‘My Husband Is Returning to Judaism’—What Now?

What should a person say to his wife when he comes home on Friday night from synagogue and finds her sitting with a coffee and a cigarette in front of the screen? When is it permitted to eat food that was cooked in a non-kosher pot? At what point is it right to add more hours of Torah study? And in general — how do you tell your family that you’ve decided to become religious?

The questions are many, and every new baal teshuvah finds himself facing dozens of them. Rabbi Ofir Tangi has been there too — he began his own process of returning to Torah observance at only 14. Since then he has accompanied many baalei teshuvah and wrote a series of books called “In the Place Where Baalei Teshuvah Stand.” “No one in the family is to blame for the fact that a person becomes religious,” the rabbi says. “He needs to know how to behave toward them in a proper and respectful way.”

Twins and Torah

Rabbi Tangi’s own teshuvah story began unexpectedly.

“I grew up in Safed, in a traditional Moroccan home,” he describes. “I was a good kid, and I remember myself even as a child saying to God before bed, ‘Help me be a good Jew, that I won’t do sins,’ without even understanding what I was saying. The year after my bar mitzvah we used to put on tefillin, and one day my twin brother asked me if we could go pray Shacharit at the nearby synagogue before school. I have no idea where it came from, but I didn’t like the idea. I told him, ‘We pray at home with tefillin — that’s enough. Dad didn’t ask us to go to synagogue.’ My brother didn’t give up and managed to convince me.

“We got there, and at the end of the prayer a man approached us, told us about a study hall that had opened near our house, and suggested we come. We were afraid to tell him no as we were raised to have real reverence for Torah scholars — but when we left I grumbled to my brother about why he was dragging me to a place like that.”

But the story didn’t end there. “Again my twin convinced me to come to synagogue, and again that same man approached us. He told us once more about the study hall that was very close to our house — as if they built it there just for us. This time he succeeded in convincing us to come, and we found ourselves sitting and listening to a class on Shabbat before seudah shlishit (3rd meal). At the end of the class, someone tossed out that anyone who doesn’t eat seudah shlishit will end up in Gehenna. My brother and I heard that and started crying — we thought that’s what would happen to us; we were so naive. Of course they calmed us down, and over time we began coming every day to the class. Our strengthening accelerated quickly.”

How did your family respond?

“It wasn’t easy for them. We’re a big, close family, and we did almost everything together: fishing trips, hanging out — and suddenly something changed. They felt like we were leaving them, and it hurt them. The real difficulty was around leaving for yeshivah. At first a rabbi came to speak with our parents, and they somehow compromised on a religious high school yeshivah. But Hashem directed our path to a yeshivah in Rechasim — a place that to this day I don’t know how we were even accepted into.

“In the week before leaving home, the feeling was not easy. We were supposed to arrive there on Sunday, and on Shabbat my father announced, ‘You’re not going.’ The rabbi came again to speak and explain, and when the moment came, we got into the car with my father. Leaving Safed we stopped for gas, and there he met the station manager — a man who had often spoken against the Torah way of life. From the car window I saw my father telling him he was taking us to yeshivah. I was so afraid that man would persuade my father to cancel everything at the last second, and I started crying to God that He should help us. Suddenly I heard him tell my father: ‘You’re making the greatest step in the world.’ I couldn’t believe my ears.”

The first days in yeshivah weren’t easy. “We still had quite a few friends from our old school, and we didn’t know how to face them. Sometimes we stayed in the beit midrash just so we wouldn’t run into them,” the rabbi recalls. “In general, entering the Torah world at such a young age wasn’t simple — and two years later my twin brother decided to leave.”

Why, what happened?

“I thought about it and realized he rose too quickly, and that’s why he fell. Something in his process wasn’t balanced. In any case, I remember my first Shabbat alone in yeshivah — my heart was torn. I sat there asking myself: ‘If this is true, why did my brother leave? And if it’s not true, maybe I should go after him?’ I cried out to God and begged Him to show me the true path — and there, that very Shabbat, my real choice happened. It was clear to me that I was staying.”

Another change occurred: his parents’ view shifted.

“If before that it was hard for them, now their attitude turned completely upside down. My parents began fearing I would leave like my brother, and my father said, ‘I’ll give you everything you need — just stay religious.’ I was very alone, and I told my father I want to, but I can’t promise. I was just a young teenager and didn’t know where I’d end up. My father backed off and told me, ‘I’ll keep Shabbat together with you — don’t leave.’”

How do you explain that turnaround?

“My parents saw the change in us over those two years. Every time I came home from yeshivah, I would clean the whole house — even the refrigerator. Also, the diligence with which I learned gave my parents a lot of nachat. By the way, my brother later returned to teshuvah, and after him most of the family did too.”

As he grew older, Rabbi Tangi came to Yeshivat Kisei Rachamim. “There was tremendous Torah power in that yeshivah — it grew me,” he says. “And Baruch Hashem, over the years I’ve merited to write dozens of books, establish a kollel for dayanim, and build communities with my own two hands in Eilat, Rishon LeZion, and the U.S. Today we live in Rishon LeZion, in a special community where we merited to open a beit midrash for young men, and I merit to accompany many baalei teshuvah.”

“Help — my husband is becoming religious”

The ups and downs Rabbi Tangi experienced personally — and the extensive experience he gained guiding baalei teshuvah, led him to write his book series.

“A baal teshuvah enters a completely new world he doesn’t know at all, and without learning and guidance he has no chance of knowing how to behave,” he explains. “The books show how to manage halachically in all kinds of complex realities, and most importantly, to calm down and act gently with the family. A huge part of the struggle is marital and family.

“Sometimes at the beginning a person is full of ‘lights’ — he feels he must wear a kippah, must wear tzitzit. Meanwhile his wife is going through a real trauma. That tzitzit doesn’t suit her; she’s embarrassed by it. They once told Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach about such a woman and he said, ‘Oy, what a poor thing.’ You can hear women in this period saying, more than once, ‘I’m sick of this husband, sick of this house.’ And on top of that you have all these ‘nice people’ who come and tell her, ‘What, your husband is becoming religious?’ ‘Has he gone crazy?’ She finds herself dealing with several fronts at once, and there’s no one standing there with her.”

So what can be done?

“Let’s say a man became religious, finished Friday night Ma’ariv, and now he comes home and sees his wife sitting in front of the TV in short pants, coffee and cigarette in hand. How should he respond? He should say: ‘Shabbat shalom, my dear wife… Shabbat shalom, my beloved… can we please make Kiddush?’ Not: ‘Turn off the TV,’ or ‘Aren’t you ashamed — look how you’re dressed.’

“And after Kiddush, he should wash his hands calmly — and not tell anyone in the family to join him. When the meal begins, he should ask everyone, ‘How are you? What’s new?’ If it fits to share a nice short story for a few minutes — do so. If not, better to be quiet. If the family is willing to hear him, he can sing a bit; if not, it’s better not to. Talk about regular things, keep it pleasant — that’s the most important thing.”

The rabbi brings another example, from Rabbi Greineman. “A man came to him and said, ‘My wife turns on the TV for me, refuses to sit with me for Kiddush, she smokes on Shabbat on purpose, turns on the radio for me — what do I do?’ Rabbi Greineman answered him: ‘One thing I don’t understand — what is your wife guilty of because you became religious?’

“That woman was simply continuing her normal life; it’s just that once he became religious, the husband felt she was doing it against him. The man asked again how to move things forward, and the rabbi asked him, ‘What does your wife like?’ The husband answered, ‘Flowers.’ The rabbi told him: ‘Go buy her flowers, and write her an apology letter for how you’ve behaved until now.’

“The man was shocked — that wasn’t the answer he expected. But he went and did it. When he came home with flowers and the letter, she was stunned too, and was deeply moved to hear his apology. She decided she had to meet the rabbi who advised her husband this way, and later she herself returned in complete teshuvah. The moment the Torah path communicated love and respect to her, it was clear to her she wanted to join it.”

In his introduction, Rabbi Tangi expands on this: “I explained there how a person first of all needs to remain a human being,” he says. “At the beginning, for example, a man should gather his wife and children, sit with them, and promise: ‘I’m not changing anything in the house. I promise not to force religion. I promise to consult a rabbi about everything. I won’t drive you crazy.’ It’s also important to compliment them when they come toward him. It’s not simple for them — they didn’t choose this path.”

The fruits of this approach can certainly come. “Family members see how a person behaves and respond to it. There was once a refined, noble husband whose wife didn’t keep mitzvot. He continued functioning for years exactly like before teshuvah: helping with the children, honoring his wife, making no faces about anything. One day his wife called him at work and asked him to come home early. When he opened the door, he almost fainted — she was standing there dressed modestly, with a head covering. He didn’t understand what happened, and she said: ‘Do you think I didn’t notice how much you respect me? I watched the entire way how you didn’t say even one bad word. Your behavior enchanted me, and I also want to honor you — so from today we’ll walk this road together.’”

“Judaism with joy”

According to the rabbi, patience is the key word. “A baal teshuvah must arm himself with patience, otherwise he will destroy things. Even more than that: not only will he destroy the relationship with his wife and could end up divorced — he might also end up leaving religion. Anyone who forgets the family at his side destroys everything and causes chilul Hashem. But someone who does things respectfully makes a great kiddush Hashem.

Not always do they come closer. “Sometimes it happens slowly — and yes, there are also times it never happens. But at least this approach causes the other side to respect you. The Lubavitcher Rebbe used to say: not religious coercion, but ‘Judaism with joy.’ When a person contains the other side and understands that he himself was there not long ago, his path is received well. You can’t flip a house in one day, so you must balance and calm down. Patience may be bitter, but its fruits are sweet.”

Rabbinic Guidance

Halachic flexibility in this area can be significant. “We had a case of a husband who became religious; his wife respected him, but asked to eat chametz on Pesach. He came to ask how to handle that inside the home. Another case: a son whose father lit a barbecue on Yom Tov and grilled meat — was it definitely forbidden for the son to eat that meat? Halachah teaches exactly what is possible and what isn’t, and not every answer is ‘forbidden.’ When you ask a rabbi, you discover you can sometimes manage even with chametz in the home, and that the laws of Yom Tov are not the same as the laws of Shabbat. Each case depends on details, so it requires asking a rabbi to avoid unnecessary friction with family.”

The same principle applies in the kitchen. “There are halachic rules for how to manage and eat even in a house where the kitchen still isn’t kosher,” he explains. “When a person gets a clear answer, he can live with the situation, and family members who aren’t observant can also contain him. We had a family where the husband and son became religious and the wife was totally against it. At first, with the ‘big lights,’ the husband made some mistakes — but later he learned not to pressure his wife and to give her space. At first the kitchen wasn’t kosher, and he learned how to manage. From her side, she would speak with me once every half year and ask what she could add. Over time they immersed the dishes and kashered the kitchen — only this time it was done respectfully and calmly.”

Close, consistent guidance from a rabbi is critical. “A person needs to attach himself to a clear, reliable halachic authority who will guide him, both in practical matters and in spiritual matters,” Rabbi Tangi explains. “Any other situation becomes ‘too much light without vessels’ — and then a person ends up being lenient where he needs to be strict, and strict where he needs to be lenient — both with himself and with his family.

“Also, sometimes halachah says to act a certain way, but a person still needs to do things at his own pace. When my brother and I started our process, I remember we came to seudah shlishit and someone asked us, ‘What, you don’t say Birkat HaMazon?’ We answered that the rabbi never told us — we didn’t know we had to. He didn’t say a word to us, and only after we asked did he instruct us to begin. The fastest way is not always the right way.”

There are many questions that arise in this space. “For example, people ask when it’s appropriate to start learning more than an hour a day. There are cases where it’s good to start, and other cases where the person will learn for two weeks and then collapse — so you must evaluate what fits him. Similarly, the question comes up whether to go to kollel or not. Learning in kollel is wonderful — the question is whether it will be good for this specific person. For that you need a rabbi, who becomes your roadmap inside this thicket.”

To close, the rabbi says: “The world hasn’t ended — on the contrary. Someone beginning a teshuvah process is going to become a better husband and a better son to his parents. I saw it happen in my own family — how most of them returned to teshuvah. Only one relative still isn’t there, but even she once told me: ‘If I ever return to teshuvah, it will be because of you. You don’t force, you don’t nag, you don’t interfere, you don’t push your way in. That pleasantness is enchanting to me.’”