A sensation-hungry media gleefully anticipated the juicy story: a chassidic woman leaves the fold is cut off by her family can’t bear the pain takes her own life and is shunned even in death. But one reporter who sought the truth discovered a noble family who found resources of love and connection amid piercing emotional trauma — and taught his own colleagues a lesson.
Among the horrifying terrorist attacks and calamities that shook Israel last week was one tragedy that on the surface seemed like nothing more than a sordid family drama. On the face of it the story was nothing exceptional. Family breakups fraught with suffering and angst painful separations between parents and children leading in the end to loss of life are unfortunately everyday fare in the news.
But rarely do these stories attract such deep scrutiny and arouse such strong emotion as the funeral of Esti Weinstein a”h. And that is because in this case hostile individuals and groups and especially the sensation-hungry media believed that here they had a juicy plum of an anti-chareidi story: a woman who had left the chassidic world and eventually put an end to her life due to the unbearable pain of being cut off from the daughters who stayed behind in her former community.
What an opportunity to weave a tale depicting the chareidim and one group among them in particular as cruel inhuman and entirely apathetic toward those who leave the fold (known colloquially in Israel as yotzim b’sheilah and I’ve often wondered what that phrase is supposed to mean — what is the “question” that triggers their exit?) harsh and unyielding toward a son or daughter who chooses a secular life and so on and so forth the best and most heartbreaking story an ignorant writer can concoct. Weinstein’s tragic death and funeral was their big chance and they pounced on it.
