“He Who Acquires Wisdom”

[Reflections]

It began to irk me as a young 14 year old, still still early on in “the system,” still idealistic and naive about yeshiva and Lubavitch.  I was the first of my classmates to get one, which made me feel weird, uncomfortable, and different. I never felt superior or special because of it, rather I always felt awkward.

As time went on, I became part of the majority who had it, as opposed to the minority. But that was only in the system; outside of the system it still made me feel strange. It labeled me as a religious man, a rabbi, a fanatic, things that I am not.

However much knowledge I acquired of sports, politics, and secular music, I still felt different. I could sit in a bar and have a discussion about the Mets and drink a beer, but as much as I aspired to fit in, there was always this that set me apart. When I went home in order to be liberated from the system for a little while, I would put on a t-shirt and a baseball cap to go to the mall, but even that would not shake the feeling that I was different because of it.

When I traveled to a Slifkin lecture titled “How to (Not) be a Heretic,” it caused me to be  labeled as a Chasid, a Charedi, a fanatic, when in reality some of my views about religion are heretical even by their standards .

Sitting in a Modern Orthodox shul in Teaneck with people who were similar to me haskafically, I  realized it was a barrier that hashkafa couldn’t break. Sitting in that shul I felt like an alien amongst men, a foreigner amongst citizens.

I remember a time when I would have prided myself on being the only one to have it, wore it as a badge of honor, but now it is just a relic of my past, chains that bind me to a world that I don’t relate to anymore and feel much anger towards.

Many women, when writing about ridding themselves of their sheitels, express a small twinge of pain about losing a “part of themselves.” I cannot imagine feeling that way about losing it , but I guess they couldn’t imagine feeling that way either beforehand.

The only trace of having it that I can imagine is, sometimes stroking it absent mindedly while deep in thought.