Kinky Love: Breaking with Family Tradition and Embracing Curly Hair

Here's an oldie but goodie, an old hair piece revised for mass consumption. I'm hoping it will be picked up by a women's magazines. Don't mind your prayers over it! Thanks!

Kinky Love

My mother taught me to hate my hair.

She learned this from her mother, who learned it from her mother before her. And this inheritance has been passed down generation through generation in the Dominican Republic as every Dominicana matriarch with risos (curls) has forced herself under a secadora de pelo, a hard bonnet-shaped hair dryer, to ensure every curl’s annihilation.

My mother was disappointed with me. Not a hair on my head betrayed my father’s DNA, his inky black straight hair, his “good hair.” No, I was every bit her daughter. And so, she wrestled with what she called my “bad hair” throughout the years. Being in America didn’t mean forgoing family tradition.

As a baby, my mother tried to chemically straighten my hair until it fell out in clumps. She would forever scoff at its frailty. She sent me to a hairdresser every other week, sometimes every other month, with my unwashed puffy hair ready to be tamed. Early on, I was so short I needed phonebooks to prop me up under the heat of the hair dryer. I cried when the heat burned my ears but I was still not allowed to move. I stewed with the idea that the alien-looking contraption might suck off my head.

I learned to live with the pain. Three women would wash, pull and comb my hair into large rollos (curlers) before sending me under the dryer for two or three hours. Then they would unwind my hair and use a portable hair dryer to burn it pin-straight. I read.

My mother refused to cut my waist length-hair, even when the hair dressers complained at the agony of having to tame the lengthy strands of her three daughters. They overcharged and she paid. Short hair was not an option.

“Why not, Mami?” I begged. “Can’t I cut my hair? Please!”

“Las mujeres tienen el pelo largo.” Real women have long hair, she responded in a no-nonsense voice.

In defiance, I gave all my Barbie dolls mohawks and pageboy haircuts.

My mother surveyed the massacre with a shake of her head. She refused to relent. She was never more delighted than when my head became the perfect mimic a model’s mane in a Pantene commercial for silky, straight and according to the Shampoo bottle, “normal” hair.

My hair was so exhausting by age 12 that my mother still had to brush it for me. Even in its natural “kinky” state, she would brush it. (Retelling this crime horrifies my hair stylist to this day.) But I was so embarrassed when I found out that my friends all brushed their own hair that I broke up with my mother.

“I will brush my own hair from now on, thank you,” I said ripping the brush from her hands. Was it really embarrassment or all the slaps, pulls and curses my mother doled out as she brushed? My arms sunk, tired as I brushed and braided. I had to take little breaks. I wasn’t proud of the results and my friends weren’t either.

“Your hair is disgusting! Don’t you know how to comb it?” So read the crumpled up note they left on my desk. I looked up to find my girlfriends giggling. I asked my mother to take me back. Brush in hand, she conceded.

In high school, I woke up at 5am to start working on my hair. I was obsessed with feigning straight hair. I poured gel in it until it resembled a bike helmet. I moussed it but was terrified at the resulting volume. My mother imported products from the Dominican Republic made especially for “difficult” hair. And when I ran out of gel one day, I used Vaseline. It was sure smooth! But it took days, weeks, to wash out of my hair.

The final straw was when my crush, Pedro, “water-gunned” my hair after a recent trip to el salon. His idea of flirting was to aim his Super Soaker right at my head and spray. He laughed. I froze. I grabbed at the wet hair crinkling into frizzy tufts on my head and I knew. I had to kill him. With a murderous glare, I chased him around the school. Unfortunately, he was too fast for me and I never got my revenge.

But that day, on the subway, crying as my friends cooed sympathetically over my frizz, changed everything. I was sick of running for cover during rain showers. I was sick of the cramps in my arms after hours of blow drying. I was sick of the “wet dog” smell that wafted out of the shower when I was finally given permission (from my mother) to wash my hair, only to “get it done” again. I was so sick of my damn pseudo-straight hair.

So I rebelled.

The summer before my senior year of high school, no one recognized me. My “straight” hair was replaced with a flowing, luxurious, albeit, triangle-shaped mass of tight curls. Pedro was transfixed. Classmates would reach out to touch it during class. “Boing. Look, look. Again. Boing!” I rolled my eyes while they tugged at my curls just to watch them snap back.

My mother wouldn’t look at it. But I took photographs of it in various stages of drying, marveling at how different it looked as it dried. My grandmother had her own breakdown the night before my high school graduation.

“You cannot go to graduation with THAT hair!” she screamed while I was laying out my clothes for the morning. I tried to protest but before I knew it, there were curlers on my head. I was shoved under a hair dryer again. Did I mention she was a beauty school dropout?

My hair refused to straighten. It puffed up as soon as she unrolled the curlers out of my hair. And worst, there was a red burn scorched across my forehead from the dryer helmet. I cried myself to sleep.

In the morning before the graduation ceremony, a hot, humid June day in New York City, I washed my hair back to normal. The burn had thankfully faded. In all the ensuing photographs, I resembled a little urchin, cloaked by a mass of endless curly black locks that grew more and more foreboding as they dried.

Horrified at having had my bad hair day immortalized, I cut off all my hair midway through college. It helped that a British bloke in my first English lit class stared enraptured at my long hair throughout every class. He complimented it as if my hair were not an actual part of my body. Not one to take a compliment about my hair well, I decided he was creepy and I tried a succession of short hairdos and even buzzed all my hair off several times.

At 19, I dated a “traditional” Russian Jew who pleaded with me throughout our relationship. “Please grow your hair,” he asked. “Please. I love long hair.” But I was sure he wouldn’t love mine. “What do they call this?” he asked fiddling with a curl with an expression of distaste. “Is it…nappy?” We didn’t make it. But the short hairstyles did.

By 25, in graduate school, I finally started to grow it out again. I separated it into pigtails during my days as a high school English teacher. My Latina students begged me to straighten my hair, their eyes gleaming like my mother’s once had. I shrugged them off.

When Martin, a guy I was seeing, asked if he could touch my hair, I gave him a dirty look but I let him. “Ow! Ow!” I yelped. “What hell is wrong with you?!” I swatted him away. “Are you crazy? You can’t run your fingers through it, it’s not straight!!!” I winced at every broken hair strand on my head and at all the hair he’d managed to rip from my skull.

“I’m so sorry,” he offered shamefaced.

I thought that would teach him a lesson but Martin insisted on being allowed to touch my hair again. He would fondle it, scrunching it up (not running his fingers through) and praying for damp days when he could track its hourly growth. He refused to let me cut my hair. His obsession with it bordered on idol worship. Because he was now my boyfriend, I let him.

“Wow, what hair!” a friend commented when my hair reached epic proportions. Since I had given up straightening it, it refused to grow longer. It grew bigger. Taller. Bolder. But never longer. I stunned my hairstylist.

“I just want a trim,” I told him. “I want it to be like the sun. Like rays sticking out everywhere! Big!”

It took the Spanish hairstylist a minute to recover.

“Thank God! They all come in here begging me to straighten it!” he cried dramatically in English but he complied with my challenge. He snipped my hair lovingly for two hours until it was much bigger and lovelier than before.

When Martin saw my hair, his whole face transformed. His cheeks blushed a deep pink, a toothy grin broke over his lips and his blue eyes sparkled as he clawed at my hair, wrapping the curls around his fingers.

So, of course, I said “yes” when he proposed that day.

In fact, we had a big, fat Jewish Dominican wedding, which we invited my students to attend.
“But, Missssssssssss, aren’t you going to straighten your hair?” my favorite group of Latina students whined when we discussed wedding preparations. I giggled uncontrollably and shook my head. Their jaws dropped in disbelief. “He loves it this way,” I assured them. They exchanged the glance I had come to decipher meant: “Miss, you are so crazy.” I just smiled knowingly.

And so, under the chuppah, our wedding canopy, when the rabbi asked me to give my husband a blessing for the future, I knew just what to give him. The crowd quieted down as the microphone was thrust in my face. I hesitated embarrassed that I could think of nothing else.
“I wish you a bunch of beautiful, curly-haired babies!” I whispered.

The crowd, which had left their seats to swarm around the chuppah upon my husband’s request, roared with amusement. Sorry, Mom! In mere seconds, I had broken with centuries of tradition.
That’s how my husband taught me to love my hair.

Jewish Blogger Likens Non-Jews to Junk

I was posting on another blog when someone asked me: "So, if someone has been driving an American car (non-Jews) for a while and then switched to a Japanese one (Jews), why should he object to an American car (non-Jews) being called junk?"

I'm not editorializing with the parenthetical statements, the preceding sentences were about why someone would decide to be Jewish. I've written about this before. There is this awful, prevasive mindset in the Jewish world that somehow by converting, I decided I was better than non-Jews or Jews were better than non-Jews and that's why I decided to be Jewish. I have a hard time wrapping my head around why someone Jewish would even think like this considering the laws of Noah as they apply to non-Jews. It seems to me that this "Jews are better" mindset is the opposing mindset against the Jews who hate Judaism so much they can't imagine why anyone would convert.

But let me set the record straight. I converted to Judaism because it was the best way to live MY life. I don't think it's the best way for everyone. If you're Jewish, don't use me as a way to confirm that your way of life is the best way. If you're not Jewish, don't take my choices as a personal attack on yours. I don't think non-Jews are "junk" and anyone who would take a whole group of people and label them junk obviously didn't learn a great deal from the Holocaust.

Jewish Converts Caught in the Middle of Conversion Crisis

"Conversion Crisis in Israel Boils with New Appointee", a piece in The Forward, focuses on the conversion crisis in Israel but it highlights how the crisis has extended even further and how Modern Orthodox conversions have been affected.

Things You'll Hear @ the Kosher Mart on Christmas Eve

You know you're Jewish when you get caught completely unawares by endless Christmas Eve traffic. We sat in it for two hours mystified as we drove from Times Square back to Riverdale after lunching with some friends.

We came home to a sad, empty little fridge but we thought we could sit the rain out for a bit before heading out for groceries. Alas, we were wrong. All the supermarkets were closed by 6pm for Christmas Eve, all, of course, but the Riverdale Kosher Mart.

We were waiting at the checkout when an older African-American gent burst through the door gabbing on his cell phone. He looked harried. Thick, bushy white hair shot out of the sides of his head. He was chatting away on his cell phone.

"Do you have eggnog?" he asked the blond behind the checkout counter. His lips trembled from stress.

She nodded and nonchalantly pointed to an aisle.

What a world! Now, Christians have to depend on the Jews to get eggnog for Christmas Eve dinner? I thought.

"Can you tell me how much the eggnog is?" The man asked the clerk.

"Sure, just bring one over and I'll run it through," she said with a bored expression.

"Thanks!" he said with a big smile. "Everyone's always so nice around Christmas."

My sister, my husband and I bit our lips to keep from laughing as the man scurried past us down the aisle.

The man came back to the checkout with two kinds of eggnog in tow and he balanced the cell phone precariously on his shoulder. He waited patiently on line...squished between the group of Jews who couldn't find any other place to shop that night.

Big Tent Judaism

Oh, wow, I feel...wow, overwhelmed. I just logged onto Gershom Gorenberg's blog and discovered a post about little old me!!! Good timing, too, since I had just been struck by a bout of the blues.

Check out: "Big Tent Judaism" and why Gorenberg thinks Jews should be reading my blog like a text book.

Another Way for Jewish Conversion in Israel

With "No More Illusions", Jerusalem Post Op-Ed contributor, Reuven Hammer proposes a way to circumvent the Chief Rabbinate in Israel and still keep Jewish conversions kosher. But the comments on his piece highlight that the issues around conversion may never be so simple. I'm glad that some of the people commenting don't have his address or mine.

Racilious Talks "Nappy" Hair

I've written about my hair before but never in such depth as Latoya Peterson's "Nappily Ever After? Not quite" on the Racialicious blog.

It's a great post. All you straight-haired folks might learn something. I can't tell you the amount of times that Jews make comments about my hair. Luckily, very, very few have been racist. Most of them are curiosity based.

Top 10 Things you should know about this "nappy-headed" (I can call myself that but you can't!) girl's head:

1. Though I cut my hair very irregularly, it dries differently all the time so people regularly ask, "Did you get a haircut?" The answer is always "No."

2. I don't have to wash my hair more than once a week because it is very dry and NEVER, EVER gets oily. No, I know, you can't imagine that since your hair gets oily every day but really, it's true. NEVER.

3. I only comb my hair with a wide tooth comb when it's wet. Curly hair should NEVER be brushed. I "style" it every day by spritzing leave-in conditioner.

4. My hair gets very, very tall towards the end of the week before the next wash. At that point, it no longer fits under a hat, forget a sheitel. Some people think I get more haredi (ultra-Orthodox) towards Thursday because I cover my whole head in a tichel (head scarf).

5. My hair grows up but not down.

6. Yes, I have tried straightening my hair but I am no longer interested in doing so no thanks for the suggestion, no one asked you. Not even my grandmother feeling up my hair with a total look of disgust and asking me why I don't "fix" it is going to change my views on this.

7. Yes, if you ask nicely I MIGHT let you touch my hair.

8. No, there is no rule book (and if there is one, it's racist or straightist) that says a curly-haired girl must straighten her hair to be appropriate for fancy events. For my wedding, I went with wash and dry and plopped a tiara over my curls.

9. My husband likes my hair just the way it is. You can stop crossing your eyes now, he really means it.

10. You CANNOT run your fingers through tight curls (read #3), that road only leads to pain and hair breakage.

A Shout Out to BTs (and Converts) Everywhere

Hilly Gross at the 10th Anniversary of the LSS Beginners Service @ Yahoo! Video

He has a very interesting perspective to share on the people that attend Beginners services at Lincoln Square synagogue. I think the same idea applies to all baalei teshuva and converts everywhere. Enjoy the jokes, they're killer!

Happy Hanukkah to all from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert

I feel like Hanukkah finally arrived and I stopped talking about it altogether. I'm glad to hear that some of you are enjoying your books from the Happy Hanukkah book giveaway. It's already the second day of Hanukkah and I find myself again without latkes. I might have to dip fried plantains into applesauce.

Secular Conversion--an oxymoron

"Right of Reply: Secular conversion - an oxymoron" is my latest Op-Ed in The Jerusalem Post. Talk back here or talk back there, I'd love to hear your opinions.

Oops, You're Not Jewish!

"Oops, You're Not Jewish" sounds like a great title for a book but really it's an article in Hadassah Magazine by writer/blogger Gershom Gorenberg which focuses on the state of Jewish conversion.

Here is a quick soundbite from the piece:

"Susan Weiss—the founder and director of the CWJ and herself an ob­ser­vant Jew—has petitioned the Is­raeli Supreme Court to overturn the rabbinic court’s decision. But she also states, “We should have civil marriage. It’s going to have to happen.”

One reason that issue is so controversial, according to Weiss, is that it raises questions about what it means for Israel to be a Jewish state and about the connection of religious and ethnic Jewish identity. For many religious Jews, the rabbinate’s monopoly on mar­riage expresses the idea that Is­rael is a religious polity. In theory, it creates a single, shared standard for who is Jewish and prevents intermarriage in Israel.

But today, it is clear that Israel has inherited the same ambiguities of Jew­ish identity that exist in the diaspora. Indeed, that is a consequence of the Law of Return. Even if Israel chooses to tighten the rules for immigration, the fact will re­main: A large number of Israelis speak Hebrew, think of themselves as ethnic Jews, yet are not Jewish halakhically. Not many choose to convert—and converting does not bring a full resolution of identity."

I think that in general the piece voices many concerns I plan to bring up in an upcoming Jerusalem Post op-ed (which you've probably already read as a recent blog post on secular conversion).

The Worst Guest in the World

Hello, it’s me, the self-described worst guest in the world! And I’ve just had a long time friendship end over it. But this isn’t just the story of that loss or how I’ve come to expect the worst.

As a recent convert, I've blogged before about how I've been inappropriate countless times at the Shabbos table because of social norms and cultural codes that I couldn't seem to wrap my pretty little head around. Homosexuality was too controversial for the table but discussion about the state of my ovaries was not. Talking about my fractured family was too intense but exchanging pleasantries about shopping sprees was not. I made myself a nice little chart of do’s and don’ts for the Shabbos table after one particularly memorable meal.

But even with my helpful chart, I realized long ago that, for me, the Shabbos table is never a peaceful place. It’s a rollercoaster ride. I never know when to expect the next twist or turn. I never know when I’m going to be expected to swallow the latest racist remark or terrifying Ashkenazi dish. I’m never sure if I'm using the right fork. After all, it was only yesterday that I mistakenly stole my friend's soup spoon at a wedding and then had to fight the urge to turn all shades of purple when she pointed this out.

It seems the “conversion process” is never-ending. And the ensuing period of cultural integration has left me with an overwhelming sense of foreboding. In the pit of my stomach is always that feeling that I'm doing things wrong or saying the wrong thing. My friends watch from the sidelines and coo over my mistakes. Some think watching me stumble over the bumps is incredibly amusing in a voyeuristic way. I'm frequently dubbed “funny” even when I'm not trying to be. I’m told I’m brave for frequently saying what no one else says when really, I don't realize WHY no one else was saying it.

I've been Jewish two and a half years and still, I find myself asking my friends for advice in navigating the rough waters of cultural faux pas. At a recent wedding, I probed my friends with questions like: Do you have to send a thank you card to everyone after a Shabbos meal? Do people do Chanukah cards? And if I make such and such statement, is it racist? I got straight answers for only the first questions. The latter just made people laugh. And I wondered later if they were laughing with me or at me.

There are memories that still make me cringe. There is the time, early in the conversion process, where I tried to shake a rabbi’s hand. He demurred kindly. There is the time that in a burst of exuberance after hearing a friend’s good news, I bought her a Target gift certificate for use on baby stuff. Another friend gently pointed out that the cultural norm is to wait until after the baby is born to buy gifts. There is even the time that I tried to get my husband to put on a big turkey dinner ala Thanksgiving for the first day of Chanukah like my family used to do for Christmas. He just stared at me blankly.

I told one guest at a wedding that I realized too late that I'm never going to look like any of the other guests no matter what I wear. I’ve been to more than one wedding where someone has commented on how “tan” I was in the middle of winter. I’ve worn a head scarf to weddings and gotten lost in the sea of sheitels and fancy hats. I’ve since learned that doing so was like announcing my status as a religious hippy, not the truth: that neither a sheitel nor a fancy hat would fit over my afro that day. And after receiving one wedding invitation, I remember crying at the bottom of my closet feeling intensely shallow for having nothing to wear, nothing in the right shade of appropriate black.

It took several trips to Macy's later and several boring black dresses before I realized I was never going to blend in. The more I tried to fit in, the more I didn’t. It took several Hispanic waiters at different weddings approaching me curiously to ask if I was also Hispanic for me to realize that I was never going to be cast in the part of nice, Ashkenazi Jewish white girl. I was going to be different no matter what. Wearing sneakers to shul didn’t make me different; it just meant that my only other option was orthopedic shoes.

So now with many a faux pas under my belt where I felt like I fell splat on my face and unveiled my underwear to a vicious crowd, I am practicing just trying to be myself. But I still find myself frequently apologizing for things. I apologize for not knowing what to do and when. I apologize for not knowing what to say and how. I apologize for frequently “murdering” my husband, my friends and myself through an audacious level of embarrassing circumstance. After every excruciating social event, I go home and play them back in my head and try to make sense of it. But even with all that effort, I still feel like a wolf trying to pretend to be sheep.

This weekend I opened up my email to find that a friend was serving me an ultimatum. According to her, I had committed the ultimate crime in bad manners and no amount of apologizing was going to do the situation any amount of justice. I curled up into a little ball and cried for hours. My husband held me and tried to help me resolve how to fix the situation. But in the midst of all the pain, I realized it was futile. I realized that many friendships and “acquaintance-ships” can end over simple bad manners and mine just had. I came to terms with the fact that I might lose many friends this way and that being a convert will often be a path that I will travel quite alone.

MADOFF

As if the economic crisis weren't enough? Washington Post writer Jim Hoagland tells it like it is about Bernie Madoff in "The Madoff Generation".

I'm getting all these end of the year requests from Jewish charities and I'm wishing that I could give at all. I'm sure that too many of us are finding ourselves in that position that year. Oy.

Sorry I missed it

Check out one Spanish blogger's interesting take on Bush ducking "zapatos" (Spanish for shoes).

Then in case you missed the real thing, check out the clip on the BBC website. I was never a big fan of George but I thought he handled ducking shoes really well at the press conference.

Talk about a culture clash.

Miracles, miracles, everywhere...

According to a post on Vivir Latino, a blog I just discovered, "a study released by the America Association of Retired People (AARP), at least 82% of Latinos 45 and older do." The post says, "[The study] sort of plays to the stereotype of Latino's faith as being more "folky" and less real and respectable."

I didn't read the study but I doubt they went into any kind of depth about what people meant by miracles. I think it's a miracle when I don't feel any pain for a couple of minutes--it's a massive miracle when that lasts for a couple hours. I wrote in a previous post that as a child I believed my sisters were miracles (still do) and that my Barbie dolls were miracles (teehee).

Are these kinds of miracles considered "folky"? There's a word I never thought would describe me. And on a different note, I find it fascinating that I spent most of my life having this secret relationship with G-d that I never talked about and now I'm writing about it all the time. Have I gone all fundamentalist? Should I be worried?

Putting my husband first

In case you missed it, to recap, I'm addicted to writing. Last night I suffered from a bout of insomnia that went well into the wee hours of the morning so, of course, I wrote as much as I could. I made little notes to myself about my book, etc. I did a couple of journal entries and I replied to way too many emails.

I became concerned when my husband assumed I'd miss our anniversary before I'd miss the last of my fantastic Freelancing for Newspapers and Magazines class with Marci Abohler. He swears that he was just concerned that I'd already paid for the class. I thought perhaps it was about how I keep putting writing first in a way that consumes my sleepless hours and sometimes even my dreams.

The real test was that one of my favorite editors would be visiting my last writing class as a guest panelist. I'm on a mission to get a piece into the magazine that she works for. I've spent hundreds of dollars just to take classes with her because I think she's that good. So could I just totally bail on my class? Even if it meant that I would be bailing on my husband?

In the end, I ended up attending the class for an hour and then rushing like a madwoman to my dinner date with the husband. In the restaurant, I was jittery. Had I made the right choice? I felt so guilty about this thought that I had a mini meal and I let my husband have steak. He smiled. I think I did the right thing.

Is Writing My Addiction?

The other day it occurred to me that writing might be an addiction. Like any good addiction, I get a heady high from doing it. When I’m really high from it, I have trouble sleeping and I even wake up from dreams where I’ve been writing or thinking about writing. When I’m in that zone, I can’t be too far from my computer or too far from my journal because I’m afraid I’ll miss something, some great line will come to me and it will be lost.

But the other day, after many hours in front of the computer, I got up and I couldn’t walk. I tried to take a step forward and I actually fell down. It was a couple of moments before I could get all joints working enough to move. And then the same weekend, I missed a lecture on balancing work and life because I was well, you know, working.

Living with fibromyalgia, my health should come first. But lately, writing has come first—before my relationships with friends, before my relationship with my husband, before my relationship with my knees. Every rejection letter has become a harbinger to ensuing workaholism, a call to work even harder to get that next acceptance letter. When my husband realized I had a writing class scheduled the night of our anniversary, he told me with a sigh, “It’s okay, we can celebrate our anniversary next week.” It took me a couple of days and a couple of pains to realize this was another example of how writing had taken over my life.

I’ve always struggled with balance. When I read through earlier blog posts, I note that fibromyalgia was a long time coming. My second year teaching I was suffering from pains and ignoring them because I had to get the work done, I had to be super teacher, I could never settle with just being sufficient. And I guess we’re back at it again. Only a workaholic like me, for instance, would stop working part-time to work on her health and then find herself mired by writing assignments full-time. As if it wasn’t enough to sign a contract to write my first book, I had to try to start a freelance writing career as well.

So while I’ve finally accepted that I am working, I do have a “real job” as a writer, I don’t like what it’s doing to the rest of my life. Meanwhile, I’m on a self-imposed mini-vacation watching "Heroes", reading “New Moon” and rolling my eyes over "Gossip Girl" munching on Corn Pops I’m no longer supposed to eat anymore. Hopefully by taking a step back and surveying the damage, I’ll be able to figure out how to attain balance. But I don’t know, look at me, I can’t even help myself right now, I have to write about it.

Check out NJOP's Jewish Treats blog, today's post is about "Working for a Living." Are you working too hard or hardly working?

Extremely Sensitive: Treating My Fibromyalgia

No more milkshakes for me!

A teacher I had for a nutrition class struggled with different health problems. She likened herself to the canary sent down to the mines because she was especially sensitive to everything. Because fibromyalgia makes absolutely no sense and some health professionals posit that it could the body's response, some sort of defense system, against all sorts of toxins, I felt at home thinking of myself as the canary.





But I roll my eyes every time one of my friends forwards me another email about something they've read about fibromyalgia. I don't know why I actually even open the emails, what can I expect? Usually it's another link to "crazy" (read: not covered by insurance) methods people have gotten into to curb the pain. More often than not, it's another email about some drug they saw advertised on TV that doesn't work on me . Should I be offended? Don't they think that I've already tried everything?





Still when a friend who suffers from fibromyalgia said I should try getting tested for food allergies, really food senstitives, I said I'd give it a shot. She's made significant gains fighting her fibromyalgia by curbing her intake of some of the foods in her diet. Of course, this was just another thing not covered by my insurance so I waited until a little angel gifted it to me as an early Chanukah present.





So I just got the results back but I'm still skeptical. Cutting out rice (OMG!), peppers, tomatoes, wheat, milk and most of the things I eat every day is going to help my fibromyalgia? Right now, it just seems to be hurting my groceries budget! Does anyone know if alfalfa sprouts are cheaper than Tylenol?

An early Happy Hanukkah Shout Out!

A reminder that not all of us celebrate Christmas?

Rebbetzin Ruminations

(Check out the photo of me at my Communion ceremony. Who knew I'd be a Rebbetzin then?)


Early on in the conversion process, a friend and I joked that we should marry rabbis. She was a baal teshuva, I was a convert and we sure that if we had rabbis for husband, we would have 24/7 access to everything we ever wanted to know about Judaism. It would be a dream come true!

But when my husband actually decided to become a rabbi, I wasn't so sure about things. I didn't realize until long after his decision what the role of a rabbi really looked like and what that meant for the rabbi's wife. The rabbi's wife doesn't choose to be a public figure but she is treated as such: dissected, discussed and ridiculed by those around her. Acknowledging this had led me to be much more compassionate towards public figures in general, even those who choose the role.

That's not exactly where I expected to wind up four years after deciding to convert. I didn't plan on living Judaism in the spotlight. And I would argue that the spotlight I put on myself as a writer is quite different than the one that will shine on me as Rebbetzin. Often, I find myself stopping before I write something because I wonder if it will come back to haunt me later. There's this internal censor building because of my husband's career choice that wasn't there before.

Outside of all that, it's pretty crazy to me to imagine a world where people come to me with their issues, Jewish or otherwise. I'm having enough trouble with my issues alone. I'm not sure that I'll ever be ready to stand up as an example of Jews everywhere, as a beacon of hope. I'm still trying to get used to living my life and accepting myself as who I am. I don't want to add the burden of being worried about being accepted or dissected by others.

An article in The Jewish Action explores these issues further, check out "A Delicate Balance: The Role of the Rebbetzin".

A Lesson on Jewish Geography

Ever play "Jewish Geography" as a convert? It's pretty painful. Though, honestly, pretty much everyone assumes I'm a convert or knows I'm a convert so I rarely get dragged into the game. But one night I attended a dinner where one woman insisted that I looked familiar. I told her I doubted it since she didn't look familiar to me and I never forget a face.

The woman insisted she had either met me somewhere or that she knew my family. She tried to narrow things down to "Maybe I know them from Israel" and I laughed. But for some reason, this was way more uncomfortable than that the feeling of "outsider looking in" that I get when I watch others play "Jewish Geography" (Where's your family from? Oh, I know your cousin? Do you know such and such?).

This woman would not let up, she became more aggressive the more I tried to deflect her questions. Finally, I had to say, "I AM A CONVERT" and "MY PARENTS ARE FROM NOWHERE NEAR ISRAEL." Really, I spoke in capital letters, I swear. But she was STILL not to be derailed and she replied, "I swear I know you from somewhere." Oy vey.

For more on the troubles of Jewish Geography, read "Reflections on Being a Loser at Jewish Geography" by Devora Lifschutz.

Robin Williams Makes Fun of Everyone

People Robin Williams makes fun of: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jack Nicolson, Latinos, Jews, Spice Girls, Sarah Palin, John McCain, Barack Obama, George Bush, Keith Richards and many more!

A Very Rough Draft of an Interview with Ari Hart of Uri L'Tzedek

Teens with a group of professors and students from Yeshiva University and students from Alianza Dominicana to the “Sosúa: A Refuge for Jews in the Dominican Republic" exhibit at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in NYC's Battery Park City. They boarded a bus from Washington Heights for the field trip.

Redefining Community:
Ari Hart Builds a Better Neighborhood

Ari Hart is standing in the back of the room.

The future rabbi cuts an imposing figure in a navy suit, green tie and blue and white checkered shirt. His tanned, unlined face is serious as he watches Rabbi Ari Weiss and other volunteer activists of Uri L’Tzedek role-play through skits in front of the 25 or so young Jews who have turned out that afternoon to learn more about Tav HaYosher, which means ethical seal, a local, grassroots initiative to bring workers, restaurant owners and community members together to create just workplaces in kosher restaurants.

The NY Times recently featured Shmuly Yanklowitz, co-founder and Director of Uri L’Tzedek, as he spoke about the new initiative, a move away from the more controversial boycott Uri L’Tzedek instituted against Agriprocessors earlier this year. But while Weiss and Yanklowitz represent the face of Uri L’Tzedek, co-director Ari Hart seems more comfortable acting as one of the brains behind the operation.

The first thing that strikes me about Ari is that he’s really busy. Co-directing Uri L’Tzedek is a full-time gig. And he’s juggling it alongside his second year as a full-time rabbinical student at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, where he was awarded the 2008 Herbert Lieberman Award for Community Service. When we try to set a date for our interview, Ari offers to squeeze me in between a call to Israel, an Uri L’Tzedek meeting and the little sleep he’s getting at night. It sounds like trying to change the world is a thankless job with long hours that wait for no man, but Ari is more than willing to spare half hour, after which he’s scheduled to run off to work on another event.

“What’s keeping you so busy?” I ask him.

Ari laughs. He looks younger. He looks much closer to his age, 26, sitting cross-legged in a chair and swaying slightly with frenetic energy.

“It’s a lot of things. We’re launching a non-profit, doing visioning, fundraising, making copies, teaching, organizing, buying food for events, programming and leadership, following up with people, doing a lot of one-on-ones with people, putting stuff together,” Ari begins.

I open my mouth to interject but he’s not finished.

He adds with a bright smile, “And then…yeshiva, of course. It’s basically two full-time jobs.”
But Ari’s not complaining. When the Chicago-native moved to Washington Heights, a degree in Music Theory and Composition under his belt from Grinnell College, he knew that he wanted to work to effect change in his new neighborhood. He’d been doing much of the same back in Chicago.

At age 23, Ari was working as a CASA Advocate for abused and neglected children in Cook County. At age 24, he won a Nadiv Social Justice Fellowship through the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs. The next year he launched Or Tzedek, the Teen Institute for Social Justice in Chicago. He resigned as director when he decided to come to New York to pursue a rabbinical degree at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah.

Upon his arrival in Washington Heights, Ari would pursue a number of social justice projects before taking things to the next level. He started by becoming a member of the local Community Board.

“When I came to Washington Heights…one thing I’m particularly interested in is relationships between the Orthodox community and broader communities and mobilizing the Orthodox community to act beyond narrowly defined self-interest and to be partners in the improvement of society for everyone, including the Orthodox community, not only for people outside, for everybody together,” Ari says.

“How does that work exactly?” I ask him.

“A big part of that is civic engagement and civic action and addressing common problems and finding common solutions and building relationships and partnerships. I began doing that work on my own in Washington Heights, when I first moved to there,” Ari says. “I just started meeting different religious leaders and community activists and trying to find out what was going on in the neighborhood, what some of the issues were, what people were working on and also trying to build a group of people in the community who are also interested in working on that as well. I got hooked up with Uri L’Tzedek and they were like that’s great, we should do something together.”

Ari would come onto my radar, then, when he began to cooperate with Uri L’Tzedek to develop projects in Washington Heights. He asked my husband, a fellow YCT student, and me to speak just before Passover on racism in the Jewish community in Washington Heights. He thought that as an interracial couple with ties to the neighborhood (I’m a native), we would be able to offer an interesting perspective. But it was Ari’s perspective that interested me. I not-so-secretly wondered why a white boy from Chicago was so worried about the divide between the Dominican and Jewish communities in Washington Heights.

I find the answer on the Uri L’Tzedek website in a telling transcript of the speech Ari gave after I spoke.

“[On Passover,] we are instructed to view ourselves in a position of opportunity and freedom, eager to share our meals with others, eager to share our liberation with those still oppressed. At the same time, we are to view ourselves as if we ourselves were slaves, as if we ourselves were oppressed. This Pesach, as we enjoy our freedom and many blessings, we must not forget our responsibility, and our unique ability to fight for those who are still being enslaved, whether it be by human trafficking, poverty, treatable disease, prejudice, religious persecution or any other form of oppression.”

Ari continued by quoting Martin Luther King, “All too often the religious community has been a taillight instead of a headlight.” I remember him pausing then to let this message hit home before he closed with his final words. “The Jewish people have been a headlight for thousands of years. May Hashem bless us this Pesach that we merit to continue to spread the light of righteousness and justice across the world.”

I ask Ari if he can elaborate on this speech that he gave many months ago. I coax him with a question that’s been bugging me for a while, “Why is a Jewish organization so interested in non-Jews?”

“It’s very clear in the Torah that we have to look out for the ger [the stranger], because we were strangers in a strange land and therefore, when there is a stranger in our midst, we have a responsibility to support and protect those who are weak and vulnerable,” Ari says.

But how does that work in practice in the community of Washington Heights? Last year, Uri L’Tzedek collaborated with several Washington Heights organizations on a clothing drive.

“The twist to the clothing drive was that it wasn’t just the Jewish community donating clothes to the Dominican community or to some other community, it was a lot of different groups coming together as a community. We had churches collecting clothes and Jewish people collecting clothes. And it wasn’t just the Dominican community [that benefited], there’s also the broader community, other people in the community, there’s also white people—”Ari begins.

“There are white people in Washington Heights?” I tease him. Though, the Washington Heights community, which spans from about 158th St to Dyckman Street, is predominately Dominican and Jewish in most parts, hot housing prices in Upper Manhattan have brought in an infusion of yuppies from lower Manhattan.

“Yes, there are white folk,” Ari kids before he continues. “We wanted to do a project together. We wanted to bring people together to do something that was positive. It was new and exciting and fun. The process was the purpose. The process of bringing people together and learning about the different organizations in the community, learning about the different services people provide, and having people interact and plan and work.”

Spearheading the process as an Uri L’Tzedek representative, Ari united Alianza Dominicana with other local organizations, including a church and a youth program. Uri L’Tzedek volunteered their people to help women at Alianza Dominicana coordinate a program for disadvantaged women. Then, Fort Washington Collegiate Church was brought in to donate clothing for the Alianza Dominicana program. Finally, Fresh Youth Initiatives (FYI), an organization based in Washington Heights that organizes youth to perform service projects around the community, joined by offering, among other things, manpower.

“So it was a lot of finding all these groups and people and becoming the glue linking people together and creating this thing out of all these programs that already existed,” Ari says. “Honestly the clothing drive itself didn’t really matter.”

Michal Brickman, an Uri L’Tzedek volunteer who worked with Ari on the clothing drive and other activism projects aimed to impact not only the Jewish community but the Washington Heights community as a whole, thinks Ari is being humble about the clothing drive.

“The initial goal of the drive was to help alleviate a shortage of clothing at a New York psychiatric facility, but the project quickly grew and the drive ultimately succeeded in collecting enough clothing not only for donation to the psychiatric facility but also to three local community organizations in Washington Heights and to a woman in the neighborhood who lost her belongings to a fire in her apartment,” Michal says.

But Ari does not gloss over the impact that working with FYI teens has had on him. In March, Uri L’Tzedek joined teens from FYI on a project dubbed ‘The Traveling Clothing Bank.’ FYI teens collected clothing for the project, a clothing drive and then handed them out in the neighborhood at a weekly event. A lot of the clothes end up traveling from Washington Heights to the Dominican Republic. Ari organized Uri L’Tzedek volunteers to help out at this FYI event but first, they coordinated a program where the mostly Jewish members of Uri L’Tzedek hung out with the mostly Dominican teens from FYI.

"It was a really profound thing. I live in this community. I’m here every day but I have no interaction with these people. And they’re really cool, l they want to make the community better and I want to make the community better,” Ari says. “People found it very meaningful.”

Carlos Cepeda, a group leader at FYI, agrees.

“At first, I didn’t know what to expect. We come from two different cultures. But after talking to Ari on the phone, he came across as a really nice guy who’s really concerned about young people and community. I realized that we had a lot in common. We genuinely care about helping people. Regardless of what race they might be, we want to help,” Carlos says.

Carlos believes that working with Ari and the Uri L’Tzedek team was an illuminating experience for “his kids.”

“Unfortunately there are certain stereotypes that exist in our community. In the Latino community, there’s a stereotype that Jews keep to themselves, are not very social and very cheap. I’m really glad my kids got to meet Ari,” Carlos says. “Ari came across as only Ari can. He completely abolished all those thoughts. A lot of the kids said, you know, this is the first Jewish person I got to meet and chill with and hang out with, and he’s a great guy. He broke a lot of those stereotypes that some of our kids have.”

After working together on the Traveling Clothing Bank project, Uri L’Tzedek and FYI partnered together on another initiative. Teens from FYI joined Jewish teens from an organization in Queens called The Lounge in some community building activities.

“At the core, good people are good people and we all share more in common than we have differences. We need to know more about each other to break down these stereotypes. We had a kind of cultural exchange,” Carlos says. “They brought typical Jewish cuisine and our kids ate from it. We brought our music. We played our music and spent a good half-hour showing each other how to dance. Even though we’re different and we don’t really know each other, there was a time where we reach out to each other and get to know each other as human beings.”

Uri L’Tzedek members and FYI went still one step further, coming together to visit the Jewish Museum for an exhibit on Sosua. Sosua is the tiny community in the Dominican Republic that took in Jews during the Holocaust. Carlos believes Ari took a major step towards healing the rift between the Dominican and Jewish communities of Washington Heights by reaching out to local nonprofit organizations in the area.

“Ari and some of his colleagues were looking for a way to cross [that divide] because in Washington Heights there’s a big population of Jewish people and there’s a big population of Dominican people but they rarely and seldom interact and I think he saw that as something that needs to be addressed,” Carlos says. “Regardless if you’re Dominican, Puerto Rican, Jewish, Russian or Irish, there’s one thing we all have in common and that’s that we live in this community and this community is ours.”

Troy Schremmer, Director of Education at Fort Washington Collegiate Church, is a part of the community. He also paints a very positive picture of working with Ari and Uri L’Tzedek.

“Ari came and found us. He came in one day and we sat down to figure out ways that we can interface. It’s been quite a casual partnership but it’s been a little one sided,” Troy says. “They’ve us more than we’ve helped them. We’ve helped them in giving them opportunities to help the community.”

Troy notes that he has a hard time keeping track of all the organizations Ari has put him in touch with around the neighborhood, everyone from Alianza Dominicana and FYI to the YMHA of Washington Heights/Inwood. Boxes of used clothing were just sitting at the church, which struggles with ways to distribute them, when Ari and his team swooped in to help sort clothing and redistribute it. The day of the drop-offs, Troy drove Ari around and watched as Ari smooth all the bumps along the way.

“Ari made all the contacts. I made the drop offs when we did it. I remember the day of, things don’t always go as they’re planned, and Ari was calling ahead as I headed towards different groups. I was in the van and I had to say, ‘Ari where are we going?’ And he’d say, ‘these guys can take some clothes’ and we’d head there. It was fun,” Troy says with a laugh.

Working with Ari has led the church to another partnership with the Hebrew Tarbernacle, a Reform Jewish congregation in Washington Heights. Troy feels he’s learned much more about the Jewish community from these experiences. But he’s learned even more about Ari.

“Ari has been trying to raise awareness that people of faith can work together and that we do have common ground, especially when it comes to taking care of our neighbor. That’s an imperative for People of the Book. I’ve been very encouraged by his attitude about it and just the different ways I’ve seen him show that by example and encourage others to do it,” Troy says.

Troy strongly believes in what Ari and Uri L’Tzedek are doing for the community.

“He believes in the principles laid out in Torah and how we should be living according to those and how that has direct impact on the Jewish community and folks taking care of one another,” Troy says, “But also how that also has ramifications outside of what we perceive as our family or our close-knit community. I see him extending that. I don’t get the impression that he thinks it’s a popular idea or an idea that’s real cool. It really comes from his faith and his understanding of how he reads god’s word and god’s law. I see him as an authentic person who is trying to follow God’s direction in very practical ways in this community he is living in.”

It’s these principles that got Ruth Balinsky involved with Uri L’Tzedek. Ruth met Ari when he hired her at her first social justice job as an Or Tzedek staff member in Chicago. Most recently, Ruth has worked with Ari on several projects, including the clothing drive and Tenants Rights Awareness events.

“He has continued to encourage me ever since [Or Tzedek] to pursue more projects in that field. Having worked in a variety of Jewish settings, I am well aware of the importance of Uri L'Tzedek. Not only is 'Uri' an extraordinarily competent and impressive organization, its role as an Orthodox voice in the movement is critical to my participation. While there are many Jewish social justice organizations, few, if any, seriously confront religious issues, and genuinely incorporate them into their work. 'Uri' is a perfect blend of religiosity and social justice values, and has catered to the Orthodox community in ways that no other Jewish organzation can,” Ruth says.

Ruth is particularly passionate about the work Uri L’Tzedek does outside the Jewish community.

“After years of persecution and suffering, Jews finally enjoy a status of privilege in the United States. It would be criminal to enjoy my family's privilege and success (none of which I personally earned) without repaying my debt to American society, particularly through working with communities that came here under similar circumstances and have unfortunately not been able to succeed as strongly as the Jewish community,” Ruth says. “That is one of the reasons I got involved with the clothing drive that worked with the Jewish and Dominican communities in Washington Heights. If we do not engage our neighbors in dialogue, then how can we engage other communities?”

And while Uri L’Tzedek and Ari move forward with Tav HaYosher, they haven’t forgetten about Washington Heights. Troy clues me into another project Ari has been working on in his “spare time.”

“Ari’s been real great about making himself available on individual stuff. Not to go into lots of details but he’s helped a lot of individuals in the community who have needed help,” Troy says but he felt uncomfortable disclosing the specific details about these situations. “He’s also made himself available to us to help us with tutoring some of our young people. I know that’s there’s one specific student Ari’s working with but there’s lots of other students who need help and Ari is helping network with other possible tutors.”

Ari is in talks with both Alianza Dominicana and Fort Washington Collegiate Church to coordinate over a tutoring program. But according to Uri L’Tzedek volunteer, Michal Brickman, the tutoring program is just one of two-community based youth initiatives Ari and Uri L’Tzedek are working on.

“The tutoring program will bring desperately needed math and English tutors to local schools and after school programs, both within and outside the Jewish community. And a schools supplies drive, will help alleviate the teachers in a Washington Heights public school and local Jewish day school of the burden of paying out-of-pocket for many of their children supplies,” she says.

Michal believes that none of these programs could have happened without Ari.

“Although Ari’s only been living in Washington Heights for a little over a year, he’s deeply committed to improving the local community. Ari is passionate about mobilizing the Jewish community to create social change. He believes that everyone has something to contribute to the community initiatives and is constantly encouraging people to voice their opinions and become actively involved. Ari brings a tireless enthusiasm for social justice and a deep respect for Torah ideals to the initiatives – and his optimism and positive energy are contagious!”

Ultimately, it seems that Ari and Uri L’Tzedek are working towards in Washington Heights will benefit everyone. Michal agrees, “Uri L’Tzedek’s efforts to improve tenants’ rights, the local environment, and education in surrounding public schools, availability of quality health care and the value of neighborhood apartments in Washington Heights will ultimately only enhance the lives of each of us in the Jewish community by providing a cleaner, safer, and friendlier neighborhood.”

In the end, Ari’s work has made Washington Heights a much smaller place. And he is still working tirelessly to keep it that way. Local churches, synagogues and other organizations that once ignored each other now call on each other as friends. Carlos Cepeda of FYI leaves me with his final thoughts on Ari’s community building activities.

Carlos says, “I remember a poem that goes something like this…. In a thousand years from now, it won’t matter what house I have or the car that I drive or how much money I have in the bank, all that’s going to matter is the difference I made in my community. I think that’s the message Ari and his organization live by.”

Putting on a multicultural wedding

Very excited about being published in my "adoptive" hometown of Los Angeles. As some of you know, I spent my entire summer there writing and figure drawing/painting while my husband interned at a local synagogue. Plus, we spend all the major holidays out there with my in-laws.

Anyway, do check out the reprint of "My big fat Dominican Orthodox Jewish Wedding" in the latest issue of The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles.

Second Draft: A Survivor

I'm hoping to enter this piece in a contest or submit it to one of the magazines that it's my goal to get my work in this year. I recently received a devastating rejection from one magazine. The editor was wonderful about it and she gave me a connection to another editor. We'll see what goes on from there.

I hope I don't bore you too much with this one. In some ways, I'm telling the same story you've all heard before. I think every time, I hope every time, I'm telling it from a different angle, with a new perspective.

Thanks!

A Survivor

My life should have killed me but it didn’t. And though, I’ve always been told I’m brave and strong. I don’t think of myself that way.


Growing up I was very aware that other kids loved their mothers. I stopped loving my mother at eight years old. It was a self-preservation technique. I knew that if I continued to love my mother, it would kill me. So I squelched my natural desire to love her, I scolded myself for moments of weakness when I was affectionate towards her. I numbed away the pain. I redirected all my love to my father. Though he rarely called since separating from my mother, I made him a hero in my mind. But that made my mother the villain.


My mother was mentally ill, but I didn’t know that. Instead, I knew that my mother made my sister pick up dog feces on the way home from school, one of the many ingredients for the spells my mother cast at her altar. I knew my mother thought that spirits and angels spoke to her. She said they told her terrible things about me. They told her, for instance, that I was possessed by the devil. When I confessed to my mother that my sister B. and I were contemplating suicide, my mother accused me of possessing my sister. I was 16, B. was 13. I never thought to pray for a better mother, I had to learn to cope with the one I got.


My mother’s mood swings caused us to tiptoe around her warily. We spent most of our childhood in hiding, underneath the bed, inside closets, behind each other. But my mother always found us. As a teenager, I remember my mother’s corpulent body pressed against me as she punched me repeatedly in the face until she drew blood. I remember thanking God at that moment that the knives my mother had just thrown at me had missed. Later, I watched as my mother bludgeoned B. over the head with a pair of rollerblades because B. had worn makeup and a midriff-bearing top to school. “Slut!” my mother yelled. Her eyes were angry slits as she stalked out of the room. She threw my ten-year-old sister A. against the wall repeatedly just for standing in her way.


And in all that misery, my sisters and I banded together. We tried to become an impenetrable force. We rocked out to Nirvana and Gwen Stefani. We wrote plays, books and poems. A. and I earned straight As at school while B. escaped to the mall. We fell desperately in love with the stupidest boys. We did everything we could to nurture happiness in the midst of the total terror of our secret home life.



But the secret of what was really going on at home separated me from my friends. The friends I told about it were sworn to secrecy. I told them what I believed, what my mother had told me would happen if I told.


“My sisters and I would be put into foster homes. In the foster homes, we would be beaten and raped. It would be much worst for us if we told on my mother,” I said.


But there was another fear.


“If you tell anyone, I’ll kill you and I’ll kill your sisters before they come for you,” my mother warned. “And I’ll kill myself, too.”


So I prayed. I curled myself into a little ball under the dining room table on a daily basis and I prayed. I prayed that someone would save me. That my long lost father would uncover the truth. That my mother’s relatives who knew about the abuse would take care of us. That I would have the strength not to kill myself because my sisters promised to follow in my footsteps. I prayed because as long as I believed that there was something bigger than my mother, I could look forward to the next day.


When my prayers were answered, they came with a price. My mother’s youngest sister, eighteen-year-old L., who was only a year older than me, told me that I could come live with her and my grandmother.


“If your mother gets worst, you’ll come live with us. Don’t worry,” she said. L. stroked my long, puffy black hair as I cried in her arms.


I could finally leave. But I would have to leave my sisters behind. L. couldn’t convince my grandmother to take all of us. No one was interested in taking in someone else’s four kids. And the closer I got to my 18th birthday, the more my mother singled me out. I think she worried she was losing her hold over me.


The night before my last day of high school, my sisters found me strewn across my bed after an attack. My mother had thrown a metal cup at head and missed. But when it had connected with my exposed right elbow, a fleshy bruise the size of a hockey puck had pushed its way out of my arm. My mother had muffled my screams while she pushed the battered mass back into my arm. But my sisters heard the screams and after my mother fled from my room, they came for me.


“You have to leave,” B. said breaking the silence. Her unruly black hair was still wild and patchy from when my mother had attacked her with scissors.


Thin, fragile A. began to sob.


I shook my head crying. “I can’t leave. I can’t leave you.”


“Pack,” B. said. Her decisiveness made me feel like the younger sister.


The next morning we said our goodbyes. Our sweet-smelling two-year-old baby half-sister’s soft arms encircled my neck. She was the product of a boyfriend my mother had only introduced us to twice.


“K.,” I said whispering her name. She giggled, flashing her toothy smile. My mother rarely beat her but she was often a tiny witness.


“She’s still sleeping,” B. said stoically. “We’ll help you sneak the bags downstairs.”


On the phone the night before, my maternal grandmother had warned us not to call friends or write letters. “She listens to your calls. She goes through your things at night. Looking for things.”


A.’s long, spindly arms wove around me tightly. Her long black, braided pigtails scratched against my face. Quiet tears streamed down her face.


I looked at B.. “Come back for us,” she whispered huskily. “Come back for us.”


“I promise,” I nodded.


I remember reaching the doorframe and turning back to look at all three of them. Three tiny girls. I wondered who would protect them. It turned out to be someone I had overlooked.
My sisters endured the same nightmare for four more years. I attended college and bounced between the homes of different relatives. My grandmother had kicked me out in the middle of her divorce. Another aunt had asked me to come live with her and changed her mind. I was living with a roommate off-campus when a tearstained note arrived from B. and I staged an intervention. I was 21.


“You don’t have to do this,” a classmate told me. “You can’t be the only one who can do this. You should be taking care of yourself.”


But I ignored her, I helped eighteen-year-old B. leave and when she didn’t come home, my mother didn’t come looking for her. But my sister A. was only 14 when I kidnapped her two weeks later. My mother came looking for her the next day.


What ensued doesn’t sound real though I lived it. Children’s Services told me to petition for custody of A. or I would be arrested on kidnapping charges and my sister would be sent back home. My sisters and I wrote a 13-page manifesto detailing the abuse for them, hoping that that they would take our side. They didn’t. Instead, they left my defenseless seven-year-old sister K. in my mother’s custody while I waged war in court to keep A.. Thanks to my pro-bono lawyers I won temporary custody of A.. People ask why I didn’t get custody of K., too. But what they’re really asking? “Is the world fair?” The answer is no. Lawyers assured me that age my age, with not having seen her in four years, there was no chance of winning custody of K..


In the meantime, I worked two jobs to support us. I gave up my dreams of working for magazines like the glossy CosmoGIRL! where I interned part-time. Dreams were for people I saw on TV, I thought, not people like me. My mission in life was to save my sisters. To survive on a paycheck for one, I borrowed money from friends and from credit credits while my mother collected welfare checks in A.’s name. Meanwhile my relatives refused to testify against my mother, scared that she would “come after” them. Some of them had tangled with my mother in court before and had lived to regret it.


I walked through life those years irradiated by rage. It infected me like a toxic poison. I was certain that the world was an awful, worthless place. I spat at it with contempt. I found myself punching walls and imagining the faces of my parents and my useless relatives. Every breath I took I felt more like the Incredible Hulk in frenzy moments away from decimating an entire city.


After two years, it looked like my mother would finally agree to give up custody of A.. My father, deadbeat in the Dominican Republic, already had. But as she was asked to sign the papers, my mother flung them from her and started screaming in court.


“In the name of Jesus Christ, I never hurt my daughters!” my mother wailed.


So it would be another year before I would be awarded permanent custody of my sister A. and lose my sister K. forever. I didn’t know then that I would never see K. again. I was 24, broke and broken, too tired to fight anymore. But I will never forget that to save B. and A., I had to sacrifice K.. I will never forgive myself or the justice system.


The Baskin Robbins cake we celebrated with read, “Mom sucks.” The girl behind the counter looked at us with her mouth agape.


“Yes, that’s what we want the cake to say,” I insisted.


It felt like we laughed for months after that. The tension that riddled my shoulders finally seemed to abate.


But two years later, I was married and asking my husband why he loved me. I asked him this question so often it rankled. One time, he conceded, “I love you because you’re a real hero.”
I recoiled at the response. Every fiber of my being resisted his unconditional love. Everything I knew about love insisted that it was fleeting. I loved my sisters like they were my arms and legs, parts of my own body. But everything I had learned about unconditional love from my parents suggested that I didn’t deserve it. I didn’t feel like a hero.


I still don’t. But people remind me I was the only person in my family who was willing to step up, to fight. I was the only one willing to risk my emotional, physical and financial security to do what was right. I know now that I am like that dog who gets kicked but keeps on getting up again and again. I am made of some charged, unexplainable element that refuses to die…no matter how many times people have threatened to snuff it out. I know that I am proof that the human spirit can survive anything no matter the heavy cost.


I am a survivor, nothing more and nothing less.


But being a survivor has taught me nothing about how to live my life. How do I live with the scars and bruises that my mother left hidden just beneath the surface of my body and mind? How do I live with the chronic depression and chronic illness that now plagues my daily life? Is this the heavy price I have to pay to keep on living?


Sometimes, at 28, I feel like a cross between a little old lady and a newborn. In my bones, I feel the exhaustion of a long life lived. In my heart, I feel like a baby who has no idea how to navigate the simplest of everyday life. Every day I feel like more like Atlas, my shoulders burdened by all the baggage of my past. Every other day I contemplate slitting my wrists and checking out once and for all. And though, there is counseling, psychologists, psychiatrists and “happy” pills, I live in constant struggle. I live with the survivor’s guilt of desperately missing K. and a fear that I will turn on the television one day and learn my mother has ended K.’s life and her own.


And then there are the moments where I feel utterly weightless. After I’ve just finished a good book, after hearing my husband laugh, after hugging my sister close, there are those moments that feel so easy I wonder why I don’t have more of them. And I have become certain that I’m always going to have to fight for these moments. Every day I’m going to have to wage war, not against my mother, but against the darkest recesses of myself. I will always have to fight for that weightlessness and the pure untapped joy of happiness that feels so foreign to me. Today and tomorrow, I will continue to pray for the courage, the courage to choose life and the strength to continue raging against my inner demons.


I have survived and know I will have to learn to live with it.

 

Why, as a wife, I still want to see other men

No, it's not what you think. So what is it? Check out "Why, as a wife, I still want to see other men", my latest piece in The Jewish Chronicle. I DID NOT PICK THE TITLE!

Identity Crisis: Sadia Shepard & Weighing in on Hyphenated Realities

The war against singular identities is still being waged over at the Forward where Sadia Shepard's op-ed, "Targeting Tolerance in Mumbai" has sparked heated debate about whether or not there's such a thing as a hyphenated identity. Take the time to weigh in with your two cents.

Here are some of my arguments for hyphenated identities:

"As to the debate that [the article] has sparked, let me weigh in.

I am a Dominican American Orthodox Jew. I speak English, Spanish and very limited Hebrew. My parents came to America as teenagers but between trips to the Dominican Republic, food, customs, etc, I find myself identifying strongly as Dominican.

Living as an Orthodox Jew is another side of my identity. Growing up as a first-generation American is another side of my identity. I have a hyphenated identity and I find that people with singular identities have a hard time coping or understanding how my life functions in English and Spanish and Hebrew and some smattering of Yiddish. But I would think an American Jew or a Jewish American wouldn't need to have these kinds of things explained to him. "

And another soundbite:

"Four generations of my family have been in America and I still speak Spanish, the language of my ancestors. I speak English, the language of my birth. I have adopted Jewish culture but that doesn't mean I eschew being Dominican or American in any way. And I take issue with people who would deny that let's say a Hispanic person who doesn't speak Spanish isn't really Hispanic anymore.

An identity, a culture, is about much more than a language. I really think that Yehuda [the most staunch opponent of hyphenated realities] needs to go buy Sadia's book. It's official. Let him read about the Bene Israel community to see how they have managed to stay Jewish and become Indian in their 2,000 years in India. It is not impossible to have a hyphenated identity, a true multicultural identity.

What you point to as the loss of language or the loss of parts of the culture CAN BE a tragedy of a hyphenated identity but it is not always the case. Why is it so hard for a person with a singular identity to wrap their minds around someone whose identity is so much bigger, so much richer for being hyphenated? Is it because you haven't experienced it that you cannot see all the people around you, all the people who have commented on this article who say "Look at me, I'm a person with a hyphenated identity, I exist."

No one said it's an easy road but it's a fact of life that many of live every single day. It means that I make a choice between plaintains or gefilte fish every Shabbos. It means that I think in English and in Spanish. And someday, G-d willing in Hebrew.

Many people came to this country and chose to become some European version of what American meant but more and more people are choosing to juggle being American and being from somewhere else. Obama may not have been exposed to his father's culture growing up but his heritage was written on his face. He could not deny his hyphenated identity as a biracial man, the child of an African father and a white mother. "

And one last soundbite to get you interested in joining the debate!

"Is that a failure of Judaism or America or hyphenated identities?

There are plenty of ultra-Orthodox Jews who are fighting the good fight, they're definitely American and have been so for many generations but they keep the Jewish traditions just as vibrant as in the old shtetel. They speak English and Yiddish and Hebrew. These people are not an abberation.

Neither are the English and Hebrew speaking Modern Orthodox. Neither are the English, Hebrew, French, and Russian speaking Mexican-Russian Canadian Jews I know in Montreal. There is a way to have to have a true hyphenated identity but as you said it takes work, it takes knowledge. Many American Jews suffer from a lack of knowledge about the Jewish faith and Jewish culture."

Secular Conversions, eh? The Current State of Jewish Conversion

"Integration of Mixed Families", an op-ed in the Jerusalem Post, has gotten me riled up. As a Modern Orthodox convert, I suppose that’s to be expected. It proposes in not so coded terms that conversion must change in Israel because it's currently being held hostage by the haredi rabbinate. And whether or not that seems to be the case, I'm not sure I like the alternative that's being proposed. Members of the government seem to be pushing more and more for secular conversion.


But what in the world is a secular conversion? What exactly does it look like? I'm sorry but "secular conversion" sounds to me like an oxymoron. Stop me if I'm wrong but conversion is a religious institution. It’s a pledge to a religion. When people convert to Christianity, they're saying they believe in Jesus Christ as their personal savior, they’re not just saying they believe in Christian peoplehood.



The more I read about conversion in Israel, the more I’m glad I live in America. God bless separation of church and state. For in America, we don’t ask our immigrants to convert to Americanism. We have civil channels that allow them to become true full-fledged citizens of the state. And once our immigrants become citizens, they can do whatever they please but we don’t call that process a conversion. Because it’s not. There's no such thing as a civil conversion.



I’ll get on my soapbox for a moment and represent all sincere converts everywhere. And here is what I know: Whether you're Reform or Conservative or Orthodox, when we convert, we’re doing it because of we are pledging our commitment to the Jewish faith. And yes, as a bonus, we become irrevocably tied to the Jewish people and the Jewish culture. But I sincerely doubt that anyone in America converts because they want to “hang” with the Jews. And any sincere convert from any movement will talk your ear off about what they think about those converts who ONLY go through the process because they want to marry a Jew. “They make us look bad,” any sincere convert will tell you.



So let’s just say for the moment that the haredi rabbinate turns over the keys to the conversion kingdom and people also have the option to convert Reform or Conservative in Israel in a way that is fully accepted by the state. What does that mean? Will it now be “easier” to convert to the Jewish faith? And what does that mean? Because surely, we do not believe for a second that all these thousands of people will suddenly be converting to the Jewish faith because of a spiritual conversion. Surely, we do not believe that they’ll be going to temple or synagogue on Shabbos with fervor to be closer to the Jewish concept of God.



No, they will be doing having their secular or “easier” conversions because they want to be married as Jews and die as Jews in a Jewish state without making the commitment to the Jewish faith. They will be converting to Judaism because they live in a state that doesn’t seem to accept their existence. And that they deserve to live and be buried with honor as true Israeli citizens, under Israeli law, without having to summon up the spiritual conversion necessary in their hearts to do live and die as Jews under Jewish law.



Please let's not adulterate conversion because Israel can't figure out what to do with all the citizens who don't fit into the Muslim, Christian or Jewish box on the census. Please let's not do anymore damage to the conversion issue than has already been done. It seems clear to the observant outsider, no pun intended, that the way must be paved for civil marriage and civil burial institutions in Israel that don’t make people feel like outsiders. Because, in the meantime, the current practice of religious marriages and religious burials is excluding thousands of Israeli citizens. It’s ensuring that these people feel that they are not full-fledged citizens of the state.



Now, don’t get me wrong. There is no question that the thousands of Israeli citizens of Jewish descent have a commitment to their Jewish relatives and their Jewish friends and family. There is no question that they have pledged their faith in the state of Israel. Many of them are out there risking their lives every day for the state. God bless them. But whether they have pledged themselves in the Jewish faith is another story altogether. Perhaps, it’s time that being an Israeli citizen stopped being synonymous with being a Jew. Because being an Israeli citizen should not arbitrarily make someone Jewish.

Working draft of 'My Love/Hate Relationship with G-d'

Here's a piece I'm still working on....

I’ve always had this intense relationship with G-d. I prayed all the time growing up. And I don’t just mean the on-my-knees “As I lay me down to sleep…” kind of prayer I was taught as a Catholic child or the structured three-times-a-day prayer that comes with being an Orthodox Jew. I prayed about everything. I asked for things. I talked to G-d about my thoughts, my hopes and dreams. I trusted in G-d in a way that I didn’t trust in anyone else. G-d was the ultimate imaginary friend. I had this “one-sided” relationship that felt like it was going both ways because I could see all the little miracles that G-d enacted in my life every day. My little sisters were miracles. My new Barbie doll was a miracle. My absentee father calling me from far, far away was a miracle.

But my relationship with G-d became fractured when I ran away from home at 17. G-d had performed the ultimate miracle. He had helped me escape from my mother’s abuse. G-d had finally come through, had finally saved me. But my sisters were still being held captive by my mother’s mental illness. So my mental health deteriorated. I had nightmares about my mother every night. My physical health declined. I couldn’t hold down food. When I continued to pray to G-d, to beg on my hands and knees, it wasn’t the kind of relationship we had before. I was more reticent. My survivor’s guilt clouded my feelings towards G-d. I couldn’t understand why I had been spared and my sisters hadn’t.

My relationship with G-d became even more turbulent when my sisters finally ran away from home. Again, G-d had performed a great miracle. Two of my sisters had escaped with my help. But the seven-year-old was trapped. There seemed no way to rescue her from the nightmare we had feared most, that one of us would have to stay behind, that any of us would be separated from each other again. I couldn’t see the miracle of the pro-bono lawyers who helped me fight the war I waged in court against my mother to win custody of my 14-year-old sister. Instead, I was flooded with rage. I was angry that I had to fight a three-year custody battle. I was 21 and angry that none of “the adults” in my family wanted to help me. I was angry that I had to grow up too fast. When I looked for my childhood, I couldn’t find it. And I wouldn’t even ask G-d why He had put me on this journey. Instead, I turned away from Him.

My early twenties were a period of time when I “acted out” against the only parent I had ever truly known: G-d. I tried to self-destruct through troubled love affairs, through money mismanagement, through pure, unabashed hate. I wanted to carve the pain I felt out of my chest. I thought I would explode or implode from the terrible fits of anger that overcame me. I punched the walls. I screamed. I yelled. I took my rage out on others when I was done with taking it out on myself. I was certain that I finally hated my parents, that their neglect and their abuse made it obvious they hated me. And in that “they,” I included G-d too. When I prayed, I spat out these words with venom, “I hate you, G-d. I hate you. And I will never forgive you.”

But then things started to fall into place. I won custody of my sister. I found a steady job that turned into a glorious teaching career. I believed in G-d again. It was easier to believe in G-d when things were going great. I could see the master plan. I could finally see G-d more clearly in the good and the bad that had crossed my path. I bounced around wearing “G-d” spectacles and I could spot G-d everywhere. I prayed the way I had prayed as a child, through my teens. I regained the connection that I was sure had been irreparably singed through my early 20s. Renewed spiritually by my fervor, I decided to convert to Judaism.

And then my health failed again. My body exploded in pain. All the pain that I had felt throughout my childhood manifested itself in my bones, in my muscles, under my skin. For a moment, I considered whether or not I was being punished for giving up Jesus. But doctor after doctor prodded and probed until I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. It was chronic, it was a life sentence and it was incurable. Physically, I had trouble holding a siddur (prayer book) in my hands and spiritually, I couldn’t find the will to pray anymore.

By the time I finally converted, I thought that it was G-d’s cruel joke that I couldn’t sit through a prayer service without feeling bone-crushing pain. Intermittingly, I picked up a siddur but I said the words listlessly. During the happy moments that would break through my depression, I would murmur my gratitude. But I felt like I was doing it with my back turned to G-d. I wasn’t angry at G-d. I was sad, almost terminally so.

I was sure that G-d had given up on me, sure that I was being overlooked. The space between us seemed infinite and never-ending. I didn’t know how to close it. The fire that had consumed our earlier relationship had blown out to tiny embers. What would happen to us if it never came back? Would I ever feel His invisible arms wrap around me on a windy day? Would I ever feel His breath on my face in the rays of sunlight on a clear day? Where are you, G-d? I wondered. Which one of us is lost? And how do I find my way?

When a friend, the mother of two young children, told me, “I wish I had time to pray.”

I nodded in agreement.

“I don’t even have time to go to the bathroom by myself,” she continued.

“That’s awful,” I said, knowing deep down that I had all the time in the world to pray.

“I don’t remember how to pray,” she added finally.

“Neither do I,” I replied. “Neither do I.”

Slowly, I began to rip my life back out from the clutches of fibromyalgia. I went to psychologists and psychiatrists. I tried “happy pills” that didn’t make me happy. I went to the gym to soothe the physical pain. And I began to write again. It took a long time to see how this was another of G-d’s miracles. I had never had time to write when I was healthy and suddenly, illness had given me all the time in the world. I still imagined myself unable to look G-d in the face. I didn’t trust Him anymore. I didn’t understand His miracles and His mind games. But something stirred every time I discovered and rediscovered Psalm 27.

“G-d is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear?” I started tentatively. “One thing I asked of G-d that shall I seek, that I may dwell in the House of G-d all the days of my life, to behold its sweetness and to contemplate in His sanctuary.”

And I realized that to me Judaism had always been a fulfillment of this yearning.

“When my father and mother abandon me, G-d will gather me up,” I said with a shaky voice.

And I knew that for better or worst it was because of my father and mother that I had always felt closer to G-d.

“Hope to G-d; strengthen yourself and he will give you courage, and hope to G-d.” I finished the prayer and every time, I wanted to cry. And I knew that I was no longer numb. I could feel G-d’s presence again.

Now I find myself walking now towards the bookcase where all my siddurim sit. Some are new and unopened. I trail my fingers over them. So many choices. Transliterated, English, Hebrew. Tall hard covers and light paperbacks. Sometimes, I choose a light paperback and tug it off the shelf. I sit in front of my ingenious book holder and plop the siddur over the latest copy of Entertainment Weekly.

And as I sit and wait, I know I’m supposed to crack the siddur open. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. I still can’t manage to pray with any kind of regularity. It still hurts, mentally and physically. But I know that G-d is waiting for me. I know now that G-d loves me. I know that He understands everything even when I don’t. And I know that I am working my way back to Him, working my way back home.