Mennonite to Jew

Mishpacha Magazine featured a story, written by Sharon Gelbach,  a number of weeks ago about a family of Mennonites that decided to be megayer and later, make aliyah. What I found enrapturing regarding their story was not only their free-thinking ways—they don't feel a need to find a specific niche in which to define themselves—but also their emphasis on a positive, rather than negative, outlook.

Akiva and Basya, before converting, home-schooled their children: 

They weren't looking to isolate the children from the negative as much as to have an active, positive influence and to be able to exert greater control over what their children were learning. "If you focus on the negative, saying, 'I'm trying to avoid x, y and z,' they're eventually going to see those things," Akiva explains. "As I see it, you have to say, what am I doing this for? I want to have a say in what's being taught in a positive way."

Regarding where they chose to send their children to school, after moving to Israel:

". . . most of those school representatives expended a lot of energy telling us why not to send our children to other places, not why we should send to them. I'm not saying they're bad, but as I see it, you don't degrade somebody else to build yourself up. They were saying, 'We're better,' rather than, 'Here's what we have to offer.' Bnei Akiva was the only school that said absolutely nothing about anybody else. They basically said, 'This is what we have to offer. This is what we can do.' . . . If you live in a negative mindset, it's going to get passed right on to the children."

Regarding his parents:

Akiva still maintains regular contact with his parents, and speaks to his father once a week. "If you don't teach your children to respect your father, whom they can see, how will you teach them to honor their Father in Heaven, Whom they can't see? It's important to me there is no negativity in the relationship, because that gets passed down to the children."

. . . Akiva credits his father with imparting him with lessons on how to combat peer pressure. "I teach the kids that it's okay to be different. We don't have to be like the world to be part of the world. We have to be able to say, 'I'm okay with being different.'" 

Perhaps because they were outliers in the first place—being Mennonites—the idea of being different is not so difficult for them. But I was so taken with their contentment in choosing their own path, a path that is not defined by a specific group, understanding that there is no right way to be a Jew. 

 

I'm finishing The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish, and this line won me over:

People go through life trying to please some audience. But once you realize there's no audience, life is simple. It's just doing what you know in your gut is right.