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Friday October 6, 2006

Up from assimilation: How I confronted my own prejudices

by janet silver ghent

As a child, I lived in a largely Jewish New York neighborhood, but I wasn’t allowed to wear a Jewish star. “Why do you need to walk around with a sign that says, ‘I am Jewish’?” my mother would ask me.

My father — like his father before him — would have a fit if he heard me use a Yiddish expression, and at my cousin’s bar mitzvah, when he saw me dancing the hora, he shook his head in disapproval.

In college, my parents wanted me to join the Jewish students group — to meet Jewish guys — but they let me know they didn’t care about Judaism. They prided themselves on being assimilated Americans. Later when I “came out” as a Jew and wore a chai, my father wanted to know why I needed to be so public.

Yet despite the chai around my neck and the mezuzahs on my doorposts, I still had some prejudices against people who looked “too Jewish.” At best, I viewed men with black hats and payes, and women in long skirts who covered their heads, as anthropological anomalies.

I was quick to dissociate myself from that kind of Jewish, yet I was curious. In northern Israel a few months ago, I wasn’t the only one to click my camera surreptitiously when we spotted Chassidic boys hiking in long black coats and schoolgirls who splashed in the water fully dressed in long skirts and long-sleeved shirts.

But when I returned to classes at De Anza College in Cupertino, I began to look at people in another light. At the lunch tables, I would see young Muslim women wearing headscarves or hijabs. If I could accept many shades of American, why did I stare at Orthodox women shopping at Mollie Stone’s in Palo Alto? Did I think Jewish was unattractive?

Confronting my prejudices, I called a couple of rebbetzins, Hinda Langer of Chabad of S.F. and Dena Levin of Chabad of the Greater South Bay in Palo Alto.

How do you feel about looking different? I asked. Is it modesty, pride or both?

Langer, who directs San Francisco’s Shalom School and Beis Menachem Day School, said Chassidic dress is “more of a challenge for men, and people do look at my husband twice.”

Nonetheless, she added, “I have a friend who was brought up in Marin and for her it was a huge issue. She didn’t feel Jewish was beautiful.”

Growing up in Brooklyn, albeit in a non-observant home, Langer said her feelings about looking Jewish were “never an issue. … I think for people brought up in California, it’s a bigger challenge.

“I’m proud that I’m Jewish and very proud of the way I dress. I think my girls are also… It is an honor to dress this way.

“It’s not about wanting to be different than everybody on the planet. I do feel that I’m living in a culture in 2006 that degrades women. I imagine that maybe Muslim women feel this way too.”

Levin, who grew up Lubavitch, said she never thought of herself as looking particularly different. “I wear a wig, but nobody knows it’s a wig.” But when she and her daughters have “walked the dish,” a popular trail in the Stanford hills, they’ve been asked, “Why are you wearing skirts?” And when she’s gone river rafting, “people look at me as if I’m a little bit off.”

But those stares don’t seem to faze her. Like Langer, she feels that pride and modesty go hand in hand. “We think that people who dress in a way to expose themselves are not exactly showing pride.

“The Sefer Torah is a holy thing,” she continued. “It’s covered and not exposed. The body is a holy vessel, and you’re not going to overexpose it, leave it around uncovered. You don’t leave your diamonds laying around.”

Thank God there are many ways to be Jewish. While I wouldn’t be caught dead in bottom-baring pants and revealing tops, I rarely wear long skirts. But then again, my precious “diamonds” are not on my body. They came out from under their wrappings when I reconnected to Judaism.

Janet Silver Ghent, former senior editor of j., is a freelance writer/editor living in Palo Alto. She can be reached at ghentwriter@gmail.com.

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