See, I was just looking through the comments again. This is why I'm thinking about shutting down the blog or something. I was just looking at the comments on the last post. While there were some nice comments, there are a bunch of snarky comments from someone anonymous. I think I know who wrote them. A girl who is in the process that lives somewhere around me. You know what? You'll find out in about three years when they do it to you later on. Or maybe they just hate me.
However, I don't have the money to be moving around trying different places. Maybe some people have parents to help them out. I don't. I don't have anyone. I don't have relatives. I don't have anyone to fix my mistakes if I screw up. All of you people tell me to move, but if I go from the frying pan to the fire all I'm going to hear is that I should have known better than to listen to others and I should have made my own decisions. I'm not moving. I have gone away for Shabbos and had people be rotten to me from other communities and I've been told not to move to some places. I'm not going to go around blowing all my money throwing myself at a people who don't want me.
My goal with this blog and that last post was not for people to barrage me with advice. Did I tell you guys I wanted your advice? I don't. What I want is to incite change for the better. No convert and BT benefit from people being nasty to them. Yet, this is what they do to them. Curmudge is married, but as a single I get far more nastiness and judgementalness. For Curmudge to say that my experience is somehow largely different from other converts, I'm not so sure it is. I've met a number of others like myself who have hidden out from the community or gone off. They aren't nice to a lot of us. Why a select few have actually had it easy while the rest of us have been at the receiving end of snarky rottenness I do not know. I do know this, it's not because I'm not a likeable person. That is something that I am. I have tons of friends, it's just that they are not Jewish. People like me. I don't do anything weird like look at the ceiling when I go out to eat with a friend. I'm mostly normal. I'm funny and cool. I'm very likeable.
The Curmudgeonly Isreli Giyoret says:
ReplyDeleteWell, your experience is your experience, I wouldn't try to say it isn't.
Part of the problem, I think, is that being in school, your opportunities to develop an alternative "chevre" are fewer. School takes up a lot of time, and it is hard not to get too isolated. You have the disadvantages of being an older student in an off-campus situation, without the fallback of a solid, already developed social niche.
At some point, however, you will FINISH with school and will be able to construct a more nurturing niche for yourself, where you will be able to feel and to be wanted. Obviously you have already developed these skills in the past; then you will be in a framework in which you can put them to use. This too shall pass.
Michal/Nicole,
ReplyDeleteThis isn't advice....just a comment. Your blog posts are often tinged with a lot of bitterness...and the last two exceedingly so. In fact, I've commented on this in the past.
It's noteworthy that you've mentioned 'shutting the blog', maybe because it raises the question what you hoped to accomplish with the whole undertaking, anyway. Whatever it was you thought you would do, I doubt you could succeed given the enormous amount of animosity that's coming off your fingertips.
You say you're likable, and I bet you are. However, the levels of anger you spew here make you anything but likable in this forum. No one could stomach that. And I'd bet your friends aren't privy to that side of you...only your co-religionists see that side of you.
And, my dear, it's not a pretty sight.
Good luck, whatever you decide. You're terribly angry, and at this point HATEful (your blog title). It's not a good place to be, so you should definitely get to somewhere else, mentally if not physically. And I bet G-d has broad enough shoulders to deal with your choices, whatever they may be.
Daniel
i find your blog amazing and i would regret it greatly if it was taken down. I wish i would have the time to look at your old essays but i just don't. But i find the level of insight here to be amazing.
ReplyDeletea convert in Israel told me how in San Fransisco every cute comvert had to stand naked before the rabbis that did the conversion.
ReplyDeleteIt is clear tome that when there was a possibility of exploitation of the prospective convert -the conversion was made easy.at least that did not at that time deteriorate to the recent level of having to have sex with the rabbi
Well, Rosten, I can't speak for everyone else, but I did not have to do that. Though, I spoke to a rabbi on the phone who got fresh with me on the phone and I met another convert who told me she talked to went to him but didn't like him. I said, "yeah, he talked dirty to me too." She was surprised I knew. I asked another girl who was working with him that I met and she said no, but then later she changed rabbis-still denying it. She made goood money so maybe he bothered me because I don't. The other girl he did it to in person also had an office job like me.
ReplyDeleteAnother reason, I've pulled back on the blog is also that Blogger doesn't work right anymore.
This label of Jewish Children: http://michaltastik.blogspot.com/search/label/%22Jewish%20Children%22
is some of my best stuff, if you're looking to read some of the older stuff.
Not all FFB's have a bogus superiority complex and actually take the mitzvah of loving the gair seriously. It's just that some don't. My guess is that since you're in NYC where apparently Jews are everywhere it's easy for people to treat gairim poorly, whereas in smaller communities individuals matter more.
ReplyDelete