Frieda Vizel

Frieda Vizel left the Hasidic community, the Modern Orthodox community and the Formerly Orthodox (OTD) community. She now lives in Pomona and is actively looking for a new community to leave. She deals with the perplexities of the communities she left by drawing cartoons about them, a habit that gets her into an excellent amount of trouble.

The Get

 Posted by on September 26, 2016
Sep 262016
 

wedding-ring

I remember you told me once that you like to watch me take off my rings. You said that all of my stubbornness comes through when I try to wrench them off. You said it teasingly, laughing at me lovingly, pulling my sweaty hands apart and slipping the wedding band off my finger.

Do you remember that now as I remove my ring and set it on the rabbis desk in the bes din room, near my coat and bag, looking as white as I did the day our marriage began? Do you see me trembling, my stubborn perseverance hanging on to its last fight; my willfulness slowly failing with our marital death? I wonder if youll look at me with my fingers naked of your gold, shaking, aching for your comforting bond to return. But your bearded face is turned to your father and brothers while you talk amongst each other somberly. Youre wearing your gartel over your calf-length suit jacket. Its what you wear for special events, for occasions like this monumental one, when you are to make me, me I who crept into your arms and I who share your baby a stranger. It seems like yesterday that you wore the gartel to Chanukah lighting and you bounced our baby on your knee, smiling at me proudly. But you wont look at me now. Im a stranger. Im far away from your familiar touch, a million heartbreaks apart, miles into my stubborn hell, a gaping chasm of religious differences dividing us towards an inevitable end.

The Rabbi asks me to inspect my hands to make sure I set down everything I had. I know that its a tradition at the get not to have a kinyen or accessory on you, parallel to the tradition of our wedding day. The rabbi talks with his eyes on me. You wont look at me, but he does. His acknowledgment of my presence is too kind, threatening to emit warmth thatll melt my brittle faade of bravery. I dont want to let them see how I feel in this quiet room in the synagogue on this sad day of parting. Im the only woman in the room filled with Hasidic men. I dont know most of them, but I can guess they know of me. Everyone around is blurred by a terrible weakness in me. Even you I dont see clearly. The sofer is finishing writing the get by hand. I hear my heart beating wildly. I look at you, and you glance at me before you divert your gaze. I know you hear my heart beating. Im still alive; my heart still pounds its stubborn melody, you know it does even though I stumbled on a path you do not want to walk with me. Im not so innocent or moldable anymore, I agree, but Im still the same Satmar girl. And I love you still. Even though I read books and found my voice and ask for a life of more rights and liberty, that same heart you knew from its fragile first days as your eighteen year old wife beats in me. Now it thumps, whacks, bangs its stubborn sound. It calls to you, the only man Ive ever known.

Yoelish.

You do not hear the voice of a stranger and you walk towards the sofer to whisper something into his ear. The proceedings take long and I feel cold. I fix my eyes on my warm coat on the table but I cant see anything except a veneer of tears. We bought this coat together. It has a swing and opened wide with my expanding figure when we awaited Leahele.

Im not alone, Yoelish. I have friends who support me and will comfort me when your familiar reassurance is gone. But they struggle to understand me. They wont appreciate that I can feel this way at a time of betrayal and divorce. They dont know how far Ive come with your support, only to come too far, beyond the territory you wanted to support. They cannot comprehend that even though I love you, the role of a wife and mother that is required from that love is not something I can give you. They wont understand that sometimes were confronted with diverging convictions, and as desperately as we hold onto the relationship, our deep beliefs drive a sharp knife through the bond. Our virgin marriage has become too small for our growing differences. Its time to let go.

The Rabbi wants me to step over to where you stand. I walk cautiously to you directly, Yoelish, oh, my heart explodes. I can smell your familiar sweat. My head swims with memories of your nightgown and tsitsis and our bedtime talks. My limbs fire up inside with hope that quickly burns to ashes with the dreadful realization that standing so close will only be followed by standing apart, forever. Forever. Yoelish, can you live without me forever? Forever? And our Leah?

I stand in front of you, a hugs distance. I cry quietly. A cathartic release surges in sobs as I stand here in this frightening room, with you, my husband, in front of me. I hear you sniff. I feel comfort, relief by your presence. I miss you already.

Youre given the divorce document. Im instructed to cup my hands and catch it because youre not permitted to pass it to me directly. I hold my hands. Silently, you let the document go, and it falls together with my tears. I receive my pain and my hopes for freedom into my curled fingers. I take it, put it under my arm, and walk a few steps towards the door in accordance to the Rabbis directives.

Done. Mazel Tov, they say. Im a grisha, the stigmatized rejected woman, and young single girl and many other things I choose to be. Ive come here today by myself in order for this to happen. And now I must go home by myself.

Lets go home, Yoelish. The loneliness is strangling me.

I straighten my back and try to fix my faade. I return to the rabbis and hand them the document that testifies were now strangers.

You ask me quietly for forgiveness, and I nod tearfully. I look at you for the last time. I want to tell you Im making fleish and ferfel for supper for us tonight, that we should go for a walk around Keiv Road when Leahele is asleep, but you wont be home for supper or for our daughters bedtime. You and your father and your brothers leave the bes din without looking at me again. Its the last Ill see of you for the foreseeable future. Youll go on to slash my heart again soon by quickly remarrying and moving on with a new Hasidic family, with a wife who doesnt stubbornly take birth control and resist shaving her head. Ill continue to mourn you, Yoelish, as youre alive in my child, youre alive in the Chasidic child in me. But eventually Ill be alright. You know Im stubborn. Slowly, youll become a stranger to me too.

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How my childhood was like the Rockettes

 Posted by on July 31, 2014
Jul 312014
 

I often compare my Hasidic childhood in Kiryas Joel to the Rockettes. Yes, those gorgeous 6 feet girls who perform on Broadway and dance and kick in perfect unison — yes, them. That’s how I remember it felt.

Let me explain.

Life in Kiryas Joel was many things; it was filled with female friendships, family, tradition, and constant stability. But when I try to articulate what affected me most in Kiryas Joel, I think about its discipline among women. It was like I was thrown onto the stage with these dancers. Kiryas Joel’s female population mastered perfect execution of societal choreography, self constraint, unity. We all didn’t look like these Rockettes below (or above), true, but all of my friends seemed to embody the same skill.

My all-girls classes were filled with well-groomed students ready to stand under the stage’s bright lights; to perform; to be perfect. The Hasidic community was the audience, they were all watching, the yentas and neighbors were eager to applaud or critique, and all we girls had to do was behave as we were taught. Everyone had the right postures, moved with beautiful precision, knew intuitively how to earn the approval of the crowd. They were not only modest; they were also as ‘spast, as was appropriate, and they were always “normal”, a standard that required execution of an indefinite number of rules. They could read social cues effortlessly and know without instructions what was right or wrong.

And then there was me. I was dancing with these Jewish Rockettes too, only I had no talent for it. I tried to dance; I more like bobbed; wobbled; flapped and yipped. I was as if short legged and clumsy, always absent minded and anything but a group person. I did not fit the costume at all and was an eyesore in the Hasidic girl’s uniform. As a younger kid my thick blue tights often trailed out of my shoe in a giant tail so I spent half the day tugging the stocking’s waistline up to my buttocks. People said my hair was never brushed but I didn’t know how they knew or why it mattered, and my pleated skirt was more puffy creases than pleats. No matter how hard I tried to be a Rockette, disheveled tombody I was, a Rockette I wasn’t. In this performance of religious behavior, my legs would never extend to the right length, my body would not deliver the right symmetrical movement, and my face couldn’t hold itself together with the perfect controlled smile. I was always forgetting what I was supposed to do, improvising, getting it right, getting it wrong, being weird, being silly, crying in public, laughing in public, doing things that didn’t belong on the Spectacular, raising eyebrows from the crowd, wanting to run off the stage.

I got suspended from school three times for being wild, behavior that was extremely shameful among mature girls. I was constantly in trouble. Every good or mediocre episode was a rare victory – a good report card, a pious prayer – and it was soon followed by a disaster; an inappropriate comment, troublemaking in class, just being scatterbrained.

I was always a sensitive soul and I internalized all of the criticism and let it eat at me. I spent much of my youth wishing I was like the others who were dazzling the crowd – good girls; great modest, help-at-home, mature girls – full of hope for their futures, making their mothers proud. I remember many, many nights in bed, curled up in my orange Spitzer’s nightgown, just hating myself. All I wished for was to stop being me.

My teachers, my parents, the neighbors, everyone cheered for my friends and sisters. “Spectacular!” they applauded. “Perfect! What fine, b’chaynt girls.What a joy to watch them!” and to me they’d offer encouragement: “Be like that! Do that! Follow the script! You can also be a fine Rockette!”

I wanted to be a Rockette. I wanted it so badly; I believed I could be like the others if only I tried hard enough. I kept promising myself to try. I would control myself, I would be good. I would make my mother proud. She would be so proud. She would cry naches tears and then my world would shine. I saw my mother among this audience as she watched me, I heard her pray at dawn and I knew she davened for me to improve, I saw her hopefulness that I’d get it right, then her disappointment when I acted “crazy” or “not normal” and everyone judged me. I was often upset with myself, but never as much as when I sensed the disappointment of my sweet mother who prayed every day for things to go more smoothly for me.

I often wondered why I couldn’t get it right. As I walked Forest Road to the Shopping Center, I remember trying to figure out: what’s wrong with me? Why am I so weird? Why do I break out into a sudden skip, almost as if I was overtaken by a tick, while walking in the street, when I was already a kallah meidel, big and grown up, and should be “normal?” Why did I laugh to myself or sing to myself or talk to myself while normal people just kept it together, even faced? What was wrong? I knew that no one would ever hurt me and tell me if I was somehow born with a disability that made me so terrible at what I needed to do, so I had no way of knowing what the problem was. But it was clear to me that there was something wrong. Everyone was so amazing. Whatever was wrong

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