This school's basketball team beat us in 8th grade and knocked us out of the playoffs (if I remember correctly). I cried. [Rabbi] Jonathan Kaplan and [Rabbi] Ezra Weiner were two of the stars of the other team. Shout out to them!! Back then they weren't rabbis. Just very good ball players who beat my team which caused me to cry bitter tears. My mother was kind enough to take me out for pizza and I think ice cream after the game. But I was feeling maror so it tasted like maror. וַיָּבֹאוּ מָרָתָה וְלֹא יָכְלוּ לִשְׁתֹּת מַיִם מִמָּרָה כִּי מָרִים הֵם. You know - the Kotzker on that pasuk.
"After years of confusion around my gender identity and sexuality, I realized I wasn’t gay or bisexual, or a man or a woman. And as I led my congregation through Yom Kippur services, I finally showed up as myself.
This year, 2019, was different for me. The four years I had done this previously, I was wearing a suit and tie under my white robe, but this year I wore a blouse, women’s slacks, and flats with a buckle on them. No tie. My eyeliner and lipstick were best-friend/rabbi approved, even if they did go against traditional Jewish law [??]. What others saw was that the cantorial soloist had gone from dressing in men’s clothing to dressing in women’s clothing. What I felt was that I had finally shown up."
Or this spiritually uplifting saga:
What My Kippah Means to Me
As a butch lesbian, wearing a yarmulke connects me to my people—and to myself.
Conservative? Here are some of the delightful articles I found on this truly conservative news and culture outlet:
I will spare you the rest of this tale of woe and complete sexual and gender confusion.
Another one:
"How expectations around gender and sexuality led me to embrace Orthodoxy—and then leave it." This guys "husband" can't believe that he was once Chasidic. What My Kippah Means to Me
As a butch lesbian, wearing a yarmulke connects me to my people—and to myself.
Just a sample. People like me will never be written up in this distinguished magazine. I am a man. I always felt male. I was attracted to girls from like nursery. That is four years old. Maybe already from when I was three in half day nursery but I can't remember for sure. I was in the closet and couldn't admit it for years b/c it was NOT COOL to like girls. Later on in elementary school it became cool or at least acceptable so I didn't have to hide it. I had crushes on various girls who invariably didn't like me back. Eventually I married a girl who knew she was a girl and identified as a girl. I was the boy, she was the girl. We both dressed the part. I haven't once worn eyeliner or lipstick or questioned my maleness. I don't compete against girls in sports even though I think I would do much better than when I compete against boys. That is why we lost in 8th grade. Because we played their boy's team. Had we played the girls [quite possibly including the editor of Tablet], we would definitely have won. I say that not ONLY as a male chauvinist but ALSO as a male chauvinist. Or "male supremacist". I think that males are better at sports than females. They are stronger and run faster. Unless you consider cooking, doing housework and taking care of children a sport. Woman are much better at those sports. [Later addition: I just received a death threat from a feminist comrade for writing that]. My wife doesn't wear a Yarmulke or call herself Butch. She was never into sports. Not even against other girls. She can literally ask me a question like in which sport you have a "touchdown". I say that as a compliment. Less תרבות יוון. I of course inform her that it is hockey. We were both Jewish. Then we had Jewish children. Each one being a boy or a girl [I really wanted twins and get the two for the price of one deal, but Hashem chose otherwise]. The hope and expectation is that they all intermarry i.e. marry members of the opposite gender. But Jewish of course. SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO BORRRING. Nothing that would ever interest the editors of Tablet.
Then there is the article by the Jewish woman from the Upper West Side married to a Muslim man describing how they keep both religions. "Celebrating Overlapping Faiths". She writes about her - he's going to be very messed up - son - Today, my 8-year-old son Sami takes pride in being American, Turkish, and German. He sees himself as both Muslim and Jewish, and close to Christianity through my late father, whom he never met but knows through my stories as a kind and gentle man. Sami is at home in the synagogue, where he learned to light Shabbat candles and make challah of his own. He is at home in a mosque, where he watches his father pray on turquoise carpets that remind him of the sea. And he is certain that Santa Claus does not discriminate against Jewish and/or Muslim children in his gift-giving.
This is part of their interfaith marriage series.
Then there is the article about the legendary Tzadekes Rebbetzin Bruria David, written not by one of the 99 percent of her graduates who remained Bnos Torah but by one of the fringe, less than one percent, self described "Modern Orthodox feminist" [and extremely vocal and outspoken, at that] student's, who derogatorily refers to evil people like me as "Transphobic" b/c we think that a person should dress in accordance with their physiology. Like if you have a bris milah, you shouldn't be wearing skirts, have long hair and apply makeup. What an evil ideology. Actually not evil but a Torah commandment and what prevents the world from descending deeper and deeper into depravity and sickness.
So instead of article by and about the overwhelming majority of people without profound problems with sexuality, they feature the Homosexuals, Lesbians and cross dressers. Instead of articles on fine, upstanding traditional Jewish couples, the focus is on the intermarried [in the case of the couple I mentioned - to a Muslim!!]. Instead of just an inspiring article about a master educator and Gedola Bi-yisrael, we get a radical feminist perspective [which was in part complimentary].
Some of their editorial staff is "Orthodox" and this is the drivel they are producing. They are trying to legitimize the illegitimate, to standardize the marginal.
Mussar Haskel: Stay away. There are MUCH better things to read than this agenda-driven-anything-but-conservative-rag.
