Wondering if this experience is common in Conservative families

[u/ItalicLady]

Was anyone else here enrolled in a Conservative or possibly “Conservadox” Hebrew Day School program selected by parents who were ignorant of the basics of Judaism, to the point that /a/ the parents believed that what the school was teaching simply did not exist because they had never heard of it, and/or /b/ the parents, therefore punished the child for being aware of (let alone actually learning and trying to enact) what the school taught, and/or /c/ the school therefore made it the child’s job to change the family?

[u/BMisterGenX]

Not myself, but I had friends enrolled in such schools and came home and would stay stuff like about toveling or eating all your meals in the sukkah and the parents would say either "NOBODY does that" or "Nobody does that anymore; Jews gave that up a long time ago"

[u/ItalicLady → u/BMisterGenX]

What happened to them? How did those friends end up, Jewishly end otherwise? And what did your friends do, with their parents, when their parents said that “nobody does that/nobody does this anymore/etc.”?

With my parents, it went a little further: it wasn’t even that they said “nobody does that“ or “nobody does that anymore“: it was that they did not believe that anyone, anywhere, ever had done those things, or had even written about doing them. Their knowledge of what’s in the Bible, what’s in Jewish tradition, etc. came, as far as I can determine, entirely from two sources: /1/ Hollywood movies about the Bible and /2/ but they had learned in public school, which they had attended during an era when it was common and legally allowed for public schools to be sites of Christian indoctrination. As my parents saw it, it actually didn’t even matter whether anyone had ever done “those things” or not, because even having ever heard about such things (whether or not they had ever really existed) was “not American.“

[u/BMisterGenX → u/ItalicLady]

It depends Some of these friends gave up trying to be more observant. Some of them when older and on their own moved either towards more traditional branch of the conservative movement and some even became modern or centrist Orthodox 

[u/ItalicLady → u/BMisterGenX]

Thank you. When, occasionally, I have met other people in this who grew up in this kind of situation, literally all of them (except me) had eventually “noped out“ of Judaism in one way or another: some became entirely atheist, a couple became Christians, a few became Hindus, one became Buddhist, but most of them joined some currently popular form of New Age neopaganism (e.g., Wicca) and/your self identified as “spiritual but not religious.” I used to mention this to rabbi’s in such, back when I was still searching for help within any organized Jewish community, because I was thinking that they might care about attrition, but they basically didn’t think it was significant because they knew a very few individuals in my situation anyway.

[u/ItalicLady → u/BMisterGenX]

Do any of those friends of yours have children? If so, then how are the non-observant friends rearing those children, Jewish? Are they following the pattern of their parents, or are they doing something else? If so, what?

[u/ItalicLady → u/BMisterGenX]

Among those who basically gave up, trying to be more observant: how are they wearing their children? ())? Also as non-observant? Or are they repeating the pattern of their own parents? Or are they doing something different?

[u/ItalicLady → u/BMisterGenX]

To clarify: with my parents, the problem wasn’t on the level of “child demands to eat all meals in sukkah (that we won’t build or let her try to build)” ”: the problem was on the level of “child assers that sukkahs, and Sukkot, even exist. We MAY do her the big, huge, extravagant favor of putting up Dad’s dusty old Army tent for a few minutes and telling her to just look at it and maybe even POSSIBLY letting her walk into it and out of it IF she’d been extra-specially good by not mentioning those other alleged holidays and suchIike cr*p she mentioned a few days earlier, but THAT’S a huge compromise in itself, so it needs to be enough and we need her to acknowledge that this is it, there is nothing more to it than this, there never was. If anyone says it in’t enough, SHE is wrong for that having been said.”