| In case you've missed the stink in New York this week over Republican gubernatorial nominee Carl Paladino's remarks at an ultra-Orthodox synagogue this past sunday, the NY Jewish Week is today running my op-ed on some of the implications. The takeway, I argue, is that while "Carl Paladino has expressed regret for his remarks, which at least says something about the state of acceptable political discourse in New York. () the decision of Rabbi Levin to then withdraw his endorsement of the candidate, and the silence of many others in the Orthodox community, together with the applause of Carl Paladino's audience this week" has other implications. The piece begins: Reading about New York Republican gubernatorial nominee Carl Paladino's homophobic turn in front of an ultra-Orthodox audience last Sunday, my thoughts drifted back to painful memories of my middle school years. The first time I contemplated suicide was at a charedi middle school in Manhattan. I felt out of place there, and though I didn't have a name for my depression, my parents were aware enough of my state that I spent three years seeing a psychologist. With that help, I found some happiness in my solitude. Then I was sent away for high school to a right-wing Orthodox yeshiva boarding school in Westchester. In ninth grade I developed a crush on a boy in the eleventh grade. He was handsome, funny, and he took a reciprocal interest in me, arranging for me to switch to sharing a room with him. Our first kiss, initiated by him, was when he drove me home from a Purim party at a yeshiva in Flatbush. But when we returned to boarding school, he pushed me away. The thoughts of doom returned. Without a protective older "brother," I became the victim of a bully at school, an older boy with problems of his own. But I was younger, and I was odd, and the ultra-Orthodox rabbis ignored the situation. Thoughts of suicide returned, and throughout 10th and 11th grade, I sometimes would imagine the varieties of ultimate solutions to the isolation and sense of difference I felt.
Continue reading the full piece over at the Jewish Week site, here. |
