The Chabad Aseres Hadibros

Now for the sequel. Those who dislike leitzanus my want to skip this post

Presenting the Chabad Aseres Hadibros:

1. I am the Rebbe who will take you to Eretz Yisrael. Thou shalt be mekushar to me.

2. Do not ask for brachos or eitzos from other rebbeim.

3. You should have images of all of the rebbeim in your home, in as many rooms as possible

4. You should observe Yud-Tes Kislev, keep it holy, and farbreng

5. You should honor the rebbe, your mashpia, and your parents--in that order

6. You should not say that the Rebbe died. If you must, say he was nistalek. Otherwise, just use the term "hidden"

7. You should not interact with the opposite gender, unless it is shlichus, in which case almost anything goes.

8. You should not steal another shliach's territory.

9. You should not lie. Just evade the question if someone asks your opinion on whether the Rebbe is Moshiach

10. You should not be jealous of any other group in klal Yisrael. Remember, Chabad is the best!

My Daughter and I

I sat in the hospital room, late at night, holding my newborn. She was the only girl, born third in an every-second year sequence. My boys were born in 2004 and 2006, followed by my little girl in 2008. She was healthy and cute, but I was scared. I was scared not at the massive responsibility that awaited me, nor in awe of heaven. 

I was scared with myself. After both of my boys, I immediately felt, "I want another one". This time, for some reason, my thoughts were very different. This time I thought, "This is it. She is my youngest and I don't want any more".

"But it can't be!", I thought, "I'm only 23! A frum woman cannot stop having kids at 23! What's wrong with me?"

"I'm probably just thinking that way because I am temporarily overwhelmed", I thought. "I'm sure that I just need to adjust, then everything will return to normal".

This thought continued to haunt me over the next few weeks, despite my repeated attempts to push such "machshavos zaros" out of my mind. As the weeks went on, and the pressure from dealing with the children (and pretty severe post-partum depression) increased--I reached the point where I really couldn't function at all. I was unable to properly care for my children much of the time, so I did the unthinkable...

I asked for a heter. And after a thirty-minute interview by the rabbi asking every personal question imaginable (and repeatedly asking me if I had both a boy and a girl), I was deemed in need of a two-year heter. I shudder to think what would have happened if this child had been a boy. Apparently in such a case, my legitimate medical issues would have been irrelevant.

Why was I so hesitant to ask for a heter? It wasn't because I was unaware of their existence or afraid the rav would reject my claim. Rather, because a "normal" frum woman is supposed to have as many children as possible unless she "can't handle it", asking for a heter was tantamount to saying that I was an abnormal failure who couldn't handle life. Eventually, the situation got desperate enough that I had to do just that--admit that by frum standards I was a failure and not normal.

However, this realization crushed more than just my fragile self-image--it crushed my entire worldview. 

Unlike many others, I had no problem with Judaism's concept of the role of women. If the Torah (or for that matter, "da'as Torah"), viewed women as having a different role than men, then it must be for the best. Equality, or lack thereof, didn't enter into the equation at all. I saw nothing inherently wrong with the idea that a woman's primarily role should be to raise a frum family, with her doing other things only when needed to fulfill that primarily. Although I have always been more of the intellectual type and had severe ADD, if God put me in this position it must be that I had the capabilities to overcome it and fulfill my God-given role, and only through doing this could I achieve happiness.

Well, I did try, and I couldn't "handle it". Not only that, trying for so many years to be someone that I am not, took away my ability to focus on what I am good at. Rather than struggling for many years to be a mediocre homemaker, I should have put my energy and focus towards working at what I am good at.

I ultimately realized that the problem was not that I failed to fulfill my Torah-ordained destiny, but rather that the Torah failed to take my destiny into account. Not everyone can be boxed into predefined gender roles, nor should they. It is illogical to assume that an all-powerful and all-good God would create everyone differently, yet expect them to fulfill the same general role with minor variations.

This began the journey that led me to where I am today.

However, the great irony is that my daughter, the little girl that started me down this path, is the stereotypical female that I never was. She has consistently, since birth, fulfilled practically every female stereotype in existence. It is almost as if someone gave her a book of instructions on how to act like a girl, and she followed it to the letter. At 15 months she would cry if I gave her pants rather than a skirt. My little girl who has never seen a Disney movie wants everything to be "pretty" and preferably pink. She loves playing with dolls, hates getting her clothes dirty, and attempts to take care of her brothers and the house.

Maybe there is something to those gender stereotypes after all.

The Challenge of Changing Expectations - Part One

One of the biggest challenges that I have had throughout my life is fitting in. Back in my public elementary school days, I had a lot of trouble fitting in with my fellow classmates because I couldn't understand the subtle social rules that they seemed to follow and I wasn't interested in the things that interested them. I was the nerdy kid who read the encyclopedia for fun and I liked discussing deep topics with my one close childhood friend.

During my later middle school years I became somewhat more socially aware and made a few more friends, although I still had difficulty relating to their interests and found the topics of conversation to be quite boring, to say the least. While I finally was able to fit in, I still really felt out of place.

As I became frum, however, things changed drastically. At NCSY, then later at school, I found teenage girls who I could become friends with who were interested in topics that were deeper than the latest Backstreet Boys song. While I did not become close friends with the "popular girls" at my Jewish school either, I found a group of friends that not only didn't look down on me for my intellectual interests, they respected me. People were inspired by my dedication to learning and the few people who knew my background, which I tried hard to keep secret in order to fit in, were amazed at how quickly I caught up to grade level in limudei kodesh.

This was particulalrly true when I came to my Chabad seminary. One thing that I do have to give Chabad credit for is that they are very into girls learning. During my seminary year I was constantly learning a variety of things, from mefarshim on Chumash to Yiddish Sichos. Halacha was my favorite topic. I was fascinated by the logic behind the halachic process and its implementation in the modern world. The other girls looked up to me as a sincere, dedicated frum girl and I would routinely council young baalos teshuva to try to help them succeed in the frum system.

Being the good frum girl that I was, I wanted to get married as soon as possible in order to have as many children as possible. I only wanted to marry someone in klei kodesh who was as interested in learning as I was. I figured that everyone managed somehow and that we would find a way to manage financially as well. I mangaged to find my husband, who fits that description perfectly, and a minimum-wage job for myself to complement his kollel stipend. We then got married and I started trying to excel at the next stage of my frum life just as I had at the first.

Then reality came.

(To be continued...)

Welcome to my blog!

As this is the first post on my blog, I would like to begin by introducing myself and the purpose of my blog.

I am a married mother-of-three in her twenties who has recently begun having serious doubts about the validity of Orthodox Judaism and has thus joined the ranks of the orthoprax, the despised subculture of secret heretics who remain within the Orthodox community for various reasons.

I entered the frum community as a young teenager when I, together with my mother, decided to become more religious. My mother was always religiously-inclined and would have likely become frum earlier if it were not for her living in a southern town with only a tiny Orthodox community. I became interested in Orthodox Judaism as a young teenager when I realized that since I believed in Torah min Hashomayim, it was hypocritical for me not to keep the mitzvos. My mother followed me, at a slower pace, and ultimately became mostly-Modern-Orthodox. She would, and still does, break shabbos when her elderly mother calls and in other such situations.

I, on the other hand, became charedi--very charedi. I orginially became frum at the only Orthodox shul in our town, a Chabad shul. Then my mother remarried and we moved to a big city and I went to a "modern-Yeshivish" girls high school. I ended up deciding to go back to Chabad, went to a Chabad seminary, and married shortly thereafter. I took yiddishkiet very seriously and was very machmir in many areas. I kept a very strict standard of tznius, was very machmir about hilchos shabbos, and I davened and learned a substantial amount every day. I did not go to college because I thought that it was assur to do so and then I had three kids by age 23.

At that point my world began to crash down on me. I had grown up in the self-esteem generation, believing that I could be whatever I wanted to be if I tried hard enough. Therefore, despite being the intellectual type who also has severe ADD, I figured that if the Rebbe said that women should primarily be wives and mothers of large families that I could do so if I tried hard enough. After having a breakdown after the birth of my third child, I realized that is definitely not the case. Parenting is not my strong point, to put it mildly, and housekeeping is even less so. I found that I had little in common with other frum women who primarily wanted to discuss child-rearing and recipes, and I felt like the proverbial fish-out-of-water. I began to hate myself and feel like a worthless human being as I couldn't do even the minimum expected of me.

Starting college literally changed my life. I originally decided to go back to college in order to get a decent job, because I was fed up with the "bitachon method" of earning income. However, going back to college saved my self-image by allowing me to do something that I was good at--really good at. I quickly made my way to the top of my class and excelled at every class that I took (except for one class this semester, which will likely be my first college "B"). The fact that charedi Judaism tries to fit everyone into a mold, along with the economic problems inherent in the system, made me question the charedi system as a whole (I had already decided way earlier that I did not agree with Chabad), and once the questioning began, it made me realize that Orthodox Judaism as a whole is built on a very shaky foundation.

Now I feel trapped. I am married to a super-frum husband and have kids in the Chabad system. I want to be able to focus all of my energies on college because it is the only thing that I am living for these days, but I can't totally neglect my kids and my husband. I do not want to be frum at all, but attempting to leave a frum lifestyle would cause emotional and financial chaos for all involved. However, as a person who hates hypocrisy, living a lie is killing me psychologically. I also worry that if I stay then my kids will be stuck in the system and forced to fit into a mold into which they may or may not fit.

So here I am, sitting on the fence.