My first real grown-up date, when I was 20, was an absolute calamity. Before agreeing to go, I had what felt like a 40-minute panic attack. “How do you expect to ever find a husband if you’re scared of a coffee date?” asked my Mom. She was right.

I was a ball of utter chaos: Was I supposed to offer to pay? What would happen at the end of the date? What was I supposed wear? What is dating? As we walked into the coffee shop, I tripped for no apparent reason. A kid laughed. Later, my date—a tall, dark, handsome Jewish law student—drove me through a cemetery. We did not go out a second time.

A lot of people are nervous on first dates, but I seem to experience excessive anxiety—or at least, I used to. Why? Because I grew up Modern Orthodox. I attended a yeshiva where there was no opportunity, really, for boys and girls to learn about the secular dating world. My school was co-ed, but it didn’t help the matter. Following halacha, the school’s message about was sex was firm: none of it before marriage. One of the main administrative goals each day was to  keep boys and girls away from each other.

Modern Orthodoxy is kind of a gray area, encompassing was wide range of religious practice. When people ask about my parents’ practic, I hesitate about how to describe them. They keep Shabbat, but my mother wears pants, and they eat vegetarian food at non-kosher restaurants. Some members of my extended family who also call themselves Modern Orthodox are strictly kosher, and cover their hair after marriage. Most Modern Orthodox people venture into the secular world for study and work, but many only socialize with other Orthodox Jews. The level of familiarity with pop culture varies greatly from family to family and person to person.

The messages we received in my community about dating were confusing. Only certain activities were acceptable, and the rules seemed arbitrary. “Dating” meant that you walked to class together and maybe went over to their house for Shabbat lunch. My first boyfriend—who I ogled for three years before we actually started hanging out—lasted all of two weeks. We rode our bikes and sometimes sat next to each other when the whole gang went to the movies. Romantic. As far as the physical aspects of the relationship, hugging was about as far as it went. Maybe the occasional touching of the elbow. No hand-holding and certainly no kissing. It wasn’t just us.

When I was 15, a friend told the entire neighborhood that I was a whore because I sat next to a boy on a shul trip to Hersheypark. I was comfortable hanging out with boys in a friendly, platonic context, but unfortunately, some people in my Modern Orthodox neighborhood did not feel the same. (That same “friend” later got sprung sneaking out with boys, which led to some difficulties getting into seminary. The neighborhood covered for her.)

Every love connection I had was accidental. When you grow up together, you just get thrown together. You don’t date in a traditional sense, you simply hang out closer, with an almost imperceptible increase in frequency.

My first “real” relationship started just before eleventh grade, with a guy whose religious observance swung from eating at Olive Garden and making out with girls, to Orthodoxy, to some variation of the two. The first and only time he spent a weekend at my house, he showed up with a giant black hat that he had spent too much money on, which scared my parents, who wanted me to be observant, but wanted to make sure I stayed true to my own beliefs. With him, I got a taste of almost every type of Judaism.  I thought it would broaden my relationship horizons, that I wouldn’t be so scared of guys and dating. It didn’t. He was the first guy that I had any sort of physical relationship with. Most of that had to do with the fact that he was from a different community and wasn’t raised Modern Orthodox.  When I started dating him I kept most things from my friends, but a few warned me that being with someone who wasn’t religious was a bad idea.

Once I left the bubble of yeshiva and found my footing in the secular world of college and dorms and parties, I realized that those other folks in my community—the ones who attended Orthodox, single-sex high schools—had it easy. My friends whose schools were more Orthodox than Modern were having an easier go at college life because all they went to the same schools (Queens, Stern, YU), never completely leaving the bubble. They dated within their community, with people who had the same level of romantic experience and the same expectations. Their rules of dating were clearly delineated. Most of them are married now. I was the one with the problem: I was dipping my feet in dating pools beyond my depth, with people who were far more experienced and comfortable than me.

In my freshman year of college, my sculpture TA caught my eye. He walked into the studio with his newsboy cap and glasses, making me want to marry him. I lost all motor skills each time he approached my table. Once I accidentally smashed my little statue. My friend Sammi would stand next to me molding her clay and I’d nudge her, asking “What do I do?” The semester was grueling and I was in jeopardy of not finishing my final work of ‘art.’ The closest I got to flirting with him was lying to him about liking to fish. (I saw it on an episode of Gilmore Girls.)

When the semester ended and we all went home for the summer, my big move was sending the TA a Facebook message confessing that I had a big-league crush on him—something a sixteen-year-old might do. Needless to say, the relationship never blossomed, though we did stay in touch.

My yeshiva left me with a pretty solid education, but almost no life skills. It wasn’t until I was nearly done with college that I started to feel at ease in the world of dating, and that was because I decided to work on an ethnography-type thing about the culture of online dating for credit. I actually picked dating as my writing project for the semester so that I’d be forced to learn how to go on a date.

And so, I went on dates. Many dates. I became a student of flirting, plate-sharing, coy glances, teasing. Each dinner or seat at a bar taught me something new. I learned that people who have been dating since they were 14 still get nervous. One of my first dates couldn’t seem to remember the college he went to. Another spilled beer all over the bar counter. And more than a few of them, jittery and clumsy, confessed to me that they were “a bit nervous.” So if I didn’t know how to answer a question or if I spilled my drink or tripped (which happened a lot), it was okay. More importantly, it was pure immersion therapy: the more I pushed myself, the more comfortable I became. After a while I stopped walking into glass doors. Making conversation became much easier. One guy even called me a good “verbal-spatting partner,” which I considered a win.

About three years after I confessed my crush to the TA, he messaged me on Facebook and asked me out. Butterflies were swing-dancing in my stomach, but I kept my cool and it went well. I accidentally called him by a codename Sammi and I had given him, but I covered it up with a cough and a smile. I didn’t feel uncomfortable and I didn’t feel as though I was playing dating catch-up. I felt normal. We didn’t get together, but I finally felt as though I had finally graduated into the adult world of dating.

There were many awkward moments along the way, but I think I have finally leveled off with my peers in the school of love. I am more comfortable now. Not confident all the time, but not frightened whenever I have to talk to a guy.  I’ve found someone to be with who, I think, would be surprised to know what a disaster I used to be. I’ve spoken to a lot of people who grew up in communities similar to mine, and learned that we all share a common naïveté when it comes to the world of secular dating.  But everyone has their ‘thing,’ no? Every person goes into a relationship with baggage or quirks or expectations—so it’s a process of consciously keeping those neuroses in check and not letting them hinder the progression of a relationship (or even that one date). There’s no formula to what works, it’s just a process of trial and error until you one day realize “Hey, this ain’t so bad.”

Daniella Bondar is a MFA Creative Writing Nonfiction student at The New School. Wandering New Yorker. Insomniac. She’s working on a memoir about her gold dress phobia. Follow her on twitter and find her writing at DaniellaRobin.com.

(Image: Shutterstock)

Related: I Hid My Non-Jewish Boyfriend From My Family For Over A Year

The post “50 First Dates”: Learning About Love After Modern Orthodoxy appeared first on Jewcy.

I used to love Purim when I was growing up. Mom always came up with the cutest Mishloach Manot for my friends, from candy-filled plastic hearts to sweet little ceramic Claire’s boxes. When the holiday fell on a Sunday, my parents would both be home and the table would look like a garden of cellophane-wrapped baskets. We’d stay up late the night before packing in an assembly line, and the next day I’d drive with Dad around the neighborhood to deliver the gifts. He’d lift up his windshield wipers and cover the tops of them with gloves. Then he’d turn the switch and the makeshift hands would wave. Instead of Jewish music, he’d play Led Zeppelin and drive up and down the neighborhood streets. The tunes shouted from the windows, becoming the soundtrack for the costumed families frolicking up and down the streets. I’d watch them through the window. They’d wave and smile as our blue sedan drove by.

The last Purim I celebrated was my freshman year of college. Interestingly enough, it was the furthest I had ever been from home during a holiday. My friends and I—Jewish and non-Jewish—dressed up and went to a huge carnival that Chabad was throwing. We were in the middle of Nowheresville but there was music, games, and all the food you could ever want.

It’s been a while since anything resembling that has happened on Purim. This year I stayed in and watched Mad Men reruns in my pajamas. Instagram fed me a slew of pictures of family and friends dressed up. In between Don Draper’s affairs, I double-tapped each one. Like.

Growing up in an observant home, I learned that being Jewish meant you just did certain things. I never questioned it. Shabbat happened every week and it was normal not to watch television or drive the car. Holidays were filled with beautiful traditions and family. But now that I live away from home, and am not sure I believe in religion at all, being Jewish doesn’t mean being religious the way it used to.

Without consciously deciding to, I drifted away from community and observance. Part of me is happy about that—even before I left, I knew I didn’t quite fit in. There was no one for me to discuss literature with or argue over the arts. I’d sit on the floor of used bookshops by myself while my friends hung out at the mall. As soon as school—our common denominator—vanished, so did our bond. And yet, another part of me feels bad that Purim came and went without a single sparkle of the delight and fun it once held for me. I’ve been on a religious roller-coaster for most of my life, and in my twenties—on the cusp of adulthood—it has become even more difficult.

So now I am faced with the task of redefining observance.

The meat of observance, for me, lies in two things: culture and community. What I believe, or don’t believe, about where the bible came from doesn’t have to disrupt my connection to Judaism. Realizing that I don’t have to practice religion the way my family does has helped me to reconcile my nostalgia for my childhood with my discomfort with traditional observance. If I want to, I can still spend Purim with my family, or call up an old friend and ask if I can latch onto her plans. Culture is about tradition and the group of people you belong to, and that has little to do with theology and faith.

In terms of seeking out a new community: I haven’t found one that’s quite right for me, yet. Many of the people I grew up with, if they left home at all, left for the Upper West Side or Washington heights. I chose the East Village. I don’t know where my generation of culturally-identified, secular Jews is going. But for now, I am coming to realize that despite the choices I have made, I can hold onto the parts I want and still call myself observant, without feeling like I am lying or cheating. I can create new traditions, keep old ones, and find new communities and friends. I can have my own garden of cellophane-wrapped baskets.

Daniella Bondar is a MFA Creative Writing Nonfiction student at The New School. Wandering New Yorker. Insomniac. She’s working on a memoir about her gold dress phobia. Follow her on twitter and find her writing at DaniellaRobin.com.

(Image: Shutterstock)

Related: I Hid My Non-Jewish Boyfriend From My Family For Over a Year

The post Passing on Purim For A Night In With Netflix appeared first on Jewcy.

After twelve plus years of Yeshiva education, I was dating a Catholic-raised atheist and lying to my parents about it. I met Brian during my freshman year at Binghamton University. He was the type of boy I was always warned about—a gentile. Before I left for school all I heard was, “Be careful. Stay away from those goyish men!” It was mostly my grandmother and concerned aunts and uncles talking. My parents didn’t think I needed the warning and, truthfully, neither did I: the idea of dating outside my religion never even dawned on me, and Brian and I never dated at Binghamton. I transferred to Baruch College after my freshman year. There were more Jews in New York City than upstate New York; everyone thought I’d dodged a bullet.

I grew up in a Modern Orthodox family and community in Staten Island. More modern than orthodox—my Mom wore pants and we ate dairy out—but observant nonetheless. Shabbat was spent at home with televisions and phones switched off. Thousands and thousands of dollars were spent on private Jewish education. All my neighbors were Jewish. During my year away at Binghamton, I was getting up early to pray and staying home on Friday nights while my floor-mates hit the bars downtown. The kids I grew up with all went off onto their proverbial roads of observance or non-observance, but the thing we all shared was the undeniable fact that we would never, ever bring a non-Jew home to meet the parents.

Almost two years ago, Brian decided to visit New York for a weekend. It was the summer before he started law school and the summer before my last semester of undergrad. On a blistering Friday in June he took a train down from Albany, where he lived, and I met him in front of Penn Station. We had been keeping in touch since I left, and it was easy to have a platonic relationship with him because I never thought of him as a potential partner. After all, he wasn’t Jewish.

That first weekend visit started out weirdly. There were some pauses and searches for small talk. We tried to chase away awkwardness with shared beer pitchers over bar tables. I showed him all my favorite haunts and he spoke to me about starting law school. Somehow, amidst a sea of neon bar lights and college memories, a switch got turned on. The years we spent talking, before dating, we shared a lot, which made slipping into something more than friendship easy. The night before he was due to go back home he said to me, “I think if I was here, I’d pursue this.” Without asking, I knew what he meant. But I left it alone.

My battle with religion had hit a point of almost complete non-observance at the time. Before Brian, I hadn’t thought about my religion in a while. I was describing myself as culturally Jewish, which to me meant that I didn’t believe in God or religious observance, but I did value my heritage. I had gotten over the fear that if I turned on a light on Shabbat I would be punished in the world to come. I was going out on Friday nights and spending Saturdays watching Netflix in my Manhattan studio. Still, I was only eating kosher meat and had no intention of ever being with someone of a different faith. I reached a point of simple living.

When Brian and I started dating, I had to rethink it all. We officially became a couple in November 2012, a few months after his first weekend visit, but we counted our anniversary from our first date in July, when we saw the Woody Allen film To Rome with Love. We climbed up the stairs of an old Soho theater. I still have the stubs in a box of things I hid that year.

The first few months of our relationship, I kept telling him that it could never go anywhere. After that, I spent the next few months convincing myself that it wasn’t going anywhere. It was just young love, it would fade. But before I knew it I was twenty-two and we were exchanging I love yous and having our one-year anniversary. And in all that time I was lying to my parents and everyone else I knew.

Because Brian was in law school in Albany, it made running around the truth a little easier. My parents knew that we were very good friends but didn’t think anything more of it—at least, that’s what I thought. Brian would visit about one weekend a month and I would tell my parents I was spending the weekend with other friends, offering names and lies and false locations with ease. My parents had always been my best friends and I felt that I was betraying them. And with the guilt of deception came worries about the future: I always loved Friday night dinners and holidays with my family, and I wanted to raise my kids in an environment similar to the one I grew up in. Brian, being an atheist, didn’t care much about his own religious holidays. But could I convince him to partake in mine? He was careful of how he approached the topic of my faith and my family, but some nights I watched his face contort in a mess of anger and our time would end in yelling. He knew that I was holding back.

Ultimately, eleven months into our relationship, Brian and I had The Talk. I told him everything I needed from him if our relationship was going to continue, and he agreed to convert. To take on my life. I always thought he did it too quickly, but I was so grateful. “It’s a small price to pay, “ he said, “to have you.”

Though Brian was on board, the idea of a life with him was eating away at me. My parents were asking about other men. And every Friday when I phoned my grandmother to wish her a Shabbat shalom, she would say “Yeah, yeah, thank you. Meeting any nice Jewish men?” Usually I just told her I was working on it. Other times I asked if she’d prefer a lawyer or a doctor. While all this was whirling around me, my nights were consumed by panic attacks.

A year and two months after Brian and I started dating, on the first night of Rosh Hashanah, Mom and I took a walk. As a group of black-hatted Orthodox men walked by, she told me she knew about my secret life. She had been letting me lie to her. I rushed to explain, through tears, that I never meant to lie. That I had spoken to Brian about converting. I let the story of the past year vomit out of me, and Mom listened. She had sensed my anxiety, and wanted to help relieve the burden. All she said was, “This is obviously not the life I want for you, and it won’t be easy, but if he cares about you, then who am I to stop it?”

Brian and I are no longer together. A few weeks ago, after almost two years of dating, we decided to take a break. I’m in the second semester of my MFA writing program in New York and Brian is still in law school, in Albany. In a way, my parents knowing about us took the focus off our religious differences, and put it onto the actual relationship. So the break was not about Brian’s being Jewish or not Jewish, it was about us, together. I don’t regret being with him. Though at the time I felt panicked about all the lying and secrets and the kind of future Brian and I would share, it taught me a lot about myself. I learned that who I date is not nearly as important as what I am.

Daniella Bondar is a MFA Creative Writing Nonfiction student at The New School. Wandering New Yorker. Insomniac. She’s working on a memoir about her gold dress phobia. Follow her on twitter and find her writing at DaniellaRobin.com.

(Image via Shutterstock.)

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