Children of BTs navigate life as the first generation of FFBs
Being a baalas teshuvah (or giyores) is like being a new immigrant — which makes the children of baalei teshuvah the first-generation natives in frum society. What is life like for them, growing up knowing only an observant life?
A hyperfocus on background can be detrimental to healthy integration. But the reality is that there are certain experiences and challenges unique to children who grow up with parents who are baalei teshuvah — even as every family is unique, and children within each family will have their own perspectives on their upbringing, and their own emotional reactions to their background.
When parents have an interesting background story, children will live with that story and often develop their own relationship to it. Some children embrace that aspect of their family history, while others just want to be “regular” and will do their best to downplay it.
Gila Reidy’s parents met in Venice, where her father — an Italian glass blower at the top of his field who converted to Judaism in his thirties — had a store in the Jewish ghetto. The store was a popular tourist stop, and her mother, on her own journey to observance at the time, walked into the store one day. The rest is history.
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