“Oh,” I said. “So you want the truth? You don’t just want a politically correct answer about how much I value the maturity and wisdom of the older woman. OK, I’d like to date a woman between 18 and 40 years of age.”
“So you need a girl with daddy issues.”
“Ahh, yes,” I said. “Half the time I date women my own age. The rest of the time, much younger. I don’t fetishize. She doesn’t have to be Asian or black or busty. Just so long as she loves God and Torah and turns me on. I’m a very simple man with very simple needs. I want to live a simple life following God’s immutable moral law. I want to give.”
I’ve had therapists come into my life and I’ve had them go out of my life.
Looking back, I think my every therapist has been excellent.
Here’s what I’ve appreciated in them:
* They’ve made it easy to connect with them. I’ve never felt like I had to put up fences or pretenses. They’ve never preached at me. They’ve never pronounced damning judgment.
* When they’re late, they’re appropriately apologetic. Timeliness is very important to me. Tardiness is theft.
* They ease me out of my story while never fighting my need to talk.
I’ll sit in the waiting room before therapy and review things I need to talk about, but often my therapists will ask me questions right at the outset taking me out of my story. They’ll pick up things in my posture in the waiting room and the glint in my eye — or lack of it — when they greet me. They’ll remark on how I situate my chair next to theirs.
* I find their attention intoxicating. I love it when people pay attention to me. Unless I’m in a good relationship, I’ll find my hour a week with my therapist the highlight of my week.
* I often want to beat up on myself during therapy. They help me let go of that need.
You might say, big deal. If anything, you need to beat up on yourself, Luke.
Well, when I get stuck into myself good and proper, it’s never long before I feel driven to get stuck into others. When I learn ease with myself, I have more ease with others. For instance, I was at Beth Am the other night studying Torah and you’d never find a more easygoing and gentle soul than myself. I felt no need to lambast myself or others.
* A good therapist helps me become more aware of how I think, feel, and act. They gently point out unhelpful ruts I get stuck in. They open up my thinking to greater possibilities in the way I react to life. Without therapy, I tend to feel stuck in my responses to certain stimuli such as hot chicks. With therapy, I realize I don’t have to sleep with everything that moves. Such freedom. Such spirituality. Such holiness. Book me now to speak in your shul.
I’m appalled as I walk down Pico Blvd beside Glatt Matt and its dirty competitor at how many Jews park in traffic and run in to the store to get something, oblivious to the cars piling up behind them.
I also felt shame walking around my neighborhood and seeing all the trash piling up. It reminded me of Israel, the country strewn with more trash than any other I know of.
Shame wells up in me as I thread my way through the cluster of young wives standing near my home, animatedly talking with one another as their children play at their feet. Four shopping bags dangle from one arm, five from another, and I shift them uncomfortably as I carry them from my car, practically bent over from their weight.
I take a deep breath as I try to quell the hurt and disappointment I feel, the anger that courses through me. For I know – sadly and with great certainty – that as I wend my way toward my front door, no eager young hands will try to wrest the bags from me and insist on helping me drag them up the stairs to the third floor where I live. Not one of these fine young frum women will detach themselves from the group to inquire: “Do you need help?”
The clammy cold hand of truth grips my heart and tells me: “You are invisible to them, your need is invisible to them.” What else can I think, how else can I rationalize their indifferent behavior? That they do see me struggling mightily and simply don’t care? I’d rather not be seen.
I wish I could convince myself they still consider me young – not their contemporary, clearly, but young enough to easily carry these bags myself. But I’m in my late fifties, as old, or even older, than their own mothers, and my extra weight makes me lumber, not limber.
For years I’ve tried making excuses for them, but I’m running dry; I want to think well of them, but I just don’t know how to explain their oblivion. Shame scorches me, but I’m not quite sure why: is it my own shame at being rendered so irrelevant, or is it the shame I feel as the physical capacities I once took for granted now fail me?
In a rush to get things done, in a rush to get things beautiful, in a rush to get things thin, in a city where most people know it as a laid-back non-judgmental place, Los Angeles is the greatest judgment capitol in the world. We judge age, weight, body form, and we alter it to play a part. We don
Last week I wondered why the head of American Jewish University’s rabbinics program publishes photos of himself in jeans and a tye-dye t-shirt. Can you imagine Saul Lieberman doing that?
I also wonder why recent rabbi-graduates of Ziegler think it is OK to chew gum in shul?
I was at Temple Beth Am on erev Shuvuot and right next to me in the pews was a new rabbi chewing gum.
Half the crowd was dressed casually, as though they were about to join in a game of softball.
I wonder if they would dress that way if they were about to meet the Queen of England or the President of the United States? What if they were to attend the Oscars? I think not. This means that they accord more respect to these goyisha things than to the study of Torah.
Rabbi Adam Kligfeld of Beth Am suggested there be a pushke attached to every bencher. He seems to think that if affluent people were more generous, there’d be less hunger in the world. This is nonsense. The only hungry people in the Western world are nutters or addicts. People are only hungry in the third world because they have despotic leaders who choose to keep them hungry.
There is no hunger in the world that is the result of rich people who are insufficiently generous.
Tom emails: “Mr. Ford, I’m a long-time reader of your work and I am aware that you’ve gone through two different conversions and figured you might have some insight to my question. I recently converted to reform Judaism and for the sake of brevity, my question is this: what gift should I give my Rabbi for his help?”
Posted inRabbis|Comments Off on An Amazon Gift Certificate?
Living in Brooklyn, especially in Boro Park, and being off the derech is like wearing the invisible scarlet letters “OTD” on your chest. Everybody knows you are otd, but nobody really wants to talk about it. It’s a very uncomfortable subject for people. We are out there, walking amongst you, and each of us has a unique story to tell. Going off the derech is often a life choice we make when we are too young to understand what life choices really mean. I made the choice when I was too young, but I had a very good reason.
Nataly: “I always read Heshy’s blog. I found it very funny and interesting. One day I wrote it up and thought, this would be really funny if other people could read it.”
“Everyone’s been telling me that I should write a book.”
Luke: “Are you a tomboy?”
Nataly: “I’m totally not. I’ve always sucked at sports. I’m very girly. That’s why I put that picture up, to make people laugh. Nataly’s drilling. I’m a very big girly girl.”
Luke: “When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?”
Nataly: “It changed every day. One day I wanted to write for a fashion magazine. At another point, I wanted to be a businesswoman. At another point, I wanted to be an actress.”
Luke: “You were always sure you did not want to be Orthodox?”
Nataly: “Yeah. From a really young age, like eight or nine, even though my family was.
“I have a younger sister. She’s also not religious.”
Luke: “What were your parents thinking living with all these people?”
Nataly: “They didn’t have a choice [because of poverty and illegal immigrant status]. I always asked them, why couldn’t we just live in a tiny little apartment by ourselves?”
Luke: “I can’t imagine. It sounds like hell.”
Nataly: “It wasn’t hell. I really didn’t think much of it until I got a lot older. I always accepted it. OK, we have to share the bathroom with ten people, with interesting characters. It wasn’t hell. It was interesting.”
Luke: “Have you stayed in touch with anyone from that house?”
Nataly: “Oh God no.”
Luke: “What keeps you living in Boro Park?”
Nataly: “Cheap rent. I live on the same block I grew up on, only a couple of doors down. I pay $700 for a one-bedroom, utilities included.”
“I went to an all-girls yeshiva until the middle of 11th grade when I finally dropped out and went to public school. I was such an outcast in [yeshiva] and I had no friends and I couldn’t take it. I begged my mother to let me go to another school. The rest of my family didn’t know about it. They still don’t.”
Luke: “Were you always unpopular at yeshiva?”
Nataly: “Oh yeah, I was totally unpopular. I had no friends. They all thought I was the biggest freak. I don’t blame them. I was dressed badly. When everyone had bat mitzvahs, I was too poor to buy presents. My mother refused to give me any money, so I’d go to the 99c store and buy a cheap little thing to give them. Nobody would talk to me. They were all these little rich spoiled girls. I was different. It was horrible. As the grades went up, it got worse.
“In yeshiva, you had such a small class, maybe 30 kids in the whole grade. Everyone is really cliquey. If it is a private school, they all come from money. If you are not like them, it’s brutal.”
Luke: “What were the most common things kids would say to you?”
Nataly: “It wasn’t what they would say. They would just ignore me… Just stares and eye rolls and silent treatment. Just typical immature girl stuff.”
Luke: “How about the rabbis and the parents of your classmates? Did they make much effort to integrate you socially?”
Nataly: “I was always kinda acting up. The rabbis considered me a handful. I was failing. They were dealing with that. Socially, they never made an effort. I don’t have any memory of the other parents. I had a feeling that they told their kids to avoid me.”
Luke: “Did anyone say you should be in therapy?”
Nataly: “My parents didn’t believe in therapy. Maybe it’s a religious thing. Obviously the teachers suggested it.”
Luke: “At what age did you start thinking — my religion sucks?”
Nataly: “At a really early age, eight to ten. It was not for me. I never felt like I fit in with the religious people.”
Luke: “Until what age did you live at this house?”
Nataly: “Possibly until I was 19. I’m 25 today.”
Luke: “Was there anything you loved about living there?”
Nataly: “Not at all.”
Luke: “Was there anything you loved about your childhood?”
Nataly: “My parents did the best they could. As far as childhood’s go, I’d categorize it as crappy… As I was growing up, I accepted it as that’s how life is.”
Luke: “Did the guys in this house, did they hit on you?”
Nataly: “Oh no. No, no, no. God no.”
Luke: “Why not?”
Nataly: “I don’t know. You’d think that two girls growing up in that situation that that might come up. Thank God it never did.”
Luke: “What was public school like?”
Nataly: “I loved it. I could be myself. I made two, three really good friends. It was awesome. I wish I would’ve gone my whole high school to this school.”
Luke: “Did you have good friends before public school?”
Nataly: “I had maybe one girl who talked to me out of pity. I never had any friends growing up.”
Luke: “Did you have imaginary friends?”
Nataly: “No. I was always kind of a loner, so it never really bothered me. I was always in my imagination. I was always in my own little world.”
Luke: “What did you dream about?”
Nataly: “Shopping. Being able to afford to buy things. It was usually centered on — what if I won a million dollars? What would I do when I got my independence?”
Luke: “Did you dream of revenge?”
Nataly: “I thought I’d go out in the world and be successful and that would be my revenge because I would just show everybody that I am not what they think I am.”
After high school, Nataly got a degree in Business from Brooklyn College. “I pretty much worked my butt off [in bookkeeping]. I make a living. I have a good group of friends. I have an amazing boyfriend. Hopefully we will be taking the next step soon. I’ve traveled. I lived in Israel for a while.”
Luke: “When did you bloom and become cute?”
Nataly: “I had braces on until I was 21. I was a really ugly kid. I always wanted to be a blonde. I’d take this stuff called Sun-In and put it in my jet-black hair and it would turn it orange. I spent most of my childhood with orange hair… I did a lot of crazy stuff to make what I thought was prettier.”
Luke: “How old were you when you first kissed a boy?”
Nataly: “I was 16. I was very shy until I snuck out one night with one of my friends. We met a group of boys. She dared me to kiss him. It was very unromantic.”
Luke: “How old were you the first time you did it and you liked it?”
Nataly: “No comment.”
“In public school, all my friends were Jewish. They weren’t religious.”
Luke: “What surprised you about life off the derech?”
Nataly: “The way people interacted with each other. I came from such a sheltered environment. I grew up with the idea that people who weren’t Jewish were bad and scary and no-good. That’s the mindset that a lot of religious people have… It’s us and them.
“When I walk around Boro Park today and I wear pants, nobody [frum] talks to me. It’s us and them… When people who are ultra-religious [Jews] think that you are not Jewish, they aren’t nice to you.”
Luke: “What have you found you’re good at?”
Nataly: “I found I was good at comedy so I took some improv classes. I love to paint and to dance. I’ve fallen in love with non-Jewish music.”
“I struggle a lot, especially around the holidays, I do feel guilty for my lifestyle. That I’m not religious and I should be. If I were religious, what would my life be like? When you are religious, your life is very structured. You know exactly what path to follow. It’s a wilderness out there. It’s like you are feeling around in the dark. You have to discover things for yourself. It’s scary sometimes.”
Luke: “What’s your relationship with God been like over the years?”
Nataly: “It’s been on and off. I still have mezuzot on my door. I still keep kosher. I say shmai yisrael every night. I don’t keep Shabbat. I light. I keep a lot of things because it feels like second nature. People say that if you believe in God, you believe in the Torah. Obviously the way I’m living is against the Torah. I struggle with that.”
Luke: “What type of people do you gravitate towards?”
Nataly: “People who are outcasts. Loners. People who are different or interesting. When people are too normal, I don’t think I could click with them.”
Luke: “In which ways did your Orthodox upbringing prepare you for life and in which ways did it not?”
Nataly: “It totally didn’t prepare me for life. Unless you live in an Orthodox community, the skill sets you are brought up with are completely useless. I basically had to discover everything on my own.”
Luke: “There should be an organization to help people transition from Orthodox Judaism.”
Nataly: “There should. How to open a bank account. How to write a resume. How to go on a job interview.”
Luke: “How to go on a date.”
Nataly: “How to interact with people. Even to this day I am totally awkward around the opposite sex. Even though I have a boyfriend, I don’t know how to interact with men.”
Luke: “Are there any Jewish texts that still speak to you?”
Nataly: “No… I do go to shiurs every once in a while but it’s more like a comfort thing, rather than a I-want-to-learn-Torah thing. Usually women only. I wear skirts. I try to blend in.”
Luke: “How big a problem has guilt been for you?”
Nataly: “It’s been huge.”
Luke: “What are your dominant emotions towards Judaism?”
Nataly: “I like it. It’s just not for me.”
Khunrum emails: “That was an interesting story. Luke, you look like a Rabbi (somewhat). Why don’t you become a Meshulach and go round asking for tzedakah (which I presume is funding). Try a different neighborhood where they don’t know you. Good Idea?”
Bob emails: “Knock. Knock. “Sorry to trouble you, but I was wondering if you could spare a few dollars so I might purchase a razor to deal with my Rip VanWinkle beard?” Might work…”
Khunrum emails: “Hello! I’m “Luke the Meshulach”. I live in poverty, my neighbors think I’m nuts, women run from me, rabbis bounce me out of their shuls. I need funding for Alexander studies to improve my posture.”
When you meet someone and you can’t tell if the person is a male or a female, it bothers you.
I think Freud noted that you may remember nothing about a person except whether he is male or female.
Yale professor of Psychology Paul Bloom says in his new book — How Pleasure Works: The new science of why we like what we like — that when he gets an email from someone with a foreign-name, it unsettles him when he can’t figure out whether the person is male or female.
Dennis Prager said on his radio show today: “I have compassion for any man who feels like he needs to wear a dress. The left says because an individual wants to work out his issues, society must bend to that person’s issue.”
What kind of person calls himself by his initials? Only posers do this.
I guess plain old “Anthony Scott” is just not dramatic enough for A. O. Scott.
You can see it in his writing. He loves big words and portentous statements and left-wing politics.
He writes about Robin Hood starring Russell Crowe: “You may have heard that Robin Hood stole from the rich and gave to the poor, but that was just liberal media propaganda. This Robin is no socialist bandit practicing freelance wealth redistribution, but rather a manly libertarian rebel striking out against high taxes and a big government scheme to trample the ancient liberties of property owners and provincial nobles.”
On his radio show Friday, Dennis Prager says: “I react to the New York Times dismissal of it for these reasons by saying, I have to see it. You don’t know how often I’ve bought books or seen movies because of LA Times or New York Times dismissal of it. Unless they say boring.”
Rodger Jacobs emails:
Luke, Luke, Luke,
You write:
“How pretentious is that? A.O. Scott? Only posers do this.”
You know, for someone who is a self-professed “intellectual” (highly doubtful but we will let that slide for now) you might check your wit and intellect at the door sometimes before spouting off. Because if we are to take you at your word, then all of the following authors are “posers”:
T.S. Eliot
D.H. Lawrence
E.E. Cummings
H.G. Wells
F. Scott Fitzgerald
T.C. Boyle
J.M. Coetzee
A.A. Milne
M.F.K. Fisher
A.B. Guthrie
A.M. Homes
B.F. Skinner
C.S. Forester
C.S. Lewis
E.L. Doctorow
H.P. Lovecraft
I.F. Stone
J.G. Ballard
L. Frank Baum
J.M. Barrie
J.R.R. Tolkien
P.G. Wodehouse
S.E. Hinton
T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia)
W.B. Yeats
W. Somerset Maugham
W.E.B. DuBois
W.H. Auden
V.S. Naipaul
That’s all I could think of off the top of my head. What a batch of posers, eh?
"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff)
