Check out my shun gun

So last night I ended up having a conversation with someone over what I found appealing about the Amish. I was actually too embarrassed to admit what I most like about the Amish, and instead the person talking to me assumed it had something to do with the simple lifestyle. But what do I actually love and admire about the Amish?

Shunning.
I love the concept. “You have done something so offensive in my eyes that I’m not even going to acknowledge your existence.”

“I HAVE NO SON!”

Granted, I could never live without my iTunes collection or DVD collection, or even my laptop simply for writing….but I love the idea of shunning. Just imagine. It’s like the biggest communal “fuck you!” I can possibly think of.




Can we also talk about the fact that yesterday it got REALLY hot? Yesterday I went for a stroll up near the UN base thing, and I was expecting it to be chilly and….Jesus, Mary and Joseph it was boiling. Can we talk about the fact that only a couple days ago I was wearing my North Face jacket that I used in Chicago winters, that our classroom was so cold that we shivered constantly?


So I’ve mentioned on this blog that one of my brothers has found religion. Actually, BOTH have found religion, but one has found Orthodox Judaism. Anyway, as I believe I mentioned on this blog a couple months ago, either over Thanksgiving or Christmas break he started telling me that I should be wearing a skirt at all times.

Anyway, I just remembered that a couple years ago, really not so long ago, we were going on a family walk one Saturday morning through the Orthodox neighborhood that is about a block or two from where I lived and grew up. Given the timing of our walk, EVERYONE on the sidewalk was Orthodox, either a man in a suit and a yarmulke or a woman in long sleeves and a long skirt.

I made some comment to my family how I felt a little bit uncomfortable that I was wearing pants and a short-sleeve shirt among such modestly dressed women, and how I felt that our attire was certainly offensive to our Orthodox neighbors.

And my brother, the Orthodox one who now tells me I should be wearing a skirt (and that I should ask the army for an army skirt when I enlist), snapped at me, “What, you can wear whatever you want, they don’t own the neighborhood!”

I kind of miss that….

On the plus side, this orthodoxy means that he’s probably going to come to Israel sometime in the next few months to study at a yeshiva, so that means I’ll actually have family in Israel. So that’s good…


Speaking of wearing skirts, I ended up having a conversation with a girl who grew up secular but has since become orthodox, and now wears a skirt to the floor every day. She made some sort of remark about how she feels better when she wears skirts, and I said that I totally respected that, but that I personally feel better wearing pants and occasionally wearing a skirt if I feel like it. She then went on to say that she used to wear only pants, that she was “just like” me, but that since she started wearing skirts she feels better, or something. Which kind of pissed me off.
I’ve worn a skirt before. I know how it feels.

She also kept pushing me to adopt a Hebrew name for religious reasons. I kept shrugging it off, thinking that my parents picked my two English names (first and middle) for a reason and I’ve been called nothing but them (mostly nothing but my first name) for my entire life and, religious or not, I would feel rather silly deciding that I’m now something entirely different. And to top it off, picking a Hebrew name means not being able to pronounce my own name correctly, which would just be ridiculous. It’d be the same if I were Israeli, moved to the states, then decided I was going to be “Samantha” from now on but introduced myself as “SemenTAH” to everyone.

Lately I’ve been having the realization that I know on my own what right and wrong is. Not just me, I’m not saying I’m any more special than the next people. What I’m saying is that we all do. I’m sick of people like my brother, or this girl, or other people, trying to tell me what right is, what modest is, what religious is. Granted, they all mean well, but it’s like telling me that I have no moral compass or radar or whatever. Browsing the book collection in this absorption center’s library, I’m struck by how most of the books are books of a religious nature, like books on modesty or stuff like that, written by rabbis who think they know better than everyone. I’m not really sure what makes them think they need to be writing books to tell everyone how to behave. I know how to behave. I know what right is, and when I do something that is wrong I think I usually realize it and feel remorse. I think the wrong things I do I genuinely feel bad about, and I don’t need a book or a rabbi to tell me what is wrong, and how/why it is wrong.
I’m not really sure what my point is here. I think living in a city filled with Orthodox Jews is starting to rub off on me—not in the sense that I’m becoming Orthodox, but in the sense that I’m starting to get annoyed by it.