Hats

Women in the frum community cover their hair after they get married. It's halacha (Jewish law,) the explanation of which is longer than I want to get into right now, so let's just acknowledge this as fact. Orthodox women cover their hair.

They use scarves, hats, wigs, and (ugly) snoods. Depending on the community, some wear only scarves, only wigs, only hats, and even only wigs with a hat on top. I never understood that one - it seemed kind of deceptive to me to be wearing a hat on top of a wig, which could be mistaken as the real hair that the woman is trying to cover with her hat.

Personally, I like hats. Not for covering my hair (unless you count bad hair days) but just because I like hats.

That doesn't mean that when I get married I'm going to wear hats to cover my hair; in fact, I plan to wear -- very expensive, very authentic-looking -- wigs when I get married.

But you can't say, "I like hats," in the frum community without getting a barrage of comments about covering your hair for marriage.

Case in point: I visited some cousins in Israel during the summer a few years ago and happened to be wearing a hat. It was sunny and the hat was cute, so I wore it. As girls tend to do, I asked my cousin, "So, how does this hat look?" and instead of telling me whether she liked the hat, she said:

"Don't wear it. You look married."

Seriously? I'm supposed to give up wearing hats because someone might mistake me for being a married woman? Oh, the horror.

I haven't given it up, and neither have the double-takes that people I know give me when they see me wearing a hat. Just a few weeks ago I was wearing a hat in the supermarket and bumped into the husband of a friend of mine. It was raining hard that day, which should have been enough to keep him from standing there blinking at me owlishly, but it wasn't.

"Did you get married?" he asked me.

"Nope. It's raining. I like wearing hats," I answered him. "And that's hat discrimination!"

Wedding Woes for Singles

It's traditional in the frum world for older siblings to get married before their younger ones. Sometimes, though, the older siblings pass their 21st year without getting married (a horrible tragedy,) and the younger siblings decide to get married before them.

When this happens, it's usually pretty difficult for the older siblings. Having just experienced it myself, (my baby brother just got married - now you know why I've been AWOL for a good while,) I've gained a little insight into this difficulty.

My brother informed me that he was getting engaged by inching his way into my room and saying, "Would you be excited if I got engaged?"

My immediate response was, "Uh... No!" but seeing his face fall, I quickly added, "But I want you to be happy, so if you're happy, I'll be happy." And that was that.

I smiled and laughed with him and his fiance when they came back from his proposal but soon afterwards starting to feel the hurt that I've heard of so often when people talk about their younger siblings getting married.

I needed to do a little soul-searching to figure out why it was so difficult for me to see my younger brother get married. What I discovered was - and I'm not proud to say this - jealousy. Not of getting married, but of the attention that the community gives to brides and grooms. A wedding is usually the most extravagant celebration in a frum person's life. From the *takes a deep breath* engagement party\ies to the bridal showers, to the groom's Sabbath celebration, to the bride's Sabbath celebration, to the wedding, to the seven days of partying after the wedding *let's out breath* it's a party-palooza with all the focus on the bride and groom.

As for those of us who haven't been married, we have to watch as our contemporaries get married, then our younger friends, then the younger kids who we barely know because they're so much younger, and we have to watch time and time again as they are celebrated just for tying the knot. Meanwhile, we go to these celebrations and, at best, get blessings of, "G-d willing by you very soon!" and at worst get stared and whispered at.

We could get college degrees, go to graduate school, become doctors and lawyers and accomplished musicians, but no matter what we do, as long as we remain single in the frum community, we won't ever get a chance for the spotlight.

Coming up next: Advice for how to survive your younger sibling's wedding in the frum world.

Bad News is Everywhere

"Bad news is everywhere, shut my eyes, shut my ears and mouth; cause I know there's a better day coming blowing in from the North and the South." 

-Moshav Band

It's a terrible truth that bad things are everywhere. It was news of one of these bad things that made me question, as I tend to do, the the frum community's practice of marrying of their children when they're extremely young. 

The "news" was of a very young married girl who suffered a miscarriage. A horrible thing to happen under any circumstances, but when I heard of this particular case (not that it was the first that I'd heard) I found myself thinking about how horrible it was for this girl, who really is still a child herself, to have suffered such a tragedy. I asked myself, "Why are parents so eager to throw their children into the 'real world' by marrying them off so young? Yes, the wedding is a great simcha and it's a wonderful thing to celebrate, but what about after the wedding? Once married, these young children cannot be protected from the evils of the world anymore."

With bad news being everywhere, yesterday I heard another piece of "news" that broke my heart. Without going into details, a young girl in the frum community got married and almost immediately found out that her new husband was not who she thought he was. They are now discussing divorce.

This girl is still practically a child yet she is already faced with a failing marriage. She, who was sheltered in the frum community all her life, has been intimately exposed to a person and a situation that she could have been protected from if her parents had just let her have a few more years to grow up. Maybe if she'd had a little more life experience she would have been able to recognize the signs in the man who is now her husband, and the marriage could have been prevented. 

Her wedding was a great and joyous occasion, and as long as it was all lace and chocolate decadence everything was wonderful, but the "honeymoon" ended all too soon, and now the wedding is being seen as a tragedy for this girl who now has to deal with things that no child should have to deal with. 

In some frum communities there is, "a better day coming, blowing in from the North and the South," where getting married a little later (at 22, or 23 - young, huh?) is becoming more acceptable, but there are still so many communities that run to marry off their children in their teens. 

Parents, I'm begging you to look ahead for your child and consider that maybe they need to be eased into real life, instead of thrown into it abruptly with marriage. A beautiful wedding, while wonderful, is not enough to ease that transition. Children need a chance to grow up a little bit before they are married off and are immediately expected to act like adults. Think past the simcha of the engagement and the wedding (no, I'm not talking about grandchildren) and consider whether your child could use a little more time as a child before they have to start having children of their own. 

Do you need a man to have a life?

You know what’s a really annoying thing about being a woman in the frum world? Being taught all your life that right after high school you’ll go to seminary and right (or soon) after seminary you’ll get married so that you can have a family and fulfill your purpose as a Jewish woman. Sure, it’s a nice idea, but no one seems to talk about what happens if you don’t get married. I guess that life without a man just isn’t an option. (Which is ridiculously ironic after you’ve been told all your life to stay far away from them, but that’s another story.)

Those of us who don’t get married immediately after seminary are given the option of working within the frum community, because working out of the frum community would have a bad influence on us. Usually the jobs available are: being a teacher or, alternatively, a teacher’s assistant. The reason why these jobs are available are because the frum Jewish schools don’t require that you have any sort of experience or skills for them.

Ridiculous, I know, but when I informed the principal of a preschool in the neighborhood who contacted me about a job position that I had zero experience with children, she said, “That’s fine.” That was a month or two after I left seminary and I ended up working in that school for two years until I realized the reason why they didn’t care that I had no experience: because it meant that they could pay me dirt-wages. Someone with experience wants to be paid more than they’re willing to offer.

I discovered this when I asked for a raise after two years and they informed me that that wasn’t an option. I left, realizing that I would soon be replaced with another gal straight out of seminary. Latest I heard, there are girls years younger than me who are now teaching in that school. I was an assistant with no experience; they’re teachers with no experience. I’ve warned everyone I know with kids to keep their children far away from that school.

It all worked out well for me because I got a better job with a better salary, but when I bumped into my high school principal at a wedding (of a classmate) and told him I was running a website, I’m pretty sure that the look he gave me was not one of approval.

That wedding was not a fun experience for me. Right now, I can’t even remember whose wedding it was. All I remember was seeing a number of my former classmates wearing the wigs that symbolize their married-status and wondering why they were giving me these strange smiles when they said hello to me. It didn’t take long to realize that I was getting the infamous, “Oh-it’s-so- sad- that- she’s- still- single,” Look. I was 21 at the time.

Yes, at age 21 I was nearing the status of, “old-maid” in the frum world. Now, at 23, I’m positively ancient. Showing up to my 18 year-old sister’s graduation and having girls years younger holding their babies giving me the Look… That really (pardon my French) pissed me off.

So what’s with this attitude of needing to be married to have a life? Is that as obnoxiously chauvinistic as I think it is?