“I wish I could present myself as I am without feeling ashamed of something that’s really not shameful at all”
I’ve been Torah-observant for over 20 years. As any baal teshuvah knows, the transition from one worldview to another is an intense and all-consuming upheaval — even for someone like me, who never quite found her footing in the secular world. And although I appreciate that you value my decision and self-sacrifice — at least in theory — you’ll never really grasp how the nuances of my choice to commit myself to a Torah lifestyle influence my life in an ongoing way, even decades later.
In any new social setting (since I have no personal mesorah to rely on), I’m scanning for unspoken cues. At the girls’ school, makeup is expected. At the cheder, it’s considered too modern. At shul, either is fine. What style of dress? What colors? What topics of conversation? A newcomer entering the frum world walks through life like a minesweeper, constantly checking for potential pitfalls and challenges in day-to-day interactions.
You can’t imagine how many details there are to pick up. I cringe when I hear overconfident baalei teshuvah getting it wrong — like the smiling newlywed who announced proudly to a group of women, “I just got up from sheva brachos.” Even the ubiquitous and seemingly benign Jewish geography conversation is a hazard for baalei teshuvah who may not want to share their background with someone they’ve only just met, because how can they possibly not know the Goldbergs?! Rabbi Goldberg raised thousands of dollars for the new shul, and his wife does so much chesed in the community!
I don’t blame you for not getting it; you grew up in this world and can’t imagine anything else. By “you,” of course, I don’t mean you, personally; I mean “you,” the frum world as a whole, which gives us newcomers big smiles of welcome — at the same time that you don’t want us to marry into your families. You, who speak in glowing generalities about the neshamos of Klal Yisrael who are coming back, but aren’t quite sure how to actually have a conversation with us that goes deeper than superficial chitchat. I’m not naive or stupid. I understand the challenges, and you’re rightfully cautious of the influences we grew up with that, undetected, could seep into our families and compromise Torah values. I don’t blame you for wanting to be careful.
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