HasidiCult

Shabbos, the weekly Jewish holiday, should be a day of rest. But for survivors, it can be just the opposite. I was going to write this as an inspiration piece, full of encouragement of how you can keep going and keep Shabbos even when the going is really rough. (Haha, as if.) But then, I thought, to hell with that. Let's be real.  Keeping Shabbos as a trauma survivor is hell. Plain and simple. Majority of my coping mechanisms are melacha ( which is the term for forbidden work on Shabbos), so I can't cope with the tremendous amount of anxiety I feel. Listening to music? Nope. Putting on lotion? Nada. Calling a friend? Can't do that either. Cutting myself? Just kidding. Don't do that anymore. Plus, all of my major traumas happened on Shabbos, so that doesn't help things much. Even just thinking of the day gets me jittery. As a child, I was molested by a predator in the neighborhood who attended the same Shul (synagogue) as my family. He also happens to be a huge donor

Recently, I've had to switch medications for my juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. I was on a medication called hydroxychloroquine (yes, the same one that made the news for Covid-19...), which I later found out did nothing to help my disease progression. I then switched to a wonderful new doctor who specializes in pediatric rheumatology who suddenly made everything make sense. I'll spare you the elaborate details, but suffice it to say that my previous rheumatologist had diagnosed me with adult rheumatoid arthritis and was treating me as such, regardless of the fact that juvenile and adult arthritis are diagnosed and treated completely differently.  So I was obviously pretty bummed to hear that I spent nine months on a medication that was useless. My new doctor put me on a med that I got excited about, called meloxicam. It was not a very serious medication, an NSAID, but would hopefully bring down my persistent swelling, pain and inflammation. But of course, there was a catch: I co

          Sitting at the Friday night Shabbos table last week, I was hit with some shocking news. Casually, one of our guests threw the bombshell that Malka Leifer was extradited to Australia from Israel.      "What, you didn't hear yet? It was all over the news last week."       She said it so casually, as if discussing last night's meatball and spaghetti dinner or the latest celebrity gossip. Meanwhile, my jaw had dropped so low that I was incapable of forming coherent words. After so many attempts to extradite her, countless interventions of the three sisters at the forefront of the case, and the strained relations between Israel and Australia, it had almost become somewhat of a righteous yet unattainable goal. The kind of thing that you hope for desperately but resign yourself to the thought of it never being achieved.      The fact that it was now a reality stunned me speechless. The relief and ecstasy that the news brought me rendered me a jiggling glob of jello

     Thirteen years after Malka Leifer fled Australia to escape 74 charges of rape, indecent assault, and child sex abuse charges, among others, she is finally extradited to Australia. This followed attempts in 2014 and 2016 to extradite her, both of which were unsuccessful due to Leifer's fabrication of mental illness that deemed her unfit to stand trial. Israeli Deputy Minister of Health Yaakov Litzman is being investigated by police for interfering into the mental health assessment and pressuring psychiatrists to proclaim Leifer unfit to stand trial. Only last year, once an Israeli psychiatric panel declared that she was lying about her mental illness, was her case set back into motion. Israel began the process of extraditing her yet again, leading to the Supreme Court rejecting a final appeal against her extradition. After that, Israel's justice minister, Avi Nissenkorn, signed an order to send Leifer back to Australia.     Leifer has already had her first hearing, at which

Coming from the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic community, which is considered to be more "modern" than other communities, people expect that it's easier for me to assimilate and join the secular world. Cue frustrating buzzer noise. WRONG! I am unfortunately woefully ignorant as to how to conduct myself out there- in the big, wide world. Yes, I speak English, which is a plus, but I can't so much as figure out how to buy myself a pair of jeans. Especially not in the midst of this pandemic, when all the changing rooms are closed. (Hit me up in the comments if you've got any tips!) It bewilders me to imagine how the fabric should stretch itself over my ass. Should it be tight? Should it be loose? Some middle ground between the two? I honestly have no clue. I know how to buy skirts, but that's easy. Does the zipper close? Does it cover my knees? Does it match most of my clothes? Okay, great. Mission Skirt Purchase accomplished. But pants are a whole 'nother ballgame.