Crying on Yom Kippur is an accepted norm, but I didn’t cry on Yom Kippur until well into adulthood. When I did, it wasn’t the usual tears of guilt for my sins or pleading for a good year. The ineffable emotion that brought me to tears came from struggling to find my place as someone raised as a girl in an ultra-Orthodox community, seeing a different way of being an Orthodox woman, and trying to push past the silence I’d been taught was my proper role in public spaces.
In childhood and adolescence, I attended High Holiday services at a Boro Park shtiebel, a small synagogue led by a Hasidic rabbi. The thermostat was always set to freezing to accommodate the men’s several layers of clothing: an undershirt to keep the tzitzis (the American ultra-Orthodox pronunciation of tzitzit) away from their skin; tzitzis, often woolen even in summer; a white shirt; a suit jacket or bekeshe — the long caftan worn by Hasidic men — or a kittel on Yom Kippur; and a tallis (the American ultra-Orthodox pronunciation of tallit). The women, dressed in far fewer layers, shivered and wrapped themselves in sweaters and blankets.
The most significant difference between the two sections, though, was the noise level. The men loudly sang along with or responded to the ba’al tefilah, the man leading services, their heads raised and chests open to the world; the women softly whispered the words, hunched over their machzorim with shoulders rounded inwards.
By the time I was 24, I had already broken many of the community’s unspoken rules. My parents worried about me having “one foot out the door,” and I couldn’t genuinely reassure them otherwise. I didn’t know what direction my life would take, but I knew I didn’t see myself as one of the shtiebel women whose purpose in life was to raise children and enable their husbands’ Torah learning and whose conversation topics were limited to babies, clothes and community gossip.
I decided to explore other forms of Judaism, because I knew this wasn’t the only way to be a Jewish woman (I still thought I was a woman then — I didn’t know that much of my discomfort came from trying to find my place within strict gender roles when I was agender). I made arrangements to spend Shabbat in Washington Heights, attending a Modern Orthodox synagogue and having meals with Modern Orthodox families. My parents were none too pleased about what they saw as a step down in religious observance, but this was preferable to losing me altogether to depression or non-observance.
The Shenk synagogue on 185th Street between St. Nicholas and Audubon Avenues was warm and welcoming, but I didn’t experience any religious or social epiphany. Other than cross-gender interaction and slight differences in conversation topics, it wasn’t so different from my Boro Park Bais Yaakov experiences. I didn’t feel drawn to return to Washington Heights or engage further in Modern Orthodoxy after that Shabbat. It wasn’t the enticing alternative that I had been hoping it would be.
I dreaded attending the Boro Park shtiebel for Yom Kippur, though, with women whispering and wiping away tears all around me while I mouthed the words and let my mind wander. So I purchased a seat at the Shenk synagogue and made arrangements to be in Washington Heights for Yom Kippur after all.
Unlike the shtiebel where the women’s section was on the same level as the men’s, separated by seven-foot-tall rolling screens, the Shenk synagogue’s women sat in a balcony overlooking the men’s section. And while other Boro Park synagogues with women’s balconies had latticed walls allowing women to peer down on the men but preventing men from seeing the women, the low edge of the balcony here allowed full view of the men below.
I found my seat and watched young women exchange waves with their husbands. I thought about what my teachers had always told me — that men aren’t allowed to see women during davening because they would have impure thoughts. This didn’t look impure. This looked warm and intimate.
Kol Nidre started, and I followed along in my machzor as I always did. I knew from my Shabbat here that the women would sing along with the men, and I had resolved to sing along this time, to raise my voice in prayer rather than whispering under my breath while the men sang aloud.
But when the first song started, my throat closed up. I was painfully aware of the men below me who could hear all the women singing and of the lustful thoughts that would — according to my teachers back in Brooklyn — be incited in the men because “kol be-ishah ervah,” a woman’s voice is considered nakedness. I didn’t believe that anymore, but my body wouldn’t let me join the women singing like they had not a care in the world in a way I’d only ever seen in girls-only environments like school Shabbatons and summer camp.
My chest tightened and tears gathered in my eyes. I whisper-sang the rest of the davening, crying during Yom Kippur services for the first time in my life. When I got into bed that night, I was numb. I could have sung if I wanted to — and I did want to! So why didn’t I just sing?
I managed to sing in a voice slightly above a whisper by the end of Yom Kippur. The men and women joined voices to sing “Avinu Malkeinu” one last time during Ne’ilah, the final prayer signaling the closing of Heaven’s gates after a period of repentance and supplication. My own voice joined the chorus, barely audible to anyone more than two feet from me but so powerful for how hard I’d had to fight to accomplish something so seemingly insignificant. Not even the loud shofar blast that put the final flourish on Yom Kippur could dim the power of my barely-audible singing voice.
Modern Orthodoxy didn’t end up being the final destination in my exploration of my Jewish identity. I know Modern Orthodox women have their own struggles, and I also don’t identify as a woman anymore. But I had seen the comfort and sense of self embodiment in the women’s ability to raise their voices and sing, in stark contrast to the quiet restraint I was used to in women’s sections, and I knew that I would do everything I could to attain that for myself.
For a while, I went in the opposite extreme, stepping into every Twitter tussle and reveling in my ability to use my voice. I’ve been told to keep quiet by people from my community of origin when I speak up about injustices or attempt to tell my story. It took some time to achieve a balance, but I credit that first transformative Yom Kippur experience with helping me find and raise my voice in all the ways that matter.
