I had just decided to keep Shabbos from now on, only to discover that my family had been invited to a pool party for the weekend. Uh, rain check, G-d?
My parents brought a few principles with them when they left Israel and settled in America. We had yearly Pesach Seders and separate dishes for meat and dairy. (We didn’t necessarily have kosher food on those dishes.) Another thing they brought was a fear of the American public education system. That’s how I ended up in yeshivah and in religious day camps. And that’s what led to my strange quasi-religious act: I so badly wanted to join the cool (but nice) clique in camp that I walked the walk and shuckeled the shuckel, at least on the surface.
I vaguely let these religious girls know that I was more observant than my family, which only made the welcome warmer and served to make me feel like a lying slug.
I didn’t really mean to deceive them. It was more like a lie by omission. They didn’t know that when I put on a skirt in the morning, I was pulling it from a closet full of pants and shorts. That when I hung up the phone after wishing them “good Shabbos”, the table in my home wasn’t set, there were no candles about to be lit, and my family was most likely going out to eat. I didn’t offer that information. But at a certain point after spending time with these quality girls, I decided that I wanted to be like them. I was going to be religious and observe halachah just the way they did.
Let’s just say it didn’t go over too well. When I went to friends for Shabbos, I knew this was the life I wanted to lead, but commitment seemed impossible. There was the Erev Shabbos I decided right then and there to keep Shabbos from now on, only to discover that my family had been invited to a pool party for the weekend. Uh, rain check, G-d? Or the wardrobe I slowly tried to convert to halachic standards, only to find the perfect mini skirt that I just had to have.
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