PURIM NEWS: Jewish mother says she’ll accept son’s new career path

Elaine Adelson

TORONTO — A Jewish mother of three adult children says she will probably be OK, at some point, with her youngest son’s decision to pursue a career in the arts. 

Toronto resident Elaine Adelson, 56, told The CJN she was “blown away” when her son Joshua, 31, informed the family at a dinner last month that he had decided to leave his full-time job at an accounting firm and follow his “life-long dream” of working as a set designer on small-scale theatre productions. 

“I just couldn’t understand it,” said Adelson, who also has a 35-year-old son – a pediatrician – and a 33-year-old daughter – a corporate lawyer at a “very respectable firm.” 

“Why would you leave a good, stable job to run away and try to be an artist?” Adelson asked. “You want to be an artist? Go paint a picture in your bedroom. No one’s stopping you from painting pictures.”

Joshua, who clarified that he is not embarking on a career as a painter, explained by phone that he has long been unhappy working as an accountant. 

“I’m 31. If I don’t make a change now, I’m going to wake up and be, like, 50.”

Having worked as a volunteer set designer for years for his university theatre society, summer camp and, more recently, for a local community theatre company, he says he’s ready to make set design a full-time occupation and has already started to network in the field.  

His savings should last him at least a year, he figures, and after that, if he hasn’t landed a steady gig as a set designer, he’s willing to work in retail, at least for a little while.

“Maybe don’t mention that part to my mother?” he added, after a moment’s pause.

“His father and I sent him to all the best schools,” Adelson said. “This is how he thanks us? His brother and sister never did anything like this.”

Upon his wife’s insistence that he “Say something,” Joshua’s father Herb, 59, a dermatologist, remarked, “When I was his age, I had three kids, a wife and a mortgage.” 

He then lapsed into a disgruntled silence and referred all subsequent questions to his wife. 

Joshua’s older brother, Zachary, who Adelson emphasized is married to another doctor, with whom he has two “gorgeous” boys, said that he was, upon hearing Joshua’s news, somewhat, but not totally, surprised.

“I guess Josh has always been into artsy stuff,” Zachary said reflectively. 

“He used to make us go see the plays he worked on and they were intense, man.”

Joshua and Zachary’s sister, Leora, said she is grateful to her younger brother for “taking the heat off of [her], for a bit.”

“I’m over 30, and I’m still single,” she told The CJN on a recent visit to her parents’ home. “It’s nice to hear people talking about something other than my eggs, for once.”

“I just don’t see why she can’t try JDate,” shouted her mother, who had been surreptitiously listening from the other room.

In a subsequent interview, Adelson conceded that she thinks she will, eventually, get used to the idea of her son leaving accounting for a job that’s “not lucrative, secure or esteemed – Is it even a job?” and continued: “Am I happy? I’m not happy. It’s not my choice, but what can I do? Does anybody ask me what I think?” 

She also noted that Joshua has recently started dating a “nice Jewish girl – very pretty. Good family,” adding that “hopefully, she won’t leave him over this.”

Joshua – whose volunteer theatre experience has included work on the set of an amateur adaptation of Mordecai Richler’s The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz and an avant-garde reimagining of Chaim Potok’s The Chosen – said he hopes his family will eventually come to understand his decision, or at the very least leave him alone.

 “Honestly, I just want everyone to get off my back.”