I spoke to Reb Shmuel, our rosh yeshiva, about some of the thoughts I had yesterday, about being troubled that the attack at the Yeshiva didn’t hit me more immediately, that I was as blinded by our differences as I was and that my own mind was revealed to me as being as bad at this klal yisrael thing as those by whom I feel excluded.

Reb Shmuel told me a few things.

First of all, the people in this Yeshiva, specifically this institution, were Jew loving people. What he meant is that, while we as (small l) liberal or (big C) Conservative Jews feel and often are excluded by the Orthodox in various ways, while we feel that we are not included in their vision of Judaism and often we aren’t, these people specifically did include people like us in their vision of klal yisrael. These are not the people who I think of when I think of “The Orthodox who hate us” as I inevitably do.

Second… Reb shmuel studied in that Yeshiva, for two years, when he was a teenager. The same age as the boys who were killed.

He asked me if it had been just 8 random Israelis standing at a bus stop of various backgrounds and ethnicities, would I feel differently? I thought a minute and said I probably would… because I stand at Israeli bus stops. And if it were in America? I thought and said “It would depend on where.”

Thinking about it… I thought back to katrina and to the tsunami… the disasters of the past several years, the things that have upset people, the big events that people have cried over, that have deeply touched even the unaffected. I have hardly felt touched by any of these events. The last time I viscerally felt a disaster was September 11th 2001. And I remember feeling guilty that I felt it so strongly, having personally lost no one I knew. And I remember that my initial reaction was not even to the people, it was to the building… I couldn’t see the people until I could see the building. I had to visualize the building and then visualize the people in the building… and I felt it specifically when the first building fell. Because the people left in the second building saw the first building fall. And there was no way they didn’t know what was going to happen next.

The first problem is the number. After 3000 people dying in one day in my hometown, about two blocks from my high school, 8 feels like nothing.

That needs to change.

I keep reading biographies. I’m reading everything I can about these boys, finding them, feeling them, feeling who they were and how they were like me. One of them, it is reported, was seen alone in the beit midrash studying until 1 am Wednesday night. I can relate to that. He was buried with the Masechet he was studying when he was murdered, which was soaked in his blood. Masechet Nedarim. I haven’t studied it. I am studying masechet Shabbat.

One of the boys, Avraham David Moses, is the son of a friend of Rabbi Diamond, one of the directors of our program, and of Shaiya, one of my favorite teachers. Avraham David’s mother came to study for a year in Israel in the early ’90s and decided to stay. She studied at Pardes, where I have many friends. This morning Rabbi Diamond said to us, “Imagine your vision of a crazy right wing settler and everything that goes along with that in your mind. Avraham David’s mother and family are just about the exact opposite of that.”

We dedicated a special learning session this morning to the memory of the boys who were murdered. Rabbi Diamond taught us a psalm that had been said at Avraham David’s funeral.

One of my initial thoughts was that, like I’ve had wakeup calls to start thinking again about theology, about philosophy, about halachic theory, this is my wakeup call to start reading the news again… to integrate some of real life back into my consciousness. I’ve been in my study bubble long enough. I have to become an integrated person again. I’m not diving back into analysis at this point, I just need to know what’s going on.

But right now, this is not about that. This is not about politics or analysis or about religious fanaticism or extremism. This is about me and my relation to my fellow Jews, and to my fellow human beings. This right now is an exploration of my emotional reactions, to gauge where my humanity needs adjustment.

***
I just remembered I was wrong… the last time I felt viscerally connected was not September 11th, but the Lebanon war.

Thursday evening I got home at maybe a quarter to ten. I put my stuff down in my room and proceeded to fold my dry laundry and hang up my wet laundry. I talked to my flatmate for a bit. I came back to my room and saw that I had a text message on my phone. I checked it and saw that it was from Harris, my chevruta from last semester who is now working in the dairy on a kibbutz. The text of the message read “Are you ok?”

Harris doesn’t usually check up on me like that unless there’s a reason. So I called him. He told me that 8 Yeshiva students had been gunned down in their beit midrash in Jerusalem, and that they thought that there was a gunman still loose. Now Harris knew that the Yeshiva hit was Mercaz HaRav and not our Yeshiva, and he knew that it was in a different part of the city. But still he worried.

I don’t have internet or television at home. I didn’t hear more about what happened until the next morning at Minyan, not at the Yeshiva but at the Conservative shul next door. The morning’s darshanit (they have a rotation of congregants who give divrei Torah every morning) was visibly shaken by the events. After services and the Rosh Chodesh breakfast, I went down to our beit midrash to set up for Yachad Minyan with my friend Benjamin. He used the Yeshiva Computer to check his email while I cleared off the tables for dinner. He turns to me and says “You’re going to want to check your email… people will be worried. Also Rabbi Diamond wants us to confirm that we received and read the security updates email.” So I checked my email and indeed I had a few asking if I was dead.

Grandma Bev heard from someone in her community that there was a shooting at “The Yeshiva” in Jerusalem. Since this person is active in the movement she assumed at first that she had meant my Yeshiva.

The news says things like Yeshiva in Jerusalem, Jerusalem Yeshiva, things that make people back home think of me and where I am, where I am studying. When I first heard the news, I didn’t make the connection as quickly. I am accustomed to the idea of the Yeshiva where I am studying is not generally accepted as the same kind of Yeshiva as where eight were killed and forty wounded Thursday night. I would not be allowed to study there, I would not be considered a serious Torah student there, I would likely not even be considered a Jew there. The first thing I thought about the kids who were killed (and they were just kids) in relation to me was not how we are similar but how we are different.

Where did this poison come from?

It was the email from one of the directors of our program, Rabbi Goldfarb, that started to bring it home.

These boys were learning Torah and celebrating Rosh Hodesh in the beit midrash, activity we know and appreciate.

I sit here in my own beit midrash, in my makom kavuah, my gemara still sitting on my shtender open to the sugya we were learning this morning. At Mercaz HaRav, they might not recognize me as one of them, they might not see the similarity between this Yeshiva and theirs. That doesn’t matter. Why is it that it takes so long for me to recognize them as like me, their Yeshiva as like ours? What is this wall that is between us?

The shooter was a resident of Jerusalem… an Israeli citizen. Someone from a neighborhood not far from where I live. I don’t know what to do with that.

I find myself noticing that my makom kavuah is next to the door of the beit midrash. I find myself looking to see who it is whenever I see movement outside. Mercaz HaRav was hit most likely because it is the flagship institution of the Religious Zionist movement and of the settlement movement. These factors don’t apply to my Yeshiva. There is not much reason why an institution like this one would be a target of Palestinian terrorism… honestly, around here we are more worried when we see Haredi types poking around. They have been known to try to steal (liberate, I guess) sifrei Torah from liberal Jewish institutions. My sense has always been that we here at The Conservative Yeshiva have more to fear from the right wing of our own people than from the sorts who perpetrated last week’s massacre.

Talking to my friend Alex over lunch yesterday, we were talking about egalitarianism and the movement. He told me that he cares a lot less about the Movement than I do, or our friend Adam does. Alex is going to be enrolled in JTS’s rabbinical school in the fall. He says that he hopes to be a Rabbi for all Jews, not just for Conservative Jews. I agreed that Klal Yisrael is more important to me than Conservative Judaism… but that since Conservative Judaism is the only place where I have a home, I am necessarily forced into a particularistic way of thinking about my Judaism.

But this is much deeper than that. Deeper and sicker.

Wednesday we went on a field trip to a museum on the border between East and West Jerusalem, formerly the border between Israel and Jordan. It is called Museum on the Seam in English, מוזיאון על התפר in Hebrew. It calls itself a socio-political art museum. We haven’t had a whole lot of discussion about how we all felt about it. It’s kind of difficult to describe on the whole, but the current exhibition is called Bare Life. From the website:

Bare Life is the third in a series of exhibitions on themes of human rights that we are presenting at the Museum. This exhibition aims to touch upon the increasingly unraveling seam between deviant states and normative states, and to point resolutely at the place where the temporary emergency situation turns into a legitimized ongoing situation that in the end leads to a paranoia of suspicion and to the use of violence to re-establish public order.

A couple of people have talked to me about liking or not liking the museum, liking or not liking the art, liking or not liking the message. I found myself unable or unwilling to express or admit to, even to myself, a solid opinion on the content. I was very aware, as I wandered though the exhibits, of an analytical aloofness that completely overtook me. I found myself not judging the art or its message, but merely decoding, dissecting, pulling out from each image the message that the artist and/or curator seemed to be putting forth and… doing nothing with it. I thought a great deal about the manipulative nature of art, and the resultant roles of responsibility of the artist and viewer. Art by its nature, tends to elicit emotional reactions in people. It is visceral. Political art seeks to bypass reason and go for the jugular, to reach the opinionated part of the mind without the messiness of the critical faculties getting in the way, slowing it up, blocking it out. I hate when people use the word “powerful” with regards to most things, but especially with art. In certain contexts at least, the “power” to which people refer is a combination of the artist’s skill at manipulation of the audience and the audience’s ability or willingness to be manipulated. It is the meeting place of the speaker’s strength and the receiver’s weakness.

There are times when I do not mind, or when I even like to be manipulated. There are certain media, certain contexts, in which I want a feeling to be elicited from me. But I resent it when it is overt, and moreso when it seeks to persuade in a context which should be subject to critical examination rather than emotional reactionism.

I went to the Yeshiva yesterday (Friday… part of the weekend here) to talk to Reb Shmuel who is one of our Roshei Yeshiva. I needed to talk to someone about some particular concerns that have been arising for me with regards to my halachic observance and my place in the Conservative Movement, and my concerns about rabbinical school. He gave me some good advice and some reassurance, let me know that what I was thinking and feeling was reasonable and not completely out of left field.

He also told me that he was very glad that I was here at the Yeshiva, that it was good to see someone who was as intelligent and serious and self-aware and articulate as I was and who was working on their Judaism and their learning like I was… and he told me that he thought I could really benefit from another year here at the Yeshiva.

Now I’ve been thinking about this pretty much since I got here. But hearing Reb Shmuel say it… well, he made it seem real, like a real option. It felt like the moment I knew for sure that I was coming here in the first place. I think it would be really unfortunate if I didn’t take advantage of the opportunity I have here to learn that much more in a serious immersion environment that isn’t geared toward a career in the rabbinate… because that is not what I want out of rabbinical school. I’m not looking for a job, I’m looking for learning. I want school, not training for a trade.

After our meeting I sat down to go over a sugya that my chevruta and I had been having particular trouble with on Thursday. After a few minutes of struggling through with the Jastrow and the Frank, who should walk in but… my chevruta!

“Harris!”

“Gella!”

“I’m so glad you’re here!”

“I’m so glad you’re here!”

“Do you want to-”

“-go over the sugya?? Yes!!”

So we sat down and wracked our brains over who was saying what to whom, what point they were trying to get across, what they meant precisely by the word “gibul” in the context of kemach and in the context of dyo… eventually one of our friends who is in the next talmud level up came over and helped us with the Rashi… which clarified things quite a bit, but not entirely. Reb Shmuel walked by a few minutes later and we asked if we could check with him if we were understanding it right. He confirmed most of our conclusions and helped us with the rest. When we were confident that we understood and thanked him he said “Go over it a few more times.” Harris and I looked at each other hesitantly for half a second and then went back over the sugya, alternating the reading and translating and clarifying/explaining three times. After the third time we looked up at each other again. After about five seconds of silence…

“We have to do this with everything.”

“Yes. Yes, we do. Three times reviewing everything we study.”

“When are we going to find time to do that?”

“I don’t know… but we have to.”

“Yes. We absolutely do.”

It was a wonderful moment. Wonderful because we came to a realization of what we needed to be doing with our learning to get the most out of it, and wonderful because we were 100% on the same page about it, because we each knew that the other was completely committed to this.

Harris is 18, and here with Nativ. He will be leaving in January for the second half of his program on a kibbutz. I don’t know what I will do without him.

We weren’t looking for it, it just popped out at us.

We were rolling the Torah in preparation for Rosh Hashannah. We were taking the Yeshiva’s sefer torah to Kibbutz Bror Chayil because they did not have a kosher scroll. We were planning to just roll to the place where we would be reading and make sure that that section was fine, because generally you do not look for mistakes in a Torah except in places where you would inevitably find them on Shabbat or Yom Tov when you would have no way of fixing them, and you assume, unless you have reason to think otherwise, that the Torah is kosher.

But when you see a big ass crease in the klaf, you can’t help but see where the roof of the dalet is separated from the leg. Hm, what to do? Well, we had an offer from Moreshet Yisrael to use on of their sifrei torah, so the first thought was to just go ahead and get it from them, but sometime between finding the problem and getting a second opinion from Reb Shmuel (which of course concurred with Reb Hillel’s) Hillel decided to run over to a safrut shop and get supplies to go ahead and fix the Torah instead.

Dude!

So I got to help fix a sefer torah. And by help, I mean that, well, I was there when we found the mistake, and I held the sefer open while Hillel fixed it, and I pointed to it several times and speculated as to whether or not the ink had dried and stuff like that. Oh, and also I yelled for people to come watch Hillel doing his safrut thing, cause I mean, how often do most of us get to see someone working on a sefer torah?

We brought the Torah home that night and rolled it back and forth a couple of times since we had time and supplies to make sure both sections were clean. We found and fixed a couple more mistakes… really minute ones which I would not have caught.

In Taanit (30b) it says, “Those who mourn for Jerusalem will merit to see it in its joy.” This is derived from Isaiah 66:10, “Rejoice with Jerusalem and be glad for her, all you who love her; join in her jubilation, all you who mourn for her.”

Last night I walked with a group from The Yeshiva to Kotel HaMasorti for ma’ariv and Eicha.

I said at the beginning of this trip that I would talk more about The Kotel. I suppose I shall do so now.

I have been to The Kotel proper twice. Once on birthright, and once the first day I was here. This is my experience of The Kotel. I see people walk up to the wall. They put their hands on it. They put their foreheads against it. They stand there for a while with their eyes closed. They pray. They cry. They come away slowly, sometimes walking backwards so as not to turn their backs on it. They come away talking about how powerful and moving the experience was.

I go to the Kotel. I look at these people. I walk up to the wall. I put my hand against it. It feels smooth, almost like plastic, from the wear of millions of fingers touching it as I am. I put my forehead against it. It feels like stone. I stand with my eyes closed. I wonder what I’m doing, what I’m supposed to be doing. I think of Papa Karl who, seeing how people push and shove and jostle to kiss the Torah when it is brought around the shul, would mutter under his breath “That’s right… kiss the magic box.” I stand there and remember that I’m surrounded by women. I stand there and I feel a little bit angry. I stand there and I feel a little bit sad. I stand there and mostly, I feel very little. What I do not feel, is God.

When I was a little girl and we were in a very scary car accident (in which, Baruch HaShem no one was injured) as we sat on the side of the mountain next to the smashed up rented minivan waiting for help to come to help us climb back up to the road we’d fallen off, my mother asked me if I wanted to pray. I said no. Why would I want to pray? It seemed a complete non sequitur.

Last night was… I guess nice is the word. We sat at the southern corner of the western retaining wall of the Temple Mount known as Robinson’s Arch because of the archway that used to be there which was part of a staircase leading up to the Temple that was discovered by Edward Robinson. What is visible now of the arch is a bit of a protrusion where it met the wall. The majority of the space next to the wall itself is roped off, as the ground is uneven and there are large stones piled around which have not been moved since they fell in 70 C.E. when the second Temple was destroyed. We sat and Eicha was read, a few words were said, a few songs were sung, and we concluded with HaTikvah.

When it was over, my friend Eitan suggested that we walk over to the platform to the left of the space where it is possible to access the wall itself. I decided that I should try again, in this different environment. We walked over. I watched as Eitan walked up to the wall, put his hands against it, put his head against it, and stood there. I walked up to the wall, touched it, stood staring at it for a moment, and realized that I wasn’t seeing anything. I walked over to the railing which overlooked the pile of rubble and the place where those still lingering after davenning were milling about. I looked down the wall. I looked at the pile of stones. I looked at the people. And I started to cry.

This past year, I walked downtown to where the World Trade Center used to be. This was the first time I went there on the 11th of September.

I grew up not observing Tisha B’Av. I told this to my flatmate today. “It was the single most tragic even to befall Am Yisrael. I can’t imagine just ignoring it.” I could only shrug. I know all the reasons not to observe, not to mourn, not to want a literal third Temple. I understand the evolution of Judaism and the sense that prayer is a more advanced form of worship than animal sacrifice. I tend to make a point of calling the religion of the Temple era “proto-Judaism” because it is more correct from a historical, semantic and evolutionary standpoint.

But really… to put it in a rather crude way, that’s a lot of eggs to go into an omlette.

I’m not going to pretend that I’ve got this all figured out. And I’m okay with that. I said the other day that I was trying not to think too hard. This is not true. I’m thinking just as hard, but I’m observing anyway. I’m making a conscious decision to think only in certain directions and not to be put on the defensive by my own questions or by the questions of others. I decided that today I was going to mourn the destruction of The Temple and the fall of Jerusalem and the scattering of my people. And I did. And I think it was the right thing for me to do.

Here’s something that’s been troubling me a little bit lately…

I am here to work on practice. On practical Judaism skills, as it were. I’m here to gain fluency where I am missing it. I’m here to get myself accustomed to practices and halachot that came as pre-rejected in my family when I came into this world. I do not fault anyone for the situation I find myself in with regards to my Jewish education and/or practice… I think that the way I grew up in Judaism was more or less the way it had to be and I am where I am and it will all be good.

Here’s the thing… I’ve recently had people start to try to challenge me and my practice on philosophical and theological grounds. Not in a hostile manner, mind you… innocently and in a well-meaning fashion, engaging in the sorts of conversation that I am usually eager to take part in. I find myself now, however, asking to be excused from such discussions. I don’t want to have my inconsistencies pointed out to me right now. Right now I’m trying things on, testing things out, learning and taking on practice as I find it. For once in my life, I’m trying to not think too hard.

This goes against everything that anyone including myself knows about me. I am always the first to challenge myself and to insist on knowing why I am doing something before I do it. Theology is my thing. I’ve been working the theology and philosophy angle of my religion my whole life. Why now am I making a conscious effort to turn down (not off) that part of my brain? Will my friends and teachers think less of me for this? The new people I’m meeting?

I get the sense that a lot of these folks are accustomed to people who never bother to think through their practice and just do either what they’ve been taught or what they feel like doing. I have stock answers ready for why I do certain unusual things (like wearing tzitziot) but I’m not ready to talk about why I’m making an effort to observe the three weeks and the nine days leading up to Tisha B’Av, a day commemorating the destruction of a Temple I was raised not to mourn for. I’ve been thinking hard about this stuff for as long as I’ve been able to think. Right now is the time to learn how to do Judaism rather than just thinking about Judaism.

I’ve moved in with a fellow who is formerly Chareidi, still largely Orthopractic, as we say, strongly egalitarian minded and who teaches here at The Yeshiva. He has Orthodox smicha (meaning he is an Orthodox ordained rabbi) and he is a wonderful resource and living with him makes it very easy for me to learn and take on observances that I would not be able to otherwise. I talked to him last night about this and he thinks that it is not a bad thing at all, that he thinks that it is important to have the traditional groundwork before you go smashing the system and breaking the rules. While he agrees with the documentary hypothesis and believes in biblical criticism, he would not want to teach it to his kids without first teaching them Tanakh in the traditional manner.

I talked this morning with my friend Josh who is a Conservative rabbi. He also thinks that I’m doing an ok thing in terms of my exploration of practice… though his initial response was “You realize that your “not thinking too hard” is probably more self-reflective than what most folks do when they’re trying to think about what they’re doing”

That made me smile.

Whoo… first week of classes over. Dear Lord I’m surprised I even remember my name after this week!

The day before yesterday was, as most of you probably are aware, the 4th of July, A.K.A. U.S. Independence Day. Being in Israel I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Well, it turned out to be quite an interesting and eventful day.

First point of interest… I got a package! And not at the apartment where I’m staying, oh no… I got a package at The Yeshiva! After tefillah I was hunting for coffee for the old beit midrash and Rabbi Lebeau intercepted me. “Oh, did you get your package?” he asked.

“Package? I got a package?”

“Yes, you got a package! Hang on…”

He disappeared briefly into a room and emerged with… that’s right… a package. And it was from none other than Ms. Jen Taylor Friedman, A.K.A. Hatam Soferet. The package was an “Instant Yeshiva Bochur Kit.”

Yes, that is a miniature Vilna Shas. You might even think it was made for a… a…

Oh come on, you know the answer.

Anyway, THANKS SO MUCH JEN! You made my day, like, for realz.

In ulpan, our instructor told us about a CD shop on Rechov Shammai off Ben Yehuda. Rebecca (one of my classmates) and I decided to go find it.

And find it we did. On the way back, two interesting things happened. One, we ran into Cantor Simon. This was the third time I had run into him on the street since he gave a presentation at the Fuchsberg Center on the great chazzanim on the golden age. I decided that this time I had to take a picture.

The next interesting this was that we came across a group of folks sitting on the midrachov playing Apples to Apples. Just sitting there. In the middle of the road.

We followed the sign’s instructions.

This guy knows two of my friends. I’m telling you, Jewish geography is scary.

The guy with the parasol, Dovid, told us that there was going to be a barbecue in Independence Park across from the consulate and that we should come. So after we took our leave of the A – A group we got some food (cause we were hungry and couldn’t either of us wait for 8 o’ clock barbecuage) and headed over at a leisurely pace to supersol to pick up a 6 of Heineken. By the time we got to the park Dovid was already there with a couple of other folks from the A – A group and some others setting up disposable grills.

Ok, so I had a hot dog. I bit into it. And… it was… well… it was…

The hot dog was fluffy. I ate a fluffy hot dog. I tried to get a picture of it but I couldn’t get it to come out right in the dark. I mean, it was like a sponge.

It was tasty, don’t get me wrong. I think it was a chicken dog. But… dude… fluffy hot dog.

Dovid and I talked most of the night. Turns out we like a lot of the same music and we stood and recited the Penguin Sketch from Monty Python together. Someone else. I found someone else who recites the penguin sketch word for word. No one was listening or watching us, it was purely for our own amusement. After a bit we got into a friendly argument about whether or not it was problematic for women to wear tzitziot while niddah. He said it was problematic and I said that it wasn’t… and neither of us could back up our claims, so we just left it. (I have subsequently asked one of my ravs and am satisfied with his answer and with my ability to make the point better in the future.) At some point we could hear fireworks but we couldn’t see them. Someone broke into The Star Spangled Banner. When everyone finished with “And the home of the brave” I launched into the other two stanzas.

I got strange looks.

It was a lot of fun. I still smell like smoke.

And yes, I am proud to be an American. I will never apologize for that.

Yes, I am still here. No, I have not died. Yes, I have been keeping very busy. Also, right now I am quite wiped out because today is a fast day and I didn’t sleep too well last night. I do, however have something written in a notebook that I’ve been planning to post here for some time.

A couple of things I was not prepared to think about:

Just about everyone here is Jewish. That was one of the things that first really attracted me to Israel… when I was on birthright 5 years ago I was very aware that, even as a person coming from Brooklyn NY, the city with the largest Jewish population outside of Israel, this was my first majority experience. This is the only place you can go where you can make a default assumption that, barring such factors as convent/monestary garb or certain other signals, anyone you meet is likely to be Jewish. The interesting thing is that what this means is that just about everyone is Jewish. That means doctors and lawyers and professors and pharmacists as well as shopkeepers and security guards, construction workers, sanitation workers and beggars. We in the US are not particularly accustomed to thinking of Jews as laborers, low-wage workers, etc.

In North America we have become very accustomed to the image of the modern Jew in a position of prestige or at least of relatively high income. Israel provides a different perspective. It is true that low wage workers do come from the territories (I have not seen this in play but I am aware of the fact) as well as from places like Latin America and East Asia, but it is still a radical departure from the American perspective to see any Jew in any of these positions at all.

It reminded me of a film I watched in my Israeli History class at Brooklyn College. The film starred Topol of Fiddler on the Roof fame- I don’t remember the name of the film- and was about Olim (Jewish immigrants to Israel)… more specifically about Mizrachi Olim as depicted by Topol’s character and his family- not a flattering picture- in, I believe, the early days of The State, lining up for work. Each man was asked his profession. Each man gave a different answer: attorney, surgeon, etc. and each was given a spade and told that their job was now to plant trees. Outraged hilarity ensued.

When you have a country, its population must build that country, its infrastructure, etc. When the population is Jewish, it means that Jews do everything. It seems really obvious, but it still elicits some cognitive dissonance.

Other things I’ve noticed: tzitziot are a turn-on. So are female soldiers. This city is filled with hot women. Also dirty Chassidim. I mean that literally.

This is a subject that is somewhat difficult for me to discuss for a number of reasons. It is much harder than coming out. When you are gay (or bi in my case… in case there was anyone left who wasn’t aware of this fact about me, there you go. I mean, since we’re being honest here) it is something that can be presented at least as just who you are, an essential part of you, and you can ignore anyone who tries to make you justify it. Sexual orientation is not something that, in most of modern society (at least in the contexts in which I usually find myself), one must justify.

Religious observance is.

I didn’t start to put on tefillin until I got here. I didn’t because I was scared. I was scared of people seeing me take on a new observance, even though it is perfectly normative for women to do so within The Conservative Movement. The even scarier step was beginning to wear a tallit katan.

Last night I was over at my friends Juan and Abby’s for dinner. I mentioned them yesterday… I met them at Kedem on Shabbat. They are both rabbinical students at JTS and are wonderful people and I think very good friends for me to have. Abby wears a tallit katan with her tzitziot hanging out. I wear mine tucked in for now. She asked me why I started to wear a tallit katan, and I had to tell her that I decided years ago that it was something that I should do, and that I was always too scared to do so till now.

Years. I have been holding off on this practice because of my fear for years.

At Hillel’s place on shabbat at one point I got up to go to the bathroom. Hillel handed me a box of tissues and told me “Oh, you’ll need this. The paper in there isn’t cut.” This is in reference to the fact that one is not supposed to tear paper on shabbat, so frum Jews will either use facial tissues or pre-cut the toilet paper before shabbat. In my family, we don’t worry about this. In my family, we don’t worry about a lot of things. But… this is a little difficult to explain… I was sincerely touched by the gesture, though I’m sure he didn’t think it especially significant. I was touched my friend was making it easy for me to be observant. I have had so little of this in my life, where every observance is a fight and a struggle and a source of… I’ll just come out and say it… of shame. Telling an old friend that I wear tzitziot makes my face go hot. When I daven in my room here in the apartment I am gripped with fear that the man with whom I am staying (who has known me since earliest childhood) will knock on my door… because I will have to either say “Not now please” which is rude, or interrupt my tefillah and open the door and have him see me in my tallis and tefillin… which is a terrifying prospect to me.

All this is made somewhat more complicated because I am a woman and the most visible observances I am trying to take on are traditionally those of men. Most Orthodox Jews believe that women are exempt (and therefore implicitly forbidden) from wearing tzitziot and tefillin and from praying three times a day (something that I am working myself up to). No one is, strictly speaking, required to cover their head, but most Orthodox men take the custom as law because it is so prevalent. Women are not considered obligated in this unless they are married and then they are expected to cover their hair. I cover my head much in the manner that men do (though sometimes I will wear a scarf which makes me look married) and for the reasons that men do (to be reminded of “what is above us” and to remember observance) and many look upon this disapprovingly as a matter of בגד איש (beged ish) or a woman wearing the clothing of a man, which is not permitted. (I don’t have a problem with בגד איש. I do not think that there necessarily is even such a thing as בגד איש. We can talk about matters of fluid gender another time.)

Were I a man taking on these observances, folks on the street wouldn’t look twice. And that is, in fact, part of why I feel that I should take on these observances. If someone were to ask me why I wear tzitziot, the first think I wonder is “if I were a man, would you ask me the same question?” It is of course important to be able to explain why you do these things, but if the only question is why I, a woman, would do such a thing… well then it is time to assert my egalitarianism, isn’t it?

I think that I will continue this line of thought later.