Unorthodox Orthodox

I will try to clarify what is happening in my mind.

English is my second language and it's not a language of emotions, so i will do my best.

I am Cartesian, and i always needed to have an explanation about things before digesting them and understanding them.

I was bad in maths when i was 11. My mom hired a private teacher, a very good one who explained me maths, physics and chemistry very well. I had a high school diploma in sciences.

My mom insisted that i keep on learning sciences at College to become an engineer. I struggled a lot with her till she understood that i wanted to go to a Visual Arts college.

Once, my mom accepted my request, and i passed my high school diploma, i forgot everything about maths.

Maths in high school junior is abstract and, this teacher showed me by concrete examples the meaning of maths. He has been through that too when he was younger.

If you understand the basis, you can understand the second level.

I have always been a curious child, looking for the meaning of things and, i read a lot.

If i forgot my book, i read the packs of cereals or other food stuffs packs.

We didn't have TV till i was 9. And it was because a friend of my mom gave one to her. But my mom was very strict with me. I thank her for not being a TV addict. Later, there are many moments in my life where i didn't have TV by choice.

Our first TV was in black and white, and my child's eyes were able to imagine the colors. Weird! :-)

Between the strictness and open-mindedness of my mom, i was a happy child. I was happy not to have a room full of toys that scares me a lot like the ones that i can see in my friends's place.

My mom taught me the values of things and money. She was a hard-worker, i am the same but i have a more important need of distraction to learn culture.

My mom is not into religion at all, because her mom forced her!

But she let me go to the church service in a very small village in Auvergne (in the middle of the France).

Devotion and God attracted me a lot. I have always been fascinated by my devoted Catholic friends.

I cried a lot at church because i have been to the funeral of my teacher who taught me the writing when i was 6, then the one of a little boy who died at 8, after a long struggle with a cancer of lungs.

I never forgot what my mom said about his parents: "They are strong believers and the religion are saving them from this drama."

But i have never been attracted to Catholicism or Christianity. I was more interested in Buddhism that i see like a sort of philosophy of life.

Who is this God who gives so much comfort to save people from their woes, and especially the woe of the loss of a child. I was intrigued.

My path was opened to understand what was the religion.

Coupled with that, i was not allowed to say that my father was Jewish. I understood early that to be Jewish might be dangerous in a country which used to know many fascists (the Vichy government) and many resistants. "If we have a WWIII, we can be in trouble."

I was not scared of Bogeyman but, of the Nazis who could be any neighbors.

When i was with my Jewish friends, i could not say it either without the agreement of my mom.

I was rejected by my Jewish friends, i was dreaming in silence to celebrate their religious holidays. I asked questions but they didn't care that much because they were used to following the traditions. It was what it was!

Retrospectively, my mom put Jewish in different drawers according to their origins of birth: she was more confident with the Ashkenazi than the Sephardi. She didn't really like the Sephardi because they were too show off, speaking loudly…

She repeated me many times that in Israel, they don't like each other.

When you are a child, you believe what your mom says.

But, she is a liar and she admitted it many times. 

Growing up, i made my own opinions of people and things.

My mom is stuck to the 50s and 60s where she had fun a lot: traveling, partying during 3 days and nights, then falling on her bed with shoes and coat… and resting during 24 hours. Yes, my mom rocks and she is a kind of child of Simone de Beauvoir generation: feminism by its meaning, not by its strictness.

We can have conversations about intimacy. She knows things, but i don't share everything, i keep a secret world for my own fantasies.

We were an unorthodox family, she raised me alone, and she didn't care about what people thought of her choices of life. A few couples got divorced at this time of my childhood.
How many i have seen with my child's eyes that they were miserable: wives or husbands cheating on each other, staying together because of the children… The parents always think that the children feel nothing. Children are more sponges of emotions than we think. 

One of my best friend had an alcoholic father. She was hated by her mom who let her alone with him during week-ends to handle the delirium tremens of her father. She often came to our place to find comfort.

I was happy to avoid all this kind of misery.

My mom had many books about the Shoah, that i read a lot during my teenager years… I wanted to understand why i was caught between two stools: hidden Jewish blood and atheism. 

I traveled in Eastern Europe: Berlin, Czech Republic, Poland… always looking for my roots, visiting ghettos, cemeteries… Where are you my brothers and sisters, i have only seen the mortal remains of your past life.

Then NY in 1998, where i spent 2 weeks on vacation, with a visit in the Lower East Side where i met a few of Hasidic people. I didn't know the existence of the Hasidic community in Williamsburg and other neighborhoods.

But they were there, i felt them.

Then NY again in 2011 to change my life. I came twice in 2010 to be sure that i wanted to live in this city. 

During Shavuot, i was with friends for a bike ride on a Saturday afternoon, from Williamsburg to Red Hook and back to Willy.

A Hasidic man came to my male friends, asking for help. They followed the Hasidic man, and come in a big room where one of my friends became a Shabbos boy and switched on the AC. I was very jealous not to have been chosen for this job. Grrrrrr! :-)

The Hasidim wanted him to stay for a L'chaim. A scream from their heart indicating that my friend might be the Messiah who came to save them from the heat floating above NY.

I was waiting for the boys with a girl. She wanted to go, i told her no. They won't accept us, we are the temptation. 

Riding amongst a crowd of shtreimel, black coats, i was there, with them, with my brothers and sisters.

It was not the time to talk to them, but i was determined to do it, once i will put my suitcases in Brooklyn to work on my new project of life.

Then, Craiglist, but also all my strolls in Williamsburg, my meetings with these men, crying and screaming for more freedom… My fascination, once again, for this devotion for someone whose i just knew the names: G-d, Hashem…
Who can be so powerful to leave all your disillusions and dreams in a cloak-room? Who are you? Is there an equation to resolve?

I traded around 10,000 emails, met around 30 Hasidim with ups and downs on our paths: joys, disappointments, expectations, surprises, sex, music, Torah… 

My road is not straight, and theirs seems so drawn… They are so Orthodox, religiously speaking. And Orthodox in their way of living.
I was Unorthodox in both ways.

Then i followed my Hasidic girl-friend in a shul, reformist or conservative. She didn't want to touch the Torah, i did. She is back in the community, married to a Lubaba.

I have been alone in the Pupa shul.

I believed in what Albert Einstein says below:

"The one who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. Those who walk alone are likely to find themselves in places no one has ever been before." 

That's my road, i need to be alone to meet these men. I need to be alone to find my own faith, to understand who is G-d.

Lately, i found some explanation in the book of Jonathan Sacks.
Many Hasidim already told me that i believed in G-d, with a blur explanation of this meaning which never helped me.

The first chapter of this book gave me the answers i expected since i am a toddler. I look up at the sky, and i know that G-d is watching me, that he punished me when i was a bad girl, gave me strength, gave me this mother who taught me how to fight in life, to have always hope, despite many woes that i have encountered…

Many things happened to me since i am in NY. I can't tell all of them here, because some will think that i am actually meshuga. My French friends asked me for writing a book about my NY adventures, i am not ready so far.

Then, i decided to go for a conversion before a revelation of my belief. 

That seemed to be a bad idea, but it was not.
My road is not straight as i said, and i had to meet up different rabbis, different shuls to see which one suits me the best. 

I still have the choice as i have been taught by my mom once again.

After nearly 3 years, hanging on with Hasidim, the fascination is higher and higher to touch their authenticity of their belief. 

I am in love with Orthodoxy, and i am unorthodox. But i don't think that it's incompatible. My approach will be different.
To understand their devotion, i need to learn the basis, not the "Judaism by-products".
I have not been raised like a princess, believing that life is easy, but if i want something, i have to get up, stand up, walk, fight, spit and laugh… 

Coupled with an emotional nature, i have been hurt, and i hurt myself a lot…

But i am still there on the barricades of my old ghetto.
I am Jewish and proud of being a Jew without the Kosher stamp yet.
I am a woman of integrity and faithful to my choices, friends and lovers. 

I don't post on Craiglist anymore, i am not interested by this aspect of meeting Hasidim. 

To have been fired from my own company and to have quit my own business by closing it down, gives me more time and freedom of thinking, before crossing the Atlantic to go back home where i will be in transit before another immigration.

I will 'confront' Hasidim in person in the streets, stores as i used to do it. That will avoid me to have a flow of sexual words.
I hope that i will have the giggles like i had with this salesman in a bookstore in Williamsburg last summer. As a sort of trouble-maker, i can handle easily conversations with them, when they are trouble-makers too.

I want those who are still in the community, those who don't sneak around… I want to understand their happinesses, their joys, their fears, their woes that Hashem gives them day by day, night by night…
I am headstrong, and i want to thank them for having helped me, despite them, who i am as a Jew. And i want to tell them that in person. They will probably think that i am meshuga. That's fine! :-)

Next step is to go to an Orthodox service in a shul recommended by my Lithuanian cousin. :-)

Basement Apartment Workshop, Warsaw, 1935-1938
Photographer- Roman Vishniac.

Roman Vishniac-The Market in the main square
in Lask (near Lodz) Poland -1937