Torah, Torah, Torah

When a well known Chabad Rabbi taught me the concept of "Inflexible Ego," I knew I was in trouble. For some reason, this Torah was easy to grasp in the moment. I guess that I had had enough. The relationship that I was in with "this guy," was like a one way train ride into the junk draw of life. Everything was piled now. I could not see how to sort myself out from the drech that was wasting my time.

After the Rabbi drove his point home, I got up and walked right out of the relationship that was consuming me. We met, "this guy" and I in his mother's kitchen, when I was 16. It took 17 additional years for the elixir to seep into my brain and for the bond to fuse. The detour in love was at times scenic. Other days, it was as appealing as a B rated movie, edgy edgy edgy. I thought I wanted though to be married so badly and so I stayed and stayed and stayed. He said it, "although this is best relationship that I have ever had and the happiest that I have been and the closest that I have ever felt to anyone, I still think there is something better, I need to shop around." I was stunned as I kept staying invloved with him.

After a time, the Rabbi had to ask, "will you find a Jew, please? This way, you can at least shrink the pool of jerks you may come in contact with. You can have a common base, better conversations and arguments and a serious chance at what you want, to be understood and appreciated." I agreed to the idea and after a while, set out to avail myself for the Shidduch, the Jewish match. Thank you so much for your support. I am alone ever since. I don't mean single. I mean, wow, I am all alone. I have no dates, no calls, no matches, no intervention, no help from anyone who has gone before. People, the Rabbis, say that they don't know what to say to me, "it's hard."

I am reading more now, Jewish Blogs, to see what others are kvetching and kveling about. The romantic notion of relationship catches my eye. The topics of Shidduchim,matches, sex, love and isolation among community are common themes, so nu?

In the beginning of my road out, I made changes. I was getting religion like I had it back in the day when my family was whole. I started thanking G-D for my life as it was, full with so much good. I kept Shobbas, kept kosher and was sure to learn a little Torah when the opportunity occurred, every single day. I did what the Rabbis told me to do. These activities, they assured me, would raise my neshama. my soul would advance and I would become a vessel for the match to be made. It never went that way.

Simply put, there are not enough Jewish Jews to go around. I found and still hold to the idea that between my baggage and their stuff, we are settled in our unsettling ways. I cannot forge a path of clarity from which to make a connection, the match, a life together with men based on the foundation of need to be paired. The basis of marriage in the observant community goes past being fruitful and multipling, although that does sound great coming off of my lips.

Being observant is hard in this new and modern world where there is so much to distract from Torah life. It is really tough in places where there isn't population density to support Torah living as if it were a matter for life. After assimilation, as Jews, we are fewer in just. To shrink one's pools to the point of few and far between makes little sense to me, a single woman who wants to be paired. As someone who observes any amount of Torah life, the pool is a mere puddle with little depth as you might imagine.

I have met Jews, allot of Jews, in person, via the Internet and at shul. It remains, I was too much of this and too little of that for them to consider me. I found them to be un kept and saw how poor their table manners and many other anti social behaviors could make me a hateful person. During these events, I was more judgmental than was typical for even me. Even though other people would suggest that this one or that could be a match, I saw nothing but a project, someone that I would quickly resent, hardly spend my time loving. I felt as if it were not going to happen by my hand.

The politics of searching becomes itself a platform. It appears as if searching as a sport allows us to appease the community with the idea that we are fulfilling the obligation of looking and looking and looking. Finding a match has nothing to do with looking for one when we are middle age and our lives are complicated with histories that we wish told other stories. Now that we are observant, religious and learning....we must pair up with a person who appears to disregard older versions of who we are right now, excluding five minutes ago when we were less then they are now, right now. Consider the surgical procedure of Hymen Reattachment, it's happening. Women can have a surgeon go in and restore her to new, never before explored as a woman of faith. Nu, such a lucky doctor, he becomes her first last man again. Now, she can deny ever being in bed with a man if it means getting to again.

As I was new to the shidduch process and when I met a guy who I thought I might wish to see again, he would mention that since I was not so frum, religious enough for him, I was not a candidate for his match. This same fellow would report to me that just that day he made such a shonda that he feels compelled to confess it as if we were Catholic. Jews don't confess I mentioned. He told me that because I am so smart, I'll suffer alone some more. Such a nice thing to say, nu? Such a Jewish value, spite.

I made my comment in such a way to get him off the hook, to cover for him, show him I was able to understand that we can often take our lives for a ride. What was his crime, he ate in a popular and un kosher fast food place. Un kosher meat, fries and a coke was how he spent his lunch hour. Oh, how he wanted the milk shake but drew the line there. I saw how my developing yiddishkite was a threat to him and I moved on again. There were a few guys who at 49, 53 or even 58 that had a deal breaker called: "kids." That's correct, these men who missed the boat and never had gotten around to it, to start a family, expected now to get so lucky. "Next," the Rabbi says as I pack up my position on the matter. The Rabbis say to deflect from the negitive, I shoould take on another mitzvah, make my vessel stronger. Oy Vay, am I'm telling you. What good deed could I adopt in the face of learning how a date of mine, an observant guy was reduced to un kosher fast food and how he found me as being less observant than he imagines he wants for his Torah wife in his Torah based home. I was hungry for a real man.

Before I could look ahead some more, it happened that I glanced back in time. What drove me to "this guy?" I often allowed that the years we shared in common gave me a sense of place. As an orphan, I would now define myself as having roots in his life and family. He knew me unlike many many people that I whirled past, I wanted so badly to belong to some place, someone would have my heart. In sticking to my tribe, I know that I am now grounded in my rootlessness. This space, smells like food that I can't eat. It holds people that I can't relate to and friends who I love dearly even as their marriages are hanging on by a thread. I wish I could mend my life. Inflexible ego is about "This Guy" and then me not willing to make a change in our perspectives. We were the same in this manner.

Like a hopeful girl, I called him once since my departure and hung up. Like a complete mishganah, I phoned him a second time and learned why the Rabbi insisted it was inflexible ego that prevented him from going forward, aside from the fact that "this guy" was not a Jew and in that way, not good for me. I appreciate the ideal in this situation and I do thank G-D that I am not married to him. "This guy" was my broken heart. My neshama is another story.