BY AVITAL CHIZHIK-GOLDSCHMIDT
It’s summer, and that means the inevitable stares on the subway, the street, the grocery lines.
“It’s 90 degrees, and you’re wearing long sleeves?”
Welcome to the life of the religious woman. I find myself constantly explaining my Orthodox Jewish customs, defending my faith, representing something larger than myself, even in a city with a large minority of people who share my faith.
“Why do you have to suffer underneath all that clothing?” sales associates ask, carefully, as I look for a modest dress.
“Why can’t you just be normal?” my braver, blunter secular relatives ask, caressing my wig.
It’s inevitable, in a secular world that cannot bring itself to understand, or at least respect, the values of the religious other.
The debate roiling over the Bedford Ave. public pool in Williamsburg offering several hours weekly to women’s-only swim, accommodating local Orthodox Jewish women, has gotten especially ugly. Separate women’s hours, the New York Times proclaimed in an editorial, carries the “odor of religious intrusion.”
(DIN:Interesting to note that the same New York Times wrote an editorial, last week, praising Canada for allowing separate swimming for Muslims)
Read on:
