Gebroks or Non-Gebroks…That is the Question

Pesach is here and here’s a blast from the past first published on April 06, 2006. Shayna was one of original contributors and if you’re still checking, we hope everything is going well with you and your family. Being kosher seemed like a good way to be a true Jew, so I called the local [...]

UnInspired

Thirteen years ago, The NY Times ran a puff piece on the Weddings page about me. A unique angle for their “Vows” column–anti-establishment editor burns her Ms. Magazines and ties the knot in all-concealing gown. Driven by the kiruv fever that often hijacks the newly frum, I was quoted insisting that my new lifestyle was [...]

Those Five Magic Words

“I never would have known!” What a thrill I feel every time I hear it. But as Rabbi Greenman so movingly describes, how healthy is it to want to “pass”? Like all of you, I’ve explored so many stages of BT-hood; found the truth beyond those early idealized visions of the frum world. The amazement [...]

The Parent Trap

Why are we always placating, mediating, even apologizing? Why do we have to feel like we’re the ones mucking up family tradition? Why do we always have to explain how it’s really not so hard or different to do things our way? Why must we look the other way or come up with rationalizations for [...]

Painfully Cutting Ties to the Past

Thanksgiving was supposed to remain a lifeline with my Before Teshuva world. At first, I stubbornly held on to New Year’s, defiantly rationalizing that we live by the secular calendar, too. But in truth, I’d long been uncomfortable with the idea that we kept our dates by their relation to the death of the Christian [...]

First you Think in Secular and Translate for Yourself; Eventually you Begin to Think in Frum

I spent the first 25 years of my life big into non-conformity. I prided myself on digging hipper music than my high school friends, choosing a trendy college too cool for grades, eating vegetarian, camping through the USSR before glastnost, living in the East Village, and on and on. Becoming a B.T. was the ultimate [...]

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