flipping the switch.. after conversion

Sometimes unusual and fascinating, while evn heart-wrenching, dilemmas are presented before the Rabbis for resolution.

Here is one that was presented to Rav Yuval Cherlo. A young man writes to Rav Cherlo that his family was not Jewish and his parents divorced a few years ago. His mother moved to Bnei Brak to be near her work. Over time she became closer to Judaism and eventually converted. Now, he says, she has become haredi.... Since her transformation, his life has become very difficult. She tells him because she converted he is not her kid, she cannot hug him and touch him, he cannot touch the dishes lest he defile them, she threatens to throw him out of the house, since he is not her son anyway (because she is a convert).
He asks what he can do, if her claims are true that he cannot give her a kiss, he is not interested in converting, and he is very distressed about this.

Rav Cherlo writes back that while this case sounds extreme, and he has never heard of such things before (and he is not familiar first-hand so he states that it is an estimated response and not definite), it is however common that people who go through serious social changes become more extreme, in an attempt to be accepted in the new group.

Rav Cherlo explains that she is allowed to hug him, as that is a mental issue and not halachic, and she is still his mother. While certain halachic realities are created and there is a distinction in halacha between them, the relationship as mother-child is a mental connection. Also he explains that the boy does not defile the plates by using them, but she would not be able to eat from his cooking...

Rav Cherlo advises the boy to contact the rabbonim she is involved with and converted through to assist in patching the relationship and straightening her out.

Read the original for the full heart-wrenching story, in the words of the young man and Rav Cherlo.

The mother sounds crazy to me... to be able to treat a kid like that? conversion or no conversion, whther some of these issues are real or just her becoming too extreme, there are ways to deal with all the issues pleasantly, and not hysterically. How can a mother just flip a switch like that and treat her son that way? Hey - maybe she is possessed by a dybbuk!