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