Q&A: Leaving the Haredi world and needs to pay back a multi-million penalty he doesn’t have?
Leaving the Haredi world and needs to pay back a multi-million penalty he doesn’t have?
Question
A friend of mine, an outstanding person, got into trouble. I spoke with him and understood how big the mess is.
He was one of the top students in the yeshiva where he learned [in his particular sub-sector, this is the best yeshiva there is], achieved very significant success, and an important Torah figure took him as a groom for his daughter. Of course, he also gave him an apartment worth today several solid millions.
Everything went smoothly, really like in the stories. He persisted in Torah study in kollel and was truly considered a very significant Torah figure.
Then one day he began to feel that he was searching for the truth, and in his understanding it was not in Haredi society but in other places. His wife is also pretty much in that direction, and so he, his wife, and their children are cautiously beginning formative steps out of the Haredi world, in his view, toward the truth and the service of God.
He is being persecuted, scorned, and humiliated by his father-in-law and his wife’s whole family in a shocking and deeply hurtful way, something almost inhuman in scale. And they have no pity—not for their daughter, not for the grandchildren, certainly not for him—and of course they long ago erased any sense of obligation to honor the Torah scholar who is their son-in-law. [The rest are just ordinary mediocre people with huge mouths and not much brains…]
I shared in his pain, and I told him something that in my opinion is both advice and maybe even an obligation.
Give your father-in-law back the expensive apartment, or its value. [He is drowning in debt partly because of the apartment he gave you, he’s eaten up inside—give it back to him and maybe some of the hostility and hatred will subside.]
I heard this advice from a famous rosh yeshiva who, although his grandchildren are now getting married, is still rolling over debts in free-loan funds from marrying off his sons and daughters. In recent years he himself has been saying, in an increasingly audible whisper, that the Haredi way is not the proper path for serving God, and anyone who comes to consult with him about problems in the Haredi world—his first response is: give back the apartment; what you took is theft…
My friend heard what I said, that he should return the apartment, and claims that he should not, for several reasons. Some he said explicitly; some he didn’t know how to articulate, and I’ll open my mouth for the mute.
- His father-in-law would be hurt by having the money returned
- I have no way to scrape together such enormous sums
- What he took, he took lawfully. His parents did not fulfill the obligation to teach him a trade, and the apartment was in place of teaching him a trade. His father-in-law wanted exactly this type of person, one for whom the obligation to teach a trade had not been fulfilled. He wanted this, he got it, and he paid for it.
- There was never any commitment to remain Haredi
- For years he really did deliver the goods. He raised children in crowding, lived in financial poverty [today he claims also poverty of mind], and his father-in-law merited great honor by being the father-in-law of one of the most highly regarded scholars in the whole area [a rare description, and true]
What is the best advice for him?
To start going crazy and return millions?
Or not?
Answer
The question continued elsewhere:
Sorry, I forgot a few arguments
6. His father-in-law did not give him a lot more than what was customary at the time to give a young man in his situation. If he hadn’t given it, someone else would have. He was heavily pursued in matchmaking, and all or most of the offers included an apartment.
7. They made a deal: he took his daughter and gave an apartment in return. Whoever wants the apartment back should also take back the daughter [they’re living wonderfully and not thinking about that; it’s only to underscore the absurdity—that he fulfilled his part of the agreement, and you can’t now split it in half…] 8. In his understanding now, he is truly serving God much more than he was in that Haredi world. The fact that his father-in-law doesn’t recognize this is probably true, but as far as the truth is concerned, only now has he really become a person of spiritual ascent.
My answer:
I think that if he is a Torah scholar and God-fearing, the claim of a mistaken gift is weak. The father-in-law would have to prove that already then he intended to condition the gift on a Haredi outlook for life, since there was no explicit condition there (certainly not with formal stipulation language). However, if he were to stop learning and start working, that would be a different matter, since then he supports himself and his father-in-law is not supposed to support him.
In general, I am not comfortable with Haredi couples who murder their parents, as it were, so that the parents will support them like a raven and a wolf while they sit diligently over their Talmud study.
In my opinion, his father-in-law should accept—with joy—his son-in-law, his daughter, and his grandchildren, even if they serve God in a different community from the one he thinks is most fitting.
They are upright and are doing what seems to them most true.