Red Nail Polish
We pack up the car and pile in. We drive for an unfortunately short half an hour. When we arrive, their smiles are gaudy and curious. A child takes my coat, revealing my bare forearms. Anger registers on the shver’s face. He tells me to pull, pull my sleeves down! I smile and show him that no amount of tugging will make my sleeves longer. He looks disgusted with me.
‘Kim, tzadikel,’ he finally says to my husband, and I am left holding the baby. Left with a gaggle of questions and stares. I chat and find mutual topics of interest; one has the same buggy as I do, I admire another’s silk tichel. We are plied with food, a substitute for acceptance. One of them ventures to ask ‘So are you settled? Do you have furniture?’ I try not to laugh. ‘Yes, we have chairs to sit on and a table to eat at. Settled for us means that we are good to one another, and that we raise our child the right way’. ‘But furniture,’ she presses, ‘Do you have bedroom furniture?’ ‘Yes’ I answer, ‘We have beds to sleep on, and would you believe my husband built us a wardrobe?!’ ‘Ah, I know someone else like that. My sheitel macher. I kept waiting for her furniture to be delivered but that was it, it was never going to come. That’s how she lived! Such a tzadekes!’
The sheitel macher is a tzadekes for living without a display cabinet. We are goyim because our meat has the wrong hechsher. What about us? We don’t have a display cabinet either.
My husband comes back inside, smelling of cigarettes and resignation. Our baby is playing happily on the floor. The shver turns to me, begs me to speak to our child in Yiddish. I tell him a mother must speak to her child in her mother tongue. He says Yiddish is every yiddishe mama’s mother tongue, and I will learn soon enough. ‘No’, I say, firmly. ‘You had your children and you raised them your way. You took your son under the chupa, for him to cleave unto his wife. Now it is our turn to choose a way, and it hurts us that you can’t respect that’. ‘Only a little’, he says ‘maybe you’ll feel differently soon.’ ‘No,’ I repeat, gesturing for emphasis. ‘He is our child. Please don’t ask us again’. He turns away, mutters to my husband, and leaves us.
We drive home, contemplating the ramifications of my outburst. Later, my husband tells me what his father had said.
‘Why is she wearing red nail polish?’
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Tova Schwartz??? interesting! great piece xxx
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Damn sister, you’re good.
(On a side note, someone’s dropping the ball on editing / spell checking…)
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Tova,
I hate to say this, but your shver is right. If you’re going to be a shadchenta you don’t wear red nail polish. Either gothic black or prima ballerina pink, depending on your shadchening style.
The truth is that visual cues tend to be extremely important parts of our identity. We all make a bigger deal of nail polish than we realize. We all use our cloths as a way to express who we are, which is why so much religious disagreement play out on the clothing/tsnuis forum. A comment about a certain way of dressing is a compact way of attacking a whole way of life.
We often think frum people as very trivial for their emphasis on exteriors, but we may also think of non-grum as very vain. Perhaps we underestimate the value of clothing.
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I loved it. I found the sleeveless start shocking. But it works nicely with the red nail polish at the end.
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I loved the furniture piece, I think it epitomizes the black and white character of our extreme community…nice
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Nice piece! Although the grammar is a bit off, it was very well written.
I have to ask. If this was a planned visit, why the bare forearms? I’m the last person to be preaching tznius, but isn’t it a matter of respect? When in Rome…
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Shpitz,
You make an excellent point. We use clothing as a frum-ometer, even though it’s generally agreed not being a matter of halacha. In fact, we shaped our society into a tiered pyramid of frumkeit by wardrobe. More like a caste system where an individual is expected to dress in accordance with hereditary norms. You wear black hosiery, you’re frum; covered wig, you’re frum; bare wig, you’re still frum. But if you cross lines, if you dress out of your caste, then you’re a slut. It’s absurd, but with a kernel of logic.
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Good for you, Tova, for having the courage to stick up for yourself and telling your shver where he should stick his…it’s no mean feat.
Gilah, bare forearms = sleeves covering the elbows. Sleeveless shirt = bare upper arms.
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Misyavni – not even a kernel of logic. It’s all pure irrational feeling on a level that cannot even be described as childish, for that would slight children, who generally have a lot more sense.
Take a simple example: wear a white pinafore on Shabbos, and you’re almost-as-holy-as-the-Shabbos-Queen. Wear a pinafore of any other color during the week, and you’re eviler-than-the-Evil-Queen.
Most of the hullabaloo surrounding clothes and dress codes is about conformity and suppression of individuality. When someone refuses to conform, the community sees its cohesiveness threatened, afraid that one trendsetter will lead others into (blind?) “nonconformity”, and therefore feels compelled to condemn it. Regardless of whether there is any merit in that voice of disapproval or not.
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Oops, Skeleton, you’re right.
My bad.
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The logic being that the change is not the problem; it’s the symptom. When a person is ready to trade in disproval for clothing style, he or she must feel strongly in a particular way, and that’s the supposed problem: the feeling, not the change. Put another way, styles are only a matter of importance because it so happens there are established norms in place, and not because it’s in anyway principal in Judaism.
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Those bare arms are a sure mark of the devil, you know. You’ll soon turn into a shiksa just by virtue of exposed arm-skin. Soon, we’ll see headlines in the newspaper: “JEW IS VICTIM OF VIOLENT SEX CRIME; TEMPTED MEN WITH HER ELBOWS”
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“We are plied with food, a substitute for acceptance.”
Boy, that sentence sums up a lot.
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Hi, malkelle! xx!
Gila and Shlomo (hi, shlomo!), please feel free to point out grammatical errors.
Shpitzel, maybe I’m hooking up couples don’t even notice the colour of my nails, because they could just as easily be a chic navy or fashion forward ‘backwards french’ (2 points to whoever knows what that is). Yes, people choose clothes to express who they are. In this case, even if I was dressed in uber chasidish clothes, there would always be something wrong. Always. My turning up in clothes my husband’s family disapprove of is not to prove anything to them. It is because that is how I dress, and pevious attmepts to fit in have always failed. Short of shaving my head and putting on a shpitzle, they will never be happy.
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what lady doesn’t know what a backwards french is?
Interesting that your red nail polish got comments…in my MO high school red tones (ok, more like pink) were the only acceptable colors of nail polish. Once I wore silver nail polish to school and was forced to take it off at the principles office, and then she made a big announcement after davening the next morning that silver was not an acceptable nail polish color becasue it wasn’t a flesh tone unless you were a vampire (she thought she was being very clever there..sigh).
It’s just some freakin paint on your nails! Who cares what color it is!
Meanwhile, I wore blue nail polish to my wedding.
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I agree with you with respect to the way you want to raise your kids; it’s your job to do, not your shver’s¸ regardless of your choices. As for the way you dress in HIS house, I couldn’t disagree with you more. Like one of the commentators pointed out, “when in rome…”. If you search online, you’ll see how most female American dignitaries cover their hair when they visit Arab countries, out of respect to their laws and traditions.
Btw, who are you trying to impress with the red nail polish at your shver’s house anyway, the shvegern who considers “settled” having nice furniture? Try to mellow out in those situations, and it might be less painful.
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Blue nails at your wedding! Why?
AE, a) It wasn’t the shvers house
b) if you reread you will see that I DON’T consider furniture ’settled’
c) These were ‘gel’ nails that last for up to 3 months. I don’t plan my manicures round my shver.
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(2 points for me)
And I think reverse French is too tacky.
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Tova,
Your story gives the impression that you went to visit THEM, so I assumed it was at their place. Maybe you should’ve been a bit more clear as to where you were going and why. Was it a Shabbos, was it a Simcha, etc. Hard to get a full picture otherwise.
I didn’t say that YOU consider “settled” having furniture, I was referring to the women you encountered at that event.
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‘Now it is our turn to choose a way’. As long as you and your husband share the same belief system, the problem is half solved.
Nice piece.
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“It’s just some freakin paint on your nails!”
Fluffy, my initial comment was in response to this line, which was implied in the post. I’ve said this myself many times. I’ve said it, begged it, pleaded it, yelled it, threatened it, cried it, hailed it, applied it, removed it… It’s just nail polish! It’s just nail polish, can’t one be left alone?
But it occurred to me that if it can upset me so, maybe it isn’t ‘just’. It’s not ‘just’ to me at all. It’s symbolic of self expression and freedom. To chassidim it’s symbolic of obedience and commitment. Maybe trivialities just arent’t trivial.
To A&E
“When in Rome…” Vee shteit? Pray tell, vee shteit?
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I don’t get the whole “when in Rome” argument. The shver’s problem is not her coming to his “Rome” in red nail polish, it’s her wearing red nail polish, period.
I respect people who say, and believe, that those on the fringe should respect their sensitivities but otherwise can do as they please. I have no respect at all for those who use the “Rome” line as an excuse to knock and complain someone’s chosen way of life.
Live and let live.
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Oops. Should have been “knock and complain about someone’s…
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An ironic point is, that the shver calls his son, “tzaddikel” (unless he’s being sarcastic), but won’t lay off his son’s beloved, you.
If parents can’t or don’t succeed at being mechanech their own child according to their liking, do they really think they can ‘fix’ their in-law, somebody else’s kid?
It’s as common as it is incomprehensible.
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Skeleton, maybe he thinks that the Lady in Red is not good enough for his tzadikel.
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What about us non practicing orthodox whose chidren morphed into chasidim? OUd is considered treif and we have to be well stocked with Uncle Moishe and Hasc Concert DVD’s. Why us? We tried to give all of them a normal MO life but they chose to go over the deep end. Excuse ..have get my talis out of the mothballs
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Fluffy!
A blast from the past!! Nice to c that u r still around and what a joy to read your prose again!
Shame u r writing on this blog of disgruntled misfits though.
True our society has it’s faults, but then, life is never perfect. If only we could focus on the good points, and ignore those we can do nothing about, we would all be far happier people!
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Frummy,
I guess one of the disgruntled misfits is a very close friend of yours – with whom you reminisce of “blasts of the past” – named Fluffy.
shame on you Mrs. Perfect to befriend such an outcast.
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Frummer is a he
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Frummer???!!! RIP, fortunately, your “sit on the fence”, “can’t beat them join them” apology and snivel of a grovel, is not considered as virtuous or constructive by so many.
We would still be living in the dark ages if your self motivating apology was commonplace.
I wonder if you think that those demonstrating in Iran should adopt your passive stance too.
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Frummer, define the difference between an avid reader and an occasional writer. Who is more disgruntled?
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Hi Shtreimel,
Sorry dear friend. You may indeed have many avid readers, but I’m not one of them. I do pop in from time to time to see how the “other side” are getting on, but all this online kvetching is from a long forgotten past.
I’ve come to realise that there is more to be acheived by fighting from within than by bashing from without.
I live in hope that each and every individual who has issues with Yiddishkeit is able to come to the realisation that nothing in life is perfect and one should make the most of the circumstances into which one has been placed.
From where you are, it is indeed difficult to see things my way – we are both so very far apart. But, a bunch of years ago, I also couldn’t see myself where I am now!
If you had told me then what I would be now, I would have told u to f*&$ off. Today, it’s amazing. I have a life, with purpose and goals, and bH, it truly is fulfiling.
Pen:
I’m not ignoring you. The above applies 2 u 2. BTW, whoever told you that we are not still living in the dark ages? For people in the future you wont event be a mindless numbskull. In the eye’s of those from the past, well, they can’t see you anyway.
Hoezen!
Hiya too!!! Nice 2 c that u 2 are still around! Hope u acheived that what u were trying to. Fluffy, The GirlSH, Shaigetz, me with my question mark et al, those were the days!
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Just logged back in after a long while. Hello hello frummer!!
I write because I enjoy writing, and you didn’t think I assumed all the other old timers are lurking too??
Take care all of you.
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