New Archive:

May 2001 Issue

Leaving the Orthodox Community but Keeping the Spiritual Lessons: The Story of Avigal

By Daniela Gerson

My skirt keeps creeping up above my knees. Ordinarily I would not really mind, perhaps I would even like it, but in the company of Orthodox women I feel obliged to try and sit modestly. Next to me on the floor, my friend Avigal definitely does not share my problem. In a skirt that reaches to her ankles, she is the same portrait of confident grace that is her mark in the karate class we take together in Tel Aviv.

Rather than meeting Avigal in a dingy high school gym, we are at her sister's home in Jerusalem. The room is packed with Orthodox Jewish women, dressed in long skirts or pants and many also sport costumes or masks. It is Purim, a holiday for merry making, and they have gathered in order to read the story of Ester.

Avigal is one of the women called to the make shift bima in order to read from the scrolls. In a beautiful voice, she flawlessly sings her part. After the service, I observe Avigal as she mingles with the other woman in search of a sign that would set her apart from them. I fail to do so. Even her trademark dramatic makeup fits right in with the Purim atmosphere.

But appearances can indeed be deceiving. Avigal's approach to religion and by extension life in general, is different from the other women in the room for one simple reason: her appreciation for Judaism is based on its tradition and culture, not some sort of deeper faith. The youngest of eight children, she is the only one who now lives outside of the Orthodox community.

When I told an American friend that I was writing a story about women who had left Orthodoxy, he groaned and said, "Oh that's so cliché. I mean, I feel that it is always used as a symbol of women's liberation--this story of escaping the confines of Orthodoxy for the freedom of secularism."

The Purim celebration at Avigal's sister's home told a different story. Here were religious women who rather than sitting in the back of the shul and listening to the men enjoy the story, were actively celebrating Purim in their own way.

Such, Avigal's story is not simply one of female liberation, but of a choice of personal lifestyle. This becomes clear to me a week after Purim when I meet Avigal again in her home. From the balcony of the apartment she shares with her yoga/karate teaching artist boyfriend, I look out on a garden where children play, roosters strut freely, and in the distance I find a view of the sea. Avigal again appears entirely at ease in her environment, though this time she has exchanged her conservative skirt for pants and a form fitting t-shirt.

The change in lifestyle Avigal made by leaving her parents home is much more than a shift in geography or clothes. What is fundamental to understand about an Orthodox upbringing, according to Avigal, is that "it's the whole way of life. You open up your eyes and you think of God. You have to thank God for bringing me back my soul, then you have to wash your hands, then you have to say the morning prayer, then you go to school and study Jewish topics."

This is an intensity of faith that I found hard to imagine. While I consider Judaism a very important element in my life, when I make a decision it is from the perspective of what I want, not what is right in the eyes of God. Avigal explains that the structure Orthodoxy gives is truly all encompassing: For instance, "when you go to the bathroom you can't think about God and when you are finished you thank God for cleansing your systems."

Until Avigal was eighteen, this was her reality. She prayed twice a day, strove to observe all the commandments, and it was very much in her head what God was thinking about her actions. To that end, she read all sorts of religious thinkers in search of conviction--"but I didn't find myself inside. I felt my character could not be religious." In afterthought, Avigal recalls that her doubts about religion began at an early age but it was very difficult to act upon them.

Unable to live with such doubts, Avigal set aside Tisha Ba'av, a fasting day in the Jewish tradition commemorating the destruction of the second temple, in order to decide whether she would continue to live an Orthodox lifestyle. She told herself " 'you're eighteen years old, you have to decide whether you're going to be religious or not.'" And then she recounts "it was very easy, I said 'you're not religious' and I felt very relieved for that decision."

Her parents did not respond in kind. They sent her to see two therapists, waited for her to come home at night, told her she was a disgrace to the familial rabbinical legacy, and there was a lot of crying throughout. As Avigal tried to find her way from orthodoxy to the secular community, she "became a very big liar." It was the only way to live a secular existence within an Orthodox family. Every action she did that was part of a non-religious lifestyle, as simple as turning on a light on Shabbat, was an extreme offense to her parents' whole structure of beliefs.

Even after resolving that a religious lifestyle was not for her, Avigal continued to encounter internal obstacles to making the shift. "It's strange," she reflects. "I thought it would be much easier for me. For many years I listened to non-religious music, went to movies, watched TV, and I study art. But actually it was difficult for me to move out of religious culture."

For example, it took her years to become comfortable wearing pants, mostly because they just felt to her like pajamas. With time, however, she adjusted and is now entirely immersed in secular Israeli society.

This morning Avigal takes a break from the normal pattern of her life and returns to her roots; She shows up at my apartment in a long skirt with big yellow flowers--religious clothes with a secular flair. She's dressed for our trip to B'nei B'rak, a community of 125,000 Orthodox Jews, and it goes without saying that once again I am not dressed appropriately for the occasion.

As we wind our way down a central avenue where men and women in traditional dress are preparing for Shabbat, I feel like I am truly in a foreign culture. Avigal, at ease as usual, acts as my guide. Her eyes light up as she explains to me who each rabbi is in pictures on the wall, the meaning of each religious object, and how to identify individuals from different sects of Orthodoxy. What is obvious is that she has retained appreciation for religious culture even though she has left its boundaries.

Beyond being able to read the story of Esther, and having a wide base of knowledge in Jewish custom, philosophy, and culture, Avigal feels that something of the religious value system has stuck with her. "I'll give you a big example" she tells me, "seeing the world as being not only human. That there's a spiritual presence, even if we can't call it God. You can't ignore it if as a child you were constantly instructed with it. You look at the whole world and see it not just as my small life but as a big picture."

In the big picture of Avigal's life she has made a decision to not have religion define the structure of her life, but she does not try to escape its influence on her identity and spirituality.

Daniela Gerson graduated from Brown in may 2000 and has spent the past year in Israel. She is the Israel Correspondent for New Voices and the magazine's future assistant editor. She is from Washington, D.C.

lifestyles | fiction | politics | daily buzz | relationships | culture | social action | spirituality | chatroom | J-TV giude | win stuff | e-postcard | about us | archive | disclaimer