by Sarah Lavane
In each chapter of Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz’ book “Simple Words” he dissects the true meaning of another “simple word” but the word that I remembered years after reading that book was “Masks.” He has a lengthy explanation of that word and what constitutes a mask. Is it our clothing, the expression on our face, the hairstyle we choose, our behavior or more? And he asks, “What is the real onion?” When you peel the layers off, what is left? Who are we if we strip our masks off? This thought really resonated with me, especially in my dating life when masks seem to weigh so heavily in the process.
Am I my age? The neighborhood I grew up in? The name I’m called? The school I went to? I felt all those things were part of me, but not me. The questions asked by probing shadchanim or dating profiles didn’t reflect my true essence. Was I being judged by the very things I felt shouldn’t matter all that much? Who am I when things like my height or my school are stripped away? What are the questions and masks that matter? I wasn’t sure.
The one thing I was already sure of was that finding a husband was going to be much more difficult than I had ever anticipated. I had the overwhelming sense that untested people couldn’t understand it. I was facing this challenge daily and could barely believe what I was going through myself. So when someone made an insensitive remark about my inability to find someone, my overwhelming wish was that I could make them understand who I was. But I didn’t know how.
Years later, I read a “bad date stories” book and was very disappointed. Story after story, the author mocked all her bad dates. We all manage to laugh about a bad experience after the fact. But what is it like to go through it again and again? How does it affect us and why isn’t that discussed? Couldn’t there be a book that had substance and gave people the insight to understand the inner experience of singlehood and dating ? I suppose that was the seed of what would eventually turn into my memoir “Unmatched.” I had always liked to write and had written articles, essays and poetry. I had taken writing workshops. Why not write about it? But every one of my attempts fell flat. They were preachy or whiney and just didn’t work. The task seemed as futile as explaining the color yellow to a blind man.
Once the seed was planted though, the compulsion to write that book grew, as did my pile of balled-up paper. I thought of all the things people didn’t seem to understand – and there were so many little things – everything from the dread of disappointing my parents, figuring out how long was a fair amount of time to wait for a late date, looking into egg freezing, the morbid, selfish worry of who would say kaddish for me if I died childless and so much more. But there was one subject in particular I had never seen addressed anywhere – the difficulty of being shomer negiah. Everyone navigates this their own way. There are people who stick to halacha and suppress themselves. Some guiltlessly cross boundaries whether it’s first, second or third base. Others give up and go off the derech. None of those options are ideal. Many, like me, walk the tightrope of wanting to do the right thing but slipping up every now and then. Each of these choices has a price. A lot of singles have difficulty reconciling their desire to do the right thing with their need to feel human. It’s tough precisely because there is no satisfactory answer to this dilemma. Additionally, it’s not discussed because we are a discreet nation.
People who lecture on why bad things happen to good people also won’t address the “How can He do this to me?” aspect of dating. We’re not supposed to be angry at God. People might question God over war, illness, poverty, infertility, but when it comes to matches, the tendency is to blame the “unmatched” rather than question God. God made our matches before we were born. If we haven’t found him, the assumption is that it’s our fault. So “unmatched” people often struggle with God. Some of us question Him, bargain with Him, get mad at Him, then apologize to Him, thank Him, pray to Him as the cycle starts all over again. Others give up on Him.
I needed to write about all that. I felt the Orthodox world didn’t fully comprehend this subject and should. I needed the “matched” society I was living in, to understand the “unmatched” amongst them better. A whole segment of society was written off as a “singles crisis.” We are their friends, neighbors, colleagues, relatives and need to be understood. I wanted to put the human face on this community issue ironically by ripping off the masks and labels.
Addressing all this – especially the spiritual struggle – in a book would be challenging. How could I raise this issue in a modest way and still appeal to the broadest audience spanning liberal to machmir? How do I write about difficult subjects in an uplifting, entertaining and charming way? How vulnerable would it feel to share my own story? Would I be judged? Run out of town? Would those more machmir question my behavior and those more liberal wonder what the big deal was? How do I protect the privacy of the other people in the book? It seemed daunting. In time, I realized that instead of trying to explain the impossible, I would invite the readers on my journey.
It was the OU’s own Jewish Action reviewer who later compared my memoir, “Unmatched” to “the immersive experience of a visitor to a museum of the blind, the reader is plunged into an alien environment—the quest of the Jewish woman in search of a compatible mate, along with the raging emotions, the humility, grief, betrayal, despair and faith.” Apparently, this reviewer had indeed been along on my journey.
But while writing it, I couldn’t foresee that review. I struggled and thought “no one is going to be interested in this,” “my writing is terrible,” “how will my family react,” “who will publish this,” — yet I couldn’t shake my distress at my situation nor the ache of being misunderstood. Even if no one else reads this, I had to write this for myself. I grappled with all the tests and struggles so long, I just needed to get it out.
When I started, I did not feel like an author setting out to write a book. I was just a person with a need to share my story. This book wasn’t “planned” so much as “felt.” I always joke that it took 20 years of thinking about it and four years to write and publish it. But it happened the way it was meant to. It’s a much better book than anything I would’ve written back at the start. I had more life experience, better writing skills and I had lived it, thought about it, discussed it way longer than I had ever imagined I would – all while working to change the very situation I was writing about.
My goal in sharing my story was to bring solace and comfort to the “unmatched” as well as empathy and awareness to the “matched.” And from the reactions I’ve been getting – whether it’s from “unmatched” readers who told me they cried because they finally feel validated or “matched” readers who wrote how eye-opening this story has been for them or how many of the themes resonated for them too – it’s gratifying to see that the book has indeed already begun to do just that.
It took me years to learn to be my authentic self, to peel off some layers of my own onion, allowing me to rise above the boxes and labels that society had imposed on me. There is an irony here, as I mask my identity and those of the characters in my book. The details may be particular to my story, but the themes and emotions are universal. The experiences of love, hope, heartbreak, loss, regret, faith, grief, aging and so much more, affect us all, whether “matched” or “unmatched.” Indeed, we are all so much more than our masks.
Sarah Lavane is a writer living in New York. “Unmatched: An Orthodox Jewish Woman’s Mystifying Journey to Find Marriage and Meaning” is her first book. It was chosen as one of Jewish Link’s “Six Best Books of the Year” one month after the book’s launch.
For more info, excerpts and reviews, visit: unmatchedstory.com
To sign up for the Kol Echad Limited Series E-Magazine, click here: https://www.ou.org/kolechademail/
