Reviewed by NEAL GENDLER
For 13 years, Sara Glass lived with constant fear of losing custody of her children.
Born into a Gur Hasidic family, she had a son and a daughter with Yossi, who was devoted to his religious studies and, Sara says, oblivious of Sara’s needs. One of those needs, which Sara concealed and fought, was for a woman’s love.
At 19, Glass was teaching at a very Orthodox school. One day, vivacious Dassa, 20, arrived as a speaker.
“As soon as she walked into my classroom, I knew she was not conventional,” she writes. “This was not the first time I had looked into someone’s eyes and felt a thousand vibrations echo through my body.”
Sara and Dassa met outside school, and “love hit us when we expected it least.” A secret physical relationship blossomed.
But “I was taught that God found my natural desires repugnant,” Glass says. She prayed, “trying to understand: Why would God create me this way,” to be condemned for “loving someone of your own sex.”
But “the only path forward was marriage, to a man, and lots of babies … the single mold created for adolescent Hasidic girls.”
Glass’ story, Kissing Girls on Shabbat, is a ruthlessly frank memoir of her inner turmoil, trying to live the expected married life with a self-absorbed Gur hasid, then later adhering to Orthodox requirements with a second husband who was wealthy and adoring.
The author now lives in Manhattan — a therapist and licensed clinical social worker with a Ph.D., helping gay people and people who have survived trauma.
Kissing begins with a “trigger warning” about its themes. At the end is a note to her clients. Both enhance a story so beautifully told and engrossing that it’s hard to put down. We also get a peek inside the Gur world, where gender separation “is taken to extremes even by Hasidic standards,” Glass says.
“What Gur Hasidim lacked in numbers in our Brooklyn neighborhood, we made up for in the weight of our dread,” Sara says. “Ours was a world of fear:” fear of God, the Torah, the rebbe and community members — and they were taught that “it was our job to fight the evil with ourselves.”
Gur women marry young, and a few months before Sara and Dassa took a trip together — lying on a Florida beach “in skirts that covered our knees and shirts that reached up to our necks” — Sara’s older sisters decided it was time to employ a matchmaker.
“I was nineteen and a half, and my friends were getting engaged one by one. I was falling behind.”
That led to “six awkward dates” with Yossi, marriage — “I barely knew him” — a home in the Lakewood, N.J., Gur community, two children and Yossi’s agreeing she could pursue higher education. When her first child was eight weeks old, she entered Rutgers graduate school in her wig and long skirt, seeing conventionally dressed classmates talking and laughing with each other and even touching.
Eventually, in a loveless marriage of inconsiderate sex, unproductive counseling, loss of a third pregnancy and nightmares about a girl in danger, Glass was done.
“I was done being a vessel,” she says. “I was done being owned. I was done with men telling me what to do with my own body. I was done fighting just enough to save my babies, but not enough to truly live.”
Yossi and his family refused a divorce until Sara threatened a reputation-damaging revelation.
Yossi agreed to a get — a Jewish divorce — that contained this paragraph:
“It is agreed by both parties that the children will be raised according to Halacha as stated in the Shulchan Oruch and the Mishna Berura. If it is determined by Rabbi Turkel of Lakewood, N.J., and Rabbi Levi of Jerusalem, Israel, that one party is not raising the children according to Halacha, custody will be transferred to the other biological parent.”
That would hang over Glass like a sword.
Three days after signing, she placed her children with a sister and flew to Aruba, left her wig in her hotel room, put on a tiny red bikini and went to the beach.
“I knew it was bad, the light on my body and people all around me who could see so much more of me than what God allowed. … I felt liable for the sins of every man” on the beach.
Back home, single and so poor she couldn’t pay all the bills and went hungry to feed her children, she “discovered I was a fantastic mother — way better than I had ever been” for her son, three, and daughter, 16 months.
She also led a double life: kosher and observant at home, but dating men who took her far from prying eyes into a world of forbidden entertainment and trysts.
She applied to doctoral programs and accepted a fix-up date with Eli, finding him the kind of man she’d want if she wanted men.
Wealthy, attentive Eli wanted her. They married and moved with Eli’s young son into a beautiful home. Sara’s money worries vanished, her therapy practice flourished. Life was good.
Suddenly, Glass’ favorite sister died and she withdrew into herself. Despite their efforts, and Eli’s pleading, she could not restore whatever emotional intimacy they’d enjoyed. Another divorce. Sara moved to Manhattan, expanded her practice and, over Yossi’s objections, sought better schools for the children she was determined to keep.
What happened? Be surprised.
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Neal Gendler is a Minneapolis writer and editor.
(American Jewish World, September 2024)
