I don't think we're supposed to judge this man. My great grandparents have made an opposite decision when faced with Stalinism and Nazism - they decided not to tell their kids anything about Judaism and take it all on themselves. Well, it worked. My great grandfather, a rabbi, refused to sign a confession stating judaism is opium to the masses. They were thus deprived of the right to work and my great grandmother, a direct decendant of the Ba'al Shem Tov coming from a big ultraorthodox Hassidic family, had to work as a bartender in order to feed the family.

They have also traded gold spoons, which was awfully illegal but necessary in order to survive when you can't legally work. It was their moral decision to do that rather than sacrifice their kids on the altar of their beliefs.

So in the end the whole wonderful family of my great grandmother was brutally massacred in Babi-Yar and on the way by the storming Nazis and their Ukrainian allies. Her beautiful sister went insane after watching her baby's head smashed against the wall, she wondered in the streets before being taken into an Ukrainian house, where she was murdered and buried in the lawn. It happens.

Then Stalin died and my grandparents had my mother, called after this beautiful sister. And I'm called after the fathers of my great grandmother (Hassidic Rabbi) and my great grandfather (mitnaged Rabbi, decendant of the gaon from Vilna). It also happens.

Then in 1998 my great grandfather died in great misery after suffering for 5 months in a poor hospital in Netanya, where he got fleas and other diseases just due to maltreatment. Then again, he would never make it to the age of 94 had it not been his daughter, a doctor, who took care of him through all these years. It also happens.

Then his little son, a manager in a leading defense research facility, didn't know how to say kadish over him properly because he was never taught how to do it by his parents, nor by the Soviet Russians. It also happens.

So none of us can judge whether my great grandparents, who saved dozens of Jews in the holocaust and were willing to suffer Stalinism but were not willing to let their children suffer with them, have made the right decision.

If any religious man would come to me and say that my great grandfather has died in so much misery as a punishment for bringing up a secular family, I will personally break his nose if not have him blinded. Not because anyone deserves having his nose broken, but because no one deserves the misery and humiliation my great grandfather had to withstand in the end of his amazing life.

Right?