The Baal Teshuva is a person who has been metamorphosed, often straight after finishing university. Just when the parent has arrived at a happy and contented stage of life, thinking: "Well, now my son has finished law school and soon he will be a successful lawyer and I can think of retiring," or "Now my daughter has finished architecture with a Master's degree, is working on her Ph.D. thesis and has acquired everything she's yearned for," just then this child, with his or her fabulous education, suddenly decides that [there may be something more important in life]…

This is what happened to our Natalie. She made a turn as sharp and abrupt as is humanly possible, back into what we thought of as the dark, black world of the Orthodox Jew, the world of our ancestors.

Orthodox Jews live with strict and rigid rules in an easy and comfortable way from birth. They do not question these rules; they are God's rules, handed down from Sinai. The Orthodox know the rules well and apply them to themselves and to their children, just as countless generations of Jews before them have done.

For Baalei Teshuuah it is very different. They were born into Jewish families, ranging from the totally non-observant of any Jewish laws to the partially observant. And then, suddenly at some point in their lives comes a moment of truth, a moment of decision-making, when they decide to return to the ancient and Orthodox way of life...

This is not something we can minimize in any way, as it demands a complete change from all the rules which BT's thought fitting until then, to new ones they will have to fit their lives to in the future. There's so much for them to learn! But learn they must, and learn they will, all the intricate and stringent laws that our forefathers clarified and codified over thousands of years of scholarly research.

As they need and want to know them as quickly as possible, they eagerly sit in yeshivas and study almost night and day. Orthodox Jewish men and women all over the world today subject themselves to this incredible discipline, as they find this the only way in which to cope with a world that is too fast, too unjust, too promiscuous, and in fact, too everything.

But why look for more adjectives to describe our troubled world of today? We thinking people have only to open a newspaper in any country or listen to the news on the radio, and we come face-to-face with stories so horrific and horrendous that it is not surprising at all that some of our youth should want to change their way of life completely.

I will tell you what my own child said, as a perfect example: "I like waking up in the morning, knowing what God expects of me." This she can do only by adhering to a most rigorous set of laws and customs. In a world in which "anything goes" and the rule of law seems to have collapsed, it is understandable that people should want to put some order in their lives. Strictly Orthodox Judaism, where every rule is carefully spelled out and life is neat and orderly, was apparently what Natalie needed…

As a result of the secular parents' feelings of resentment and anger over these changes, almost every word uttered by their BT child is heard by them as though through a special "Declaration of Rejection" filter, since by his actions he has demonstratively rejected the parents' entire value system. His voice, perhaps unintentionally, seems to take on a superior tone. Therefore, many of his utterances may sound like denigrating and belittling remarks, which serve only to exacerbate the parents' feelings of hostility towards him, his new lifestyle, and those responsible for "turning him away from them…"

I would like to tell you about our own rabbi in Sydney, Australia. He was a parting gift our daughter left us before she immigrated to Israel. She said: "I know this will sound crazy to you today, but if you ever encounter some totally unacceptable problem, please go and talk to him." We did think the idea crazy, at the time. But, as we did indeed encounter some totally unacceptable problems, I did go to the rabbi one day and I found him most helpful. He told us something that has become a sort of maxim for us, one that has helped us at times when we simply did not know how to keep the peace with our daughter.

At those times, we would look at one another and repeat what the rabbi had taught us: "When you don't know what to do anymore, then simply do the following: LOVE HER MORE!"

We did have a choice: to accept Natalie's new way of life, or not to accept it -to let her go to live her chosen life in her chosen way with our acceptance, love and support, or without it. We chose the easier path - and I am convinced that this was the easier one - and decided to accept her way of life, no matter how hard this would be for us, no matter how strange it would seem to us.

Under no circumstances were we prepared to lose our child. You may be faced with the same difficult choice… In fact, you may find, as I did, that it can be truly rewarding.