The car pulled to a stop; someone said that we would have to walk from here. Out came the long skirts to be pulled over our jeans and scarves for the married women to cover their hair. As we walked up the hill, I remember it vaguely feeling as if we were going undercover. It was a Friday evening in Meir Sharim, an ultra-orthodox Jewish community just outside of Jerusalem, and we were preparing to infiltrate.
Before long, it was time to divide; the men went one way and the women another. When we filed into the dim room, barren except for a few scattered wooden chairs, there was silence save for the shuffling of shoes. Nearly all the women were politely trying to edge toward one side of the room, which I realized was not a wall but a fence-like structure. Light streamed through the openings. The women were packed against it, each fighting for a glimpse of what I realized were the men performing the ceremony we had all come to see.
I had moved as far as I could, squinting to see the symbolic pieces of challah bread passed around the rows of men and becoming resigned to the fact that I would probably see little more when an elderly woman took my hand and pulled me forward. The ladies seemed to part for this older woman with an air of reverence; she would take me where she wanted. Seconds later, I was in front of the lattice. The men were singing, intoning the Hebrew syllables in a haunting, beautiful chant that reverberated everywhere.
I looked at her, trying to thank her but I didn’t know the Hebrew words and she would not understand my English ones. She felt my eyes on her, and gestured with wrinkled hands toward the men with a smile.
And in that moment, I saw that we were fooling no one. And it wasn’t just the sound of my heels when I was surrounded by women in flat shoes, or the way my sleeves kept riding up and threatening to expose my elbows. We were all Jewish, yes, but they knew we were not like them. And yet this ancient woman had taken me and tried to show me who they were, to help me understand their ways. And as I stood there, listening to the archaic melodies of my people, I did.
