I personally am fascinated with the whole subject of frum porn, purely from a statistical perspective (girls in long skirts just don’t do it for me even if they are showing a little more ankle than normal). You see, I run a popular Orthodox blog that makes fun of Orthodoxy. Due to Google’s search engine algorithms, many people who come to my site are searching for frum porn. Not just frum porn, but everything from "naked Lubavitch girls" to "Chassidic gang bangs", and much more. I have wondered for years what exactly they expected to find, who these people were, and what exactly would constitute frum porn.

By definition frum porn would be oxymoronic – that would mean that the porn stars would have to be dressed modestly and this would defeat the entire purpose of porn in the first place. Maybe it would mean that all products used in the video were certified kosher, and before licking any cream products off of each other the porn star would make the required blessing. Maybe all of the male stars had to be circumcised, or the women had to keep their hair covered during the video. 

"Bais Yaakov Girls Gone Wild" has been in my imagination since I was 15. I never thought there were any other sick yeshiva guys like myself, but I have been surprised again and again by the search traffic to my site and the random emails from horny Chassidim in Brooklyn who think that I hold the key to their frum porn adventures.

Several months ago I wrote about the Hot Chani phenomena sweeping through religious neighborhoods in the New York metro area. "Hot Chanis" are religious women who wear wigs but dress very scandalous with tight short skirts, hooker boots and lots of makeup. I posted an example and was flooded with emails from people seeking more pictures. I told them I was not in the porn business – but that they should take s stroll down any street in Flatbush if they wanted some Hot Chani action.

I have been rethinking this whole comedy thing, seems I could make a killing in the frum or Chassidic porn industry.

This awesome article first appeared on April 1, 2009 and has been republished as part of the series JEWCYEST WEEK EVER.

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One of my roommates during Birthright thought that my tefillin were just straps to tie my arm in order to shoot up. This was a non-affiliated (albeit educated) Jewish kid from Colorado who was in school at NYU. If someone who attended NY Jew and still not be informed about tefillin – imagine what those passengers from Kentucky thought. I would have freaked out as well.

Kiddush Levana: A bunch of Jews are gathered on a street corner looking up at the moon.

What they think: Wow, I didn’t know the Jews prayed to the moon God! I always thought they were monotheistic.

Lulav: People are walking down the street with lulavim on Sukkot.

What they think: So this is when the Jews celebrate Palm Sunday… wait a second, it’s not even Sunday. Maybe they are doing it now because palm branches cost less when no one really needs them, those cheap bastards.

Shabbos: It’s a frum community and everyone is going to shul.

What they think: Look at all these people wearing black! There must be a really big funeral going on somewhere. Wait, why is everyone walking to the funeral? They must be trying to save on gas, or maybe it’s a green funeral.

Burning of the chometz: There is a garbage can in the street and the Jews are gathered around throwing their chometz into the fire.

What they think: I wonder if this has something to do with commemorating Kristallnacht. Are they burning German books or something?

Megilas Esther: Everyone is dressed up and it’s time to boo for Haman.

What they think: Why is everyone cheering every time they mention that man Haman?

Purim: Everyone is delivering gift baskets and most of the kids are dressed up.

What they think: Look, the Jews have their own Halloween, but instead of waiting for people to ask for candy they go and deliver it.

Simchas Torah: In some places, Jews take to the streets to celebrate the giving of the Torah.

What they think: It’s an Orthodox Jewish gay pride parade… but why are all the lesbians just watching?

Note: This post sparked an interesting discussion on my Jewish comedy blog that is 105 comments long.

The post What Non-Jews May Think of Some Jewish Rituals appeared first on Jewcy.

“The gay issue is one of those things that prove to me just how outdated and irrelevant the torah is as a text to live my life by. It has good things in it, but it’s mixed up with so much primitive and sometimes barbaric instructions. It reflects a social ethos that was relevant to the primitive tribes that lived here thousands of years ago. Not really relevant to the 21st century. No offense.

Stoning for gay sex is just one aspect of it. Easy enough for me to solve as a secular Jew.”

The comment represents what I think are the opinions of a large part of the Jewish population at large, and some individuals in the Orthodox community as well. I myself have wondered about the relevancy of the Torah and although I lead a religious and observant lifestyle, ever since I left high school I have been questioning the whole thing we call "Torah Judaism."

Was the Torah merely written from a periodical perspective, or was it written to be, as they say, a living Torah? I am almost positive that if the Torah were written now it would be drastically different, but we can’t just rewrite the Torah, we can just reinterpret it like we have been doing for thousands of years. Besides – didn’t God write the Torah? Someone recently asked me if I believed if God wrote the torah and I said, I wasn’t really sure – it is a bit farfetched. Besides, in my mind, believing in God is definitely not rational even though I continue to do so. 

The more I try to explain the Torah and its wacked-out parts, the more I find myself busting out taykoos and halacha moshe misinai, but I can’t just say "we will find out when moshiach comes" for everything (sometimes I just think the moshiach thing was invented so we think we’ll get see our relatives again) and so that the Lubavitchers have something to do when they get drunk.

Even as an Orthodox Jew I struggle with the fact that much of the Torah is irrelevant (and downright offensive, nasty and insane), but what are we supposed to do about this? Maybe it will come to something like the Constitutionalists or the revisionists? What do you think?

The post Is the Torah Outdated and Irrelevant? appeared first on Jewcy.

Unfortunately I never really got to pick up chicks at Yizkor because since the age of 6 I have been "stuck" inside shul during Yizkor. I always sneaked out the back entrance of the shul out of embarrassment when I was younger. It wasn’t until I got older that I realized that getting to stay in shul during Yizkor was kind of like a private club. I can remember countless times looking over the mechitza at some other girl my age and trying to get her eye, as if to say "don’t worry baby, my mom’s dead too" or "I know how you’re feeling, lets get it on til you feel better." This never happened, but only after the age of 23 or so did I realize the possibilities of picking up a chick at Yizkor were greatly increased if you had to say it.

I used to hate coming out of Yizkor. It felt like all eyes were on me, people snickering and saying "ha ha his mom’s dead." Remember that I grew up in the ’80s before political correctness became stylish – I was treated like shit as a kid for not having a mom.  My stuttering problem and weird name for a modern Orthodox kid didn’t help much either.  I kind of avoided having to admit I was in a single parent household, like how someone who is closeted and gay tries to avoid all talk of heterosexuality. As a motherless child I avoided conversations that were about things like what your mom made for lunch – it kind of sucked to tell you the truth.

Now I look forward to Yizkor. Not only is it time to focus on our mortality and remember those who have passed on, but it’s kind of cool to look around as I get older and realize that I am rarely the youngest anymore. I also love seing who has had a death in the family so that I can have some ammo if they look like someone I want to get to know – not only women, my dear friends, men as well – because I am an equal opportunity bonder.

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I was doing Google girl searches for a long time before it became acceptable to admit this. Back before Google became an official verb, I would do this, but it had to be kept secret. The one time I assumed the girl was relaxed enough to hear that I found her profile on Onlysimchas.com but was disappointed to find no picture she demanded to know how I had found the profile. I told her that I Googled her and she went berserk, like I was some freak for wanting to know more than what our mutual friend had told me, because everyone who wants you to go out with their friend switches to "sales mode" when talking about their friend’s attributes.

Around the same time that Facebook opened its doors to tweens and preteens it became acceptable to conduct extensive back round checks on the internet of potential dates. Facebook is basically inviting you to look for dirt and thanks to my favorite feature – tagged pictures – the girl you are researching can’t just hide her true figure behind a well placed column and a thinning black skirt. You would be surprised to see how different people look in their profile pictures versus their tagged pictures.

Blind dating has its virtues. For me it was a rush of sorts, kind of like playing the lottery: you never knew what was going to happen, although I mostly assumed it be crappy until I would win once in a while. I do wonder if I will miss the joy of haggling with the neighborhood shadchan and finding subtle ways to reject the dating offerings from my Charedi cousins in Monsey?

Although Googling and Facebooking potential dates can be a lot of fun and informative, one should keep an open mind. People are too quick to judge folks based on their friends, half-naked drunken pictures taken from their spring break in Cancun and whether or not they are a Yankees fan. There is more to people than what they put on their Facebook profiles, although if you find their blog you can pretty much assume it is describing their alter ego and what they wish they were but never will be.

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Regardless of whether he happens to be an Orthodox Jew, the video is hilarious. Old men grinding on chicks at the West Indian Parade is funny all the time.

The post What Happens at the West Indian Parade Stays at the West Indian Parade appeared first on Jewcy.

Yated

The Yated is the yeshvish (ultraorthodox Jews who are not Chassidic) paper of choice. It has the "Readers Write" section, in which Lakewood kollel wives complain about women wearing crocs to shul, the visiting day crisis (see explanation below) and how to solve the shidduch crisis by telling girls to stay in the freezer (Lakewood yeshiva policy for not letting guys date after they come home from Israel) just like guys.

The only other interesting feature in the Yated, for someone who doesn’t want to read cut and pasted week old AP and Reuters articles, is the Chinuch Roundtable – someone asks a question (sometimes juicy) and a bunch of rabbis from different institutions answer it. Every rabbi says the same exact thing and there is no diversity within the group. One week there was a question concerning this family who invites over yeshiva rebels to get them back on track but the family has two teenage girls and they’re scared of the potential bad influence – it had the most sexual undertones I have ever seen in a yeshivish publication. However, most of the Roundtable has to do with whether or not girls should be taught aleph bais, because that may lead them to want to learn gemara and as a result women may have some influence.

The Jewish Week

Then you have the Jewish Week, which is trying to be a Jewish version of the New York times, well thought out articles by academics bashing anything religious or right wing, at least one article per issue about a crisis in Africa which has no Jewish appeal and items that are constantly telling us how philanthropic liberal Jews are even though they rarely give to Jewish organizations.

Hamodia

The Hamodia is actually a real paper – of course it’s all right wing, doesn’t have pictures of women and is full of ads for kishke and kugel makers – but it’s a daily paper and people love it.  It has absolutely nothing of interest to me, but for folks who can’t tune in to Fox News daily because their TV is behind the mirror in their bedroom it works.

The Jewish Press

The Jewish Press is famous for being the only paper about which there is an ongoing halachic debate whether you can bring it in to the bathroom or take it out of the bathroom. It also has several pseudonyms, The Jewish Mess, The Jewish Prust, etc.  For one reason or another, probably because they have the most diverse roster of writers, is hated by many in the more black hat community.

The Jewish Press has articles from Lubavitchers, secular Jews, frummies, and Modern Orthodoxers. It happens to be that the Jewish Press has some controversial stuff that is not appropriate for little Ruchie fresh out of seminary. The Chronicles of Crisis in which many of the issues dealt with are swept under the rug on a regular basis is part of the Family Matters section which could be pulled out of the paper for censoring.

While they may be slightly left wing, compared to other Orthodox papers, but they are still right wing by journalistic standards. For instance, in their Chronicles of Crisis articles they like to write about frum women who discover one day after 30 years of marriage that their husband is gay – but they don’t call it gay, they call it SSA "same sex attraction" which I think was taken out of the DSM in 1960 or something. The articles viewing frum men who look at porn as diseased addicts are also quite funny.

The Jewish Press also has something that I am surprised more papers don’t have, and that is articles dealing with shidduchim and the so-called shidduch crisis. You would think, if there was really a shidduch crisis facing the frum community, more Jewish publications would devote more space to it. Esther Jungreis and Shmuely Boteach love writing about it and at the back of the Press they have the shidduch page which has a male/female response to questions about shomer negiah, saying no after the first date and telling the guy you can’t send him your picture because you haven’t photoshopped it enough yet.

There are loads of local Jewish weeklies and I don’t know of them all, but maybe you can enlighten me with what they spew.

The Five Towns Jewish Times (FTJT)

The Five Towns Jewish Times it seems is devoted to advertising. It’s kind of like one of those countless free zines with ads for tichel washing – but in a more large print format. Every other advertisement is for an overpriced yeshiva dinner or a raffle in which you can win a dream kitchen or fully stocked beis medrish. I was published in this paper, but I still like the Jewish Star better.

The Jewish Star

The Jewish Star is the other five towns Jewish paper. Reading it makes you draw the comparison between it and the FTJT in that the Jewish Star is way more mature and an actual newspaper, whereas the FTJT is just an advertisement-laden NY Post style paper. Not that either of them are that interesting, but if you want news, that’s what its about.

My favorite ads in Jewish newspapers are the ones for new yeshivas opening up – seems that different programs for off the derech kids open every day. I love how they try to be all politically correct with phrases like "do you want your child to receive the attention they deserve?" which really means that they have drug tests and won’t let the kids out at night.

The Texas Jewish Post

In Dallas they had the Texas Jewish Post which was really an overpriced, undervalued edition of the Jewish Week. It was tiny, colorful, and had nothing of interest to anyone besides for Texas Jewish Community Center directors – so they could know who to hit up for money.

Mishpacha Magazine

Mishpacha magazine is the only Charedi magazine, and it’s actually pretty good. I really like their articles about great Rabbis that passed away or on their yirtzeits. The magazine caters to women, it seems, and once in a while they go a little risque and talk about the shidduch crisis or judging within the frum community – but most of the time it is Rebbe stories and how to make sushi for your next vort, or how to wash and set your sheitel.

Heeb

I bought Heeb magazine once and it was great. It was before I started writing and entered the Jewish literati world. The Beastie Boys were on the cover, they had an ad for kosher butt lube and a picture of a ketuba for same sex couples, but the next time I saw the magazine it had degenerated into an elitist hipster rag of kitschy Jewish things like glow in the dark dreidels and too many bagel and Jewish mother guilt articles.

Lifestyles Magazine

Lifestyles Magazine has got to be one of the most ridiculous magazines I have ever seen. Basically, it’s one thick magazine full of Maserati, Rolex, and personal jet ads with picture after picture of cocktail party attendees with lifted faces smiling because they just gave away a million dollars to some Jewish environmental fund. It’s really pathetic, and it’s like $8 an issue.

New Voices, Jvibe and Presentense

These are the low budget versions of Heeb for college students who use the term Jew-ish, Jewy and I enjoy all three of them, but am waiting for my free subscriptions so I can find out more.

I haven’t read enough of the following to throw down my two cents:

Moment, The Forward and Tikkun…I am sure there are some I may be missing.

The visiting day crisis: The Readers Write section of the Yated erupted with chaos last year when one reader brought up the visiting day crisis, how something deteriorated into a crisis so fast boggled my mind but based on the letters it seems that anything that bothers anyone in Lakewood or Boro Park becomes a crisis.

With that said the so called visiting day crisis revolved around the fact that parents couldn’t afford the costs of visiting day. You have to give tips, drive up and then take the kids to Woodbourne to fatten them up and buy them nosh. I recall visiting day as going for a hike with my dad. But I guess parents have lost the concept of not spoiling their children and turned it into a crisis instead.

I hope to continue this with a satirical critique of Jewish news websites for there are many…and possibly a more in depth look at the types of advertisements in Jewish news papers.

The post Your Satirical Guide to Jewish Print Media appeared first on Jewcy.

I remember the day in ninth grade when my rebbe was faced with the awkward task of explaining the concept of anal sex.  "Ah, boys," he told us, "lets say you have some thieves, and they want to rob a house. Biah she’lo c’darka, or, relations that occur not in the normal way, is an important concept when considering the finer points of the acquisition of a woman through intercourse- you know, the transaction.

"Now normally," he continued, "the thieves would go in the front door and in that case they would have access to all the rooms in the house. But if the thieves had occasion to use the back door of the house- for whatever reason- they would only have access to several rooms.  Would you say that the house was partially robbed, or is it considered a complete robbing?"

Indeed, is it considered a complete robbing? I don’t remember the maskana, but I can tell you one thing- the lock on that back door is certainly a little harder to crack than the one on the front door.

Explaining this sort of thing, I suppose, is one of the hazards of teaching the mesechta on marriage to a bunch of heretofore sheltered yeshiva boys, some of whom had never heard the particulars of how sexual intercourse is supposed to go (my cousin Yaakov told me when I was seven and he was ten and my parents being reformed hippies and avid Doctor Spock readers had no qualms about filling me in on the details- which, by the way, scared the shit out of me. "What if it gets stuck?" I remember crying as I imagined some sort of zipper between a girl’s legs).

I always wondered what my rebbe, obviously a talmid chacham, was thinking when he chose to teach us the most explicit of all the mesechtos of the gemara (though I hear that Gittin is pretty heavy, too. Go figure). "A woman can be acquired in three ways," the mishna says, "through money, a written document, or sexual intercourse." And contrary to popular belief, Chazal are no prudes.

We learned about everything- I’m talking about ALL the varieties of lo c’darka- you name it. We learned the minimum quotas for how often a man is required to provide satisfaction to his wife. A sailor has to do it once every six months, due to the nature of his job. A merchant, once a week.

Not surprisingly, rabbis are required to pleasure their wives every day (and twice on Friday nights). We learned the law for every contingency. I remember there was another time when the question arose whether a couple were considered married if they chose to consecrate their marriage through the act of sex but they stop halfway through.

What means halfway through? Before the man finishes (can all the ladies in the house say "That’s so chauvinistic"). Anyway, rebbe gets up there to explain all this to us, you know, how to tell when intercourse is considered over and so on- as if we couldn’t figure it out ourselves- and he’s turning red again, and his words are coming out real fast on account of he’s pretty nervous, and, after sending out the boy whose parents forbade him from learning this sugya, chas v’shalom, he says quickly-

"Um, you see, if you are moving a couch from one room into another, boys, and you put the couch down halfway through, is it considered to be in the first room or the second room?"

So some kid raises his hand and asks which room the couch is further into, and then rebbe says that it doesn’t matter, and the kid asks why, and rebbe says that he can’t explain the mashal any further because of darchei tznius.

In eleventh grade after being thrown out of that yeshiva and several others, I found myself in the day school back home, where the rebbi asked my class to decide which mesechta we wanted to learn. It didn’t take me long to convince the class which one. I remember putting my previous knowledge of Kiddushin to good use when I asked some detailed questions- which relied on several m’forshim- involving myself, the rabbi’s twin daughters, and a can of whipped cream.

The rabbi fielded the questions with surprising aplomb, leveling his well-put answers evenly at me. I don’t remember the rabbi losing his cool that year (the sole exception being the time he told us that he liked to collect old and unusual things, to which my friend yelled "Like your wife?").

This in spite of all the perverse comments my friends and I threw in between lines of gemara. I still find myself calling him from time to time, asking more serious questions that have a real impact on my life. And as a character whose mind is steeped in filth, having a rabbi who actually picks up the phone when I call is really something to be thankful for.

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Why is prison so frum?

No women: It seems that the goal of ultra-Orthodox Jews has been to remove women from the scene for some time, slowly making crazy decrees from banning denim, the color red and arm-swinging to preventing women from leaving the home, pursuing post baby-making education and learning Torah. Seems like prison without the yetzer harahs temptation of women is all fine and dandy.

Food: We all know religious Jews aren’t the healthiest of the bunch and now they can enjoy a life of crappy food. Besides, I’m sure half the food in prison looks like cholent.

Shabbos Goyim: Imagine a world in which the lights were turned off, the food was made and the doors were opened on shabbos by goyim without a peep from you. Now imagine that your whole world was reshus hayachid and you could carry all you wanted on Shabbos. Prison is like having your very own Shabbos goy.

Shabbos Riots: Its perfectly normal for a prison riot to break out so if you feel that your fellow irreligious Jew down the block (literally) is going to be forced to play sports and carry on Shabbos, starting a riot seems like the thing to do anyway – frummies who riot will feel right at home in prison.

No internet: I can only imagine that prisons now have internet, but fear not my frummy friends. It is a public place and they block all the good sites you so truly love to search in Arab-owned internet cafes.

Television: You mean I can watch TV and I don’t have to hide it behind the mirror in my bedroom? I wonder if a kid would get kicked out of a yeshiva if they knew his father was watching TV in prison?

Smoking: Frummies and especially hocker types (the guys who wind up in prison) love to smoke.

Mikvah: So the shower may not be the same, but at least they will be used to large hairy men taking them from behind.

Why prison may not be so frum:

Metal toilet seats may need to be kashered

Can you imagine an inmate demanding a challah knife?

Use of the word Shvigger (Yiddish for mother in law) in conversation may be a sakanah

Are you allowed to daven in the same room as a toilet bowl?

The post Don’t Worry About Your Rabbi – Prison is Quite Frum appeared first on Jewcy.

I think the last time I put on something that I would have called "Shabbos shorts" was in the mid 1980s – you know, those dark shorts that covered your knees that you wore to shabbos parties that gave out pekalechs filled with button candies and fizzer pops?

Well even if you didn’t have those experiences, I did, and I was wearing longer-than-my knees-shorts and a button down shirt for my first pre-shul shul experience. That isn’t a typo. This was similar to the college party pre-game which starts in your dorm room, in shul mode.

We walked down First Avenue in the East Village towards pre-shul. We were headed to an Egal (‘egalitarian’ for all you right-wingers) minyan for the cultural experience of it. That alone is enough to get those frummies with pitchforks and lanterns banging on my door in the middle of the night. What’s more, for the first time in my life I sat in on a minyan on Shabbat and my phone was vibrating for attention.

I walked in and stuffed my hat in my pocket and grabbed the most "I have no idea what I’m doing here" yarmulke and sat down. I didn’t want to be outed as an infiltrator. I wanted to appear legit, so I kept pretending to look at my neighbor for the page number, and every few minutes my yarmulke would fall off my head and I would take a little longer than a regular frummie to realize this. Frequent yarmulke wearers know when their yarmulke falls off, but I have noticed that the unaffiliated and non-regular yarmulke wearers will go for about 30 seconds before they realize it has fallen off.

Clad in shorts and a pink silky yarmulke, I davened mincha and tried not to shuckel. I also tried to bust out those BBYO "I have never davened before" modiim bows – you know, the whole ‘knees bent and then bow’ which is never done in frum circles. I was sure some people could tell we were there as spectators, just as I could tell the guy sitting next to my friend was also religious – well not that religious, because anyone going anywhere for the cultural value of it cant really be religious, right?

So back to this other religious infiltrator. I could tell he was religious based on several things: besides for the fact he was wearing a yarmulke in the correct, not-too-far-behind-the-head position, he knew how to perfectly place his finger in the siddur as a bookmark. He also sang along with Kabalas Shabbos by heart, while everyone else – including myself – who didn’t want to be mekabel shabbos at that time hummed and did our oy oy oys.

Then there was this girl with flaming orange hair and a bright teal outfit that matched her sandals who was doing the sit down shuckel right next to me. As many of you know, the sit down shuckel is complex and not traditionally done by anyone besides very religious folks, which led me to believe the girl in teal was in fact another one of the religious infiltrators present in this Egal minyan. Shit, we probably could have had a breakaway minyan, separate seating and all.

The place was a big mix. The Rabbi was like one of those super friendly NCSY advisers who went to YCT and became an overzealous Rabbi. He had this perfectly groomed modern orthodox flair, knit yarmulke of perfect geometric proportions and a blue shirt, sport coat and khakis. He screamed Connecticut upper middle class and told us that ‘Ian’ would be leading Kabalas Shabbos as they started Yedid Nefesh.

We were sitting on wooden chairs, men and women together. There was no microphone. They didn’t need one but I always figured non-observant people did things to spite Orthodoxy (you know, that’s kind of how its taught in yeshiva), so I was expecting everyone to be davening through a microphone and eating ham and cheese while they talked on their cell phones about after-shul movie plans. Well, besides the mixed seating and a siddur that took out the morning bracha of "shelo asony ish" and replaced it with "made me a Jew" so as not to be too politically incorrect, nothing was really wrong.

Yedid Nefesh was sung from a feminist point of view, but Ian – a supposed male chazzan – was going to lead Kabalas Shabbos, so I didn’t have to hear kol isha. After an Aleinu which leads me to believe that non-affiliated Jews all bow exactly the same way with the knee intensive bow, and would have no idea when to bow if not for the chief bower at the front, we started Kabalas Shabbos, or "Shabbat" as they claimed it was called.

I should also note that everyone ended Shemona Esrei at the same time, kind of like when I was in high school and we would look around to see how many people were done and then sit down. But this was a more en masse ending, like the Rabbi sat down so we could sit down. Another interesting thing was that it was completely silent, which drives people like me nuts. I need constant stimulation regardless of whether it has to do with Yehash Shmei Rabba or overhearing some woman talking about her estrogen supplements.

During Yedid Nefesh I looked through the siddur and tried to find stuff that was changed or taken out (nothing besides the brachas), but I did find all of these nationalistic songs like "America the Beautiful" and "The Star-Spangled Banner," and "O Canada" – WTF??? The Sim Shalom siddur is also the first siddur I have ever seen to have a bibliography which was really interesting because they talk about who wrote this and that and when.

Not one person was wearing a tallis. I was kind of surprised. I mean, based on my "unaffiliated kids at campus chabad and hillel" wearing tallis on Friday night experience I would have expected everyone to be wearing tallis scarves, but they weren’t, and only 2 women were spotted wearing a yarmulke. I realized that Ian might actually be a woman.  The kids in front of me turned around and asked me about the chazzan. They said Ian was going to lead services, but Ian was a woman, what was up? I told these kids that this was the East Village and anything goes in the East Village.

I was kind of sad to leave because I had grown fond of my pink silk yarmulke – which would be a great way to get aliyos at frum shuls which would never give just a regular modern-looking guy one. Just like black velvet changes your status in a lot of places, having a 1950s bat mitzvah yarmulke of someone named Gertrude will also change yours.

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