Our Gemara on Amud discusses the unfortunate situation of children whose father was a thief. Are the children who were supported by their father over the years, responsible to pay restitution to those whom he stole from? We won’t get into the Halachic specifics, but instead I thought to discuss the social and psychological impact of having a father who is a thief.

Unfortunately, there are crooks even in the frum world. Sometimes the convicted felon might be an otherwise upstanding member of the community, perhaps even due to his acquired wealth, an admired pillar of the community. Certain types of fraud, especially government fraud, can be rationalized as “crimes with no victims'', or “the way business business is done in this city.” This allows a sophisticated religious perpetrator to be different in his legal practices versus his interpersonal relationships. 

But what is it like to experience having a supportive father, who for all appearances is a wonderful person, suddenly become a convicted criminal?  There must be shock, and feelings of intense loss of the prior social and religious status, aside from the trauma of imprisonment of a loved one.  Those are the immediate concerns, but then there also must be confusion about loyalty.  If your father is a good man, how could he do this?  If the law does not count, do you emulate his lifestyle?  More subtle psychological challenges ensue regarding the ill-gotten gains. If your whole life you are used to an affluence, and even received many benefits from illegitimately gained funds, how do you undo that?  Is your own success legitimate? 

I could not find specific research literature on these effects in frum families, so I widened my research to include a category of persons that, at first glance, are unrelated: Mafia Families.  At least from non-fiction memoirs and movies, one gets the sense that the external religious practices can be strongly interwoven into the family values and process, extreme loyalty to the clan, multi-generational strong patriarchal and matriarchal figures, as well as rooted family traditions and ethnic pride.  In an emotional-symbolic sense, there are parallels to the frum family, (lehavdil).  

I will reference psychological dynamics described by researchers Serena Guinta et al that bear resemblance, and are instructive regarding frum children of convicted white collar felons. (Mediterranean Journal of Vol 9 No 1 Social Sciences January 2018, “Being Mafia Children: An Empirical Transgenerational Research”):  

• The mafia family has a rigid organizational structure which is also the source of its strength and its own power. This structure rests basically on the distinction between the “inside”, which protects and helps, and the “outside”, alien and threatening.
• The mother educates her children giving them the values of the mafia culture, in a condition of acceptance of the family hierarchy, preventing them from developing autonomy and keeping them forever tied to herself; the father, mostly idealized, is the model to imitate, provides rules and values; the child is educated to the code of silence, to show virility, strength and opposition to the legal power.  (With frum families, we can substitute “virility, strength and opposition to the legal power” with “Stoicism and contempt for the frivolous and meaningless illusions of secular culture”, which involve discarding a more balanced respect and sense of propriety for secular laws and values, even when at times they are alien to Torah values.  In addition, the Mafia code of silence, while not the same, does bear some similarity to the frum taboo against mesirah, involving secular legal authorities to police internal matters.)
• Idealization of the father figure, who often may be absent from family life due the intensity of the legal, and not-so-legal, business escapades.  The admiration from afar can serve as a way to mythologize the father, and allow him to be a greater personage than when he is up close.
• There is conflict of loyalty between family versus the outside world. Family expectations become a cage from which it is difficult to escape. And this is particularly true for the Mafia families, in which trying to disengage is considered treason, a sort of denial of the family roots and an effort to acquire values different from those provided by the family context.
• Adolescence is a time of questioning personal values and finding one’s identity in contrast to family and community values. Therefore teenage children of convicted felons may experience the above difficulties with greater intensity.

Of course, I do not mean to say that all Jewish white collar felons are anywhere near to the depraved morality of mafiosos, but rather by way of comparison to understand psychological dynamics that are similar. In addition, there certainly are convicted white collar criminals who may be largely innocent, in the frum and secular community.  We must be especially careful not to judge appearances as the press and gossip mill can be cruel.  For interesting reading about the weaponization of our current criminal justice system, I refer you to Dershowitz’s and Silverglate’s superb book: “Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent.”  In this book’s ominous descriptions about where society is heading, Dershowitz and Silverglate describe our country’s arcane and vague legal system that predisposes most business people to actions that are almost inevitably illegal.  This, combined with a legal system that rarely punishes ambitious DA’s who can make a case based on flimsy evidence and political motivations or instructions by power brokers, the accused is forced to choose between a quick plea bargain and/or selling out associates who are so-called bigger fish. Many will just agree to a guilty plea and take the 16 months in prison as the better option when compared to years of legal expenses, broadly seized assets, and even punitive and retaliative prosecution of family members and friends for “non-cooperation.  This allows for a Soviet-Era style selective prosecution where the target is decided on first, especially political enemies, and then the crimes are discovered.

Translations Courtesy of Sefaria, except when, sometimes, I disagree with the translation

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