when I was a kid I hated wearing kippahs. people in the orthodox community felt it was a rejection of them. it was a rejection of a tradition that was not practical. fashion can be subverted. you could easily get a man to wear the fashion and say he is against Israel. I was right. I am amazed that years later so much of what I was dealing with when I was 5,6,7 or 8 years old still applies. the kids that bullied me at camp Ramah or at Solomon Schechter and called me "pig jew" because I was not raised kosher.... are a reaction to the bigotry of the outside world. I admit that I have full respect for Kosher laws within reason and today I don't eat pork for myriad of reasons, but these kids were teasing me because I reflected secularism. I was too young to understand that I was being bullied because I was an outsider. my parents were too naive even then to understand what kind of self hate was going on in the Jewish community. Irony is that I would become the "Conservative" defending the community they never understood as "Liberals". They just wanted me to be Jewish because they wanted to fill a moral obligation... little did I know that I would become a guardian of what I thought at the time bullied me as a child. The fashion and the obligation to ritual is not what makes us Jewish. I understood who g-d was. I understood who my community was. I understood that you have to fight and that moral absolutes like pacifism is not the answer. Today some of the extremists on the internet point to men who look like Hasidim and say that there are men who don't support Israel. I support Israel and it's people and I really resent the bureaucracy of my Jewish community experiences... it was their orthodoxy that allowed our ways to be co-opted. Judaica is not a fashion. I also resent the other polarity of Jewish thought that developed: feminism. There is no method... I have been oppressed by different extremes. I close my eyes and I know g-d has nothing to do with people's ritual and organization. I know that attacks to my spirit come from many directions.
