Being Queer and Jewish in Ultra-Orthodox Brooklyn

by J.E. Reich for The Blog/HuffPost

I walk home from a friend's house party at 2 o'clock in the morning, tired from drinking. Nearing the corner of Kingston Ave., I hear an aching chant. It is a prayer, the v'ahavta, and it comes from an elderly woman in a ratty dress, shuckling on the mezzanine of the Chabad synagogue. I stop and blink once, twice. She sees me and motions for me to come over, to join her. I sit beside her and begin to recite it, this prayer I know with easy memory. A communal longing surges through me from the bottom of my ribcage, igniting my bone marrow. It is only after we end the prayer with a quiet, resounding "amen" that she asks for my name.

"No," she says with a Yiddish inflection after I answer. "Your real name." My Hebrew name.

"Esther Yaakova bat Shimon ve Chaya," I say, relishing the formalities, the guttural buzz at the back of my throat.

She claps her hands once. "Aha! My name is Esther too!"

Esther begins a line of questioning: Do I live in the neighborhood? Where do I go to shul? Do I have anywhere to go for next Shabbos? I reply with a soft shyness, afraid that this moment of Jewish connection will end too soon, in a place where I perpetually press my face against glass, only able to look in and never enter.

We come to the subject of Jewish learning. I admit that I've contemplated seeking out a Torah study group.

"Yes, yes," she says. "Join my group. I meet with girls just like you."

Just like me, I think, but not like me at all. "You should know," I tell Esther, feeling a sense of hope that things might be different this time, "I live with my girlfriend." She blinks once, twice. "I'm gay," I say. Again, no recognition. "I'm a homosexual."

She inches away, ever so slightly, and closes the siddur in her lap. Could I not be that way, she wonders out of the side of her mouth. I tell her that it's impossible to not be any other way for me.

"Oh," she says. "Then no."

At my apartment, my girlfriend asks why I'm home so late. After I finish the story, my head cradled in my hands, she says that sleep will make me feel better in the morning. But in truth, I know that these small words are empty consolations, despite her best intentions. Only I could know otherwise, and yet I don't.

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