Shmuel hurried to get dressed. It was a few days before Pesach and his house was in full holiday preparation mode. His oldest sibling, Shaindel, had actually made a sign for the front door that said, “Warning! Construction Zone Ahead!”

As Shmuel navigated his way to the bathroom, he thought that the construction sign wasn’t a joke. Rubbermaid containers littered the hallways with old clothes, mismatched toys, and actual chometz that had been found in the bedrooms. Inside the bathroom, chometz soaps, deodorants, cosmetics, and cleaners were lined up along the sink waiting to be tossed out or locked up and sold with the other non Pesadik products.

“Shmuely! Shmuely!”

Shmuel spit out the remaining toothpaste from his mouth, just as his brother Benji called his name from the hallway.

“Perfect timing.” Shmuel thought, reaching for a towel.

“Morning, Benji!” Shmuel said, as he stepped out of the bathroom and put his arm around his brother’s shoulders.

“We’re going shopping today Shmuely! Mommy said we’re going shopping today!” Benji was practically jumping with each step toward the staircase.

“Yep! You and me are going to fight the crowds to buy Mommy’s shopping list so she can finish cooking. Pesach is only three days away!” Shmuel smiled as Benji clapped his hands in delight. Shmuel knew that Benji had probably been awake since dawn. Benji often rose at the first hint of daylight, quickly dressing and remaining perched on his bed in restless anticipation until the rest of the house woke up.

Pesach was Benji’s favorite holiday. He loved asking the four questions and hiding the afikomen. Even though Benji, at 22, was four years older than Shmuel, he never lost his childish outlook.   From the time Shmuel was a young boy starting cheder, he was like a big brother to Benji. The doctors had never given Benji a clear diagnosis. They only knew that he was developmentally delayed, but couldn’t say why.

Shmuel’s parents said that Benji’s condition was a result of a virus that their mother contracted while she was pregnant.   That way, the community would know that Benji’s condition was not genetic and people shouldn’t worry about marrying the other kids in the family, who were all, Baruch Hashem, fine. What happened with Benji was a random tragedy that could happen to anyone, God forbid.

On the outside, Benji looked like everyone else. If someone saw him sitting on a park bench, they would assume he was there with his wife and kids, maybe learning a shtickle gemara while his family enjoyed playing on the swings. However, upon closer inspection, one would see that Benji wasn’t holding a gemara in his hands, but rather, his tzistzis strings. He would roll them between his fingers, twirling them into knots, rendering them non kosher. His rocking wasn’t a shuckle of prayerful ecstasy, but a rhythmic motion accompanied by groaning, to soothe himself in the open air.

Open spaces made Benji nervous. He preferred the indoors, which was why going to a store suited him. He needed walls to feel contained, so that he wouldn’t fly away in the wind. Benji thought that the wind was Hashem’s vacuum. That’s how people died. When Hashem saw them walking outside, he would suck them up to shemayim in his vacuum.   Benji wasn’t ready to be sucked up yet. He wanted to stay down here with his family and have Pesach.

As Shmuel and Benji descended the staircase, a warm aroma of cinnamon and orange danced in invisible spiraling ribbons toward their noses. Benji ran to the kitchen, knowing that the scent could only mean one thing. Mommy was baking her famous Pesach sponge cake. A few cakes were cooling on the counter and Benji put his face up close to breathe in the heavenly fragrance.

“Mommy, can I have piece?” Benji begged. “Please, Mommy? Just one piece?”

“Benji, zeiskeit, you know that we can’t have any matzah before the seder. These cakes have matzah meal. Here, have some of the non gebrokts brownies. There’s no matzah in them.” Mommy adjusted the slipping turban on her head, matzah cake meal flour sprinkling the sleeves of her housecoat.

Benji’s face clouded over and reddened the way it did when he was about to have a tantrum. He eyed the prized sponge cake through squinted eyes, and opened his mouth as if he were about to say something more. Before he could speak, Mommy went over to him and put her hands on his cheeks.  With a smile and sparkling eyes she said, “Do you know what Mommy bought for her Benji? Kosher L’Pesach chocolate milk!”

Benji’s sour expression changed to a wide grin. “Where is it? Can I have some? Thank you, Mommy!” He broke away from his mother’s caress and made a bee line for the refrigerator.

“It’s on the the top shelf, bubbeleh. Of course, you can have some now. What, do you think I bought it for myself? I bought it for my Benji!” Mommy got Benji a cup as he wrestled the cap off of the milk at the kitchen table.

Mommy picked up a piece of paper and walked over to Shmuel, who was making himself a cup of instant coffee. “Darling, here is the list of things I need today. I would go to KRM Kollel and see if you can get everything there. If not, maybe go to Gourmet Glatt. I hate to make you shlep around.”

“It’s not a problem, Mommy.” Shmuel said as he pocketed the list. “I’m happy to help.”

In a hushed voice, Mommy whispered, “Please keep a close eye on Benji. I have a doctor’s appointment with him over chol hamoed. Something’s going on with him. He’s been doing things when we go out that he shouldn’t.”

“What things?” Shmuel asked. He had been away at yeshiva for the past few months, and only returned yesterday for Pesach vacation.

“I don’t like to say. It’s not nice. I’m just asking you to keep an extra eye on him, ok?” Mommy looked down at the scuffed kitchen floor, and pushed at a chipped tile with her slipper.

“Sure, Mommy.” Shmuel looked at Benji, who had a chocolate milk mustache from his first cup of milk, and was pouring himself a second cup. “Finish up, Benji. It’s time for us to go!”

Seeing Shmuel heading to the front door, Benji gulped down his milk, shoved his chair back from the table, and began a mad dash after him.

“Benji, tatteleh! Go to the bathroom before you leave and brush your teeth.” Mommy said.

“Mommy, I already went!” Benji whined.

“Go again, zeis. You’re going to be gone awhile.” Mommy said.

“Benji, you heard Mommy. I’m not going anywhere without you. I’ll wait.” Shmuel said.

Benji trudged up the stairs, looking behind him to make sure that Shmuel was a man of his word.

“I’m still here, Benji!” Shmuel said with a smile.

After Benji came back down the stairs, there was another few minutes of negotiation to get him to put on his trench coat. He only agreed after seeing Shmuel put on his coat as well. “I’m anxious for the weather to get warm again too, Benj! Maybe over chol hamoed we’ll finally be able to go out without our coats.”

As they stepped out into the brisk air, there was the feeling of industrious purpose all around. Men in black trenchcoats, practically identical to those worn by Shmuel and Benji, walked quickly with plastic bags filled with silverware to be kashered for Pesach in giant communal vats of boiling water. Girls pushed strollers teeming with younger siblings, getting them out of the house so that their mothers could cook and clean uninterrupted for a few precious hours. Women half stumbled down the street, weighed down with shopping bags, already thinking about what temperature to pre-heat the oven and hoping that the soup pot hadn’t boiled over while they were gone.

Benji walked at a quick pace, and Shmuel had to grab his hand to stop him from getting too far ahead. Benji often went shopping with Mommy, and knew the way to the store by heart. “Wait, up, Benji!” Shmuel said. “Your legs are too long and I can’t keep up with you!”

Benji smiled, “You’re too short, that’s why!”

Shmuel laughed. Benji was a good two inches taller than Shmuel.

“You got the height, I got the good looks!” Shmuel teased.

Benji laughed and tugged Shmuel’s hand to go faster.

When they finally reached the store, they had to wait in an impromptu line to get a cart. Even at 8:10am, only ten minutes after their opening hour, it was busy.  Benji dashed off to the side to grab a red hand basket.

“We don’t need that.” Shmuel said. “I’ll grab us a cart in a minute.”

Benji held the basket protectively away from Shmuel. “I want it! I want to carry some of the groceries myself!”

“Fine, fine.” Shmuel said. “Keep it.” It wasn’t worth a fight.

Benji smiled and started walking into the crowd with his basket cradled in both arms.

“Wait up, Benji!” Shmuel called, a cart finally in his possession.

At the sound of Shmuel’s raised voice, a few shoppers turned their heads to look at him. He put his head down and quickly wheeled the cart over to his brother, who was looking at bags of marshmallows.

“Shmuely, can we get, can we get?” Benji asked, simultaneously tossing bags of mini marshmallows into his red basket.

“You can get two bags, Benji. It’s not on Mommy’s list, but she told me last night that you can buy two treats. So, this is it.” Shmuel knew that in another few steps Benji would see something else he wanted.

“Ok, Shmuely! This is all I want.” Benji smiled in delight, looking at the cheerful picture on the Marshmallow bag.

“Pickled kolichel…” Shmuel read off the list. “Ok, Benji, we have to head over to the deli counter.”

Shmuel started off toward the deli, the wheels of his cart squeaking and turning pell mell, as he fought to steer it straight. As he turned down the aisle that led to his mother’s corned beef, he realized that Benji wasn’t behind him. Retracing his steps, he found Benji putting packages of jelly fish and little heart shaped jelly beans into his basket.

“Benji, you already picked your two things; the marshmallows. Remember? If you want these candies you have to put the marshmallows back.” Shmuel said.

Shmuel’s words had startled Benji out of his joyous reverie, collecting candies in the red basket. He forgot he could only pick two things. His brow wrinkled worriedly over this difficult choice.

“How about one of each? One bag of marshmallows and one bag of jelly beans?” Shmuel suggested.

Benji smiled. “That’s a good idea, Shmuely. You always have the best ideas!”

Shmuel quickly put back one bag of marshmallows and all but one bag of jelly beans. “Benji, let’s put your basket in the cart. There’s something wrong with the wheels, and I’m having trouble pushing it. I need you to push the cart for me, ok?”

“Sure thing, Shmuely!” Benji said, proud to be asked to perform a task that Shmuel was having trouble with. Benji was an expert cart driver. His mother said so whenever they went shopping together.

With a few distractions along the way, Benji and Shmuel slowly snaked through the aisles and completed their mother’s grocery list.

“High five, Benji!” Shmuel said, as they stood in the checkout line. “We managed to get Mommy’s entire shopping list at one store!”

Benji slapped Shmuel a high five. Waiting in line, there was an irresistible selection of batteries, mini flashlights, and kosher L’Pesach bubble gum. “Shmuely, can we get, can we get?” Benji asked as he pulled down some batteries.

“No, Benji. We don’t need those.” Shmuel was growing impatient at how slowly the checkout line was moving. A woman was trying to return a raw chicken that she had bought the day before.

“Smell this!” she said to the cashier holding up a package of raw chicken, whose plastic seal had been broken. “It smells spoiled. Can’t you smell it? Would you use this chicken?”

The cashier was paging the manager.

Meanwhile, Benji was fidgeting, shuffling his feet and leaning on the cart so that it inched forward.

“Ouch!” the woman ahead of them in line looked back angrily. She reached down, and massaged the backs of her ankles, encased in dark beige hose. “You pushed your cart into my legs!”

“I’m so sorry! It was an accident.” Shmuel apologized, his face getting hot.

The woman eyed them suspiciously, and tried to move as far as away from them as possible in the confined space, which wasn’t far enough.

“It wasn’t my fault! The cart is broken! Shmuely even said there’s something wrong with the wheels! Shmuely said!” Benji was breathing hard at the perceived criticism.

“It’s ok, Benji.” Shmuel said in a hushed tone. “It was an accident, the lady knows it was an accident. I told her.”

“But I didn’t do it!” Benji protested. “It was the cart!”

At this speech, the woman turned around. “Carts don’t push themselves! Just be more careful, that’s all!”

Benji’s face turned splotchy red and his eyes looked like they were about to spill over. Before he could say anything, Shmuel said, “Benji, it’s nice and sunny outside. We don’t both have to wait in line. Why don’t you wait for me outside the store. You can see all the people going in and out. When I’m done here, we can divide up the grocery bags and go home.”

Benji loved to watch people bustling on the sidewalk from their living room window. Maybe he would be entertained for ten minutes watching the customers go in and out until Shmuel could finish paying for their groceries.

“Ok, Shmuely. I’ll wait outside.” Benji suddenly felt an urgency to leave the store.

“Great. I won’t be long. Stay right out front and don’t go anywhere!” Shmuel instructed.

Benji walked out and smiled into the sun.  He gasped as a crisp breeze suddenly slapped his face. The wind blew stronger and he began to feel nervous. Hashem must have his vacuum turned on. Shmuel told him to wait outside, so he couldn’t go back in the store. Benji walked a few steps and saw an alley with a large green dumpster. That could shield him from the vacuum. Hashem wouldn’t see him hiding behind the dumpster.

Benji walked over to the large metal structure and placed himself between the brick wall of the store and the dumpster. The voices of the people on the sidewalk seemed to grow quiet. He felt like he was alone. He also felt that same urgency below his belt that made him want to leave the store when Shmuel asked him to. He had to make pishy. Even though he made when Mommy told him to before they went shopping, he had to make again. No one was around…no one would see.

At the checkout counter, Shmuel quickly shoved his wallet back inside the back pocket of his pants. He pushed the cart, gaining momentum with every rusty turn of the wheels, and scanned the crowd near the entrance for Benji. He was nowhere to be found. Fighting the immediate panic that crept up from his stomach to his throat, Shmuel continued to push the grocery cart outside.

A store employee called after him, “Hey, sir, you can’t take the carts outside! Sir!”

Shmuel abandoned the cart and started running, first to the left and then back to the right, shouting, “Benji! Benji!”

Shmuel noticed a small crowd gathered a few feet away and he walked over with a sinking feeling. People were pointing and laughing. Two women in short wigs and pillbox hats were shielding their eyes and saying “Oy gevalt! Someone stop him!”

A man with a salt and pepper beard was shouting at someone, as yet unseen by Shmuel. As he approached, Shmuel saw the crowd was gathered around a large green dumpster. An arch of yellow urine was splashing against its sides. Oddly, Shmuel thought of a fountain or a monocolored golden rainbow. The creator of this unseemly work of art was standing, unabashed, a short distance away from the dumpster against a brick wall backdrop. His confused face turned to the outraged mini mob, as if he couldn’t imagine what they were doing in his private space.

Shmuel broke through the crowd and shielded Benji with his body. “What are you doing?” Shmuel hissed.

“I have to make pishy!” Benji anwered. What seemed like a perfectly reasonable idea a few moments ago, now looked like a bad plan. He had made people angry. Although, some people were smiling and laughing. They were even holding up their phones.

“Stop it right now! We don’t go pishy outside. You know that!” Shmuel tried to keep his voice calm, as he grabbed Benji’s hands away, getting urine splashed on his shoes in the process.

Keeping his back to the crowd, Shmuel put Benji’s clothing back in order, and quickly hustled him through the observing crowd.

“You should be ashamed of yourself!” The man with the salt and pepper beard yelled.

“We took your picture, you pervert!” a teenage bochur yelled out as they passed him. “We’re gonna put fliers up!”

“Please, don’t!” Shmuel half whispered, as he passed the boy. “He can’t help himself. He’s sick.”

The boy gave him a quizzical look, and then looked at Benji. “He looks ok to me!” The boy glanced over at his friends, who were looking at something on a cell phone while hooting and hollering.

Shmuel took Benji by the hand and scurried over to his cart, which was being hauled back inside the store by one of the grocery clerks.

“Wait! That’s my cart!” Shmuel called out, his breath coming in shallow pants.

“Good thing you came when you did. I was about to put everything back on the shelves.” the clerk responded.

Shmuel quickly took out the bags, giving over a few to Benji, who gripped his charges tightly. Shmuel didn’t know how many people had seen Benji and he didn’t want to find out. With his head down, he said, “Let’s go Benji. Come on!”

“Are you mad with me, Shmuely?” Benji asked, practically running to keep up with Shmuel now.

“No, Benji. I’m not mad. You just shouldn’t have done that. You know that, right?” Shmuel asked sadly.

“Mommy told me not to. I forgot. Mommy’s gonna be mad with me. Are you gonna tell Mommy?” Benji’s eyes looked wide and nervous.

“I don’t know, Benji.” Shmuel said. “Let’s worry about it after we get the groceries home.”

Shmuel and Benji hurried the rest of the way home in silence.

When they came home, Mommy cleared a space for them on the kitchen table to put down the bags.

“My boys are back! Did you get everything at KRM?” she asked.

“Yes, Mommy. They had everything we needed at KRM.” Shmuel said.

When Benji made a trip to the hallway to retrieve more bags, Mommy asked in a whisper, “How did it go? Any problems with Benji?”

Shmuel hesistated. He didn’t want to give Mommy any more tzores with everything she had to do before Pesach. Maybe now wasn’t the time to mention what had happened.

“It went ok.” Shmuel said.

Mommy looked relieved. “Good! Now bend down. What, your Mommy can’t give you a kiss on the keppeleh anymore! Just because now you have to bend down for me to do it, doesn’t mean I shouldn’t do it!”

Shmuel smiled and obligingly bowed down so that his mother could give him a kiss on top of his head, the way she used to do when he was a young boy.

“I’m going to wash up, Mommy,” Shmuel said, as Benji came back in the kitchen and heaved a few more sacks of groceries on the table. “I’ll be back to help you peel potatoes in a few minutes.”

As Shmuel went upstairs, he heard Mommy and Benji in the kitchen. “My big helper! I’m so proud of you, Benji! What would I do without my Benji to help for Pesach!”

Shmuel remembered his soiled shoes and took them off on the staircase. In the bathroom, he rinsed them in the sink and set them to dry in the bathtub. After soaping down the sink, he went into his room to change clothes. Grabbing his phone out of his pocket, he saw several messages. He opened them and saw the same heading, “Crazy chasid!”

Opening the first message, he saw a video file. Pressing play, he watched in horror as his brother Benji appeared on film, urinating against a dumpster. It seemed that hundreds of people had shared the video, and the numbers were growing.

“What a shanda!” one person commented

“This is hysterical! Typical chosid!” another person said.

“Isn’t he supposed to be studying in the beis medrash!” an astute viewer pointed out.

“The result of many generations of inbreeding, ladies and gentleman.” an anonymous critic proclaimed.

Seated at the edge of his bed, Shmuel bent over until his head was between his legs, his hands over his eyes. He didn’t know how long he stayed in that position, but his agonized meditation was broken by the sounds of sobbing in the kitchen.

Quickly, Shmuel took the stairs down two at a time, worried that Mommy might have cut or burned herself cooking.   He found Mommy and his sister Shaindel looking at Shaindel’s phone. The kitchen was filled with a man’s angry voice hollering at Benji, people gasping in shock, voyeuristic laughter, all coming from the phone’s speaker. Although Shmuel couldn’t see the screen, he knew they were watching a visual recording of the scene Shmuel was trying to forget. Benji stood near the sink, a contrite and fearful look on his face, as Mommy cried with a hand clamped over her mouth, unsuccessfully trying to hold in the sobs, her Pesach preparations all but forgotten.

———————————————————————————————-

This story was inspired by a video clip I saw on someone’s Facebook page. It was a short viral video of a chasidish man “watering” a garbage can in an alley. People (other Jews) were laughing and using him as an example of what disrespectful and crazy people the chasidim are. A few people spoke up and said that this man is known around town as a “nebach case” who suffers from mental illness. He can’t help himself. It made me sad to think how there are mentally ill and intellectually challenged people who can’t take care of themselves or perhaps have no care givers to watch them. How sometimes the “candid camera” photos and videos that go viral and make people laugh are of folks who suffer from mental health issues. It’s really cruel.

A male chastity belt used in England during the time of Queen Victoria in the 19th century.  This metal device was created for “masculine self-control in support of the bourgeois ideal of domestic life.” photo from bbcamerica.com

Celibacy. It’s an easy solution that was right in front of everyone’s face. Lifelong celibacy is the answer. Gay Jews can be out and proud and be accepted by a community comfortably assured that no rumpy pumpy is happening behind closed doors. This is the premise of an article I read this morning written by a gay orthodox Jew, who says that it is entirely possible and preferable for homosexual Jews to lead celibate lives. Of course, the article is written by someone who already sowed his wild oats in a formerly non-frum life, is now middle aged and no longer a hormone crazed teen or young adult, and who seems to be able to satisfy his need for male companionship through close friendships with chavrusas, community members, and the occasional non-sexual massage from a straight masseuse.

It’s a win-win situation all around, because our gay brethren can officially take themselves “out of the parsha” with a valid excuse and no longer have to endure the constant overtures of shadchans, pushy friends and relatives, and surplus female victims of the shidduch crisis. Gay men can openly admit to same sex attraction, while at the same time, assuring the rest of the community that, of course, such attraction is merely theoretical.

IF gay Jews were halachically permitted to date, fall in love, and marry other men, they would do so. However, since halacha never has and never will permit two men to be together in the same way a man and woman can be together, being gay is just a philosophical label. Practically speaking, no gay activity will ever happen in an orthodox gay man’s life. No heterosexual activity will happen either, which in this scenario of eternal celibacy, is the main purpose of “coming out.” To let people know to back off in terms of shidduchim or expecting a gay man to father children with a woman. It’s not going to happen – unless of course, there is a trace of bisexuality there that will permit these mitzvot.

Really, the solution to the “homosexual problem” in the orthodox community is to create a new subset of sexuality – asexuality. People who vow to never engage in sexual activity with anyone – not with the opposite sex (who they are not attracted to anyway, and who they would be lying to if they engaged them in a relationship without disclosing their true sexual preference) and not with the same sex (with whom they would be violating Torah prohibitions if they engaged in such a relationship).

Orthodox Jews can finally be “politically correct” in our open acceptance of homosexual (read “practicing asexual”) members of the tribe. The politically correct bandwagon isn’t something that we orthodox Jews often get to ride on in the 21^st century. Here’s our chance to be trendy! We can feel good about asking an openly gay man to daven for the amud, give him an aliya, hagbah, or ask him over for Shabbos and yom tov meals. Heck, there might even be a rush to include homosexual Jews into services and into our homes to show just how accepting we are! As long as there’s no mailman knocking on the backdoor, it’s all good!

If you think that expecting lifelong celibacy (and for an orthodox Jewish gay man, of course that means masturbation as well) is cruel or inhumane, you are falling into the patronizing attitude common among the heterosexual population.  Don’t bring your own issues into the discussion! Just because YOU wouldn’t be able to keep it in your pants for the next 120 years, doesn’t mean someone else isn’t capable, dang it! If you doubt the word of a frum homosexual man that he is remaining completely chaste, whether through his own hand or the hands of others, than you are simply a judgmental person who has never learned to be dan lchaf zchus and maybe needs to go back to cheder for this basic lesson.

Chazal have said, “There is a small organ in a man. When it is well-fed, it is hungry. When it is starved, it is satiated.” The less you use it, the less you need it. Therefore, maybe we can all take a page from this new movement of homosexual, or practicing asexual, Jews. Perhaps it is holier for all of us to suppress our sexual urges, and do as Chazal says. After a certain period of starvation, we will all eventually lose our sexual urges, and be practicing asexuals – free from sin, free from discrimination or discriminating, free from our yetzer hara, and as an added bonus, free from needing contraception!

I’m one of the only people I know who has two mommies.  My first mother (not necessarily in that order) is my adopted mother, A”H, who passed away in 1997.  I’ve been saying Yizkor for her since that time.  My second mother is my biological mother, A”H, whom I had never met.  She passed away last year, two weeks before I was reunited with my birth family.  I’ve also been saying Yizkor for her since last Yom Kippur.

I was thinking about how unusual my situation is as I stood murmuring the Yizkor prayer with my congregation on the last day of Pesach.  As I said the names of my two mothers, I thought about their strengths and weaknesses (concerning my biological mother, my musings were based upon second hand information).  I thought about how I couldn’t have been given life nor stayed alive were it not for the partnership between these two women who never knew each other.  Although they didn’t necessarily view it this way, they collaborated to make a person.

Below is a post I wrote in 2007 that memorialized my adopted mother on her 10th yahrtzeit.  Later this year will be her 17th yahrtzeit and my biological mother’s 1st yahrtzeit.

Princess Diana’s Yahrtzeit

I remember walking into the hospital room. I wasn’t sure if she would be awake or not. The past few days she had been in and out of consciousness. Although the room was dark, the hospital TV atop its ceiling mount flickered light across my mother’s sunken features. She didn’t turn her head until I came up to her bed.

She smiled when she saw me, her cheekbones stretching the thin skin into a shiny mask. The death mask, I remembered the phrase. She smelled different, like antiseptic or iodine. She had needles and tubes coming out of her arms and was attached to a heart monitor. She gave me her hand and I squeezed it, careful not to disturb the oxygen monitor on her finger, which reminded me of the thimble she used to wear when sewing clothes for me as a child.

“Did you see the news?” she asked. “It’s awful. Princess Diana was killed in a car crash.”

“I heard about it.” I said, turning my head toward the flickering TV set which was set to mute. My mother couldn’t hear without her hearing aides. I supposed the nurses had them as she couldn’t sleep with them in her ears. She could, however, read the tickers along the bottom of the TV screen, describing the awful car crash in Paris which killed the Princess and her wealthy boyfriend, Dodi Fayed. She could make out what I was saying if I stood close enough for her to read my lips.

On the screen was a dark Paris tunnel strewn with broken glass and crushed metal. The view switched to daytime in London, people crying and bringing bouquets to Buckingham Palace. They showed the gates piled high with flowers, cards, and banners.

“Do you want me to turn it off now?” I asked, both because she might be tired again and also because it was a depressing scene.

“Yes.” she said.

As I held her cool hand, I made chit chat about my day at work, about taking the baby to the park that morning, about Mr. Frumhouse and his hectic schedule. I told her about how I was feeling and how I had to drink one Slurpee on the way to work each day to ward off the nausea of morning sickness.

I kissed her goodbye, her skin like fragile paper beneath my lips. I told her I would be back tomorrow, as long as my in-laws could watch the baby. Before I left, I washed my hands. I stifled the urge to hold my breath until I reached the outer corridor of the ICU, knowing that it wouldn’t protect me from any illness. I was paranoid about going to hospitals with sick people while pregnant, but there wasn’t a choice in this matter.

Ten days later, the time came to mourn my own mother. Interesting how popular culture can affect your own life. I remember the english date of my mother’s passing, but rely on the yearly reminders from the funeral home as to when her hebrew yahrtzeit falls out. However, right before I get the mailed notice, there are usually media tributes remembering the death of Princess Diana. Although the Princess did many charitable works, to me, her passing is forever linked to the memory of my own mother’s deathbed. There were no bouquets and throngs of mourners at my mother’s funeral and shiva. There was a small crowd who paid their respects to a quiet woman who lived her life for her family and with a royal dignity. This year is her 10th yahrtzeit.

SHEITEL (n): $3000 strawberry blonde hairpiece employed by Orthodox women to preserve short matted hair for their husbands’ sole viewing. – Ortho Diction

A few weeks ago a Facebook friend, known as Ortho Diction, shared a glossary of terms he created. One which I found particularly humorous was his definition (see above) of a sheitel. It’s funny because it’s true. Even those of us who try to maintain a healthy head of hair under our wigs, still end up with our “outside hair” looking better than our “inside hair” most of the time. When your hair is only uncovered in the early morning or late in the evening it’s all too easy to get lazy about styling a natural mane that never sees the sunlight.

Today I happened upon this older article by Frieda Vizel called, On women shaving all their hair. In her article, Vizel recalls a poignant memory of being forced to shave off her hair as a young hasidic wife. She details how the community used her son as leverage to get her to comply with shaving off a growing head of hair by threatening to expel him from cheder and warning another local school not to accept him if she tried to circumvent the system. In the end, she reshaved her head, but the event heralded the death knell for her membership in the hasidic enclave where she was born and raised.

Vizel writes –

“But it left a very deep impression on me — about how vulnerable mothers in the community are. I learned that women who become mothers at a young age are essentially powerless, because anything they try to do puts the children in the balance. To me, shaving embodies the enormous power the community has to make its rebellious women naked, humiliated, powerless and defenseless. I feel strongly that more needs to be done to help the women who want different things for themselves and their children.

I don’t shave anymore but it still hurts, a scar that refuses to heal.”

What struck me about this quote is that the same vulnerability exists in non-hasidic communities too. While there are women who enjoy the mitzvah of hair covering, there are many who feel confined by it. I’ve read of frum women who waited a long time to find their bashert and see hair covering as a much coveted right reserved for married women. Some older singles look forward to the day when they will purchase their first sheitel/head covering with immense longing for its greater significance – that they will finally be married women. Hair covering separates the women from the girls in orthodox Jewish society.

However, many other women either secretly or outwardly make it clear that hair covering is, to put it mildly, not their favorite mitzvah. I remember going to a lecture given by a very yeshivish rebbetzin who spoke about her puzzlement regarding women’s complaints over keeping the laws of taharat hamishpacha. She was a kallah teacher and found great beauty in the laws governing intimacy between spouses. She said that if Hashem suddenly decided that we could eliminate one women’s mitzvah of our own choosing, her first pick would be getting rid of sheitels!

I have had conversations with so many non-hasidic women who are unhappy about having to cover their hair. They cover not for themselves but to comply with the standards of their families, husbands, in-laws, friends, shuls, day schools, or those of their general community.  It’s easy for the modern orthodox or yeshivish women who cover their hair to recoil in horror at hair shaving stories, since this is not the custom in those segments of orthodox society. Although the most common rationale I have heard for hasidic women shaving their heads is so that no hair will accidentally form a chatzitza (barrier) in the mikvah, one of the obvious reasons must also be because shaving a woman bald ensures that she won’t ever be tempted to remove her head covering in public. However, even orthodox women who don’t shave off their hair, find that after covering for a lengthy period of time, natural hair can become so unpresentable that they would also be ashamed to reveal it publicly.

Sometimes having ugly hair is by design. For example, one time a friend and I decided to create the perfect “hair covering haircut.” We did find it, but unfortunately, it was hideous. My husband was devastated when he saw my long wavy hair had been replaced by this kisui rosh cut, shaved up short in back and slanted down to near shoulder length angles on each side. The short shave in the back prevented “camel hump;” a common problem when wearing longer hair in a ponytail or bun underneath a wig. The longer front and sides allowed for wearing snoods and scarves without short pieces sticking out, the way they do when a woman has an all around short hair cut. It was a look that I would have been embarrassed for the general public to see, but it worked well on a practical level.

Another time, after growing my hair back out, I was working downtown and wearing a sheitel for many hours each day. The center comb that attached the wig to the crown of my head had worn away into sharp points. Since it was my only wig, and I was a busy working mom, I didn’t have time to get to a sheitel macher and get the comb switched out. I continued to wear the painful wig until it pulled out a small front section of my hair where the comb had left me with a scabby red bald spot. It was quite an attractive look, as you can imagine. Certainly it was a time in my life where I looked better in my wig than in my own hair. Eventually, after fixing the comb and deciding to purposely uncover my hair at home as much as possible to give my follicles a break from confinement, my scalp healed and most of my hair grew back into the irritated spot. That area is still more sparse than the rest of my hair; a reminder of the price paid for years of hair covering.

Ortho Diction’s definition of the sheitel is ironically true. Often, an orthodox woman looks better with her wig on, than with it off. Her husband, who should be seeing his wife at her best, often sees her at her worst. Just as hasidic women would be ashamed to reveal their bald heads in public (not so much because a married woman should keep her head covered, but because she would be ashamed of her appearance), likewise, many women from non-hasidic segments of orthodox society would be ashamed to reveal their matted and damaged hair to the public eye. Surely, the cliche about “saving our beautiful hair for our husbands” is proven false by this common reality.  Essentially, we all belong to the same hair club for women.

I made a commitment to myself several years ago that I would always make an effort to keep my own hair nice enough, that were it to be uncovered, I wouldn’t be ashamed to have it seen in public (at least not after a good wash and flat ironing). I want to cover my hair because I choose to do so, not because I have to do so out of shame over what I’m covering. Unfortunately, many of us are forced into continued hair covering, not only by community enforcement, but because we have ruined our hair by the practice. In this sense, we really are no different than the hasidic women we “pity” who shave all of their hair off.

In this 2008 post I discussed ayin horah ladies; women who claim to be able to remove the “evil eye” that could be holding you back from a happy life. For a small fee of course. I believe that such things are hocus pocus – not necessarily the evil eye part, which I see as negative energy, but profiting off the misery of others by claiming to reverse their evil mojo.

Ayin horah is an interesting subject. It means that even our thoughts can have power in the physical world. A rabbi once told me a story about a frum man who was afflicted by the evil eye. He was a very wealthy man and decided to build a huge and extravagant home on a street otherwise populated by modest abodes. A woman walked by as the workers buzzed about their business. Looking at the construction site, she asked one of the men who could possibly afford to build such a big home. It stood out like a sore thumb among all the smaller dwellings in the neighborhood. The worker pointed to the owner standing on the porch. The woman looked over at the owner through narrowed eyes, spat on the ground, threw her cape over her shoulder and flounced off – never to be seen again (well, I’m imagining the part about the spitting, the cape, and the flouncing off, but it paints the picture).

Anyway, the end result was that shortly after that incident, the man came down with a serious brain tumor. The rabbi who relayed this story insisted that this jealous stranger had given him an ayin horah. Why else would a healthy man in the prime of his life suddenly be stricken with such misfortune? Our thoughts have power. This was relayed to me as an admonition to always live a humble and modest life. Showing off and being flashy leads to ayin horah and misery.

If our thoughts can have concrete consequences, it stands to reason that we are judged for them in the same way we are judged for our actions.  As such, we might be punished for evil thoughts we have toward others, even if we have no intention of acting upon those thoughts. Apparently, the bad mojo created in our psyche is enough to make bad things happen to someone else. Of course, our victims have to be susceptible to having bad things happen to them in the first place. That’s how it was explained to me – ayin horahs can’t hurt you if you don’t deserve them. However, if you are due for a divine smack down, you will be left vulnerable to the negative energy of others.

Ayin Horah Ladies

My in-laws were recently in Israel, and they told me about a woman they had visited, who claims to be able to detect and remove ayin horahs on a person.

They went with relatives who regularly visit this woman. When they arrived, the woman took them one by one and said a tefilah followed by a bracha with their name. She then poured a hot pot of lead into a pot of water over their heads. As the hot lead cools with the cold water it starts forming pictures. By interpreting the pictures, she can tell you what kinds of ayin horahs you have hanging over your head and advise you on how to eliminate them.

Apparently first time visitors, like my in-laws, have a slew of ayin horahs that would require multiple return visits to correct. Regular customers, like our Israeli relatives, have hardly any ayin horahs to fix. Basically, as long as you regularly visit this woman, you can remain virtually ayin horah free. ETA – My mother-in-law told me that this woman does not charge a fee. She pours the lead and it breaks up into a series of crevices that look like eyes. If she sees this – she says a tefillah and repeats the process until the surface of the lead is smoother. Apparently this indicates that the ayin horahs have been removed.

On a related note, many years ago I was visiting a friend out of state. She wanted me to meet an amazing frum woman she had befriended. This woman was well known in the community for communicating with the dead. People who wanted to get in touch with loved ones who had passed on could make an appointment with her. To my knowledge, she did not charge for her services. Apparently, her rabbi had sanctioned her “gift” as being kosher, because she did not use her ability to for any other purpose other than to pass along a howdy do from the great beyond.

Being game for a new experience, at my friend’s urging I asked the woman about my grandmother. She told me some standard things that you might hear from television mediums. Nothing that would specifically identify my grandmother. I thanked her for her time, and was polite, but I think she could tell I was a nonbeliever.

How does this fit in with the concept of “Tamim Tihyeh.” Do not look into astrology (I am taking liberties with the term astrology to include a general mysticism) – you are above it. The Ramban adds, although the Torah prohibits us to approach astrologers and inquire regarding our Mazal, if they happen to inform us and warn us to be aware of a certain bad Mazal, we must heed their warning and not rely on a miracle.

Have any of you had experience with people who claim to have special mystical powers in the frum world? I am not including going to rabbis for a bracha, but experiences similar to what I have described. Have you ever paid for such services? Are you a believer?

I was recounting a story to my grandmother the other day about the cultural differences between the United States and Israel regarding how children are viewed and valued. In the United States, good children are seen and not heard. Americans love to see smiling cherubic faces dressed in spotless clothing, toted about as designer accessories that serve as testimonies to their parents’ fertility, success, and personal legacies.

The ideal child is one who is frozen on a Laura Ashley catalogue page, an extension of who their parents want to be themselves – slim, pretty, stylish, active, happy, and forever young. What happens when our tiny lap dogs nip at an unsuspecting admirer patting their heads? What is the reaction when our children don’t behave as the beautiful and silent collector dolls we need them to be in order to magnify our own image of success?

When I became a parent, I soon found that my new extension of myself was not the compliant infant action figure I needed him to be. He would complain at the worst moments (like when I was trying to show him off to friends and relatives). He was awful about cooperating for photographs. He loudly decided he was ready for his lunch right when I was sitting down to my own. He messed up multiple trendy baby outfits over the course of a 24 hour day. In short, he wasn’t the baby I had been promised by Gymboree. He was his own person from day one, and if we were going to get along, I had to learn that he wasn’t simply an extension of my own ego, but his own little person. We had to learn to compromise.

While my child schooled me about his individuality rather quickly, as I’m sure many babies have schooled their unsuspecting parents, we tend to assume that this lesson doesn’t apply to other children. We still expect other people’s kids to be porcelain LLadro figurines when we see them in restaurants, stores, or any public venue where they are on display. If they shatter our peace with loud noises, crying, fidgeting, we are completely unforgiving. I think the farther out we are from having our own babies, the more we forget the lessons of parenting young children. We tend to romanticize our own infants as well as our own parenting. “When my daughter was that age, I never allowed her to behave that way!”

Many years ago, I was a working mother with one very opinionated toddler, a baby, and another one baking in the oven. Coming back home from downtown on the Metra train, I stewed over a dilemma. I didn’t have enough diapers to get through to the next morning and I needed to go to the store. My babysitter insisted on leaving promptly at 6pm. My train wouldn’t get me home much before that time. It was always a race to the finish line to relieve my babysitter; I was always worried that she would quit if she felt that I was taking advantage of her.

There were no quick convenience stores on the route from the train to my apartment. Any stop would require going into a larger grocery store or Target, which would mean at least a 15 minute delay. I pictured rushing in the door at 6:15pm to my babysitter’s glare, as she told me that this was not the first time I had been late coming home, and that she’d had it. She wouldn’t be coming back in the morning; I would have to find someone else to watch my kids. I would have to call in sick the next day, and the day after that, until either I found another quickly screened babysitter, or lost my job altogether. I went straight home.

The only problem with this plan was that my toddler didn’t do stores. Taking him to a store was a certain tantrum, and my son’s tantrums were a 9 on the Richter scale. A simple 5 minute task like buying diapers could turn into a 45 minute battle. That night was no different. As I walked in the door, my babysitter walked out the door promptly at 6pm. Still in my own coat, I bundled up my two charges, and heaved the baby onto my hip, careful to avoid knocking him into the other baby bump inside my belly. My toddler led our small party down the stairs and we made our way to the car and into the intricate straps and fasteners of their car seats. Target or bust.

Once we were at the store, unfastened from the car, and refastened into a cart, I tried to make a beeline for the diaper section. Damn their crafty marketing! In order to get to the baby section we had to pass a minefield of toys. Shelf after shelf of magical dream worlds beckoned to my toddler. I imagined I was racing a boxcart, looking like a lunatic pushing my boys faster than safety allowed, past the legos, the soccer balls, the action figures, the costumes, the clacking/clucking/coo-cooing dolls that called my son to come closer. Despite my best attempt to rush past temptation and get to the diaper aisle unscathed, my son was faster. Before I knew it, he had unclicked himself from the cart and made a beeline to a $50 dollar electronic Darth Vader mask. I caught up to him in the middle of having an animated conversation with the heavily breathing Darth. A child comforting an alien in the midst of an apparent asthma attack.

“This! Buy this!” he demanded.

Of course we wouldn’t buy it. We were here for diapers. I was praying that my debit card had enough money on it for diapers. Even if I had wanted to buy a Darth Vadar mask meant for a 12 year old, for a 2 year old, I didn’t have $50 to buy it. I almost grabbed a $5 action figure as a bribe to forget the Darth Vadar mask, but thought better of it. This was a life lesson. We can’t always get what we want when we want it. I was not about to encourage impulsive spending – it would only teach him that he could demand unreasonable things every time we went shopping. Well, you can probably imagine how that went over.

After putting the mask back on the shelf, my child threw himself onto the floor in a kicking and screaming frenzy. My cart, with the baby in it, seemed to be rolling farther down the aisle away from me as I attempted to lift the red-faced, tearful mass while not getting my baby bump kicked by little feet in the process. Lifting him horizontally by a leg and an arm, we made our way back to the cart as a pair of ice dancers performing an intricate stunt. People stared, people glared, all conversation seemed to stop as the only sound was the siren of my son’s screams and the squeaky wheels of the shopping cart.

I whizzed down the diaper aisle and threw in a pack without stopping. Gaining momentum, I raced to the checkout lanes to find them all full. We came to a screeching halt at a 10 item or less line, all heads turning in our direction.

“Someone tell her to shut that kid up!”

“Call security! That kid is disturbing the peace! No one should be allowed to yell like that in a store!”

“Why don’t you buy him some candy to make him quiet? He’ll stop crying if you buy candy.”

The entire time I tried to coax, cajole, threaten, and mind meld my son into silence. If only I were a Vulcan. Briefly, I considered admitting defeat, leaving the diapers, and hauling the kids back into the car without my trophy. However, I had come this far, it didn’t pay to leave now. I had to endure. Red faced and humiliated, obviously the worst parent on the planet with the brattiest kid ever to live, I waited in that checkout line while my son melted into a puddle inside the cart, my baby sitting silent and somewhat confused in the front section. I think I started crying myself on the drive home, and by the time we arrived, had called my husband at work hysterical over the crisis that was already over. I think he was confused over my level of distress. I guess you had to be there.

This experience was a stark contrast to a similar circumstance that occurred during a family trip to Israel. My youngest son was 2 years old, and suffering from a horrible case of shilshul in addition to fever. Why do kids always get sick during vacations? Anyway, on one of his worst mornings, I told my husband that I would stay behind with him. Of course, this idea was not acceptable. We had paid a fortune for the trip, the private tour guide who would be taking us around that day, and we were going to go as a family. It would be a complete waste to stay behind because of a sick child (remember, this is the last kid in a line of many – you know, the one who if the pacifier falls on the floor for 5 seconds or less, you blow on it and pop it back in his mouth?).

Anyway, as you can imagine, the excursion was simply delightful. Changing loose stool diapers in the scorching desert is an experience that no parent should miss out on. At some point, nearing lunch time, my child began to scream in the car.

“He’s just hungry.” my husband said. “We’re all hungry. We’ll stop for lunch.”

I was skeptical. My son was sweating bullets, red faced, and his stomach was making the gurgling sounds of a latent volcano.

We arrived on a street filled with little shops and cafes. I don’t remember much about it because my child’s screams were searing a hole into my very being. However, if I recall correctly, it seemed lovely. We entered a small restaurant and sat down. As we tried to casually peruse the menu, my son whooped, gasped, hollered, and snortled. Everyone went about their business as if nothing was happening, including my own family. I wondered if I was in some sort of alternate reality. I was the only one who could hear my baby’s cries, and he was depending upon me to save him.

Finally, I got up from my seat and took my son out of his stroller.

“I’m taking him outside for a walk.” I announced.

My husband appeared relieved, apparently he was aware of our child’s caterwauling but had chosen to play it cool.

We emerged into the heat, with me patting his back and murmuring soothing words and sounds as we walked. My shoulder was soggy with tears, snot, and the misery of illness. Happy people were sitting enjoying lattes at outdoor cafes, window shopping, and casually strolling in conversation. My child’s cries seemed to echo down the avenue as I walked and bounced and patted. I suddenly became fearful that people would be angry at this rude interruption. Maybe someone would call the police or security? My fears were realized when someone came up behind me and called for my attention.

I turned around to find the tanned face of an Israeli man.

“Here,” he said, shoving a balloon into my hand. “You give it to him.”

Suddenly, out of nowhere, people came up to us.

“What’s wrong with him?” a woman asked with concern. “Is he not feeling well?”

“Poor baby.” another lady said, patting him on the back. “Why are you crying?”

I couldn’t believe the level of concern and acceptance. I had been told that in Israel, children are considered a gift. Kids are valued. However, now I was experiencing that love first hand. It was truly remarkable and something that I will never forget.

I know that Jews value children, value the preservation of our people, rely on the continuity of Torah through each generation. To me, the way we treasure our children is one of the main things that separates us from the secular world. Simply having children isn’t what brings us glory, rather, the care and consideration we show to our children brings us glory. They make us better people by the lessons we learn and the sacrifices we make in parenting them.

Lately, I’ve been seeing disturbing signs that some in the Jewish community are falling prey to outside attitudes about the role of children. Children are to be seen and not heard; children are not fully fledged people with feelings; children can be used and harmed and get over it. Children are there to reflect the image we want to project about ourselves, our families, our communities. If an adult victimizes a child, the consequences would be much worse for the adult than the child. Therefore, it’s best to protect the adult, because children are resilient.

Hence, we see an orthodox community celebrating the release from prison of a man charged with bribing a sex abuse victim to drop charges against her rapist. We see respected rabbis pleading for leniency for a man charged with possession of child pornography and solicitation of a minor for sex. We absorb the overall message that an adult’s life is more important than that of a child.  Our image is more important than the well being of our minors.  We see that when an accused pedophile or those who seek to obstruct justice for a child victim is given a lesser sentence, released from jail after serving time, or has the charges dropped due to insufficient evidence or the victim deciding not to press charges, it is cause for celebration. If we have reached this point where children don’t matter in the Jewish community, it’s time to admit that we have all gone off the derech.

This came in the mail yesterday and once again I am left scratching my head – the same way I do when I see mailings that include the all male board of directors’ names for my daughter’s all girls high school. Why is it that so many orthodox women’s institutions have all male boards? Is this just a Chicago thing? To me, the mikva should have a primarily all female board – if they have to have a few token men on it, fine. However, to have an all male board of directors with zero female representation? Don’t even pretend that women have any authority whatsoever over this mitzva.

I realize that our mikvaos are used for other purposes besides taharas hamishpacha such as conversions, kalim (pots and utensils), the men’s mikva, and possibly even for taharas for the dead (although I thought that mikva was under the auspices of the chevra kadisha).

Being on an administrative board of directors for the mikva isn’t only about halachic issues, but administrative issues. In fact, being on the board might not involve dealing with halachic issues at all. I assume that there is a separate rabbinical council that advises on overall mikva matters, in addition to each woman having her own individual posek for personal shailas.

Dealing with building repairs, complaints about facilities or staff, scheduling issues, technical glitches with the appointment system, keeping the rooms stocked and finding the cheapest supply vendors, operating hours – these are just a few things I can think of that might be board meeting agenda items. I can also imagine that more sensitive issues might be brought up at these meetings. How to deal with signs of abuse noticed by the mikva ladies? How to handle confessions about marital issues at the mikva? Why does it make sense to have the mikva ladies acting as the eyes and ears for the male board members? Shouldn’t the women who work at the mikva and those women who use the mikva be on the front lines to observe, report, and resolve these types of issues by sitting on the board themselves?

Things operate the same way in some of our local day schools, both those that are mixed and separate sex. Women can’t be on the boards of directors, but they can be members of the PTA. Women provide the volunteer manpower, the smaller fundraising efforts, the day to day hands on work that benefits the school. I’m not denying the essential help the PTA provides, but women don’t have any direct authority in making school decisions the way the male board members do.  Women don’t have a vote at the table.

It seems that our mikva association is being run with the same premise – we have the Daughter’s of Israel that runs kallah classes, refresher courses, educational seminars, and fund raising events.  However,  women have no actual vote in how the mikva is run. Yes, they have input and I’m sure their concerns and suggestions are taken seriously; those concerns might even comprise the main talking points of board meetings.  Yet women still have no direct control as to whether their wishes and ideas will be implemented.

Again, being that the mikva has other purposes besides existing for women’s usage, I can understand having male representation on the board of directors. I can also understand that often times the makeup of community boards has more to do with being a large financial supporter of the institution rather than with being a highly involved member. However, the wives of large donors can just as easily represent the family as the husband can. Especially in the case of sitting on a mikva board, as regular users, their input would be more valuable. Maybe it’s just me.

I received this email in response to yesterday’s post about the installation of the new female-free Chicago Mikva Association board of directors.  I have no answers to offer besides the usual trite responses (learn more about this important mitzva, find a female mentor to confide in, find a trusted rabbi to talk to, find the beauty in the practice, take note of the practical benefits of separation and coming together, do it for the reward you will receive for performing a difficult mitzva, do it for your spouse, do it for your children, just do it!).

I do know that depending upon location, there are mikvaot that will allow making after hours appointments in special circumstances, even letting the husband be the shomer in such cases.  However, as this is an unusual request, it would be hard to keep making this special appointment month after month.  After a certain amount of time, I think there would be the expectation to “get over it” and take your dip with the big girls.  However, it could be a short term solution if there is a mikva in your area willing to accommodate a private dunking.  Just a thought.

Maybe after reading this woman’s plight, someone else will have helpful suggestions for how she can keep taharat hamishpacha for the rest of her reproductive life without feeling resentful.  You can leave a comment below or I will be happy to forward her any private responses via email, as she wishes to remain anonymous.  Comments from both women and men are welcome.

Dear Sharon,

I have never been the spiritual type. In my Orthodox high school we had a mandatory class on Taharat Hamishpacha. I hated the content of it and felt all aspects of what we learned was so invasive. My friends chuckled as I squirmed with each mention of a period.

Yet despite the uneasiness I had with the topic, I have always been thankful to have a textual background on it. Mostly because I knew it played such a big role in women’s halacha.

When it came time for me to learn how to apply these halachot, I chose to learn with an incredible role model. I learned not only the halachot but the challenges and progress that had been made on niddah infertility. My teacher was extremely sensitive, knowledgable and caring. I am lucky to have her helping me deal with these challenges today.

Despite the unique insights into modern day halacha I had been learning, deep down I knew I would struggle with every aspect of niddah. I knew any separation would be traumatic for a non-shomer negiah couple. Yet there is no easy solution for those who simply don’t want to deal with the anxiety and trauma of separation. Try explaining to a medical expert that you want to use a medical solution to bypass a separation imposed on you by your chosen religion. Their answer would be that’s your choice, but medicine is not the answer. I agree.

As I chose this route, I asked myself: why have medical solutions such as fertility drugs been recommended to those with niddah infertility? I struggled to see how can any halachic authority could validate using potential harmful biological solutions when there is a natural solution. Niddah infertility has been addressed by medical experts and halachic authorities, yet not enough progress has been made.

My first mikvah experience was a nightmare. But I don’t think this event made a huge impact. I always felt these laws are solely placed on women, that the stringency and procedures invite obsessiveness and cause many to harbor a resentment for halacha. Many people wait so long to live with their partners and once this is halachically permissible you are still asked to separate.

To me the halacha calls for an unnatural lifestyle. The reactions of my secular friends make me long for a relationship without restrictions.

Will I ever have a relationship where physicality is only up to me and my partner? If I stick with this, the answer is no. Do young girls realize these laws ask for a lifelong commitment? For me this commitment is a lot to ask.

My mom came with me for my mikvah initiation. The mikvah lady greeted me with midrashic divrei tora, which made me furious. Spirituality is definitely not how I approach the immersion process and it felt like she was on a mission to instill belief and holiness in me. She emphasized my status as a kallah and told me that the shechinah is about to come between me and my future husband. Knowing that this mikvah attendant knew my sexual and biological status felt like the deepest invasion of my privacy.

Immersing felt so foreign to me, but I felt forced into it because I chose to live halachically for all the other parts of my life. Yet I am still the girl who wont change in locker rooms, never let her mom in the dressing room and shudders at the mention of periods or blood. Having to discuss any of this with another person was challenging enough.

The mikvah attendant tried to test my halachic knowledge, and rubbed my thigh as she continued to give me spiritual divrei Torah against my will. She made no attempt to avoid her eyes as I dunked in a hysterical state after stating twice that I prefered her only to come in the room after I was under water. I cried underwater and the tears continued for months. Although I rarely tell anyone about these kind of private experiences, I called my yoetzet halacha and she did everything she could including calling the mikvah to explain how deeply I was affected. I found myself repeating this story to friends and family, and soon learned how that many women feel strongly about the mikvah system.

Despite my extreme discomfort and negative feelings toward all these halachot, I have decided to go back to the mikvah and immerse alone. Even this is a challenge and I have no desire to say the beracha. To me it’s not a holy act. Its something i felt was forced upon me by Orthodoxy and I struggle to submit to something that is so against my private nature.

As I enter the waiting room for the third time, I see other women sitting there. Anger burns inside me. I am now in an impure state. I am an untouchable, and I have just chosen to go to a women’s bath-house. It feels degrading to be sent away to become purified and join with other women in this exile of contamination. I feel like I am part of a controlled system. Yet this time the control is exercised by women, not men.

I dip privately, with no ability to recite the beracha. Why would I say words that were imposed upon me to add holiness to an act, which I feel is degrading? I walk out with a fake smile, trying to mask the disappointment in myself. I can’t believe that I agreed to this.

I am not the kind of person who accepts anything blindly. I have spent my life searching for textual sources to help me find rationale and meaning to each aspect of Judaism. If I cannot find any meaning in my practice, then I come to resent it. I admit that after much searching, I am fully resentful of every aspect of this halacha. I am resentful of the fact that it in talmudic sources the conclusion was that the women accepted upon themselves the more stringent approach, and I am bound to that today. There is a part of me that wishes I was ignorant and never learned what a mikvah was.

I am resentful that so many women submit to this system without a fight. And I am resentful that my request to immerse alone requires means I will need to explain my request to those who insist on overseeing my immersion. I am horrified to have learned that any mikvah attendant feels its her responsibility to ensure the mitzvah is kept according to her standards.

I promised myself that I will never allow myself to do anything that will cause resentment towards religion. Yet here I am.

If I decide to stick with these halachot, I know it will be accompanied by continued resentment. Resentful for the feeling that I no longer have the power to say this simply isn’t working for me, no thanks. The worst part is that if I am honest with them, I will not be able support my future daughters in doing the same.

Sincerely,

Drowning in the mikvah

I started this blog to try and cure my writer’s block.

I wanted to work on writing fiction and poetry.

Instead, I found myself writing about social issues that affect me and those I care about. Although I tried to tackle questions without bitterness, apparently that didn’t always come across in my posts.

Very quickly I found that some people didn’t appreciate my social criticism.

Then I started learning about issues that really did anger me. Some folks started contacting me who suffered various forms of abuse in the community and were ignored, silenced, or even vilified themselves by certain groups.

I started writing about some of these sensitive topics, but instead of focusing on the issues raised, people focused on the character of the people raising those issues or on my own character for writing about them.

Some people told me I was the one creating problems where there were none. People liked the way things were in our community and I had no business stirring things up. To those people I said:

I realized that there were people who felt just as strongly about their positions, as I did about mine.

Some people who I was certain would agree with me, thought I was way out of line.

Some people, who I never thought I would see eye to eye with, were actually open to a dialogue – and I learned from them, just as I hoped they learned from me. As long as no one was getting hurt, I learned that it’s important for there to be different perspectives, as long as all those different perspectives are allowed a voice.

Some people said that blogs were relevant in 2004, but were totally irrelevant in 2014.

Blogs don’t accomplish any positive social change, they only provide a whining platform for sad people pecking at computer keyboards in their basements, surrounded by half-eaten packages of corn chips and empty cans of Red Bull.

I say that revolutions have started on lesser sparks than the flames kindled by blogs. The written word is a powerful weapon and tool for social change. However, a blog post can only reach so far. Real change happens offline.

The word emunah is generally translated as faith. Emunah isn’t based on logic or rationality, but rather, on the spiritual belief that there is a higher power in charge of the world. People who have emunah are characterized as having an unshakeable faith in Hashem’s existence and power. The ultimate public display of emunah would be martyrdom. Another example of emunah would be the unwavering belief in Moshiach’s imminent arrival. Yet another display of emunah is in keeping mitzvot, such as kashrut, that don’t have a logical explanation or an obvious benefit.

Emunah isn’t something that can be forced. A person can be taught the importance of having emunah in Hashem and the Torah. Explaining the benefits of keeping those mitzvot that we can rationally understand can be used to promote emunah. However, ultimately faith is a personal journey. However mightily one person might hold of their faith, it’s not something tangible that can be given directly to another person.

One can discuss, theorize, cite religious texts, quote rabbinic scholars, or show practical examples that may inspire belief in God’s existence. However, there is no guarantee that other people will be swayed by those arguments.

Many times, when a religious person is going through a nisayon (test or difficult challenge), they are told to rely on emunah to bring them through their trial. Increasing emunah is a commonly called upon technique, in addition to tefillah (prayer), for us to overcome our challenges with Hashem’s help. Strengthening emunah often calls for practical steps, such as pinpointing areas in our lives that could use improvement in the form of mitzvah observance.

While davening and having faith that Hashem is watching out for me is something that has helped me through many hard times, there have also been times when the concept of emunah has hurt me. For example, I didn’t have my first child until I was married for three years. I have no idea why it took so long to have my first baby and, at first, I was so preoccupied with getting used to marriage, leaving school, working at my first full time job, managing my own household, and basically learning to be an adult, that having a baby wasn’t at the forefront of my mind.

After awhile, as friends who were married for less time than I was started announcing pregnancies, I began to worry that something was wrong. In fact, quite a few couples that got married after my husband and I did already had two kids by the time we had our first (such is the baby race in the frum community for newlyweds).

As a caveat, I don’t mean to detract from the pain of those suffering from long term infertility. I don’t know if it was emunah, prayer, a bracha from a tzadek, managing to get to the mikva earlier on a given month to catch my ovulation cycle at the right time, or just random luck, but eventually I got pregnant and didn’t have any subsequent problems conceiving.

However, my childless state lasted long enough that it got to a point where I began feeling more depressed than happy when yet another friend would announce a pregnancy. I started feeling out of place in shul during times like Purim or Simchas Torah. Babies made me sad. I hated feeling that way, and knew that someone else having a baby in no way affected my own situation, but it wasn’t about logic – simply pain and confusion over why my seemingly healthy body wouldn’t cooperate.

During that time I read a lot of books and articles about infertility from a Jewish perspective. How Rachel and Sara cried out to Hashem, and how infertile Jewish women needed to pour their heart and tears out in their tefillot. So I did. I davened and I cried. I was told to do more mitzvot – especially mitzvot that characterized my nisayon. So I volunteered for Shifra and Puah and my shul and any friend who had just had a baby, to cook and deliver meals. It was gratifying yet also painful. I found that some women expressed surprise (in a nice way) that someone who wasn’t yet a mother was volunteering. Most of the volunteer meal programs were run by mothers for mothers in a kind of pay back circle.

I also tried to increase my mitzvah observance in general. I began having a shiur at my house on the Chofetz Chaim’s Hilchot Loshon Horah. I read that being careful about tznius and taharas hamishpacha can be a good segulah for, well, really anything, but especially having healthy children. I started wearing only skirts and long sleeves, covering my hair all the time, and eventually covering all of my hair (instead of hats with my hair down). My husband and I became much more careful about harchakot, and I became more detail oriented with all the technicalities involved in counting and preparing for mikva, etc.

There was still no baby. At that point, whenever someone would tell of another person pregnant or a friend would make a grand announcement, I would think, “What is she doing right that I’m doing wrong?” I think I already had a BT inferiority complex that I wasn’t as religious as most of my husband’s friends wives, but here I was increasing my observance and emunah; wasn’t I worthy enough to have a child yet? Even worse, sometimes someone would announce a pregnancy and it would inspire mean and judgmental thoughts, “Surely I’m more observant than she is. When will it finally be my turn?”

The longer I remained barren, the more my self esteem plummeted – particularly on a religious level. Obviously I still wasn’t frum enough to be granted a baby and everyone else around me was. My emunah was not up to par and I was being punished for it in an obvious way. Finally, after almost two years of trying and failing to conceive, I told my husband that I was going to seek medical help. There was no obvious explanation for why I wasn’t getting pregnant and it was time for further examination and possible intervention.

For whatever reason, my husband asked me to hold off seeing a doctor until he talked to a certain kabbalistic rabbi. He wanted to get a bracha from this rabbi who has been known to facilitate miraculous things. The long story short is that the rabbi assured my husband that he would see what he could do and basically not to worry. That month I got pregnant.

Another caveat, I realize that a bracha is most likely not going to be the necessary elixir for those suffering from medical infertility. My adopted mother was born without ovaries, so I doubt that a bracha would have caused her to conceive. We aren’t supposed to rely on miracles, after all. I don’t know if Hashem needed a divine nudge from a tzadek for me to have a child, if it was a random coincidence, if all of my personal religious efforts paid off, or if that ovulation kit I bought at Osco finally provided the accurate information needed to work the proper magic.

In any case, for a long time, that experience caused me to view challenges in terms of personal fault. Meaning, I felt that I was causing my own misery because I didn’t have the right mindset. If I had more emunah, was more religious, and was a less judgmental person than I would be granted a child. I felt that anyone who was able to have a child must be a better person than me. This resulted in being distraught both about whatever difficulty I was facing, as well as my sense of self worth.

I’m sure the authors, lecturers, and rabbis whose words and advice I followed about using emunah to power through difficulties didn’t mean for the concept to be twisted around in that way. However, I wonder how many other people feel even worse about their challenges when the message seems to be that if they only had more emunah, their situation would be resolved?

The oven timer goes off just as the soup begins bubbling over the edges of the large pot, hissing onto the burner below. *Sara runs with her oven mitts from oven to stove to countertop, turning down flames and removing steaming casserole dishes like a mad scientist in her laboratory. Shavuos is the one yom tov that Sara makes milchig holiday foods. Creamy potato leek soup, lasagna, salmon and dill sauce, eggplant parmesan, and homemade blueberry cheesecake are but a few of the delicacies on her menu. Of course, Sara won’t be eating any of the food she makes.

Between the preparing, serving, schmoozing, and clean up, her guests and family won’t notice that she is only picking at the undressed salad and bit of salmon she will put on her plate. She will use every excuse to leave the table to replenish the water pitchers, refill the dill sauce, replace a dropped fork, offer tea, or bring more napkins to her guests.

Anything to avoid the temptation of the aromatic dishes being passed around the table has been and will continue to be employed by Sara. She has made a vow not to gain any weight this yom tov. Sara can’t afford to gain any weight or she won’t fit into the new clothes she has purchased expressly for the new parsha in her life – her daughter’s shidduchim.

Sara’s daughter Dalia has officially been put “on the market.” Dalia gave Sara a list of reputable shadchans given to the girls at school, and Sara has made appointments to meet with the local ones with Dalia after yom tov. The shadchans will have a before and after view of the two women.  Sara has heard from friends that, as the “after version,” the shadchans will be judging her appearance just as harshly as they are judging Dalia’s.

The boys and their mothers specifically ask what the girl’s mother’s dress size is – the mother is a preview of things to come and they want to know that their potential bride will hold up over time. Sara has a responsibility to present a good image, because her appearance will reflect upon her daughter and determine her dating prospects.

Sara knows that other women with marriageable age daughters feel this same pressure. It seems that everyone is on a diet and has joined a gym or exercise class.   Lately at shul, Sara feels like the giant version of Alice in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.  It seems that all the ladies around her are shrinking, making her seem larger in her own eyes. All the 40-something mothers are so slim and pretty. The ultimate compliment is to be told you and your daughter look more like sisters than mother and daughter, and many of the mothers fall into that category.

Shidduchim isn’t only a beauty pageant for the prospective kallahs, but also for the mothers. With each new beauty innovation, procedure, diet, and exercise regimen the competition grows fiercer. The goal of all of this dieting and exercise is rarely good health (although that’s the excuse given), but merely to get as skinny as possible as quickly as possible. Sara even knows of some mothers and daughters who diet and exercise together; competing over how many calories they burned exercising that day or how few calories they logged in their food plan journals.

As Sara mixes the batter for her blintz soufflé, she scolds herself for buying outfits a size smaller for her upcoming meetings. She had thought the outfits would provide incentive to get down another dress size, but with all of the good smells assaulting her nose, she is starting to think that her will power might falter over yom tov. Sara has been sticking to a 500-700 calorie a day diet (the minimum healthy range for a woman of her size is 1200 calories per day) for the past month. She also has been exercising with the goal of burning at least 500-700 calories per day, so that any calories she does ingest will be cancelled out.

This isn’t the first time Sara has gone on such a restrictive diet. The last time she lowered her calorie intake was the year before when she and her husband were honored at a banquet. That time, Sara managed to shed thirty pounds before caving in to a binge. That particular dieting episode was the first time she threw up after eating too many calories. Although Sara has never purposely vomited again, it is comforting for her to know that purging up a mistaken meal is always an option.

The best option, however, is not to take in all those extra calories in the first place, and Sara is determined to maintain control this time. Sara is motivated to be successful at achieving and maintaining a trim figure, because this time it’s for her daughter’s future, and what could be a more important cause than that? Sara puts the last covered casserole dish into the refrigerator with a new determination. Soon she will go upstairs to try on one of her new outfits, getting inspiration from the zipper closing a bit more easily with each passing day. Sara will make her daughter proud and when she is dancing at Dalia’s wedding, all of this will have been worthwhile.

*Sara is a fictional composite character based on multiple personalities

The Kol B’Isha Erva “Email Hotline” strikes again.  I received this comment last night in response to my post Girls Just Want To Have Fun.  After reading it, I felt it deserved to be showcased as a post of it’s own (the name has been removed to protect anonymity).  I will give my response after the email, but feel free to add in your two cents in the comment section.

Dear Sharon,

Hi.  I’m a 16 year old jewish, frum girl. I really really need some advice! A few days ago I joined a social 3d website that allows to to meet other people and chat with them. I started talking to this non-jewish guy who is 22 years old. I was just playing around and talking to him. He ended up falling in love with me and he gave me his number.

I told him that I was jewish and it wouldn’t be possible for me to be with him. He told me that he would convert. Seriously doubting that but intrigued I ended txting him. I kept asking him if he was serious about converting and I haven’t stopped badgering him about it. I’ve asked him a lot of questions about how serious he is and if he knows how much he’d have to sacrifice to be able to convert to judaism. He said he would give everything up for me.

I’m not sure whether to believe him or not. I am starting to believe that he really does love me and that thought makes me sick. I never in my wildest dreams ever imagined this. I’m 16. I have a whole life ahead of me. I’m going through a really hard time at the moment and I can’t spare any thoughts for guys let alone non-jewish ones. If any of my family, friends or community found out about this they’d probably kill me!  I have thought a lot about this and I’m pretty sure that this is definitely not what I need and want at the moment or even in the next few years.

I could just delete his number and never talk to him again but number one, if he really does love me I would break his heart, number two, if he’s really serious about converting I might destroy that by severing all contact with him. I don’t know what to do! I’m at huge conflict here! I feel really guilty about this whole mess and that I was the one who started it in the first place. Please please help me!

Sincerely,

Sleepless in the Shtetle

————————————————————————————–

Dear Sleepless,

First of all, in reading your letter, it’s obvious that you know in your heart and gut what you want and need to do from this line -

“I have thought a lot about this and I’m pretty sure that this is definitely not what I need and want at the moment or even in the next few years.”

Ding! Ding! Ding!  Congratulations, you’ve given yourself your answer.  Whether this young man was a deeply religious frum Torah scholar descended from the Chofetz Chaim or the non-Jewish social media predator that he is, you are only 16 and have a lot of self-discovery and growth to do before settling down with any man.

What you are describing here is not a man who has “fallen in love,” but a man who is “sexually preying on a minor” according to the laws of most states.  Even if the age of consent is 16 in the state you live in, there is also a law that says the person you are dating can’t be 4 or more years older than you at that age.  So basically, this entire “relationship” is straight from a Dateline: To Catch a Predator episode, because he is legally not allowed to engage in a sexual/romantic relationship with you online or offline.

Additionally, you have probably seen or heard of the MTV show Catfish. For those who haven’t seen this show, Catfish exposes people who prey on others online by pretending to be someone they aren’t.  Sometimes they keep up the charade for years before being discovered as a fake.  With this in mind, your guy could be anyone from a 22 year old young man, to a 42 year old married stock broker, to a 52 year old lifelong serial killer.

Let’s assume for one nanosecond that this guy is legit – he really is a 22 year old Romeo who is so in love with a young Jewish girl that he is ready and willing to convert, sweat through tzitzit in the heat of the upcoming summer, put strange leather boxes and straps on his person while mumbling incomprehensible Hebrew prayers each morning, and give up McDonalds for life.  What do you think the reaction of your rabbi will be when you present your “boyfriend” for conversion?  Your rabbi, as well as any other Orthodox rabbi, will turn him away.

Why?  First of all, any potential convert who approaches a rabbi about converting is turned away initially.  In fact, I believe a potential convert must be discouraged at least 3 times before being taken seriously.  Becoming Jewish is no small undertaking, and only those who are deemed to be serious in their conviction that Judaism is the only true religious path are educated in our ways and allowed to convert.  One red flag on every Orthodox rabbi’s radar is someone converting for the sake of love or marriage.  People converting for a relationship are not converting because of belief in our religion, but because of their belief in their relationship.  If that relationship ends, so too does their belief in Judaism.  I think your young man would find many doors closed to him if he approached conversion in the given scenario.

From your letter it seems that, as any 16 year old girl would be, you were flattered by this man’s attention.  The thought that he would make such a major life change as converting to Judaism just to be with you must have made you feel good.  However, remember, words are one thing and actions are another.  Men have been known to make all sorts of empty promises to women in order to take advantage of them.  Even if this guy is sincere, he has no idea what becoming an Orthodox Jew really means in daily practice.

Bottom line, you don’t owe him anything.  22 year old hearts are surprisingly resilient and he will get over the heartbreak of you ending the relationship.  Judaism isn’t a missionary religion, and we are under no obligation to convert the non-Jewish masses to our ways.  There is nothing to feel guilty about if he doesn’t convert.  If you feel he is truly interested in sincere conversion, tell him to Google “Orthodox rabbi” near his location and call one of them for assistance.  It’s not your job.

Finally, take this experience and learn from it.  A mistake isn’t a mistake if we’ve learned a lesson.  Next time you think about flirting, texting, chatting, webcamming with a random guy online your thought should be – “I’m having fun and enjoying the attention this person is giving me, but then what?”  What do you hope to gain from such interaction?  What will the outcome look like?  All online relationships, just like all offline relationships, come to a crossroads.

At some point, you are not going to be satisfied with only online or phone interaction, and the choice will have to be made to break off the communication or meet up in real life.  If you are embarking on a relationship with someone you could never be with in real life, you have your answer to “but then what?”  Then nothing.  It’s a dead end every time.  Quite frankly, at 16, every relationship is a dead end, because you are simply too young to choose who you want for your life partner, even if the young man is another frum Jew.

Enjoy being 16, enjoy your freedom, enjoy having a world of opportunities before you, enjoy getting to know yourself and what you want out of life.  I wish you luck!

Sincerely,

Sharon

It’s always interesting for me to get a glimpse of how other Jews personify God.  For example, as a young child, I always thought of God as an angel with large and feathery wings.  Oh, and He was a She.  God was a nurturing mother figure always ready to comfort young children as needed.  Obviously, other people have different visions of what Hashem is like.  For example, some folks imagine Hashem as a flamboyant hairdresser, a divine Vidal Sassoon, if you will.  This version of God is very concerned about the hairstyles worn by Jewish women.

“Whyyy are all these Jewish ladies still wearing long hair? Prince called – it’s time to stop partying like it’s 1999, girls! Have any of you even cracked open an issue of Vogue in the last decade?!!  The look now is a shoulder length razor cut bob.  This is how I want all my women to look!  You don’t want to chop off your expensive long wigs, you say?  Fine, as an added incentive I will make sure that no illness, accident, nor fatality shall befall your community for the next, say, two weeks!  Now get to cutting!!!!!”

In what kind of mad world does Hashem give a crap about the length of our sheitels?  If anything, Hashem is probably shaking His head over how far we’ve taken this head covering thing.

“He he….you know ladies…it’s a funny thing…you’re really gonna get a kick out of this.  You know that portion of the Torah that talks about uncovering the Sotah’s head?  Yeah, that passage where you all inferred that a married woman has to cover all her hair in public at all times?  Well…cough, cough…you see right around the time I wrote that, I was taking this writing course, “Creative Writing for Deities.”  I know, I know, I was the only legit one there, it was kind of funny.  That Odin is a really nice guy though, but I digress.  Anyway, I had just learned about “show don’t tell,” and that lesson fit right in with the Sotah story I was jotting down at the time.  It’s just that I was thinking, a dramatic scene like that should take place on a windy and stormy day to reflect the mood.  Naturally, if it was a windy day, the Sotah would be wearing a scarf so that her hair wouldn’t be blowing all over the place for the outdoor trial.  Yeah, that’s all that was about.”

Who knows how many things we get wrong in our human interpretation of events?  I can picture a woman who cut down her $2,000 wig going to shemayim and facing Hashem ready for her reward due to her great sacrifice and Hashem asking -

“You mean to tell me you cut off five inches from your custom European sheitel?”

“Yes, Lord.”

“And if you had bought a shorter wig to begin with it would have cost $500?”

“Yes, Lord.”

“So, you wasted $1,500 of your family’s hard earned money?!!”

“Yyyeesss…I mmean….nnnooo!”

“STRAIGHT TO THE FIERY FLAMES OF GEHENNOM!  NEXT!!”

As the woman is ushered down to the depths of hell by one-eyed demons, she sees a line of women, hussies who had left their long wigs alone, being escorted by angels into the Gan Eden Day Spa with complimentary mimosas.

This was just a long winded explanation of why I won’t be shortening my wig.

A few years ago I read about a group of women who were petitioning the Jewish volunteer emergency medical service, Hatzalah, to accept females into their organization. The Forward had an interview with the woman lawyer and EMT spearheading this effort, Rachel Freier. Freier and others created Ezras Nashim, hoping to create a women’s EMT division in the Brooklyn branch of Hatzalah, primarily to assist with emergency home child labor.

In the late 1960’s when Hatzalah was first founded, there was a short-lived women’s division called, Hatzilu. Within three months of operation, local rabbis, fearful of inappropriate relationships happening between mixed gender emergency volunteers, ordered the female division to be disbanded. Ever since that time, the rabbis and lay leadership of Hatzalah have excluded women from participating in the service, even though half of their patients are women.

The Forward article included this interview from a woman named Miriam :

“Miriam was home alone in Brooklyn’s Hasidic neighborhood of Boro Park when she birthed her second child, her water breaking unexpectedly and the baby slipping out along with it. Moments later, seven men barreled through the door. One of them took the baby, and another asked Miriam to lie down so that he could check between her legs for the placenta. Then, the technicians — members of the volunteer ambulance corps Hatzalah — whisked her away to the hospital. Even though her male neighbor had called the men in an effort to help, Miriam said the experience was “traumatizing.”

In the ultra-Orthodox world in which Miriam lives, unmarried men and women are barred from touching, let alone exposing their bodies to one another. Though the incident occurred 15 years ago, Miriam (who asked that her name be changed to protect her privacy) remembers every detail of that uncomfortable visit. In particular, she remembers wishing that women had attended to her, instead of men.

“I think that a woman who has to give birth at home should at least have the comfort of another woman at her side,” she said.”

Rachel Freier added in a Voz Iz Neias interview:

“Women who have had a baby delivered by Hatzalah are grateful to them, but they are also embarrassed and humiliated by the experience,” said Mrs. Freier.  “If they meet that EMT or Hatzala member, they will likely cross the street to avoid him.  We are all so proud of Hatzalah.  We can’t live without them.  But the voice of the women now has to be heard.”

Hatzalah refused to change its position not to accept female volunteers, and so Ezras Nashim has been established as its own organization. They will first begin serving Boro Park and hope to expand into other areas of New York and even Israel. According to Tablet magazine:

“None of the issues they’ve faced have been enough to deter Freier or her dedicated crew of nearly 50 volunteers. In fact, they went above and beyond, with each EMT attending additional training sessions at two local hospitals, where they shadowed doctors on the emergency and obstetrics wards, and obtaining certification in neo-natal resuscitation, which requires extra hours of instruction. New recruits are signing up every day, with 10 or so currently enrolled in courses. The EMTs will at first be answering calls related to childbirth but plan to expand their focus as they solidify their practice.”

What’s interesting to me is that, aside from the usual critics who don’t feel that women are capable of responding to medical emergencies and that Ezras Nashim is taking precious financial donations and resources from the already established Hatzalah, there are those who feel that Ezras Nashim is anything but a female empowering endeavor. People have critiqued the service for promoting a hyper-tznius agenda which further separates the sexes, and could be creating a new chumra that will stop women from accepting medical treatment from men or stop men from offering medical treatment to women.

My opinion on the matter is that I think that frum female EMTs are long overdue in our communities. I think that the Hatzalah organization should be ashamed of itself for refusing to let women into their corps. Having a separate Ezras Nashim should never have had to happen – it should have been a division of the already established Hatzalah all along from the beginning. Since Hatzalah has stubbornly refused to let women into its volunteer EMT organization, forming Ezras Nashim is a necessity.

Ezras Nashim will give women more control over their care in vulnerable situations. I think it’s a terrible breach of tznius to have familiar men caring for a woman in labor who they know – especially when there have been women asking to take over this role and were told no. There is such a big difference between having a male doctor and male volunteer EMT from your neighborhood treating you. Most people I know don’t have a relationship with their OB/GYN outside of professional visits. Plus, a male OB/GYN has seen hundreds/thousands of deliveries and done hundreds/thousands of intimate exams. After awhile they become desensitized and it’s strictly professional. Doctors undergo sensitivity training in medical school on treating the opposite sex. They are graded by volunteer patients to see how they perform in this area.

Being treated and seen for an intimate exam by someone with a BLS or ALS license who you see at shul, the grocery store, parent/teacher conferences, simchas – someone who you only know socially – is quite different than being seen by a physician with whom you only have a professional relationship.

I think the critique about Ezras Nashim being a feminist step backward has to do with the emphasis on only providing labor and delivery services. In reality, these women are getting the same certification that Hatzalah members have and can treat emergencies of any nature. My opinion is that I think they are kowtowing to rabbis and those accusing them of being feminist upstarts by stressing the childbirth/doula angle. Eventually, they will incorporate all emergency services into their repertoire. I agree that it’s a waste that the women of Ezras Nashim had to recreate the wheel, but that wasn’t their choice.

I think it’s hypocritical for people to argue that the men of Hatzalah are professional and unfazed when seeing an unclothed woman they know, but women would not show the same level of professionalism when treating a man they know. How is it pikuach nefesh when a man touches and treats an unrelated woman, but a woman touching and treating a male patient would not get the same dispensation? I thought women were supposed to be on a “higher level” regarding sexual temptation? Men and women work side by side for many hours in stressful jobs every day. I don’t see how volunteer EMTs would be any more likely to develop inappropriate relationships than in most other professional work settings.

Women have a lot to offer to community emergency health services, not just as dispatchers or secretaries, but also as active EMTs and paramedics. To that end, I am very proud of these women and their determination and dedication.

Shabbos and particularly two or three day yom tovim, sometimes bring with them a certain anxiety for married women. Will she have to use the mikva during this time when she must walk to her destination, is limited in bathing/hygiene/beauty preparations before or after her dunk, and must be noticeably absent or late to family dinners? Additionally, if a couple is a guest at someone’s home for Shabbos or holidays, it’s often difficult to get away discreetly for this purpose and/or intimacy is not even an option due to guest accommodations (e.g. sharing small rooms with children, no locks on doors, sleeping in someone else’s bedroom who may pop in to get a spare pair of undies).

A shaila and answer from Nishmat about postponing mikva on the first night of Shavuos prompted an interesting Facebook conversation. The psak given by the yoetzet was that the woman should go in order to release the limitations of the harchakot and allow for other forms of physical contact besides intimacy (the couple would be staying with family and sharing a room with their children, so it wouldn’t be a romantic post-mikva reunion).

The conversation revolved around postponing mikva night due to inconvenience. It’s no easy feat to get to the mikva on the second seder night, or on the night of your daughter’s wedding, or when your husband is out of town for the next two weeks and you are on your own with the kids. Also, if you have a big simcha on Shabbos, such as a bar mitzvah, a woman will often apply cosmetics that will hopefully last until Shabbos day for the big event. If you go to the mikva on Friday night, you can’t reapply your makeup again. It might seem superficial or trivial, but there are women who wouldn’t go to the grocery store without their makeup on, much less greet hundreds of guests at a simcha with no makeup. It seems there are two main camps on the issue of postponing mikva. Once camp says it’s assur to delay immersion and another camp says it’s muttar as long as both husband and wife agree to the delay.

Some women feel that in a system where their sex lives are pre-regulated in terms of when they are allowed to be with their husbands, controlling when they go to the mikva is a form of empowerment. Why should they have a rushed, stressed, or uncomfortable experience on an inconvenient night, when the next night will be much calmer? Other women feel that it’s a halachic mandate to get to the mikva on the earliest permitted evening and that inconvenient timing should not be a factor when your mikva night rolls around.

In a larger community, it’s easy to get away with making your own schedule. With many mikvaot and rotations of many mikva ladies, the only people keeping track of your mikva attendance is you and your husband. In smaller towns where there is only one mikva and possibly only one mikva lady, some have been known to make comments such as “I haven’t seen you recently,” indicating that someone outside of the couple’s marriage is privy to their mikva schedule. However, small towns aside, mikva calendars are personal and no one will know if a woman has gone to the mikva on her “correct” day or not.

I don’t know how often women take scheduling their mikva night into their own hands, but I do know that motzei yom tov and motzei Shabbos are very busy mikva nights. It could be coincidence or it could be because many women who would otherwise have had to go on Friday night or yom tov night have pushed it off. In any event, I think postponing mikva, as long as the husband and wife both agree, should be a personal choice. Although there are good reasons for not postponing (trying to conceive, marital discord, and various kabbalistic reasons), going to the mikva and feeling anxious or resentful about it isn’t good for marital harmony either.

I received a phone call from a reader the other week regarding my post on middle aged women suffering from eating disorders. The caller was a long married gentleman with a large family. While he in no way agreed with using unhealthy methods to lose weight, he said that based on his own observations, it’s much more likely to see frum people indulging in double portions of food, than abstaining from even a single portion.

This husband takes great pride in his wife’s youthful and trim appearance. He enjoys the fact that people mistake his wife for their daughter’s sister and that people always guess a few decades younger when trying to determine her age. In his opinion, people tend to let themselves go after marriage much more often than they become obsessive about fitness, weight, and improving their overall appearance.

With society’s current awareness of the devastating effects of eating disorders, as well as feminist outrage at women being objectified for their physical appearance, men are afraid to admit that they want attractive wives. We decry a shidduch system that imposes harsh requirements for women to be skinny and beautiful, yet at the same time, we admit that attraction must exist between marriage partners in order for the relationship to be successful.

There is a flip side to those folks who focus on their appearance in an extreme way (strict dieting, constant exercise, cosmetic procedures, expensive potions/lotions/makeup, trendy clothing). The other side of things is the stereotype of the rotund balebusta forever serving up potato kugel and kichelach to her portly husband, pasty skinned and soft from sitting behind a desk or a shtender all day – certainly not an image that would grace the cover of a romance novel. Fitness and beauty are for goyim.

The reality is that both men and women want attractive partners. Because of the taboo of married women attracting attention from other men, frum husbands can’t openly say they want a “trophy wife.” However, most men want a wife who makes them proud from a physical standpoint. Having a pretty wife is a status symbol of sorts. Who wants to be with someone that no one else will have? Many men are visual creatures and appreciate a pleasing appearance. Many men are also competitive on a variety of levels. Who their wife is, and more specifically, what she looks like, is included in that competition. Some men feel proud when they sense that other men are jealous of their wives.

This attitude is spoken of more openly in secular circles, because attraction and sexuality are more openly acknowledged. In frum circles, it’s not modest to talk of such things. Additionally, adultery is such a big taboo that a man complimenting or openly leering at a married woman would be harshly condemned.  It’s also considered frivolous to focus too much on physical appearance when marriage is supposed to be based on a love much deeper than the surface (which doesn’t at all correlate with the incessant focus on appearance before marriage in the shidduch scene). Therefore, we don’t talk about what happens when we lose attraction for our spouse, when we sense no one else finds them attractive either, or when we no longer find ourselves attractive after years of cholent, babies (sympathetic pregnancies and weight gain for men – hey, it’s a real thing!), and slowing metabolisms.

I know a couple who made a promise to each other, an informal prenuptial agreement of sorts, not to let themselves go appearance wise. They stuck to that promise to the best of their abilities. The reader who called me wanted to stress the importance of attraction in a marriage, and how detrimental it can be to downplay its importance. What makes a successful marriage, after all? Really, it isn’t the number of years a couple is married, but the number of years a couple is happily married. Sustained attraction is a key ingredient for happiness. Without it, a couple might have a marriage, but not a successful one.

Photo of Mount Sinai from ynetnews.com

I’ve been thinking about Shavuos and how Matan Torah established the Jewish people as one nation with our promise of “na’aseh v’nishma” or “we will do, and we will hear” Hashem’s commandments. Looking at the Jewish people of the 21^st century, it’s impossible to see ourselves as one nation. Even among Orthodox Jews, the factions have become so splintered; we are turning against each other. Jews of any other denomination aren’t acknowledged at all, and if they are, only in the most derogatory and dismissive terms. In the words of President Abraham Lincoln, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

Growing up, all of the synagogue services I attended were Traditional, Conservative, or Reform. Never once did I hear a rabbi speak ill of Jews of different denominations. It was only after I began attending Orthodox services that I ever heard a rabbi speak with derision and scorn about Jews of different denominations. I made a point of seeking out an Orthodox shul whose rabbi did not disparage other Jews from the pulpit.

On a similar note, in the community I belong to, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend among some parents and school administrators. The families who attend the “other schools” are looked down upon.

“I wouldn’t send my son there because the boys play with action figures and watch TV.”

“Have you seen the short uniform skirts the girls wear? Well, it’s no surprise. Have you seen what the mothers wear?”

“That’s the school you send your kids to if you want them to be brainwashed.”

It’s nice to have various schools to choose from. Some schools are a better hashkafic match for a family than others. Maybe there are personal relationships with teachers or administrators that sway a family toward one school or another. Perhaps the academic curriculum or educational philosophy is more appealing at one school over the other.  With so many valid reasons for picking a school, why must we justify our decision by putting down the Jews who go to the “other school?”

I believe that this attitude is a trickle-down effect from the top. Just the other week at the Agudah convention, a leading rabbi condemned Reform, Conservative, and Open Orthodox movements, saying that they:

“…were among those who “subvert and destroy the eternal values of our people.” These movements, he said, “have disintegrated themselves, become oblivious, fallen into an abyss of intermarriage and assimilation.”

“They will be relegated,” he added, “to the dustbins of Jewish history.”

It’s a shame that some Orthodox Jews have to put down others to promote their own ideals. If adherents to a certain Orthodox hashkafah believe that theirs is the only true derech, there is no need to disparage other groups. Lead by example and love, and that truth will have a better chance of spreading among the Jewish people, reconnecting us back into one nation.

I wish you all a Chag Sameach!

My daughter has been told many times at school that talking to boys is assur. Certainly, a girl should never initiate a conversation, but even if a boy initiates a “hello” or a “good Shabbos,” the best response is to ignore him and not return the greeting. If the boy is a distant relative or his family is close friends with the girl’s family and not responding would be rude, the girl might have to accede to a brief and grudging “hello” for the sake of politeness.

Recently, my daughter has been told something new. Talking to boys is the gateway to gehennom. Boys are demons waiting to lure unsuspecting girls to the fiery gates of hell. I’d always suspected that my husband and sons were the devil’s spawn, and so naturally, I asked my daughter how this would play out at home. Was she no longer permitted to speak to her father and brothers?

My daughter assured me that her father and brothers were not included in this category. It was perfectly fine for her to speak with them. Of course, that got me wondering whether or not I should send out some sort of announcement letting the other women and girls in my community know that my husband and sons were the only safe males with whom they were permitted to speak. That it’s only their husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons who are the demon spawn.

Upon further investigation, it turns out that it’s only safe for me and my daughter to speak to my husband and sons. It’s not safe for any other females to speak with them. Apparently, a male is only safe around the females in his own immediate family, but he turns into an uncontrollable devil among unrelated females. Of course, this does make me eye the men in my life with suspicion. After all, what if one day they confuse me for a woman unrelated to them? Is it safe to live under the same roof with such volatile creatures?

The important thing is that the first step in awareness has been taken. Information is power. When a man says hello to you, keep walking. It also couldn’t hurt to spit three times to ward off the dybbuk, “Pthui, pthui, pthui!”

I’ve been pondering the concept of mandated mourning. After a parent dies, a child is required to mourn their loss for the 12 months following the death. This means refraining from participation in joyous occasions, celebrations, and public entertainment venues where people go to enjoy themselves.

I’ve been an avel since the end of last August, so I am in the final home stretch of aveilus. Of course, this also means that I’ll be missing this summer’s blockbuster movies, in all probability 4th of July fireworks (haven’t asked a shaila yet), Ravinia’s “under the stars” outdoor music concerts, this year’s Jewish Folk Arts festival which features live bands, to name but a few activities.

Basically, anytime someone brings up something fun to do, I have to pause and wonder if I will be allowed to attend. Even if there is some wiggle room for me to participate, there’s that sense of nagging Jewish guilt that pops up scolding me for trying to find a loophole to absolve myself of my responsibility. Personally, I’ve felt that I am honoring the laws of aveilus strictly for kibbud av v’eim (honoring your father and mother), and not so much for my own private grief. While I am saddened at the loss of my mother at a young age, since I never knew her, my grief is of a different nature.

Although this is not my situation, my feelings of growing impatience with the restrictions of aveilus as the year wears on have made me wonder how children of abusive parents feel during this time. If you are ambivalent, or perhaps even grateful for the death of your parent, how difficult must it be to refrain from all happy activities out of respect for their memory? In such a scenario when a child might be feeling relief, and possibly even joy at finally being free of a toxic parent, they are told that they must express the appropriate sadness instead of celebrating. Additionally, this outward display of sadness must continue not only for the week or thirty days following their parent’s death, but for an entire year. It’s not an easy undertaking.

I said to my husband the other day that I feel like I have nothing to look forward to. I’ve been perplexed at my state of melancholy lately, especially as the weather warms to my favorite season of summer when I am usually the most cheerful. It occurred to me, as my husband mentioned the folk arts festival happening today, that my malaise has a lot to do with my limitations during aveilus.

Thankfully, the restrictions of aveilus are temporary and there is an end in sight. However, I have to wonder at a mandated mourning system generalized for every type of mourner. The ways in which people mourn are as diverse as the mourners themselves and the relationships they had with their departed loved ones. While being excused from joyous occasions might be a welcome “time out” early in the mourning period, that time out might be unwelcome as time goes by and the mourner begins to feel isolated. Sometimes attending a show, dancing at a wedding, or socializing at a party is just what is needed to raise a mourner’s spirits. My hope is that those of you reading this post never have to consider my musings from a first hand perspective.