Tradition vs. Observance

I read The Dinner Party by Brenda Janowitz, and I rather enjoyed it. It's about a Passover Seder hosted and attended by traditional Jews and the drama that ensues. 

One passage: 

The house Alan lives in now is far different than the house he grew up in. A home filled with two Holocaust survivors who feared going to the dentist and refused to stand on line. Parents who never slept at night. . . his childhood home was cold. There had been no rugs on the floor; the furniture was sparse. Nothing adorning the walls. It was as if his parents wanted to be ready, if they ever needed to again, to run and hide. 

Alan wasn't allowed to have friends over. "Who are those people?" his mother would ask. Alan's parents didn't trust anyone but other Holocaust survivors. They didn't entirely trust them, either. It was easy to avoid the outside world in their tiny Brooklyn enclave. His father worked as a haberdasher just blocks from their home. His mother rarely left the house. The only socializing they did was on the holidays, and that was with other Holocaust survivors. People Alan barely knew. They had no family. 

Alan was embarrassed by his parents. He was scared of them. He wanted very little to do with them. 

I don't know if Janowitz is depicting a situation that she knows personally, or if it was invented by her as how survivors reacted to their experience. But I found it to be an interesting contrast to my grandparents, and Han's. 

I don't really know of any survivors (and I know many) who lived their lives as described above. They didn't perpetually live in fear. If anything, many were joyful. 

I couldn't help but wonder if religion played any part in the contrast. Does religion provide us with the structure for resilience? To be able to move forward, beyond pain, towards a more optimistic future? 

Hmmm.