“You think you’ll marry him off and make a buck… if you don’t listen to me, I’ll never give you a penny!”
Shani Leiman with Zivia Reischer
“I feel like I’m never going to get married,” Leora told me.
She sketched her background: her family was less than Orthodox, but after her father had passed away when she was little, some special teachers had reached out to offer their help and support. As Leora grew up, she became inspired by their lifestyle. She learned to appreciate the depth in what had seemed to be meaningless religious rituals. Now she wanted to marry a yeshivah bochur.
Her story made me think of Yosef. Like Leora, Yosef (formerly Joey) moved more to the right of the Modern Orthodox community he had grown up in. He was comfortable in the yeshivah world, and he wanted to learn long-term.
His parents were divorced, and both had remarried. He was close with his mother and she supported his choices, even though his lifestyle was very different from her own. His relationship with his father seemed a little more complicated.
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