KISSING GIRLS ON SHABBAT

A New York City psychotherapist tells the story of how she broke away from orthodox Judaism to come into her own as a successful lesbian professional.

Glass grew up in Brooklyn as a member of the ultraorthodox GurHasidic sect. The girls she knew celebrated marriage and a life dedicated to God, their husbands, and their children. However, the author, who had her first lesbian relationship at 19, knew that “the last thing I wanted was to live with a boy for the rest of my life.” Still, she married Yossi, the first young man who passed her family’s scrutiny, just before she turned 20 and then began to express her unconventionality by seeking a university education and advanced degrees. Inevitably, though, “the walls between my universes sank through the ground” as she struggled with the demands of her professional work and her life as a wife tied to a man and religion that made her feel like little more than chattel. Against her family’s wishes, she divorced Yossi and quietly began experimenting with secular life and complex relationships with both women and men. One man, Eli, became both her second husband and “most enthusiastic cheerleader” as she pursued her doctorate. “He stuck around, found my wounds and sewed them up one by one,” she writes. Eventually, her hard-won self-knowledge helped her overcome one final hurdle when she fought Yossi and orthodox religious laws to keep her children and school them in ways that would give them power over their own lives. “I married the man I was told was best for me and was stuck with consequences that would last my entire lifetime,” she writes. “I didn’t want that for my children.” Searching and provocative, this book chronicles a woman’s struggle with faith and freedom while also celebrating the necessity of personal choice.

A courageously candid memoir.