Kissing Girls on Shabbat
by Dr Sara Glass
Simon & Schuster
Growing up in an ultra-orthodox Hasidic part of Brooklyn’s Borough Park as Malka, Sara knew that what she wanted and what was expected of her were in impossible opposition to each other, and there was no way to escape the confines of her ultra-religious upbringing.
The first part of Dr Sara Glass’s brave memoir is titled “Watch Me Burn”. On the outside, Sara looked like all the other college-aged Orthodox Jewish young women. She participated in the Shidduch process to meet her future husband and prepare for her true purpose in life – bearing children.
But Sara had met dark-eyed Dassa and she couldn’t understand why she felt love she had been taught to hate. “All love, except the love of God, was suspect, but one kind of love was singled out for extra damnation: loving someone of your own sex.”
At nineteen, Sara agreed to an arranged marriage because all the teachings told her that giving her life in service of a husband was the only way to reach closeness with God. At the time, she knew that no man was ever going to replace Dassa. Her soul wanted to be with God but her heart wanted Dassa.
The secular world of university had shown Sara how ignorant her sheltered upbringing had left her but, although she gradually started seeing things through newly opened eyes, the entrenched lessons, and people behind those lessons, continued to control her life.
Going from being looked after by her father to living with her husband meant that Sara lacked many of the basic skills needed to survive and take control of her life. Dare she disobey the most important rules that a kosher woman obeys the will of her husband? What about the Jewish law that mandated that she be heterosexual?
The second part of the memoir gets darker, much darker, as Sara tries to leave the marriage with her two children. Ostracised by much of the community and her family, Sara learns by making incredibly bad choices while there is the constant fear that her children will be taken from her.
It is a long and difficult journey before Sara is able to finally be true to herself and a brief overview does not do this incredibly compelling book justice.
The book is a huge insight into the restrictive lives of ultra-conservative Orthodox Jewish communities; how intrusive religion is on every aspect of women’s lives and how sheltered females are under the rigid patriarchal control of a demanding God.
This therapist and doctor of psychotherapy writes how she managed to vanquish a lifetime of silence and fear to become an independent sexual being, a self-determined woman and someone who made sure that her children would not be indoctrinated by a damaging belief system.
Lezly Herbert
