Another Shiksa In the Secular World

My adventure with a Hasidic man in Williamsburg began when...

Hello everyone,

I’ve got something extra special for my paid subscribers today. Earlier this year, I submitted this story below to Modern Love, the New York Times column. It seems fitting, given that it’s the last night of Hanukkah 🕎.

Thank you all again for reading Misseducated this year and for buying my book, These Perfectly Careless Things. Your support is helping me live my dream as an author and writer! I’m so grateful for your help sharing my work.

I wish everyone a safe, restful, and peaceful December, wherever you are.

Love,

Tash 💌

p.s. It’s not too late to order my spicy, coming-of-age British teen romance novel for Christmas! If you don’t want to get it on Amazon, try the more author-friendly option of my self-publisher, BookBaby.

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Another Shiksa In the Secular World

Abe was the last person I expected to find on Feeld, a kink app catered to three-ways and polyamory. He had large, round glasses and curly, brown ringlets (his payes) and a hairline my male banking friends in Manhattan would have envied. I read his bio,

“Looking to expand my horizons beyond the enclosed Hasidic community I grew up in and am still a part of.”

A small wave of excitement trickled through my body.

I am a quarter Ashkenazi, but my family has not spoken Yiddish for three generations. Ever since I had moved to Williamsburg, I loved to leave my house and wander until the signs on buildings were written in soft, cursive script. Peering into the reading halls of the yeshivas felt foreign but viscerally familiar. I felt like I was traveling back in time to when great-great-grandparents fled the pogroms of Eastern Europe to Minnesota. I glanced at the women in wigs standing on the street corners, surrounded by pushchairs and small children. I even bought myself a dress from Hat Salon, a conservative clothing shop on Flushing Ave. I wanted to reconnect, and yet, what fascinated me about it was the feeling of escapism.

So when I came across Abe’s profile, I swiped right almost immediately. We matched and started talking.

Over the next few days, he responded quickly to my texts. He was interested in my media career, my childhood in London, and my heritage. We agreed to meet that Sunday at a restaurant next to my house. It was a cold February evening. I remember sitting in the back corner of the restaurant alone as guilt coursed through my body.

Was I using Abe to satisfy my secret desires? Was he only a task on my proverbial bucket list that I would bring up at a Shabbat dinner to shock people? Would Abe find me attractive? Was he even allowed to? Or was I just another shiksa in the secular world to him?

Soon, Abe arrived. He was tall, about 6ft 3in, and dressed in a long, woolen coat and broad-brimmed, felt hat. Underneath, he wore a navy-blue sweater and a pressed white shirt. His beard was thick and full and perfectly trimmed. He was immaculately clean and fragranced with laundry detergent. As he sat down, I glimpsed a sweet but slightly anxious intensity in his brown eyes. He reminded me of my grandfather.

“I’d like water, please, no ice,” Abe gestured to the waiter before he had even looked at the menu. His voice was deep and husky.

I frowned. Once the waiter was out of earshot, I said,

“Don’t you want to order something?”

“I can’t,” Abe said, “Nothing here is kosher. I ate beforehand.”

I bit my tongue. Abe was already breaking the rules by coming on this date with me. Did it still matter if a rabbi had blessed the side of fries? Images of my Jewish friends having drunk date nights at Katz’s Deli flashed through my mind. I wondered if Abe and I would ever be able to have dinner together.

“I mean, I can’t follow every rule,” Abe said, “My parents want me to go to Temple every day, but do I? No! That’s impossible! I have to help my third sister’s eldest son become bar mitzvah because her husband is sick, and do a million other things.”

“What other rules do you break?” I found myself asking as I leaned in closer to him.

“Well,” Abe said. He glanced over his shoulder at the empty restaurant and continued in a whisper. “Just after my parents leave for prayers on Shabbos, I splash water on my face and brush my teeth. Now, it’s not even half of what I do in my normal routine. But two days without brushing your teeth? Come on! That’s unhygienic!”

I tried to hide my giggle. Abe’s stories flowed like wine at a banquet, and I couldn’t drink enough. At 32, he didn’t have children’s car seats in his minivan. Instead, it contained boxes of off-brand potato chips he delivered to bodegas from his warehouse in South Williamsburg. Non-kosher food was his business; that perplexed me even more. The conversation bounced back and forth as if fast and heavily caveated New Yawker English was our second language, after Yiddish. It was a world where Friday night partying had never existed, and neither had Disney movies or ham and cheese sandwiches.

Back at my apartment, Abe left his shoes neatly by my front door. We sat on opposite ends of my couch.

“What’s going to a mikveh like?” I asked, remembering an Oprah documentary I’d seen.

“Well, it’s only for women. My ex-wife said it’s very inconvenient to go for hours every day while she’s bleeding.”

“Right,” I said, wondering how those women ever kept down a day job. My curiosity was getting the better of me. “How long were you together?”

“Three years,” Abe sighed, “We were completely incompatible.”

I felt my body angle towards him.

“Was she the only woman you’ve ever been with?” I bit my lip suggestively. Abe was risking it all, stepping out of his world and into mine. I felt a sense of duty to rise to the occasion. I would show him a good time.

“Yes,” Abe admitted, “We divorced over six years ago. I thank God every day we never had children.”

“So that’s why you were on Feeld then?” I said, scouting close to him, “Six years is a long time.”

I reached for Abe’s hand. I traced my finger in a circle on his open palm.

“I’ve never done this before,” he said, his body tensing.

“It’s okay. We can take it slow. Do you feel comfortable right now?”

“I feel comfortable. Perhaps a little too comfortable,” Abe smiled, placing his glasses on my coffee table.

I smiled back at him. Up close, Abe’s eyes were enduring. I gently pinched his chin. His beard was soft to the touch. I kissed him. He kissed me back tenderly.

Abe kept his hands in his lap. His body was frozen stiff, but it didn’t matter. It felt like the rush of high school all over again. Doing forbidden things while his parents thought he was out on a delivery. I wanted to bite his bottom lip, but even that felt too forward, too erotic. He reached for my hand. He laced his fingers between mine. We breathed together. I felt held.

We moved to my room. Abe sat down like he was testing mattresses at a mattress store. I guided him until his payes hit my pillows. I gently grabbed the back of his head, displacing his yarmulke as I kissed him. He gripped my waist. I straddled him, moving faster, undoing the top button of his shirt to see a fresh, white tank top beneath.

“My mother will be wondering where I am—” Abe said, sitting up quickly all of a sudden.

I stopped. I felt like someone had swerved into my lane while driving at full speed. I tried to bring myself back into my own body.

“I understand.”

Abe did up the single button on his shirt and repositioned his yarmulke.

“I’d like to see you again.”

“I’d like that too,” I said. We kissed goodbye. Soon, Abe closed my front door behind him.

I thought about him all week. Before we had met, I had been so worried about fetishizing him. But now, I was afraid to admit something more to myself. I liked Abe’s stories. I liked his worldview. I liked his smile. How could our worlds ever be compatible? Would he ever leave his community, like the rogue uncle he had mentioned? If I converted, would they ever accept me? Was that even a possibility?

These questions resurfaced that next Sunday as we cuddled in the backseat of his minivan. We were in the empty parking lot of Astoria Park, and a bridge stretched out above us into the frozen sunset.

“Would you ever want to leave Williamsburg?” I said, curling up into Abe’s chest. I was doing the logistics in my head. As a remote worker, I wasn’t tied to the city. If only we could get away for the weekend. Maybe, then, we could have dinner together.

“I can’t,” Abe said, “I have my responsibilities at the warehouse. Everyone’s counting on me.”

“Don’t you want to get your own place, at least?”

“I will when I get married again.”

“Married again?” I said, pulling away. We were sitting side by side, our legs brushing against each other. Close, but still eons away.

“Yes. Any day my parents will sit me down with a new woman. She will be my wife.”

He said it so matter-of-factly. My cheeks burned. It felt like a spell had broken, and my mind was severing from my body, and I had fallen out of the car onto the dirty grit of the wintered parking lot. Now I understood. I was his stepping-stone. A secret bridge between the two predetermined women in his life: the one of his distant past and the one of his nascent future.

Abe didn’t message me for a few days. I double texted him. I triple texted him. I didn’t want to let him go. I didn’t want to descend back into the anonymity of strangers. At last, he messaged me,

“Honestly, I’m starting to think about this whole thing. It’s nothing with you personally, of course. You’re an amazing and beautiful person. I’m a bit confused about myself now. I need some time now. I hope you understand.” 

💌