My brother got married on Sunday, to a kick-ass woman, who happens to not be Jewish. My parents didn't come. My daughter was the flower girl. About an hour before the wedding I sent my dad a picture of C and a message saying "there's still time to do the right thing." He wrote back "She looks cute, I am doing the right thing."
So here's a list of responses I've come up with, for the next time he asks if I want to skype him with C:
"To quote our former president "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me...you can't get fooled again.""
"No thanks"
"Why don't you skype your rabbi? You should probably double check that he'll take care of you when you're old"
"Sure, but C is only available to talk on Saturday mornings"
"Great, C is waiting for an explanation of why you weren't at her Uncle
D's wedding" (To be honest, thankfully, she hasn't seen my parents in
over a year- in part because they said they weren't coming to the
wedding- and didn't ask about them at all at the wedding. I don't think
she realized they are related to Uncle D. She did ask if her Uncle M
would be there- which is B's sister's husband. So clearly she's not
clear on who is related to whom).
"I'd rather not curse in front of my child so maybe we should hold off on that, indefinitely"
"[Basically the entire text from this post about evidence for Ezra writing the Torah]"
"So I'm wondering what exactly the jewish source of not attending your child's wedding is. Or did you just pick that up from the handbook of shitty parenting?"
"Who dis?"
"Just wondering, what if you're wrong and there is no god, or no god who gives a crap about missing your kid's wedding, or even looks poorly upon it (since god is good and all) and you just alienated your kids and grandkids for nothing?"
"UNSUBSCRIBE FROM LIST"
ETA: Actually did get an email from him asking if I have time to talk briefly today so he can wish me a shana tova! What fucking chutzpah!! Here are two additional responses I've come up with (so far I've not replied at all, thinking of just ignoring it until tomorrow:
"I'm too mad to talk to you right now, and I certainly don't want to hear anything about your evil cult and its holidays."
""I
don't have time to talk, I have a long day of work and then afterwards
I'm going out for beers with friends to talk about my rough weekend
explaining to all my brother's new relatives about how sad it is that my
parents are part of a cult"(true story apart from the long day of work part).
Mazel Tov. Overtime here is a possible scenario. The parents etc: will pressure to convert spouse to Judaism. If that fails, they may begin to accept the situation because deep down they probably realize it is the right thing do do. Deep down they may even want to be on better terms.
ReplyDelete