Vicious emails and what to do about them..

Among a whole lot of other emails, I received this in my emails last week. It was a hard week and I am in the process of finding work and trying to finish some stories off for a competition. I was abused and stalked by a woman at a lag be Omer function who I really do still pity but want nothing to do with her. The fact that she was pointing to my son and egging her son on to him or me shows the level of depravity and idiocy that I will not sink down there.  Here is the email I received and the comments I have put on it are in blue. This is from someone who knows her and who I now believe never liked me but befriended me for reasons which become obvious.

It started with

I should have listened to all the people in the community who told me that you were mentally unstable and that you slept with some black goy to have a baby irresponsibly at an old age.

I always knew that was the opinion of some in the closed community I was moving in with my son and at one stage he was at a school which shall remain nameless because there are too many good and decent people who are a part of that same community. Why let them destroy the name of a whole institution?  I knew that a woman who I had flatted with and is the mother of several children had obviously said rather negative things about me because it was her children who were one Shabbat telling my then three year old son at the bottom of the stairs to the women’s section ,’Oh, Nir we hate you. Nir you are a goy. We hate you. Your mother is a dog. We hate you.’  Now that was not a whole community. That was one sick individual that I chose to ignore because it was beneath my dignity to respond to such stupid behaviour.

I had my son at 49. I do not consider that old. I had 5 years of IVF treatment before I had him both here and in Israel. I do not need to go into details but I was married to the ‘black goy’ that this woman refers to. I do believe I have a perfect right to sleep with someone I am married to and only to someoneto whom  I am married.  Like most women I wanted to be married and to have a family. That is a fairly normal biological drive and I was not sleeping with anyone except my husband.  That I feel is quite normal. I have far more concerns about people who sleep with people who are not their husband and they are meanwhile married to someone else. Anyway it is no one’s business my past marriage.

I didn't want to believe them and thought I saw the good side of you until you showed me your real selfish vicious self proving all of them to be correct. I am not a close friend of Pinni's but, when I read your unprovoked attack on her I saw you are really a mean person. I should have listened to them instead of wasting time listening to all your paranoid stories about how you were constantly being conspired against, and before I gave you tzedakah and free food and a chance to be on my radio show. I should have paid attention when they told me you could not be trusted to be relied upon. Before you took out the long knife to stab me in the back with.

No sure who was being stabbed in the back here but her emails have gone to quite some people and that is a bit strange if you really like some one as a friend you do not take your battles out in the public area. You need to fight fire with fire and not let yourself be bullied.
There is more.

 No wonder your teaching career is in the toilet--it doesn't take long for the education system to see that you are indeed mad. You think anyone in this community is jealous of you when you cannot stay married, get or keep a job, make a single dollar from your writing, manage to rub two coins together, or manage even one child properly?  You are deluded and have a grandiose view of yourself as some master educator and fancy yourself a brilliant writer while you are merely a legend in your own mind. You think people are jealous of your stupid little pathetic blog? Gimme a break, how pathetic!

Interesting that I am supposed to have a grandiose view of myself as a writer when this person was the one giving me compliments. I do not think of myself as a writer yet, as I have not even published a book. I have never let compliments go to my head as I know that being a good writer is keeping your feet on the ground, whether you do it professionally or just as a hobby. I am just a hobby writer as yet. Getting noticed in a few competitions, a writer, it does not make. Sustained hard work does and being self critical and analytical. And being published helps.

 Most good writers will tell you that it is 10% inspiration and 90% hard yakka which is the actually hours of writing and then editing. All writers write differently. Some like my self pour stuff onto paper and then spend a lot of time editing and redrafting. I find once you get going, a story can write itself but you have to find the time and the quiet place to let it roll out.  Other writers will craft down the words almost perfectly at once but they write slowly and methodically. I have always seen myself as a wannabe writer. Most people do not call themselves writers until they have their first book out. 

 I often find I turn a page or two of writing into maybe a paragraph if I edit because I think of a lot of things as I write. My characters and what I want them to say. My plot themes and where does it start and where does it end? You can start with one idea that you want to write about loss and that is a wide topic to deal with. You might write about grieving the loss of a child, friendship, loss of a partner, divorce, house, childhood, innocence and many other things. It can be such a broad range of stories dealing with the topic on different levels. For me, the main thing that drives my writing passion is not about other people, otherwise I would not have something to write about every day. It is about themes in life, distressing and coping and understanding events on one’s life and analysing them. My stories may not be to everyone’s taste and of course there are critics like the writer of these numerous emails which I have decided to publish in their entirety with my answers over the next few days.  I feel great pity for this person as she seems to imagine I spent my time talking about her and the level of vitriol in these letters I have received means that this person really dislikes me and probably never did like me. I believe now that she just picked me up in order to dump me and hold me to ridicule at some later stage. I was warned quite openly about her and always answered that I have found her a kind, funny and amusing companion and workmate. Far from stabbing her in the back, I have supported and defended her.

And a woman who has lived your life in the manner you have has real chutzpah to stand in self righteous judgment of others like SD or Pinni or Mandy Radofsky or the 'sluts in sheitels' as you labelled this community. You think you are some paragon of Jewish womanhood? Ha! you think people admire the mess you have made of your pathetic life? Ha! Those in glass houses!

I do not stand judgement on anyone but I live my life in keeping with my beliefs. I wear a head covering and a sheitel or wig on Shabbat. I have been doing so since 2006. I am a mother of a child and deem it my responsibility to be shomer Negia among other things. When my husband left me when I was four months pregnant with my son and I was in a permanent teaching post at Narrandera in NSW I decided I would not let another man touch me ever again.  I realised Hashem had given me the greatest gift of nurturing a small human being to adulthood and I must do it right and cannot make mistakes, any more mistakes in my life. Yes, I have had very bad judgement in husbands and even partners when I lived a lifestyle that was promiscuous in that I did sleep with people without being married to them and I will be the first to admit it. But that is in my past and I intend to make sure it stays as past behaviour. However the yetzer ra (Negative Impulse)  is a hard thing to control and a head covering reminds one, who you are and what you have to live up to. It is my tzitzit if you like.

In fifteen years there was only one man in my life and that was my husband for the first six years. It has been liberating to be single and I do not feel any compunction to be married to anyone. If I were to meet a person who treated me with respect and shared my religious beliefs and lifestyle as well as would be a suitable role model for my son, then it might be a different story but as yet, I have not and nor am I looking. I feel nothing is to be gained by going out with anyone when I am unemployed and penniless as this woman so rightly points out. Her negative comments are quite laughable as she obviously sees me as a bit of dreck under her feet, so it is almost amusing to think about why she went out of her way to befriend me if it was not to just pull me to pieces in a rather nasty fashion. She is quite bully. But I do know how to handle bullies and will give her a taste of her own medicine.

I have never said a thing against Mandy Radofsky who is a very down to earth person. I made a comment about ‘sluts in sheitels’ and it was in reference to people who will cover their hair and sleep with men or even have intimate relationships with other women  and then they go around being ‘holy’ and speak the sort of lashon Hara against me that has been spoken. I am not paranoid and I am not stupid either.  If you want to sleep with a man, or have a same sex relationship, do not cover your hair and do not pretend to be frum. That is hypocritical and I will and others will have more respect for a woman who presents herself as what she is and not under some holy facade. At least it is honest.

And the vile shmutzy way you write in the emails you sent me reveals that under your phony prim and proper facade you are in reality a lowlife. Who else but a lowlife could even think u[ let alone write of such disgusting things in such a gross manner. It is so obvious that your attacks on others are all to cover up your own moral degradation.

I am not sure I even want to go there with what this woman has said. I have few friends in the community and they are very decent people. I do not understand what she is talking about when she is accusing me of moral degradation. She is the one who is hanging out with an accused child molester and yes he may have done Tshuva but he has still done an incredible lot of damage to others that has to be dealt with. In not one email to me, has she shown an ounce of compassion for SD’s victims. She has called one victim “a mental case” and stated that he “fantasised the whole thing” because SD is really a sweet, innocent and lovely kind person???????  Maybe he is to her and those who he wants to support him and I am not saying that she should not be loyal to an old friend of twenty years or so. But her vicious unprovoked aggression against me is amazing. I am still reeling and think I have no option but to publish this to show the world what those  who want to defame and to degrade the families that have come out to see that justice is done, for what they are.

The victims’ lot in life is hard enough. When an adult human being breaks the boundaries of a child’s innocence it hurts something in the human being and it is very difficult to heal. It takes patience and years of love and tough love to bring that child back to what he or she was, is and can be. Effectively it is rape and rape is bully behaviour. It is someone taking something from another person that is not theirs to take. We have guidelines in Torah for all facets of life. This week in parsha Emor we read about the Kohanim and how they have to consecrate themselves and keep themselves holy. We are a holy nation. We should not belittle ourselves and bring ourselves down to this level of depraved behaviour. Our children are holy and we need to protect them and nurture them. Not to destroy them by protecting and supporting a perpetrator of child abuse against the victims. I am also not for hanging, drawing and quartering the abusers especially if they were or are of a young age when the abuse occured. However they need to be brought to justice for everyone's sake and dealt with. They need to be given the right counselling and incentive to heal their sickness. Child abuse is a sickness.

If by shmutzy she means the way I write, then so be it. Horses for courses etc. I write from the heart and it is not to her taste. So be it. Frankly after this and other abusive emails, her writing and her lack of compassion for others is not to my taste either. There are many things I will not agree with but I will condemn the lifestyle and not the person. Persons can do Tshuva. But do you think doing REAL TSHUVA  is easy??? No and it is not a HEY presto, WOW WEE WHIZZ BANG thing, put on a kipa, or a sheitel, keep a sort of kashrut, be kind of shomer mitvot, pick and choose here and there what we will or will not keep. It is darn hard work and every step you take, means that sometimes you slip and have to go right back up again. Work harder. It takes years and years.

And of course a person such as yourself who is such a loser and has nothing going for them in life gets relief and a feeling of self worth by kicking others when they are down like SD. How cowardly of you for it is so easy to pick on those who are down,  or on those whom you perceive as weaker. You are actually the bully!

Thank you. By your words you have shown jut what sort of sad person you are. You are so sad. Sadder than anyone I know and I felt increasingly sorry for you when I read your email.

You want to write about me on your blog? Oh yeah, go ahead and play that game and keep in mind that two can play at it and I have access to a much wider audience than you ever would and that the damage I could inflict on your already very sullied reputation could be far more damaging to you and your son than anything you could ever dream of inflicting on me. If I want to I can make it so that not only won't you ever get another job in the educational system but that you would be foolish to ever show your face in the entire Jewish community again. Don't test me.

My sullied reputation? This is quite delusional. What have I done in the last nine years or fifteen years to be honest that has been wrong? I lead a very quiet life and modest life. Why would I write about you??? What really is there more to say. Very little and you are slanderous in what you are saying.

You are not my friend.

All I can say to that statement now is ‘Thank G-D you do not consider me a friend.’  Despite the way you have behaved to me, I still consider you a human being, but a very flawed and sad one.  You are one very sad lady. I have not wanted to hurt you ever, but I see that the only reason you befriended me was because you thought you could build me up and then tear me down and leave me in pieces. You are a classic bully. You hang out with a bully and a quite cruel one. You have no sympathy for his victims or for his family.

You are playing games with the wrong person and I am not about to leave town with my tail between my legs. I may be penniless and on the point of homelessness, but  did I get there by being vicious to others? I see the hand of G-D in all things and if I am to go out on the streets G-D forbid something will come up. It is people like her who have so merrily judged me. I do not judge. I leave that to G-D and if I am to suffer then there is a reason for it and I accept the lesson with love. I do hope she finds a life that is peaceful and good one day.  She certainly has not got it now.  At least I can feel for the victims and see the balance and reality of this situation far more clearly than she can. Sad sad. I would never have published this email of hers if I had not received some quite insane emails and going on in a very childish manner about my blog being better than yours (???) what sort of nutty comment is that?  Plus the threat to spread lashon Hara all through the community about me. I have to protect my son from her and also my self. She enjoys this and she thinks causing people pain is funny. That is what is so sad.