Morbid fear

I have an absolute phobia about halloween.

Its not the ghosts, spooks, creepy carved pumpkins, not the brats leaning on
doorbells or crouched on rooftops clutching boxes of eggs to hit homecoming commuters...it isn't even the toilet paper streaming everywhere, as if a world of ghosts suddenly felt the need to wipe their invisible butts

...its my addiction to freakin candy corn.

There's so much of it left over after the holiday it sells at .50 a bag...couple of weeks later, you can find the .50 bags for 75% off.

My hero, Lewis Black, has thoroughly studied and researched candy corn. It turns out only one batch was ever made in the late 1800s and it just keeps getting recycled annually because no one eats the stuff...except me...and most idiots I offer it to.
These same folks are the ones who keep PEEPS in business, a candy standard I cannot imagine ever sinking to.

And, i might add, i was recently shocked when I walked into Walgreens and found a wall of halloween candy in bags, 2/$3.00. Peering over the bottom of my split lens (aka bi focals) I noted bags of candy corn shapes...chocolate cats, witches hats, caramel colored bats, yellow corn cobs, and fat orange pumpkins with tiny green stumps crowning their chewy teeth rotting little selves.

Like much of what's going on, its a conspiracy to kill us early to make room for the next group who need the beds.

poem

Love In Four Languages
(from the Book of Translations)

a book of Kurdish melodies
a book of Arabic proverbs
a books of Turkish memories
a book of English adorations

Tonight
come to me
in a dream
On this night
we will be born into one
from this dream
Outwit the quickness
of your thoughts
that are unsure
Outwit the alertness
of my heart
that is trembling
Open softly
the door of me
Translate this love
in all of your languages

I
Kurdish
I am watching the stars
Whisper nothing, even less
Shelter my eyes with your hands
Open your rose petal lips
drink the cream of my skin
I am in exile
Unable to eat or sleep, ecstatic
in shrouds
in ashes
on the shore of a continent
that carries your name

II
Arabic
The moon ascends
Seven years the moon rose
then fell as I waited
at seven gates
Pale as this night
My heart lived shut
like a pearl
Trampled by war
at the borders
of sunrise and sunset
Men were bees
whose wings carreid honey
swarming to nest
before you

III
Turkish
I am listening to the Sea
It is you
that enters me
without words
without mercy
Sharp as a knife
The steel of your fingers
crushes my bones into stars
Your cries are my cries
I fly
on the breath of your soul
on the scent of your skin
Swear as I do
we are clear, we are
surrendering nothing
to all heaven and earh
Say-
you take
what is yours

IV
English
Constellations move
in your eyes, I pour
down your chest like soft rain
you shudder
under the fall of my fingertips
Columns of marble
Your thighs are veined with sapphire
My hands gather you
soldier, my king
you are here without words
or maps
at the mouth of the Nile
Your history is written
on the waves that dissolve
between my lips
You have slept in my blood
While I slept on a bed of fire
I am on the bridge to Damascus
I am beneath the Polar star
I am naked before Heaven
I am shameless, speechless, blind without limbs
in your arms
You call my name
I dissolve in a bed of tulips
Your hands pull out my life
You fill me with yours
I am ablaze
thirsting in a garden
that glistens with tears
You call my name
your tongue carries me water
I find you
above me
wordless
waiting
still as a storm
your heart exploding
inside me

R.S.
2004

Light damns

On the train coming home today, reading about the obsfucation inside our community I had a flashback to 1973. I was standing in Ansche Chesed in the rabbi's office the day my father was nifter. I was begging him to intervene and stop my mother from cremating him. His response was, he's your mother's husband, I can't intervene, its her right to do as she wants.

My father was already considered 'dead' by the Jewish community; he married a shiksa, his own famiy sat shiva for him and never spoke to him again. Our jewish neighbors didnt speak to him (or us). For everyone, my father was dead long ago...it didnt matter what my mother did with him, his body, I counted him as a Jew, the rest of the world had already discarded him. I doubt he would have received a jewish burial or had been allowed to be laid inside the cemetary among Jews if the rabbi had helped us. Years later after obtaining his ashes from my mother, he was buried finally, outside in a special area with others not allowed a space among jewish dead.

Its not easy being 'chosen', too many wrong choices and you might as well be in an ari miklat.

Yontif...

Yom kippur was a bust. Couldnt get past the fear of walking cold into a shul to ask if i could hear mussaf, kol nidre, say kaddish. So me and my artscrolls stayed home,made kaporas with money, bentched, cooked yontif foods and davened...being alone i had to say the chazen's and congregation parts. dont laugh, i think G-d was probably not too happy if He heard any of it.

I've been refused by every Jewish publication I submitted "A letter from the City of Refuge"--Hamodia wrote they would publish if edited down to 700, I edited and turned it in, silence. Since '86, after leaving crown heights, I felt like and was treated like a leper. What I didnt know is that this is indicative of the entire yiddishe velt--'mesirah' and a chilul H*shem remain guiding principles, no matter how grave or dirty the community laundry is. Denial of abuse by men against women and children, husbands, rabbis, day care centers staffed with untrained russian immigrants, women taking in yeshivah bochurs for meals and other activities...hide your faces all of you, pretend nothing is going on, pretend those who leave are the sinners, tell yourselves that the Truth is a chilul H*shem...I think its a sign of our generation, all religions are in philosophical denial.

Last Pope euthanized? Priests bankrupting the church with their sexual depravities, rabbis... leaders of us Chosen folk sending women back to their abusers, hiding molestation of yeshivah kids, Islam is the quintessential contradiction...the religion of peace promoting death and ignorance at every turn...sending a moronic mouthpiece to NY to spew his 'final solution' and offer an olive branch for us all to convert. He tried the stick, now he's trying the carrot approach. In case no one's paying attention, its traditional in islam to offer the captives, idolators and kafirun an opportunity to convert before they're condemned to death. Or you can live as a 2nd class citizen and pay a special tax rate only for non muslims...if you're allowed to remain alive.

I was initially offended that Lee Bollinger hosted the underdressed ignoramous today, but after reading the statements Bollinger made, statements that this government, our media and worst of all other academicians haven't had the badahn (cohones) to say out loud, I can only hope he sent a few copies of the transcript back with Ahmaddidit so they can read it over leisurely in Qum and plan their next conversion project with a better understanding of what the enemy really thinks of them.

Co-opting Judaism

About 10 years ago I was invited to attend a conference in upstate NY where Holocaust survivors meet annually with the children of Germans who had actively taken part in the war, as opposed to those who claimed ‘we knew nothing, saw nothing…”

The first days were spent with survivors describing what they had lived thru. Emotionally devastating to listen to, slowly, methodically spoken, with such dispassionate facts. One might mistake this manner of speech as a kind of numbness, when it actually is just the opposite, a rawness so deep it must be contained with very careful speech.

Young Germans spoke about the stories they had heard from their parents, trying to explain why they did what they had to do, in that time, sometimes defending their roles, sometimes apologizing to thier own children for the legacy they marked their family with. The sense of shame some of these young adults felt was clear and in my opinion wasted. The final day of the 3 day conference culminated in both groups coming together, Germans offering apologies and survivors trying to accept their verbal offerings.

While cathartic for many, the process seemed an erasure of a history so inexplicable and debased, that apologies border(ed) on pathology.

This pathology becomes clearer as more recently Holocaust revisionists, deniers and others have begun claiming that Jews are “exploiting” an ‘incident’ similiar to the suffering of many peoples. The Jews are milking a moment of suffering (the Holocaust)and have themselves become nazis to other people in a land they stole and sit in illegally. Antisemitism continues to flourish throughout Europe, grows intensely in the Mid East and percolates more quietly in America.

In Poland there is currently a revival of Jewish culture, foods, dances. In one of the most destructive countries that both slaughtered and built the ghettos and ovens of destruction, this too, is a perverse celebratory cannibalism of the dead. Yiddish is no more alive today than the millions of Jews who were sent to their deaths. Yiddish only exists in tiny communities were chassidim continue to use it. And Singer is one of the rare writers that can be read in English without losing nuance; you either know the culture he describes or you dont.

That Others take on the cloak of dead Jews, already soaked in blood and try it on, attempting to fool ‘blind’ folk into believing the Chosen son remains alive, means nothing more than the deceptive act it is. BEcause Others chose to forget or forgive themselves doesnt mean Jews have forgotten or forgiven. Although forgetting, like selective memory is becoming preferrable and politically correct.

Yiddish is a sacred language, I would liken it to Aramaic–which may sound bizaare–both languages created the sacred laws defining a people and the means with which they communicated in their daily lives.

Fin

I purchased machzorim and a mezuzah at Eichler's. With no shul to go to, davening at home is the schedule. This week, a series of incidents, some minor, some not have me remembering that since 1973 I've been looking for acceptance within the jewish community. For whatever reasons, emotional, spiritual, intellecutal, none of that matters now.

What's become clear, is that just because I stepped away from chassidus in '86 and now want to reconnect, for myself as well as the kids, the same doors remain closed. The fact is I remain a geress,without family, only older now and even less useful.

I watched Soldiers of G-d and was so charged up by the movement to keep Yerushalyim intact. I looked online and found their website, emailed to say it was amazing work, that I hoped the reaction and support would be tremendous. I got a phone call from Hikind asking me to host an open house so she could come pitch for money. Surely I knew people or people who knew people to support the movement. I was embarrassed to say I dont live between Jews, in 2 rooms and there are even fewer jews at the college. I sent them tzedakah...I feel like a scab on a wound. If I had MONEY to give, doors would suddenly open in many ways. I called the JBFS and asked if they have support groups for women, they only have an older group that meets but they mailed me 4 fliers for tai chi and yoga sessions, 2 of which already happened months ago.

It all feels familiar. I've been thru this already...there's no place
The subject of being part of the jewish community, any jewish community is now closed. It hasnt happened and will not happen. The very few jews that know what I've lived thru actually have apologized on behalf of Jewry to me, as if 'real' Jews owe the convert an apology for 'bad behaviour'. That's how deep the schism is and they dont even get it. And the conversation always ends the same....talking about the negatives inside the community doesnt help anyone, we all know about the abusers, molesters, thieves, liars...but they exist everywhere. It's because I lived inside, studied chassidus and loved the Rebbe z'tl that this doesnt wash...jews are better than that, better than accepting filth as part of life. Maybe we've come so far and live is so dark now we can't even see the distinction between what is good and evil.

I dont even know at this point what it is I 'want.'
My childhood is gone, I already was converted, married and had children inside chassidus, what's to bitch about? Happiness? A decent mate? Millions want the same and never get it. The frum community is what it is and owes me nothing.

I dont know what's left to write here...I began this blog to journal about returning to a frum life. My 'frum' life is totally internalized, lived inside 2 rooms. And that will have to be enough, becuase the ABishter alone didnt abandon me, ever and its only to Him I owe anything to now.

Not a day, not an hour, not a space between each breath and my flesh, that I do not think about death. Its not even depression. Depression is a state, an existence separate that one moves into and possiblyt out of. This is different, its blood, its instead of life. Its no different than someone being a prisoner or lost somewhere alone and instinctively trying to stay alive. Even when it appears clear there is not purpose, instinct kicks in, but the darkness has already overwhelmed any hope for actual life. Only being frum seemed to resolve this issue. I have no other explanation for eating, working, shitting and starting it over again each day.

A letter from the City of Refuge

A letter from a City of Refuge


I write to you from exile, as an exile.
Din decrees that one condemned to an ‘ari miklat’ may return to live with a Jewish community once the High Priest has passed away.

I do not mean to use the term City of Refuge sacrilegiously, as the term applies to Jews committing ‘accidental murder’ as well as intentional pre-meditated crimes. Thousands of us born to non frum Jews, remain condemned no less, as living exiles suffering spiritual banishment. And I will tell you, it is not from lack of wanting our freedom.

My story is not unique. I’ve met many similar souls on my journey to find a road out of exile. I write to you, who are reading these words, with hope you will recognize the next yid that Hashem places in your path, as someone no stranger than your own flesh, family or limb.

As we are one people divided by the politics, geographic communities and diversities of religious observance and minhagim, we remain in front of Hashem, His chosen, with responsibilities not only to salve the ills of humanity, but to look to attending the pragmatic needs of our own.

I was born to an intermarried couple. Her conversion was not done halachically. His family sat shiva after his marriage to a Jewish woman ended to marry a woman 30 years younger and not Jewish. I never knew my father’s family. His grasp of yiddishkeit was contained in bits of tradition he tried passing on to me and my sister. Friday nights we donned yalmulkahs and listened to him intone brachas over Manischewitz and then watched him slice a challah from Cake Masters around the corner. Passover he had 10 lbs of pike and whitefish delivered and messed up the stove for hours, puttering and wrapping gefilte fish inside skins place in huge pots to float along side the fish heads and onion skins. Overwhelmed with his own personal demons, on Yom Kippur he sat morose and silent, as he did most other times and broke ‘fast’ with a tall glass of scotch. All I would add about my mother is her ongoing disdain of anything “Jewish” other than buying into the rumor that marrying a Jewish man meant stability and money.

Two girls born to a couple, a father who wanted to perpetuate his yiddishkeit despite his choice to marry a someone forbidden and a mother who married an older man who promised to provide for her, which he did…until the money ran out.

The smaller issues of infidelities, betrayals, lies, physical violence are secondary to this story. The day before my 18th birthday, my 83 year old father died. Years earlier the challah deckle, yalmulkahs and a prayer book had been discarded in the trash. I found them ‘accidently’, and out of sentiment more than understanding of what they were and how they should be used in a kosher home, retrieved them. We were already subsisting on my father’s Social Security. With two daughters in school, my widowed mother made the decision to cremate his remains, pack up our West Side apartment and move back to her Italian Christian mother in Jersey. My sister and I at ages 18 and 12 respectively were, in her words, free to do as we liked.

The road to exile had begun. In fact, it ran parallel to the road I walked in earnest toward yiddishkeit.

It began with a year in Israel living on a kibbutz. As a CCNY student in my sophomore year, the college had a program sending students to study abroad. I chose to ‘study’ in Israel, thinking that immersion into the land of yidden, would magically make me one too!

In my kibbutz interview I was asked about my parents and not understanding halacha and the concept of mi yehudi, was told when I returned to the States to speak to a rabbi about my parents. It was 1973, months after the war and everyone willing to work was sent to work. I was sent out into the fields picking olives and pomegranates. Inept at learning modern Hebrew, I worked in silence and felt isolated when away from roommates from England and the U.S.

Almost a year later I returned to the U.S. but no longer a resident of NYC , had lost eligibility for in-state tuition at CCNY. I went to my Italian grandmother’s house, stayed in an attic room with an admonition from my mother, that Grandma didn’t want ‘Jews’ living in her house. With experience from working in the kibbutz kitchen, I found work as a short order cook. I soon earned enough to pay for a small apartment.

Not a day passed when I did not ask myself if the years in front of me held nothing more than serving badly cooked treyf to goyim, to pay for a studio apartment. It did not occur to me to re-enter college or to marry. Life felt out of reach. At age 21, I did not know why I was alive. I could not explain the reason for my own existence. It wasn’t a philosophy question, it was genuine confusion and spiritual pain. I did not know and still cannot understand how people live without asking or answering what seems the most basic question of all.

Israel had not been the ‘Jewish experience’ I expected, so I began reading books written to explain Judaism in easily digestible terms, e.g. “How to be A Jew”. A large workbook explaining holidays, basic homemaking, Jewish history and ending with a listof resources for readers wanting further information.

A Lubavitcher chosid was listed with information about free shabbatons in Brooklyn, where you could experience ‘real’ Judaism among frum Jews. I called him on a Sunday and hashgocha protis, a shabbaton was scheduled for the following weekend.

I cannot remember how I traveled to Crown Heights from Jersey. I was placed with a large, clearly poor and profoundly generous frum family. Their acceptance of me, a stranger was immeasurable, as I was fed and given a place to sleep, simply because I came to be there. Motzei shabbos my hostess took me to a huge farbrengen set up for a room filled with lost souls like myself. We sat listening to fiery speeches from young baletschvahs now frum, who had come from backgrounds similar to ours. Hope, redemption and a future with purpose was the context of every speech. At the end of the evening a rabbi stood at the microphone asking who was ready to make a commitment to yiddishkeit, who was ready to change their lives to walk on a path of indisputable truth. Anyone ready should come forward, sign up for an all expenses paid 2 week trip to study Yiddishkeit in Minnesota. We were told, being truly frum was like being pregnant, you are either were or you’re weren’t. I think I was the 2 girl to run up to the podium and that was only because I was seated in the back.

On Sunday, not allowed to travel home alone, I was driven back to Jersey by a young balestschuvah, who tried explaining to my mother I would just be going to study for 2 weeks. I packed my clothes and got back into the car to return to Crown Heights. Two weeks turned into 8 weeks. As snow continued to fall, covering our footsteps completely, most studying happened from midnight until 2-3am inside a room filled with young women exhausted but electrified, vulnerable and pliable. We had only one teacher, who remains famous for his ability to give over chassidus, notably to young female baletschuvahs.

I explained to him what I was told in Israel and he explained to me, I was not a Jew. It was the first time anyone had told me that. As a child growing up, people took me for a Jew, their treatment for better or worse. Lubavitch preferred not to maguire anyone, because being Jewish was min sha mayim, not a religious menu selection. The rabbi explained conversion was life changing and many gerim who took on the cloak of Judaism, found it too heavy, eventually ditching it altogether. But, since my situation seemed unusual, he would write to the Rebbe z’tl to ask what to do.

The Rebbe z”tl answered they should toivel me ‘to correct what needed to be corrected.’ Usually when a girl came into Lubavitch the Rebbe z”tl was asked to give her a yiddishe name. In my case he noted the name I was given at birth had kept me close to yiddishkeit, that it should not be changed and that toiveling would allow the neshoma hovering, to finally settle inside me. I don’t repeat his words for vicarious reading pleasure, this is what I was told and so toivel we did, in a record cold Minnesota winter. I took to bed with a fever of 104 for 3 days. Girls were sent to sit by my bed to say Tehillim until the fever broke. The rabbi explained the fever as a reaction of my physical body being traumatized by the spiritual impact of the conversion.

The idyllic life of eating, learning and budding frumkeit, a sisterhood being learned through talking, praying, singing, sharing family histories, days spent evolving around shabbos preparations were coming to an end. Pressure began, to return not to our former lives but again to Crown Heights, to begin life among the community who had invested in us and hoped we would join them. What a decision…a choice between the emptiness of flipping burgers and no family or the richness of yiddishkeit and a community to grow into.

With my mother insisting I had been brainwashed, I returned once last time to pack the rest of my clothes, say some goodbyes and told her everything else was hers to keep, sell or give away. I did not see her until years later. I was Jewish now and one didn’t keep company with goyim. Those unfortunate to be born into such situations were advised to be respectful to parents who had raised us but to keep our distance. Rather than allow me to join the rest of my graduating class from Minnesota in the home named after the Rebbe’s mother, it was suggested to me that I rent a basement apartment with other girls. Without family support, I had to work. I found office work and lived with 4 girls in one large basement room with a kitchen. Most of the ‘basement girls’ scattered around Crown Heights also worked and it seemed the goal was to find a shidduch as soon as possible.

Expeditious marriage the focus for baletschuvah women, already acquainted with a liberal lifestyle. With non mandatory classes teaching the basics of Hebrew, chassidus, minhagim and taking shabbos with community members, each of us gradually assimilated into Crown Heights. We lived to find the right rafter to hang from at farbrengens, to collect rebbe dollars, have our tzetlach answered about possible shidduchim, to get married and raise our own genuine yiddishe children whose authenticity no one could ever question.

But inside Crown Heights the exile of baletschuvahs had already begun. Considered not quite ‘clean’ in terms of yechus and life experience, baletschuvahs were expected to marry their own. After two bochurim asked about a shidduch with me, the families involved were so frightened at the aspect of losing two extraordinary young men to a geress, each family sat me down and explained why I could not marry their nephew or cousin and how I had to refuse so that the bochur would think I wasn’t interested. My conversion was never brought up even though it was sanctioned by the Rebbe z’tl. For shidduchim I was classified as a woman from a divorced family and told never to tell anyone I had converted.

A shadchun sent me out with a man accused of molesting young boys, something I was only told about after the rabbi in Minnesota came to Crown Heights during Elul and when he heard who I was seeing, strongly suggested I not see him. I finally married the son of Polish immigrants who asked their son, ‘where is her family?’ They had already rejected one convert for their son. So they weren’t told the truth. I called my mother thrilled to tell her I was engaged and asked her to come to the wedding in Crown Heights, she refused. We married out of state, his parents made the wedding.

By the second month of marriage I had a fever and went to a doctor who laughed at both me and my husband. He chuckled and asked to be invited to the bris. I had no mother, sister or relatives to ask about being pregnant, giving birth, being a mother. Like frumkeit and much of life, I learned by doing, not the passing of oral traditions. I was so tired from the pregnancy and working, I would fall asleep at the shabbos tish. One afternoon my husband came home and I was lying down on the bed. He had invited bochurim back with him for shabbos lunch. After lunch, which consisted of me serving and nodding at the table, I lay down again. He came in and prepared himself for intimate relations. When I refused, my head was slammed into an exposed metal spring of the sofa bed and he told me as his wife, I could not refuse him, ever.

We had been married 3 months by then and I had been living and working in Crown Heights for almost 4 years. The analogy I’m reminded of, is the army who arrived at the sea with marauding troops not far behind. Their choices were ride into the sea and pray for redemption or wait to die by the sword. I had chosen to redeem my life in Crown Heights rather than live and die among goyim. The distinction between choices had rapidly disappeared.

The next 10 years is a story I will not write about here. It is long and fraught with such poverty and violence, it either needs to be told in another venue or never spoken about. It involves 5 children, now grown but whose lives were shattered very early by abuse, by neighbors refusing to give us shelter to get away, by a Rav who I asked for a heter for birth control, inquired if I was attending to my husband’s ‘needs. A community who preferred dumping boxes of food erev shaboos and yontif on the porch rather than demanding a man posing as a chossid be responsible and support and protect his family.

The Rebbe z’tl was the father I almost had. There was never a letter that went unanswered. Was I capable of hearing or understanding everything he told me, no. Not then, maybe only in hindsight. He warned me about the marriage, using the term “if” frumkeit was the defining factor, the marriage would succeed. While Lubavitchers themselves would take such language as signal not to marry, that I was even put with a man born to Jews and who spoke fluent Yiddish seemed enough to work out a two letter word like “If.” Frumkeit barely disguised the charade we called a marriage. After 9 years of marriage my last letter to the Rebbe z”tl asked for permission to return to college, to earn a degree so I could support my children. My children lived on a patchwork of tzedakah from neighbors old clothes, a friend’s grocery account, the Rebbe’s household fund, from grandparents paying rent for years, from everywhere except the sweat of a father’s honest work. Eventually even my 5 year old son’s yeshivah told us, either pay tuition or send him to public school. My in-laws drew the line at paying rent and buying their son cars.

If you cannot understand the shame of this, no one can explain it to you. Having the yechus of parents who were a baletschuvah and a convert, was already a level they would be burdened with. Searching later for a shidduch while known to be dependent on charity with such a yechus, was a recipe for being offered the kind of shidduchim their mother had been offered years earlier.

Before anyone points a finger reminding me of the meaning of being a yerushamyim in terms of the Abishter providing income and a beshert, let me remind anyone still reading there is not a person in the frum community who with self respect and love of their own children as well as a passion for frumkeit that would accept to live this way, blindly stumbling along on community tzedakah without preparation for their children’s future.
I had written for a bracha to become responsible for my family and did not receive one. The Rebbe z”tl answered that ‘fire comes before great wealth’ and told me to stay home.

With a shaved head beneath my shetl, dressed tznius, I naively walked into to the Admissions Office of a college in NYC thinking somehow I might talk myself into school. I do not know what the woman must have thought, but she clearly believed that by giving the ghost of a woman seated in front of her the opportunity to attend school, she was giving me life itself. She accepted my transcripts from studying in Crown Heights and admitted me for the fall semester. My husband had already taken the children to visit his parents at the beginning of the summer. I called and said I would be remaining in New York and attending college. I did not know how long it would be before I would see my children again. In front of me was the creation of a future foundation where their lives would not be defined by the subjective generosity of family and neighbors whose help if given, would likely come with humiliation, asking them, as their mother had already been asked, ‘when are you going to get on your feet? Stop having children, put an aspirin between your knees (that one I still don’t understand.) It was one thing for born Chassidim to have as many children as possible to bring Moshiach, but sense dictated, and women advised, that if your husband wasn’t supporting you, bringing Moshiach was better left to those equipped to make it happen.

It is twenty years and many life times since I left Crown Heights. In twenty years I have not assimilated back into the secular world I left to enter Crown Heights and chassidus.

I read the Torah based paper Hamodia like a child opening a gift. My face remains pressed against the glass of a wonderous world, alive with frumkeit. Yet thirty three years after my father’s death and journeying toward frumkeit, I remain isolated and an outsider, a 5 minute bus ride away from Boro Park and a lifetime away from the Jewish community at large. I can only view from outside children playing on stoops, worlds away and ensconced with the indisputable knowledge they are yidden, children who walk unhesitant while clutching strollers wheeled by frum mothers. Young girls chiding younger siblings in Yiddish on behavior so ingrained because they are, to the manor born and blessed to be Jews.

The frum world remains the place my soul longs for, the only way of life for any Jew, that makes sense. Even those who haven’t grasped that fact, yet. After years of living as an exile, from birth and then circumstance, being an invisible Jew remains an impossible divide to bridge solely with good intentions.

In this beginning of another year, Elul presents us once again with the opportunity to make tschuvah, clean our accounts with the Abishter as well as those in our lives. On behalf of those of us who stand outside with our faces against the glass of the frum world, we need you to meet us at the gate, welcome us inside, not as strangers or exiles, but as family returning home.



(c) R. Singer