Monday, July 12, 2004
I've decided to continue blogging at http://jonathan_alliel.blogspot.com/
Blogger has offered new features and i think i want to use them.
Blogger has offered new features and i think i want to use them.
Wednesday, October 08, 2003
I am going to continue blogging at www.mycousinjonathan2.blogspot.com
I want Jonathan's story to be the landing page of this blog.
Please continue to post comments here.
For further reading about Jonathan's life please go to: www.mycousinjonathan2.blogspot.com
For the site created by Jonathan's brother, Miki Alliel, as a memorial to him please go to In Memory of Jonathan Alliel 1978-2001
I want Jonathan's story to be the landing page of this blog.
Please continue to post comments here.
For further reading about Jonathan's life please go to: www.mycousinjonathan2.blogspot.com
For the site created by Jonathan's brother, Miki Alliel, as a memorial to him please go to In Memory of Jonathan Alliel 1978-2001
Sunday, July 13, 2003
This is a blog about my cousin Jonathan. I got the courage to write this blog after reading The blog by the Hasidic Rebel.
In his suicide note jonathan asked me again to make his story heard. So I'm torn between writing his story, the way he saw it, and my story. My story is different than his. My story is my relationship with jonathan. I told him to write his own story. Get his own story published. I told him that if he wanted his story to be heard he would have to stay here to make sure it would get heard. But he left this world, by his own hand. And he left me with the task of writing his story. Where I can I will tell you his point of view. But mostly I want to tell you what happened to me. Jonathan happened to me.
Two years ago there was a tragic suicide death in my family. Jonathan, age 23 took his own life. Jonathan was my fourth cousin (our grandparents were 2nd cousins). We were extremely close and his death has left a great hole in my heart.
Jonathan grew up in a secular home in Israel. His mother made aliya to Israel in 1973 and his father came around the same time from France. His mother came with her parents. They had lost 2 young boys in the war.
Jonathan grew up in with his younger brother Miki (born 1980) and his parents. I grew up in on Long Island, NY and only knew them slightly. I spent my Junior year of college at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and spent some time with my cousins in Israel. Miki was 2 and Joni was 4. My mom always kept in touch with the family. In 1992 Jonathan and his mother took a trip to the US. Joni was 13 then, and he was a strange boy. They were here on a tour and we met them for dinner one night. The next time I saw any of them was when Miki finished high school. Before entering the army he came to visit his cousins in NY. He spent 6 weeks with us - staying with my mom and dad and then with me and my husband. He also spent some time in NYC with my sister and her husband. That trip solidified a connection between our two families. Miki started to tell us about his brother.
While in High School Jonathan become orthodox and politically active. This part of the story is fuzzy for me, but he seemed to have gotten in trouble with law over some political actions he took and spent six and a half months in jail after finishing high school. I'm pretty sure his story was in the Israeli newspapers at the time. I think it was like 1996. I think it was while he was in prison that he decided to become a Hasid. (Jonathan said the idea to become a Hasid was brewing long before he was in jail, its just that while he was there he had the time to grow the payot.) Jonathan told me many funny and tragic stories about his year in prison. I will write about them in later postings.
When he got out he bought Hasidic clothes and went to the Rabbi of the Tzanz community in Netanya and obtained a place in the dormitory to study at the Tzanz yeshiva in Netanya. He saw that all yeshiva buchars were getting married and thought that he should too. He didn't have a mother who could call the matchmakers so he started to call them himself. Mostly he was told that he should marry another baal teshuva. He didn't want to. He desperately wanted to marry a "real one".
In the meantime, he was spending a lot of time at the yeshiva and on shabbat he would have meals with other Hasidic families. He started to see the way these families treat the women and each other and he was appalled. He strongly believed that he was "more Hasidic then they were". He vowed that if he was able to marry a Hasidic girl he would be kinder to her than any Hasid was capable of. He didn't want to marry a woman who would slave in the kitchen and be worn out being a "baby factory". He wanted a partner in life.
Life become more difficult for Joni. His peers were being married off and no family would consider him. It especially hurt when parents of his friends wouldn't consider him as an appropriate match for their daughters. He would question their motives for inviting him to their shabbat meals. He would say that they were trying to obtain mitzvot by having guests at their tables. But they were not treating their guests as people, just as opportunities to do mitzvot. He felt this way about the Hasidim in Netanya as well as those in Boro Park.
Then he heard of an opportunity to get married in NY. He heard of a girl from a divorced home. The Hasidic community thought this girl was "damaged goods" (due to the divorce and she had something wrong with her eye or her leg). But he didn't believe that these things make a girl "damaged". He came to NY to meet her.
His mother was frantic. She called my mother. You can only imagine how a secular/traditional Israeli mother feels when her son is dressing Hasidic and running off to NY to get married. Miki called me. "Please take care of my brother". I promised I would. Joni arrived in NY July 26, 1999.
Before Jonathan came to NY we spoke on via email and an instant message program on the computer. He asked me about the kashrut in my home and about the synagogues in Merrick. I agreed to take my dishes the mikveh with his help. We ended up with all my dishes at the beach. It was great fun. And now my home is "more kosher" which I appreciate.
He also noticed that I only had 3 mezuzzahs up (front door, my bedroom, my daughter's bedroom). He took it upon himself to obtain one for each doorway in my home and to put them up. I always really appreciated his help. (I'm more observant than my husband, and sometimes it's a struggle-but that's a different story).
The shidduch didn't materialize. I don't know the particulars. Jonathan was staying at my parents' house and he became very depressed. He was trying to get a place to study at the Tzanz yeshiva in Boro Park and Yussel, the man in charge of the boys at the Yeshiva was giving him a hard time. He went to the Rabbi of the community and he also gave him a hard time. These people were not very nice to him. Finally, Yussel said he could study at the Yeshiva but he could not live there. This happened in October. He was assigned a study partner, Chaim Elbogen. Chaim was not one of the brighter boys at the Yeshiva and spent a most of his days playing cards. Jonathan wanted to learn Torah but he didn't have a partner that was interested or a place to stay in Brooklyn.
Someone i knew had a friend who lives in Boro Park who said Jonathan could live with them and she would help him get a spot in the dormitory. (Jonathan called this woman a "nebuch lawyer" but was grateful for her help). This was right before Sukkot. Jonathan arrived at the home of Rabbi and Mrs Sheingarten and was asked to build their sukkah. He did. He lived with them for a few months. They couldn't get Yussel to change his mind about the dormitory. While he was there, a woman by the name of Esther who was married and had a few young children offered to help Jonathan. She did his laundry, she called matchmakers on his behalf. (Jonathan also felt that she behaved inappropriately - she walked barefoot in front of him, she once touched him to remove a price tag and he was furious, and she just stood to close to him). By now Jonathan had developed a long list of matchmakers that he was in touch with himself. She had more that she could call. She took on his mission and was determined to help him find a bride. After a while Jonathan felt that although she seemed to be trying to find him a match her inappropriate behavior was more than he could bare. He stopped going to see her. We found a letter in Jonathan's apartment that she wrote him after he stopped going to visit her. She seemed heartbroken. Miki has this letter.
Jonathan's pain at not being accepted by the community was growing. He went on a Taanit Dibor hoping it would help his situation. Sheingarten family kicked him out of their home. They called me to tell me that he was crazy because he wasn't talking.
He stayed in my home for a few days and then got his own apartment. He kept studying at the yeshiva, kept calling matchmakers. He would visit me every Friday and then go back to Brooklyn. We also spoke a few times a day. He was getting more and more depressed. He said that if he couldn't find a wife he was going to kill himself. It seemed that all the matchmakers wanted him to marry another baal teshuva. He didn't want to. He asked, why should I live in a "baal teshuva ghetto". Why won't they accept me? They kept pushing him away. He kept watching the community. He told me some crazy stories about the people in the community. Things that were hard to believe. (After having read Naomi Regan's books and the blog of the rebel hasid, I'm more inclined to believe that the people in the religious community do not always treat each other with kindness.)
He started having shabbat meals at the home of his study partner, Chaim Elbogen, from the Tzanz yeshiva. He "fell in love" with Chaim's sister, she smiled at him. I called Chaim's mother on his behalf. She explained to me that her daughter could not marry a baal teshuva. That's not how it works. He doesn't have the right family. Jonathan was despondent.
Jonathan decided he would kill himself since he could not find a wife. He called this his "Plan B". However, he was frugal. He didn't want to kill himself and still have money left as a security deposit on his apartment. It was July 2000. He went to his landlord and said he would be moving back to Israel when he "lived out" the security deposit on his apartment. I was frantic. I knew he wasn't going back to Israel. He gave up his apartment. This could only mean one thing. I called his parents. They didn't believe me. I called his brother, Miki, who was in the IDF at this point. Miki wanted to come to NY right away and save his brother from this terrible fate, but dealing with the army was not easy. He got permission to come but it wasn't until October. I didn't know if we had time. I called suicide hotlines and therapists. Jonathan took the telephone number from me for one of the therapists in Boro Park and the suicide hotline. He said, "I am taking this from you so that when I kill myself you don't have to think that you didn't do everything you could. But I am not going to call."
Then Jonathan met Mordechai, a Hasidic divorced man, who offered to help him. It was like a miracle. He wasn't going to kill himself after all. Mordechai had a extra apartment that he was renting to an old lady that died. This woman had no family and someone had to clean out the apartment. Jonathan could live in the apartment rent free while cleaning it out and then start to pay rent when it was cleaned. Joni moved into the apartment. I was so relieved that he wasn't dead. Miki came to NY again in October. Mordechai was helping Jonathan and everything seemed ok. As each holiday passed, Joni would say, "I can't believe its Rosh Hashana and I'm still alive." "I can't believe its Yom Kippur and I'm still alive." "I can't believe its Hanukkah and I'm still alive." I started to let my guard down. Maybe things were going to be ok. I didn't know Jonathan had already written suicide notes that we would find the following June. No wonder he was so surprised to be alive.
Mordechai and Jonathan developed a story. Jonathan needed a new pedigree and a new name. Part of the reason he couldn't marry a Hasidic girl was his name. His last name was a Sephardic name, which was no good in the Hasidic community. They chose a new name, Jonathan Alias. At some point, they figured they could just say, "oy, did you think it was Alias, no, you must have heard wrong." They also made up a new pedigree for Jonathan based on his maternal grandparents. It was only a half lie. Something about his grandmother's father being a Hasidic rabbi from Poland. Nothing was said about his secular traditional family. It was said that his parents were "Modern" and the Hasids assumed Modern orthodox or something. He figured when it came time to meet his family he could convince his father to don a hat and his mother to put on a wig. (Ironically, his mother is now wearing a wig as she recovers from chemotherapy for her struggle with ovarian cancer). Mordechai had some friends in Israel who were willing to say they knew him and his family if anyone called to check on his pedigree. As it turns out, this friend did get some calls. Everything seemed like it was going to work out.
Now Jonathan Alias had a pedigree and Mordechai called matchmakers. This went on for a few months. On June 14, 2001, Jonathan, was still not married. He was turning 23 on June 21. He didn't have faith that he could get married to a Hasidic girl like he longed to do. He hung himself from the bars on the window in his apartment in Brooklyn with his gartel. Shiva ended on his 23rd birthday.
At 6:00 am June 14, 2001 Miki called me, he was crying. Jonathan called him to say goodbye. Miki immediately called me to see if I could do something. I called Joni's apartment and he didn't answer. I called the police. By now Mordechai had found him and the Jewish ambulance was there. The police came too. It was too late. The police built a story. They found one of my sonograms in the apartment and thought something was fishy. Maybe he got a girl pregnant. This couldn't be farther from the truth. He just kept me company one day when I went for a sonogram and the technician handed him a copy of the picture. I had promised Miki that I would help his brother. And in the process, we had become great friends. Of course this baby wasn't Jonathan's. She looks just like my husband.
Jonathan told Miki to look for some money in his jacket. He had been working taking care of old and/or sick Hasidic men (and he used to tell me some really funny/tragic/horrific stories about these men). He had enough money to send his own body back to Israel. He was quickly shipped back and buried in Israel.
When Miki came to NY in July 2001 we went to the apartment in Brooklyn to clean it out. We found the suicide notes that Joni wrote the previous August when he had given up his apartment. One for his immediate family and one for me.
I've been struggling to find the meaning of his life/death ever since. Jonathan was a young man with a dark sense of humor. He was bright. He taught himself yiddish and physics and was well read. He was a great friend.
Throughout his ordeal he would find ways to laugh at the situation. However, it was also obvious that he was in a lot of pain. He came into our lives and filled us with humor and pain. And now he's gone. He wanted to tell the world about the Hasidic community. How awful they treat their women. How terrible they treat anyone who wants to enter into the community. In the suicide note he wrote me, he asked me to expose them but also remind the world that he saw something beautiful in the girls. So i'm writing this blog and will add to it as i remember different stories about joni. And I still don't think I've told the story in the way that Jonathan would have liked me to, but I did the best that I can.
Post Scripts:
p.s.
[ Mon Jul 14, 03:09:15 PM deborah edit ]
as i sit here, there are more and more comments being written on the hasidic rebel site. My story is being analyzed and pulled apart for clues that would discredit jonathan.
but i'm glad i made a stir. I obviously moved people.
P.S.S.
Miki, Joni's brother, wrote this comment. Although the English is not perfect, the message is from his heart. I wish I had conveyed this message in my original writing about Joni. Maybe more of you would have understood what Joni was looking for when he decided to be a hasid. He chose this life after reading the great rabbis and he expected to find great rabbis in the community. He was looking for a good and pure life. And what he found was fake, counterfeit, forged.
Miki's comment:
"comment to Sollyman and all of you- you see he commited this suicide since he saw and felt after all that he couldn't see any good and pure in this life everything was soo counterfeit , forged and fake and even though he was sensitive he waited too long and had all the patience to hope for good' but everyone there betrayed him betrayed the way & religion they believed in' so i'm saying it's the selfish way of thoses communities that i felt that treatment for him."
.
In his suicide note jonathan asked me again to make his story heard. So I'm torn between writing his story, the way he saw it, and my story. My story is different than his. My story is my relationship with jonathan. I told him to write his own story. Get his own story published. I told him that if he wanted his story to be heard he would have to stay here to make sure it would get heard. But he left this world, by his own hand. And he left me with the task of writing his story. Where I can I will tell you his point of view. But mostly I want to tell you what happened to me. Jonathan happened to me.
Two years ago there was a tragic suicide death in my family. Jonathan, age 23 took his own life. Jonathan was my fourth cousin (our grandparents were 2nd cousins). We were extremely close and his death has left a great hole in my heart.
Jonathan grew up in a secular home in Israel. His mother made aliya to Israel in 1973 and his father came around the same time from France. His mother came with her parents. They had lost 2 young boys in the war.
Jonathan grew up in with his younger brother Miki (born 1980) and his parents. I grew up in on Long Island, NY and only knew them slightly. I spent my Junior year of college at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and spent some time with my cousins in Israel. Miki was 2 and Joni was 4. My mom always kept in touch with the family. In 1992 Jonathan and his mother took a trip to the US. Joni was 13 then, and he was a strange boy. They were here on a tour and we met them for dinner one night. The next time I saw any of them was when Miki finished high school. Before entering the army he came to visit his cousins in NY. He spent 6 weeks with us - staying with my mom and dad and then with me and my husband. He also spent some time in NYC with my sister and her husband. That trip solidified a connection between our two families. Miki started to tell us about his brother.
While in High School Jonathan become orthodox and politically active. This part of the story is fuzzy for me, but he seemed to have gotten in trouble with law over some political actions he took and spent six and a half months in jail after finishing high school. I'm pretty sure his story was in the Israeli newspapers at the time. I think it was like 1996. I think it was while he was in prison that he decided to become a Hasid. (Jonathan said the idea to become a Hasid was brewing long before he was in jail, its just that while he was there he had the time to grow the payot.) Jonathan told me many funny and tragic stories about his year in prison. I will write about them in later postings.
When he got out he bought Hasidic clothes and went to the Rabbi of the Tzanz community in Netanya and obtained a place in the dormitory to study at the Tzanz yeshiva in Netanya. He saw that all yeshiva buchars were getting married and thought that he should too. He didn't have a mother who could call the matchmakers so he started to call them himself. Mostly he was told that he should marry another baal teshuva. He didn't want to. He desperately wanted to marry a "real one".
In the meantime, he was spending a lot of time at the yeshiva and on shabbat he would have meals with other Hasidic families. He started to see the way these families treat the women and each other and he was appalled. He strongly believed that he was "more Hasidic then they were". He vowed that if he was able to marry a Hasidic girl he would be kinder to her than any Hasid was capable of. He didn't want to marry a woman who would slave in the kitchen and be worn out being a "baby factory". He wanted a partner in life.
Life become more difficult for Joni. His peers were being married off and no family would consider him. It especially hurt when parents of his friends wouldn't consider him as an appropriate match for their daughters. He would question their motives for inviting him to their shabbat meals. He would say that they were trying to obtain mitzvot by having guests at their tables. But they were not treating their guests as people, just as opportunities to do mitzvot. He felt this way about the Hasidim in Netanya as well as those in Boro Park.
Then he heard of an opportunity to get married in NY. He heard of a girl from a divorced home. The Hasidic community thought this girl was "damaged goods" (due to the divorce and she had something wrong with her eye or her leg). But he didn't believe that these things make a girl "damaged". He came to NY to meet her.
His mother was frantic. She called my mother. You can only imagine how a secular/traditional Israeli mother feels when her son is dressing Hasidic and running off to NY to get married. Miki called me. "Please take care of my brother". I promised I would. Joni arrived in NY July 26, 1999.
Before Jonathan came to NY we spoke on via email and an instant message program on the computer. He asked me about the kashrut in my home and about the synagogues in Merrick. I agreed to take my dishes the mikveh with his help. We ended up with all my dishes at the beach. It was great fun. And now my home is "more kosher" which I appreciate.
He also noticed that I only had 3 mezuzzahs up (front door, my bedroom, my daughter's bedroom). He took it upon himself to obtain one for each doorway in my home and to put them up. I always really appreciated his help. (I'm more observant than my husband, and sometimes it's a struggle-but that's a different story).
The shidduch didn't materialize. I don't know the particulars. Jonathan was staying at my parents' house and he became very depressed. He was trying to get a place to study at the Tzanz yeshiva in Boro Park and Yussel, the man in charge of the boys at the Yeshiva was giving him a hard time. He went to the Rabbi of the community and he also gave him a hard time. These people were not very nice to him. Finally, Yussel said he could study at the Yeshiva but he could not live there. This happened in October. He was assigned a study partner, Chaim Elbogen. Chaim was not one of the brighter boys at the Yeshiva and spent a most of his days playing cards. Jonathan wanted to learn Torah but he didn't have a partner that was interested or a place to stay in Brooklyn.
Someone i knew had a friend who lives in Boro Park who said Jonathan could live with them and she would help him get a spot in the dormitory. (Jonathan called this woman a "nebuch lawyer" but was grateful for her help). This was right before Sukkot. Jonathan arrived at the home of Rabbi and Mrs Sheingarten and was asked to build their sukkah. He did. He lived with them for a few months. They couldn't get Yussel to change his mind about the dormitory. While he was there, a woman by the name of Esther who was married and had a few young children offered to help Jonathan. She did his laundry, she called matchmakers on his behalf. (Jonathan also felt that she behaved inappropriately - she walked barefoot in front of him, she once touched him to remove a price tag and he was furious, and she just stood to close to him). By now Jonathan had developed a long list of matchmakers that he was in touch with himself. She had more that she could call. She took on his mission and was determined to help him find a bride. After a while Jonathan felt that although she seemed to be trying to find him a match her inappropriate behavior was more than he could bare. He stopped going to see her. We found a letter in Jonathan's apartment that she wrote him after he stopped going to visit her. She seemed heartbroken. Miki has this letter.
Jonathan's pain at not being accepted by the community was growing. He went on a Taanit Dibor hoping it would help his situation. Sheingarten family kicked him out of their home. They called me to tell me that he was crazy because he wasn't talking.
He stayed in my home for a few days and then got his own apartment. He kept studying at the yeshiva, kept calling matchmakers. He would visit me every Friday and then go back to Brooklyn. We also spoke a few times a day. He was getting more and more depressed. He said that if he couldn't find a wife he was going to kill himself. It seemed that all the matchmakers wanted him to marry another baal teshuva. He didn't want to. He asked, why should I live in a "baal teshuva ghetto". Why won't they accept me? They kept pushing him away. He kept watching the community. He told me some crazy stories about the people in the community. Things that were hard to believe. (After having read Naomi Regan's books and the blog of the rebel hasid, I'm more inclined to believe that the people in the religious community do not always treat each other with kindness.)
He started having shabbat meals at the home of his study partner, Chaim Elbogen, from the Tzanz yeshiva. He "fell in love" with Chaim's sister, she smiled at him. I called Chaim's mother on his behalf. She explained to me that her daughter could not marry a baal teshuva. That's not how it works. He doesn't have the right family. Jonathan was despondent.
Jonathan decided he would kill himself since he could not find a wife. He called this his "Plan B". However, he was frugal. He didn't want to kill himself and still have money left as a security deposit on his apartment. It was July 2000. He went to his landlord and said he would be moving back to Israel when he "lived out" the security deposit on his apartment. I was frantic. I knew he wasn't going back to Israel. He gave up his apartment. This could only mean one thing. I called his parents. They didn't believe me. I called his brother, Miki, who was in the IDF at this point. Miki wanted to come to NY right away and save his brother from this terrible fate, but dealing with the army was not easy. He got permission to come but it wasn't until October. I didn't know if we had time. I called suicide hotlines and therapists. Jonathan took the telephone number from me for one of the therapists in Boro Park and the suicide hotline. He said, "I am taking this from you so that when I kill myself you don't have to think that you didn't do everything you could. But I am not going to call."
Then Jonathan met Mordechai, a Hasidic divorced man, who offered to help him. It was like a miracle. He wasn't going to kill himself after all. Mordechai had a extra apartment that he was renting to an old lady that died. This woman had no family and someone had to clean out the apartment. Jonathan could live in the apartment rent free while cleaning it out and then start to pay rent when it was cleaned. Joni moved into the apartment. I was so relieved that he wasn't dead. Miki came to NY again in October. Mordechai was helping Jonathan and everything seemed ok. As each holiday passed, Joni would say, "I can't believe its Rosh Hashana and I'm still alive." "I can't believe its Yom Kippur and I'm still alive." "I can't believe its Hanukkah and I'm still alive." I started to let my guard down. Maybe things were going to be ok. I didn't know Jonathan had already written suicide notes that we would find the following June. No wonder he was so surprised to be alive.
Mordechai and Jonathan developed a story. Jonathan needed a new pedigree and a new name. Part of the reason he couldn't marry a Hasidic girl was his name. His last name was a Sephardic name, which was no good in the Hasidic community. They chose a new name, Jonathan Alias. At some point, they figured they could just say, "oy, did you think it was Alias, no, you must have heard wrong." They also made up a new pedigree for Jonathan based on his maternal grandparents. It was only a half lie. Something about his grandmother's father being a Hasidic rabbi from Poland. Nothing was said about his secular traditional family. It was said that his parents were "Modern" and the Hasids assumed Modern orthodox or something. He figured when it came time to meet his family he could convince his father to don a hat and his mother to put on a wig. (Ironically, his mother is now wearing a wig as she recovers from chemotherapy for her struggle with ovarian cancer). Mordechai had some friends in Israel who were willing to say they knew him and his family if anyone called to check on his pedigree. As it turns out, this friend did get some calls. Everything seemed like it was going to work out.
Now Jonathan Alias had a pedigree and Mordechai called matchmakers. This went on for a few months. On June 14, 2001, Jonathan, was still not married. He was turning 23 on June 21. He didn't have faith that he could get married to a Hasidic girl like he longed to do. He hung himself from the bars on the window in his apartment in Brooklyn with his gartel. Shiva ended on his 23rd birthday.
At 6:00 am June 14, 2001 Miki called me, he was crying. Jonathan called him to say goodbye. Miki immediately called me to see if I could do something. I called Joni's apartment and he didn't answer. I called the police. By now Mordechai had found him and the Jewish ambulance was there. The police came too. It was too late. The police built a story. They found one of my sonograms in the apartment and thought something was fishy. Maybe he got a girl pregnant. This couldn't be farther from the truth. He just kept me company one day when I went for a sonogram and the technician handed him a copy of the picture. I had promised Miki that I would help his brother. And in the process, we had become great friends. Of course this baby wasn't Jonathan's. She looks just like my husband.
Jonathan told Miki to look for some money in his jacket. He had been working taking care of old and/or sick Hasidic men (and he used to tell me some really funny/tragic/horrific stories about these men). He had enough money to send his own body back to Israel. He was quickly shipped back and buried in Israel.
When Miki came to NY in July 2001 we went to the apartment in Brooklyn to clean it out. We found the suicide notes that Joni wrote the previous August when he had given up his apartment. One for his immediate family and one for me.
I've been struggling to find the meaning of his life/death ever since. Jonathan was a young man with a dark sense of humor. He was bright. He taught himself yiddish and physics and was well read. He was a great friend.
Throughout his ordeal he would find ways to laugh at the situation. However, it was also obvious that he was in a lot of pain. He came into our lives and filled us with humor and pain. And now he's gone. He wanted to tell the world about the Hasidic community. How awful they treat their women. How terrible they treat anyone who wants to enter into the community. In the suicide note he wrote me, he asked me to expose them but also remind the world that he saw something beautiful in the girls. So i'm writing this blog and will add to it as i remember different stories about joni. And I still don't think I've told the story in the way that Jonathan would have liked me to, but I did the best that I can.
Post Scripts:
p.s.
[ Mon Jul 14, 03:09:15 PM deborah edit ]
as i sit here, there are more and more comments being written on the hasidic rebel site. My story is being analyzed and pulled apart for clues that would discredit jonathan.
but i'm glad i made a stir. I obviously moved people.
P.S.S.
Miki, Joni's brother, wrote this comment. Although the English is not perfect, the message is from his heart. I wish I had conveyed this message in my original writing about Joni. Maybe more of you would have understood what Joni was looking for when he decided to be a hasid. He chose this life after reading the great rabbis and he expected to find great rabbis in the community. He was looking for a good and pure life. And what he found was fake, counterfeit, forged.
Miki's comment:
"comment to Sollyman and all of you- you see he commited this suicide since he saw and felt after all that he couldn't see any good and pure in this life everything was soo counterfeit , forged and fake and even though he was sensitive he waited too long and had all the patience to hope for good' but everyone there betrayed him betrayed the way & religion they believed in' so i'm saying it's the selfish way of thoses communities that i felt that treatment for him."
.
