“[She] Told Me She’d Written a Book about Our Family, “Kissing Girls on Shabbat”… I Only Wish We had Reconnected Sooner”

A few months ago, I received an email that read: “I’m not sure if you remember me — I’m your cousin, formerly Malka from Borough Park. I’ve thought about you over the years, as I left Orthodox Judaism and wondered about the relatives I had out there in the world.” Malka — now Sara — told me that she’d just written a book about our family, Kissing Girls on Shabbat (Simon & Schuster, $27.99). 

Due to the winding paths of our immediate families, I grew up secular in California, Sara grew up in a Hasidic family in Brooklyn. My world included biking on the beach, raves in warehouses, low-cut jeans. As she describes in her new memoir, Kissing Girls on Shabbat, Sara’s world was about faith, modesty, denying her sexuality, and preparing to marry a man.  

As girls, we were penpals. I recall that she wrote to me on rice thin paper, updating me on her school studies and her sisters. Eventually, we lost touch. I believe the last time I saw her was at her wedding, when we were both nineteen. 

For part of our adult lives, we lived just a few miles apart in Brooklyn. I knew nothing about her life, and she knew nothing about mine. This was by design; the Orthodox community is insular and protective. When I think about what she went through, as detailed in her new book, I only wish we had reconnected sooner. 

Sara writes beautifully about being a gay woman in a community that demands absolute devotion and adherence to the word of an inscrutable god. Recently, I spoke to her about her book, our family, and the many lives she’s lived in the past twenty years.

Chloe: When we were growing up, I thought of your family as the epitome of discipline and righteousness. My grandfather had a reverence for your family’s ways of life, and when we visited, we were expected to follow all the rules of modest dress and behavior. I remember it as exhausting and embarrassing —I was always getting it wrong. It was many years before I understood the complexities of what was happening in that community, especially for queer people. You talk about this so eloquently in your book — what was your relationship with your faith and family when we were girls? What did you think of the secular world back then? 

Sara: Kissing Girls on Shabbat begins in Borough Park, where I was raised. It’s a section of Brooklyn that looks like 18th century Europe. When you would come to visit, you would see my father in black coat, a big fur hat, pants tucked into his knee socks. My mother wore a wig or a headscarf and fully covered her body. It was a really secluded world, even though it’s only 11 miles from where I am now in New York City. In Borough Park, everyone takes care of each other. They have everything they need for survival within their enclave.

I was taught to have a superiority complex, to be honest. I thought we were the chosen ones, living according to god’s will.  But I was very curious about everyone else in the outside world. It was forbidden for me to be curious about my secular neighbors, who were wearing jeans and driving in cars on Saturday. As my cousin, you felt like someone I was allowed to be curious about. When your family would come to visit, I thought you were cooler, more integrated into American society, dressed better. You seemed to have more joy. And we seemed like these naive peasants in comparison, like we didn’t really know how to operate in the world. We were also poorer, because we had so many children in our family.

Chloe: I wonder if that curiosity fueled our penpal relationship when we were kids? 

Sara: Remember, I had no distractions. Like I had no TV.

Chloe: And I was watching a lot of TV! But for all the differences in the way we grew up, there were some really striking similarities, including the heavy weight of our family’s Holocaust history. My grandparents were Auschwitz survivors, so I grew up with their stories. My mom was also working for the Shoah Foundation, collecting oral histories of survivors, and coming back and telling me those stories every day at our kitchen table. There was a lot of trauma to unravel in our family, but also a sense of responsibility to all people. A belief in human and civil rights, that everyone’s life was valuable. 

Sara: In my family, it was less open. My mother was very fixated on the Holocaust. Both of our mothers were born in DP [displaced persons] camps. We had a lot of bookshelves in our home, because all we did was read Jewish books. But the Holocaust books were in a closed cabinet. It was almost like she wanted to protect us  — like it was too awful for children to see. I would come home from school, and she would be writing letters to officials in Poland and Germany, to try to find the graves of her ancestors.

Chloe: In the book, you talk about how you were both bound and freed by men: the husband who enforced strict religious restrictions, the Rabbis who made decisions about when and how you could have sex, and then the second husband who supported your career as a psychotherapist and your ability to leave your first husband. I’m so curious how those experiences shaped your understanding of gender, power, and patriarchy. 

Sara: I saw that everyone was bound to rules, rabbinic systems, and structures. I don’t want to say that everyone is trapped. But everyone for whom the system didn’t fit seemed to be in pain. I don’t think I saw it so much as male versus female, even though the men were really in charge. And I wonder if that’s because my first husband never seemed to take joy out of following the rules that harmed me. Like when he was told, yes, he would need to have sex with me and no, we couldn’t use birth control, he didn’t seem to be having fun. I didn’t see him as a perpetrator of patriarchy, I just saw him as someone who was being told what to do. And that didn’t seem to me like a position of power. My father didn’t think that women should drive. But he paid for my driving lessons. He didn’t think women should go to college, but he paid for a few semesters of my education. He was respectful and encouraging of my autonomy in his own way. I saw it as some individuals against the system.

People often ask, is it a cult? And I don’t really think so. Because there’s no leader.

Chloe:  Who does have power in that system? 

Sara: People often ask, is it a cult? And I don’t really think so. Because there’s no leader. I almost sometimes wish there was, because at least then someone would be benefiting off our pain. To me, it just seemed like people were afraid of outsiders, perhaps in part due to the Holocaust. So they were just trying to keep to the most rigid interpretation of the rules out of fear.

Chloe: What inspired you to write your story? 

Sara:  There are so many people who still feel stuck in the Hasidic community. When I was married to my second husband, I started to think about what it might be like to be free. I went to my niece’s wedding. She was 18. When I looked at all my other little nieces, I knew that the 11 year olds might be married in six years. And I thought: there has to be someone queer here, or maybe someone who doesn’t want to get married. Or someone who wants to have a career, someone who’s different in some way. I wrote the book for them.

Chloe: In leaving the ultra-Orthodox faith, you’ve had to walk away from so much: family, community, ritual, a rigid operating system for how to live life. I can imagine that was liberating, but also terrifying. Are there things from your upbringing that help you make sense of the secular world? Is there anything that you have taken with you from your former life? 

Sara: I love that question. I was raised to really care about others. And to think about the impact of my words before I speak. I was raised to live a life that’s meaningful and purposeful. And I still do that. 

I was raised to say a prayer every single morning when I woke up. I would thank god for waking up, and put on my shoes in a certain order. And then dress in certain clothing. And each of those things had meaning. I no longer do any of those things. But I do still appreciate the concept of living intentionally.

Chloe:  I love that. Were there writers, thinkers, artists, musicians who became the signposts along the road to figuring out your queerness and the life you wanted to live?

Sara: I tried so hard to be straight. I read books about conversion therapy. I read about why you should believe in god, I read so much Jewish philosophy. Then when I came out, it was almost a rejection of using my cognition to determine my life. An embracing of my gut. At the end of the day, I could no longer believe in a god who wanted me to keep getting hurt. 

There’s a song called “The Village” by Wrabel. It’s a queer song. It’s about how there’s something wrong with the village if we can’t be ourselves there. I cried to that song in the car for hours. Music connected me to my heart and my gut, the parts of myself that ultimately set me free. That’s why all of the chapter titles in Kissing Girls on Shabbat are song lyrics. I created a little playlist.

Chloe: While reading the book, I was struck by the descriptions of clothing in each period of your life. I could imagine you as a very young woman in an itchy wig and long sleeves in the ultra-Orthodox tradition, and as a slightly older young woman living in the Five Towns, wearing heels and tight but modest modern Orthodox styles. There’s a powerful scene where you first wear a bikini on the beach. How have your clothing choices reflected and been shaped by your story? What do you wear now to reflect who you are?  

Sara: I have a box of wigs and I haven’t figured out what to do with them. Maybe someone who reads this would like them! 

One thing I learned quickly is that you needed more than two wardrobes. In the Hasidic culture, you have your weekday clothes, and your Shabbat and holiday clothes. You didn’t have workout clothes or dinner outfits, or like casual weekend clothes. So part of me getting modernized was buying yoga pants. When I first came out in 2017, I was so awkward. If I got invited to a fancy dinner, I thought, what do I wear now? Socks were really confusing for me.

Chloe: They’re confusing for everyone!

Sara: I was looking for the next set of rules. I had a PhD at the time and I was 32 years old. But socks! The scariest thing of all was learning that there was no right way. I asked for freedom. And then when I got it, it was so intimidating.

Chloe: I can imagine. What has it been like for you to reconnect with our side of the family?  

Sara: As you know, I took on your side of the family’s name. Before I even reconnected with you all. Glass is my grandmother’s maiden name. Your grandfather’s name. 

Chloe: That’s so beautiful. I’m so grateful that you were brave enough to reach out to us, because I can imagine that was a big hurdle to cross. My family is just so over the moon. We have a new cousin! We’re so excited. Though I do have some grief and sadness around not knowing you sooner — and being able to offer you support earlier on in your journey. 

Sara: When I thought about reconnecting with any family, my immediate feeling was like — family can’t be trusted, family will reject me. It was a relief to reach out to you and your mom and your brother, for everyone to just immediately be like, when can we have you over?  And then your mom came to my book event in San Francisco, and brought friends and was so supportive, and I was like: Oh, family can also be this. That was really nice to see.

A coming out process can be painful for some people, and there’s a lot of fire to go through. And for those people, I just want to say: there could be miracles on the other side that you can’t even imagine.

Chloe: Last question. What’s your next book going to be about? 

Sara: I think it’ll be lighter, because it does represent a time in my life when there was more joy and less oppression. And also a lot of mess. I call this part of my life the “messy middle,” the antithesis of a clean “before and after” narrative. I left my community, my family, and that didn’t come without a cost. I lived with so much fear and PTSD. And I did a lot of messy things to cope with that. The second book is more sex, drugs, rock and roll — and what happens after the trauma has passed. 

As a therapist, I see people say: well, I got out of the bad situation, why am I not okay now? I think my goal is shame reduction around trauma recovery, by opening up about my struggles. Eventually, I’ll find that compassion for myself, hopefully, through writing the next book.