The Bruderhof Responds

by Doug and Ruby Moody

T HOUGH WE ARE GRATEFUL TO THE STAFF of Communities  for the chance to respond to Ramon Sender's story, we are pained that our response needs to be made public in such a forum. However, the readers of Communities   need to know that the Bruderhof community described in Ramon's article and in the pages of the KIT newsletter is entirely different from the community we have lived in and committed our lives to for the past 40 years. Though we will not present a blow-by-blow rebuttal of Ramon's story, there are several statements he makes which cry out to be corrected.

The circumstances of Ramon's departure from the Bruderhof in 1959 would normally be a personal matter between Ramon and the Bruderhof. But since Ramon has made our strained relationship a matter of public record, we have no choice but to point out some of these circumstances: After Ramon had taken the vows of the novitiate in the Bruderhof--a life-time commitment--he decided to leave for California and turned his back on many of the beliefs that we consider central to a life of discipleship to Christ. Among these is a commitment to absolute purity before marriage and in marriage. Tragically, Ramon abandoned these beliefs immediately upon his departure.

The following excerpt from a December 30, 1969 letter from Ramon to his ex-wife, Sibyl, demonstrates the enormous gulf that he created between himself and the Bruderhof immediately upon his departure: "I wish that the Bruderhofians wouldn't be so f------ prudish about things, and would relax and laugh at themselves and life more ... . Sex play is perfectly good and normal among young people, and they should be allowed to f-- themselves silly over hill and dale. Ecstasy is good   for you."

After receiving such letters, is it any wonder that Sibyl decided not to have any contact with her former husband and chose not to allow Ramon access to the daughter he had abandoned? Naturally, the Bruderhof leadership supported Sibyl in her resolve.

Regarding the life of Ramon's daughter, Xaverie, we can only report that our own experiences of living with Xavie for 30 years, celebrating her wedding and the birth of her two children, and suffering with her husband John Rhodes through the agonizing two weeks before her untimely death in 1985 bear no resemblance to the picture Ramon paints.

John Rhodes reports that Xavie did not want to inform Ramon of their marriage or the birth of their two children. They had told Ramon that it was her wish and that they did not ask anyone else's advice. But he won't believe it. Xaverie's illness was very brief. One week after her death, John tried to contact Ramon, but the address he had was incorrect, and the letter was delayed before being returned. John has apologized for his delay in informing Ramon, but Ramon persists in blaming the community. It is tragic, but still a fact, that a visit from Ramon was the last thing Xaverie wanted in these last days of her life. Regarding Ramon's suspicions about the subsequent phone call and the "slight edge of paranoia" that Ramon "detected over the phone extensions," John tells us that there was no one except himself on the line. About our being afraid Ramon would "accuse them of gross medical negligence," the doctor he inquired of told him (and reported to us later) that "the Bruderhof has one of the best medical care systems he had ever seen." Xaverie would not have received better medical care anywhere else in the world, and Ramon cannot deny this.

Since that time Sibyl (and the Bruderhof) have made many efforts to reconcile with Ramon through visits, correspondence and phone calls. We were pained that he didn't give the forgiveness Sibyl asked for on her 1990 visit to him, nor after her letter to Ramon that followed, from which we excerpt:

"Thinking about your coming visit to the grandchildren brought me face-to-face with the question, what will their reaction be to the KIT letter when they are old enough to read it? As it is written now, I do believe it would be most injurious to the relationship we both hope for. I say this based on my experience with Xavie whom I try to imagine reading the KIT letter. I think by now you may have read the memories people wrote of her and see that she was definitely `her own woman,' and a dedicated fighter for the Bruderhof. I think she would have had a pretty strong reaction against it. It would not have drawn you closer together ... . My goal was to bring her [Xaverie] up to love and respect you and I succeeded, partly through protecting her from knowledge of anything in you that might attack that love and respect--for example, how you were during the years of your drug taking. I never wanted her to be a judgmental type and she never was. But it's one thing to know that our stands are rarely those of the general society--on faithfulness to one marriage, for instance--and to know (as I ultimately had to tell her) that her own father fails to share this stand with her, has in fact remarried more than once ... Rightly or wrongly, this is the sort of thing that pained her deeply--not so much what you had done, but the chasm that stretched between your respective philosophies and values... .

"One of my convictions was that Xavie be able to choose for or against joining the Bruderhof as an entirely free person. I strongly believed that if my actions did not 'speak' to her, my words certainly wouldn't, so I 'lived' rather than spoke. She was left to form her own philosophy ... In one of your conversations--maybe it was with the Moodys--you said it was tragic that Sibyl never remarried. Ramon, I wanted  to be faithful to you. And when Xavie said, as a young woman, 'Mama, I'm so glad you never remarried--that would have been a terrible blow for me,' it was a confirmation of the joy I had had in that faithfulness. I didn't preach to her about it, I just did it. What I'm saying is the children of the Bruderhof are no more 'brainwashed' than the children outside the Bruderhof. Both sets of children are simply 'spoken to' by the lives of the adults around them.

"I think if you had been better able to communicate to Xavie, even in that one meeting in the diner, that you fully supported the way of life she had chosen and were more than willing to work out with her together a relationship which would take into account the differences between your outlooks, you would have gotten much farther with her. But she felt pressed by you to go farther into your life, on your terms, than she was ready for. She loved you and she so much wanted your respect for the life she loved."

Regarding the other issues raised in Ramon's story, we will respond simply by saying that we (both over 75 now), experienced more freedom of individual choice here in the Bruderhof than anywhere else, after living on four continents. We joined under our free will 40 years ago; we stayed and returned freely twice after spending a year away from the community; we were in no way "controlled" at any time. The collapse of 1960-61 that Ramon refers to was so great there wasn't cash to meet every need; the women and girls and the sick and elderly were helped first. Certainly, overcoming the results of such a collapse took years. Many mistakes were made. Many of us in the Bruderhof have gone to great lengths to apologize personally to those who were hurt during those years. In many cases we have received forgiveness and a wonderful reconciliation has taken place. But for some, reconciliation has proved impossible. Why is this? Rather than try to explore all the reasons publicly, we invite any reader of Communities   or any seekers of truth to come and visit us. We have an open door, and we certainly have nothing to hide.

Doug and Ruby Moody live at the New Meadow Run Bruderhof in Farmington, Pennsylvania.

Ramon Sender Barayon responds...