matcha do about nothing

“She did what girls generally do when they don't feel the part: she dressed it instead.”― Zadie Smith, from On Beauty

I like subtitling my little entries with a quote, like it’s an episode of Criminal Minds.

Here are a few things I’ve been thinking about, reading, watching, drawing, etc.

Do they even make lesbian tradwives?

My mother wants to know so here is AI’s answer with the below image…

I’ve become a fermenting goddess since making aliyah back to Columbus, Ohio. I’ve been making all sorts of things, from sourdough bagels to vegan kimchi. My mother might kill me if I keep this flour hobby up too close to Pesach, she’s already assembling her arsenal of matzo meal and coffee cake mixes.

Since being home for several weeks now I’ve had a lot of time to think, which is incredibly boring and incredibly dangerous. I’ve thought about the past 6 months of my life, the future 60 or so years I have left and everything in between. I’ve thought about the difference between a murder and an assassination (Webster says, murder specifically implies premeditation and therefore full moral responsibility. Assassinate applies to deliberate killing openly or secretly often for political motives, i.e. Murder - JonBenet Ramsey, Assassinate - John Lennon, or the guy Luigi Mangione killed). I’ve thought about what I’d look like if I bleached my eyebrows (see the horror below). The good thing about most of these questions is that Reddit and TikTok and ChatGPT usually have the answers. But Reddit and Tiktok and ChatGPT can’t tell me what I’m supposed to do for the rest of my life, only a magic 8 ball can do that.

It’s hard for me to verbalize all the things I experienced from August to January this past year. It feels a bit like a blur, a dream, a haze. I felt like I was in a space station looking down on the earth and my life and the lives as others as time simply passed but in a different way. I am hesitant, even now, to put words to the experience since it feels beyond words. Alas documentation is the only way to really move on. It’s time to put pen to paper, fingers to laptop, stilus to iPad, to start healing and start growing.

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When I embarked on this “journey” (aka leaving my life in LA selling everything I own and moving to Israel during the most violent war in generations) I thought I would be confronting something, coming to terms with a past version of myself. I guess this was one of the reasons I felt drawn to Israel, that was the first time I had been independent. I wanted to see if the same 18 year old girl was still in me or if I left her behind in the cold stone of the Old City.

For years, I have found a home for myself in progressive Jewish spaces where so many parts of my identity are welcomed and championed, a thing I never imagined possible in the orthodox world from which I came. I fell in love with my Judaism again, hosting queer shabbat dinners and learning to read Torah trope. In that though, I had to accept that my family, my upbringing and a devotion to Halacha were not as valued. By this I mean, my Orthodox upbringing and my understanding of Jewish tradition were looked at as odd, different, unusual. I didn’t know who Debbie Friedman was and I felt weird seeing a woman in a tallis or using microphones on Shabbat. I was not observant, but my Judaism was still marked by Orthodoxy. It took a while to understand and come to terms with the differences of my community at home and the community I was trying to find and build for myself in LA.

Still, my lack of observance and my sexual identity were welcomed with open arms in these communities. I have felt, over the years, a very strong conflict of reconciling my identities and my communities. I’ve learned over this long journey, that no one place can satisfy one’s cravings of belonging for every part of oneself. I have long been in search of this thing, this community where all parts of myself are welcomed. What I’ve learned is that, that is not possible. Even when communities think they are all-inclusive, they are not. There will always be a norm, and there will always be people who don’t fit into it. In reality, community is just like Brandy Melville - one size fits most.

We must, as a result, check parts of ourselves off at the door. Whether this means I wear a skirt to my parents’ Shul and politely decline setups with kind men or purposely not telling people at another Shul my brother served in the Israeli army and my mother wears a sheitl (wig). Either way, I am concealing parts of myself for the comfort of others to maintain the community’s guise of “inclusivity.” In my opinion, no community is actually inclusive. When I say community, I mean religious or social groups. This includes Shuls and dyke nights and softball teams and improv groups, etc. However, two massive parts of my identity are my interests in Orthodox Judaism and being gay. No matter where I go, one of these things has to be hidden. In a more progressive Shul, my orthodox upbringing is seen as oppressive and limiting. In an orthodox Shul, my queerness is either gone unmentioned or ignored.

I’ve learned to be a liquid in most communal settings, to fill the container in which you put me in. I can flow and blend in, but sometimes, I freeze, I stick to the shape I was born into. So maybe I speak yeshivish or kiss the door frame, so what? But as someone who was in the closet for as long as I was, I am no stranger to hiding parts of myself. Maybe hiding is a defense mechanism, a way of passing or blending in out of fear of being called out for being different.

I’ve learned that “inclusive” does not apply to all, inclusivity is no different that exclusivity, it just has a better marketing team.

Consumptions of the week

1. Currently eating: So much sourdough - Homemade blueberry sourdough scones were great fresh out the oven with good butter and homemade jam

2. Currently reading: The Devil in the White City, On Settler Colonialism, Kissing Girls on Shabbat

3. Currently listening: Julien Baker and Torres (seeing them in Athens next week!) HAIM, the colors freeze dance song that I play for my preschoolers

4. Currently watching: White Lotus, Survivor, Summer House (season 1, waiting for Ciara from Traitors to come on)

5. Currently obsessing: bath salts (the kind in the bath not the drug kind), the hydrangeas in the garden section at Lowe’s, a crisp blue button down