On Shabbos I put Yitz in the stroller and walk to the synagogue to pick up Eli after prayers, and when the men spill out the front door, they stare unabashedly at me, at my tight black dress and black high heels. If you dress up, you get attention. Here the Hasids don’t look at the ground when a woman passes. But they aren’t any better, because instead they make lewd remarks and dirty jokes. That is the extent of their enlightenment.
My neighbor Chavi, who lives just a ten-minute walk down the road, styles my wigs for me. I just purchased my first extralong wig from her, made from virgin human hair that has never been chemically treated, so it falls soft and wavy down my shoulders. Still, no matter how carefully she cuts it and how expertly she arranges it around my face, I can still see the obvious, harsh hairline, and I can’t imagine how anyone could think it’s my real hair.
Sometimes when I go to the mall with Yitzy in his stroller, I feel as if his blond hair and blue eyes and his innocent, all-American face not yet marked by side curls bridge a little bit of the distance between me and the other people in the mall. Yitzy makes everyone stop and coo at him with his perfect baby face and pudgy limbs, while I stand by in my wig and long skirt, pretending to be normal.
I’ve started taking my wig off in college, even though my hair underneath is always a little matted. The wig makes me self-conscious, as do the skirts, but I don’t own any normal clothing, and thus far I’ve been scared to be seen buying any. I go to the T.J. Maxx in White Plains and peruse the jeans rack nervously, not understanding the differences among all the shades of denim and all the styles and pocket designs. I choose a pair with big brown loops embroidered on the pockets and white fade marks at the hips and try them on. They’re a bit long, but with heels they would be perfect. I marvel at how different my body looks in the jeans, so curvy, so powerful.
When I get to class on Wednesday, I take off my long black skirt in the car. I’m wearing my jeans underneath. In the classroom, my friend Polly squeals excitedly, “Oh my God, you’re wearing jeans! Are they Sevens?”
“What?”
“The brand—they’re Sevens, right?”
“I don’t know. I got them in T.J. Maxx for fifteen dollars. I liked the color.”
“That’s a great deal for a pair of Sevens. You look so cool!”
When the class starts, I can’t hear anything the professor is saying because I keep looking down at my legs and smoothing the denim with my fingers. When I walk out of the building, the gardeners working outside whistle as I walk past, and I look down at the ground automatically, scolding myself for attracting attention. Surely this doesn’t happen to every girl when she wears jeans, I think.
At home I crumple them up and stuff them under my mattress so Eli doesn’t find them. I’m not sure I can lie my way out of this one.
Polly is my new best friend at Sarah Lawrence. She has brilliant blond hair and a dimpled smile, and she wears beautiful clothes and talks animatedly about everything. She is a character straight out of the books I read wistfully when I was younger, and I ache to have hair as yellow as hers, eyes as blue, teeth as white as milk. When I first introduced myself to her, I told her I was Hasidic, and she looked at me and laughed, as if I were joking. But then she realized I wasn’t kidding, and she slapped her hand over her mouth and wouldn’t stop apologizing, but I didn’t mind. I was flattered that she couldn’t really tell I was different. She thought my wig was my real hair.
If I had a nose like Polly’s, my life would be different, I know it. It always comes down to the nose. Bubby says that’s how Hitler identified the Jews from the gentiles. He sure would have had an easy time identifying me. I associate my lot in life with my nose. Polly’s life suits her nose, so it makes sense. You have a pointy nose, good things happen to you.
In January, Polly takes me to her neighborhood in Manhattan and we go to a restaurant. She loves food; she used to be a chef before she and her husband opened a chocolate factory. I think to myself, I will eat everything but the fish and the meat, and it won’t be so bad even if it isn’t kosher. When we arrive, I can see that the ceiling is so tall because the people inside are long-legged, with noses lifted high in the air, and I feel fascinated and slightly intimidated by my surroundings. Even the waiter is devastatingly handsome, his walk a smooth rock from hip to hip. “Gay,” Polly mouths silently behind his back, and I nod in understanding, wondering what it is about him that makes her identify him so easily.
The host comes over to our table to ask if everything is in order, and Polly flirts shamelessly with him, teasing him about his strangely styled hair. I watch bashfully, my eyes averted. When he leaves, Polly leans in excitedly. “He was totally checking you out! Didn’t you see that?”
“See what?” I ask, bewildered.
“Oh, you’ll learn in time.”
Checking me out? For what? I sneak a glance at the tall, dark man standing at the front of the restaurant. To me he looks generic, like every other gentile. With their clean-shaven faces and trim haircuts, they all look like the same alien species. Surely a man like that could never be interested in someone like me, not with my Jewish nose. Men like that are interested in women like Polly.
When the food arrives, it is plated beautifully and looks terribly exotic. I can’t help breaking my own rules, and I end up trying a cold cut that looks like turkey pastrami, but afterward Polly tells me it’s prosciutto, which is pig. I excuse myself to go to the bathroom to wait for the vomiting to set in, because that’s what my teachers used to say happens to people who eat chazer meat.
My stomach feels fine. In the bathroom mirror I can see my wig and long-sleeved blouse and I am almost surprised by my reflection, as if I expected to see someone as glamorous on the outside as everyone else in the restaurant. Tamping down the feeling of smallness that has started to rise within me at the sight of my reflection, I abandon the traitorous mirror and walk back out into the restaurant with a painfully straight back.
I return to the table and start sampling the other dishes. I eat as if having returned from war, victoriously. Lamb spring rolls, beef carpaccio, salmon ceviche, what strange food gentiles eat! I don’t understand the concept of raw meat and fish, but I try it anyway. It’s funny, I say to Polly; most Hasids who go off the path just go to McDonald’s for a burger, but I’m eating gourmet treif cuisine.
“That’s how you do it, though,” she says. “Even when you break the rules, you do it with pizzazz.” I like the sound of that. A glamorous rebel, that’s me. On the way back we stop into a sunglasses shop and I buy a pair of tortoiseshell frames by some designer Polly says is awesome, and when I put them on, I look like a supermodel in the mirror.
I look sideways at Polly and wonder if I can ever be as self-assured as she is.
“I don’t want to be a Hasid anymore,” I announce suddenly, after we leave the shop.
“Well, then,” she says, “you don’t have to be.”
I don’t see how I can be anything else, though. It’s the only life I’m allowed to live. Even if I were willing to give it all up, how would I go about finding a life to replace it?
The older Yitzy gets, the more I worry about his future. When he turns three, he will get his own set of payos and start going to cheder, a school where boys go to learn Torah from nine to four o’clock every day. I don’t think I could bear seeing his childlike perfection marred by the side curls and prayer shawl he will have to wear, or the fact that his life will suddenly be full of male influences while I am relegated to the background.
How can I condemn my son to a life of smallness and limitation? How can I allow him to be imprisoned in a cheder or yeshiva for the rest of his childhood while I am allowing myself the opportunity to broaden my own limited horizons? It doesn’t feel right. I can no longer imagine abandoning him to this narrow, stifling life when I want so much to have a free one.
Still, we are both trapped. I have nowhere else to go, and no means or resources to change my circumstances. Instead, I live my other l
ife in secret, keeping my thoughts and opinions locked up in the part of my brain I have reserved for my new, rebellious identity.
On the outside, I keep kosher and dress modestly and pretend to care deeply about being a devout Hasidic woman. On the inside, I yearn to break free of every mold, to tear down every barrier ever erected to stop me from seeing, from knowing, from experiencing.
My life is an exercise in secrets, the biggest secret being my true self, and it has become of utmost importance to me to hide this self from Eli. When I was younger I would write down my thoughts in journals, but after I got married I stopped because I was worried my writings would be found and read and that Eli would be able to see inside me through them. Now it has become more about hiding my new discoveries from him; I don’t want to leave incriminating evidence around, revealing the changes brewing inside me.
There are so many thoughts roiling around in my mind that writing becomes a matter of necessity. I decide to start an anonymous blog so I can post entries online and use the web as my private journal. I make sure the entries can’t be traced to me. I title the blog “Hasidic Feminist” and it is mostly inspired by the work I do at Sarah Lawrence, bits of writing spurred on by my feminist readings in philosophy class, and portions of essays written in my theater and writing classes.
The first thing I choose to write about is my struggle to consummate my marriage. I never actually admitted my prolonged virginity to anyone, and normally I wouldn’t consider publicizing it, but a phone call I received a week ago changed my mind. An unidentified woman from Williamsburg called me, saying she had gotten my number from my aunt Chaya, and confided in me that her recently married daughter was having issues consummating her marriage for eight months already, and did I have any advice to offer?
I was taken aback by her request because I had always seen myself as uniquely problematic in the larger scheme of vaginal health, an anomaly not just in my community but in the world. Yet here was a mother, worried about her daughter’s inability to perform sexually and the apparent lack of a concrete reason for it, floundering for some kind of explanation, some assistance. I gave her whatever advice I could, even though I myself haven’t begun to fully understand why I went through what I did.
It feels strangely freeing to post the story of my giant defect out there for everyone to see, anonymously, of course. After I post my story online, a swarm of comments appear, most of them written by other people like me, rebellious Hasids, some ex-Hasids, some modern Orthodox Jews, and even some gentiles. I don’t know how all these readers discovered my tiny little blog, my little speck in cyberspace, but they all seem to have a lot to say.
Some are disbelieving. They don’t understand how a girl could go her whole adolescent life without noticing her vagina. Others are empathetic. Still others report similar experiences. The readers debate with each other, using my blog as a forum, and for me, perusing their conversations is a thrilling experience. I feel somehow at the center of something great, and yet safe behind the screen of my computer, unable to be seen or held accountable.
“How will you keep your child?” my readers ask. No community will let you leave with your child if you’re not religious, they say. “I’m a lawyer,” one comment reads, “and I know for a fact it’s never been done.”
They warn me that no rabbinical court will let me leave with my son. Even if I were to keep all the laws, I still wouldn’t be considered devout enough to be a parent to my child. They cite examples for me, names of other women who’ve tried, but their comments don’t scare me. I know that I am different from these other women, that I have something they didn’t have. I don’t know how, and I don’t know when, but one day I will be free, and so will Yitzy. He will be able to go to a real school and read books without fear of being found out. Subconsciously I have started to say good-bye to the people and objects in my life as if preparing to die, even though I have no real plan. I just feel strongly, in my gut, that I’m not meant to stay here.
I visit Bubby and Zeidy for the last time in March of 2009, for the holiday of Purim. I still don’t know if I will ever really get to leave, but I think that just in case I do decide to make my exit, it will be easier if I cut ties sooner rather than later.
The house I grew up in is falling apart. I don’t know if it’s because Bubby and Zeidy don’t have the money anymore, or if they simply lack the energy to keep up with the maintenance this sort of building requires. It saddens me that such a beautiful brownstone building with so much history should be left to rot. How appropriate that just as the very foundations of my faith are nearing total collapse, the foundations of my childhood home disintegrate as well. I take it as another sign that I am on the path I was set on long ago by a force greater than my own. God wants me to leave. He knows I was never meant for this.
The paint in the hallways is peeling, and the linoleum on the stairs has been completely worn through in many places. Bubby wants to sell the house to a developer who has already offered a seven-figure sum, but Zeidy is too proud to relinquish control on the best investment he ever made. He’s trying to figure out how he can turn the situation to his advantage.
Already I can see there are things I don’t have to say good-bye to because they no longer exist. The Bubby and Zeidy I remember from my childhood have aged dramatically. Bubby no longer has that vibrant energy that she once had; her step is slow and plodding, her eyes glazed over in disorientation. Zeidy is more absentminded than ever, his speech lacking the alacrity and precision of his younger years. Everything I loved about my childhood home has gone to tatters.
My father walks in during the festive Purim meal, eyes bloodshot, obviously drunk. He sees me and makes his way over, and I swallow in anticipation of his loud greeting. Instead he falls heavily over me in a sort of hug and slaps his arm around my neck. It’s heavy, and his grip tightens. It’s almost as if he is choking me, and the smell of liquor is so thick I can’t breathe. His dirtiness makes me feel dirty too, the kind of dirt you can never scrub off. I will be happy to be rid of my duties to him; I never understood why I had to perform the part of a daughter to a man who never tried to be my father.
Eli watches the whole scene without saying anything, and for once I wish he would step in and be a man, maybe distract my father at least, instead of leaving me to fend for myself. Afterward he looks at me with his mouth open in surprise, but I keep my face blank.
It’s strange to look around the dining room table, groaning with the weight of platters of smoked meat and wine decanters, at the people I call my family—aunts, uncles, cousins, and distant cousins—and think that maybe in a year’s time they will have become a faint memory. It’s clear that they take my existence for granted, that by now I am no different from all of them, married off, with a toddler to take care of, the weight of a wig on my head. For all intents and purposes I am tied down. But truthfully, all those assurances are in the mind, and if my mind cannot be tied down, if my dreams cannot be diminished, then no amount of restraints can really guarantee my quiet submission.
I wonder what they will say about me when I’m gone. Will they feign shock, or will they nod conspiratorially and say they knew all along that I wasn’t quite right in the head? A child like me, damaged from the start—what else could I have become?
The women in the adult program at Sarah Lawrence go out for lunch after classes. They are mostly white, wealthy women in their thirties or forties, able to spend the money on exorbitant tuition fees and Prada bags. I am the anomaly, a twenty-one-year-old woman with a baby, who each time slaps on the same pair of jeans in the car, with hair still getting used to the sunshine.
Materialism, I discover, is no different in the secular world. I remember the girls I went to school with as a child, dressed in Ferragamo shoes and Ralph Lauren separates that had been altered to adhere to the modesty guidelines. I long for the same status symbols now as I did then, if only because I understand that those symbols command the kind of respect the world never seems to s
how me.
I sometimes join my Sarah Lawrence classmates for lunch if I have time, listening quietly to the descriptions of their lives, their talk of lavish vacations, their worries about their children’s private schools, their complaints about the cost of a gym membership, and I wonder if one day I will be privileged enough to have problems like these, a husband who works too much, a house that’s too big to maintain, a flight to Europe that even in first class is exhausting.
Surely an ordinary person like me has no real future. If I do leave, and shed the visible parts of my Hasidic identity, what life will I have as a gentile? A single mother, struggling to raise a son in the most expensive city in the world, without a family to help, without a husband to take out the trash, without a dollar in a savings account or food stamps in my pocket. Because I promise myself now that if and when I leave, I won’t just become another family on welfare, as in the world I left behind, where mothers who give birth to more mouths than they can feed trade WIC coupons for cash at the Jewish Financial Exchange.
Polly, her blond hair now cascading down suntanned shoulders, confides in me that she too grew up on welfare, in poor, run-down Utah, with a mother who joined the Jehovah’s Witnesses and a father who clutched eightballs of cocaine in his shivery fist.
“You?” I say, disbelievingly. “But you seem to have it all.”
“I only got this way about seven years ago,” she says. “After we opened the chocolate factory, it was as if the heavens finally rained down the happiness. But I always knew my day would come, you know? I waited for so long to get my share, my reward, after what seemed like a lifetime of watching other people of privilege indulge in luxurious lifestyles. It came in the end, but the time before it still seems like forever.”
I’m only in my twenties now. Who knows what could happen in ten years? Even if I have to be poor and miserable for a decade, at least there is still the possibility for that kind of miracle, the kind that happens to people like Polly, who deserve happiness. Can I really close the door on that chance?
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