Podbit · The Daily
Robby Hoffman's mother taught herself English, read the classics, and decided she didn't want her sons growing up only able to speak Yiddish and read the Torah. Beyond surviving her husband's abuse, she was asking a deeper question: what kind of people are we going to be? That question drove the whole family's escape.
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At 18:10 · chapter starts 16:40
Garcia-Navarro has done her research — including the Florida interlude that Hoffman says she usually skips over — and the conversation turns to the family's escape. Hoffman's grandfather came and took her mother out, and the family left her father behind. The move to Canada was not an overnight exit from religion: Hoffman kept kosher until 19, and they relocated to a Montreal neighbourhood home to the same Hasidic sect. The biggest change, Hoffman explains, was the absence of the father — which by Jewish law meant her mother assumed the traditionally male religious duties: kiddush on Friday night, havdalah at the close of the Sabbath. The real story behind the family's broader transition, Hoffman emphasises, is her mother's story. A deeply well-read woman, fluent in English, her mother began to notice that her sons were being educated exclusively in Yiddish and Torah — that they were not learning their own language, not learning the classics. She started asking: is this what I want for my children's lives? That question, combined with surviving years of abuse, drove the entire family's departure from the insular community.
Even after her family left the ultra-Orthodox community, Robby Hoffman remained kosher until she was 19, reflecting a gradual rather than sudden religious transition.
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