The Wrong Minority

One of my favorite cartoons on how secular vs. religious see others

In the course of my recent battles with TFA over kosher food, I said a nasty thing: “I guess I’m just the wrong minority for TFA.” For an organization focused on diversity and difference, that was like slamming them in the gut. (But it worked; starting today I have food again! If you like me or my blog, you’ll be pleased to hear I’ll be eating the last two weeks of Institute. If you find my blog tedious, you can petition TFA Tulsa to cut me off).

The truth is, in so many ways I am the wrong minority for TFA. Religious minorities don’t fit well into the Institute model. It’s not something that gets discussed in diversity sessions, and TFA isn’t out to explicitly fight religious prejudice in the schools as it is to fight racism and sex-oriented bullying (gender also gets left by the wayside, fyi). Also, in Institute, TFA attempts to micromanage every aspect of our lives. The problem is, my life is already micromanaged by my Judaism. It’s not that I’m not passionately in favor of backwards-planned lessons, it’s that right now I can’t pay attention because I have to daven mincha. TFA wants me to adopt it as a religion, and I already have one.

A Fulbrighter friend in Norway with me was on a kind of spiritual search, and when I checked back in with her upon returning to the States she said that she felt really satisfied with her community that was struggling against educational inequity. She’d done TFA previous to the Fulbright, and plugged back in to that community to fill her need for meaning. Which is why TFA is clashing so much with my Judaism; it wants to fill a space that’s already filled.

I need to be with people who find this hilarious

My Muslim friend was commiserating with me about finding time to pray. He says he smushes all the prayers into the end of the day on some kind of traveling heter. I told him I smush myself into a corner of the school where I think the least people will pass me. On Tuesday, everyone was hyper-concerned about me because I was trembling—I don’t fast well. On Wednesday, three staff members caught me exiting the bathroom mumbling asher yatzer and gave me enormous blank stares. When I explained, the stares just got blanker. And that’s beside my furious battles for nutritious kosher food in Institute.

Friday morning all of the religious Othering came to a head. Somehow one of the most awesome CMAs who totally exemplifies withitness to scary extremes caught wind of the musical prohibition during the three weeks. She sent the curriculum specialist who runs most sessions (also awesome) to speak to me, and I, at some point or another, used the word “freak” to him while trying to explain myself. Then I found the secular Israeli from Boston, and burst into tears in a gabble of Hebrew comfort. I needed to speak to a person who knew the right derogatory slur for me, who would call me “dosi” instead of “freak” in her mind, who perhaps doesn’t do any of the things I do but can say so in Hebrew and give me a hug and gets it.

The first and my own CMA caught up to me later in the day. They were displeased that I’d called myself, and religious people in general, freaks. And the truth is I’ve never felt one before. But having to fight to eat, and explain asher yatzer and shivasar b’tammuz and hide myself in corners to say shmoneh esrai and over and over shrug when people ask what I’ll be doing this weekend and spending the diversity dialogues checked out or passively listening has taken its toll. With regard to Teach for America, I am a freak. 

P.S. Best part of my day Friday was during word study with my advanced kids. I give them roots of words to play with, and today they were forming new words with them. They neologized “selfarchy,” which I loved, and “intertext,” which floored me for a solid twenty seconds before I realized they weren’t sixth grade Julia Kristevas but talking about two people texting each other on phones.