Growing up queer in a Hasidic Jewish community, Sara Glass shares her journey of survival

Australia Broadcast Center

2 days ago

As 19-year-old Sara Glass sat across from a stranger in a hotel lobby in downtown Manhattan, she knew the rest of her life would be decided for her.
Both raised in the Orthodox Gur sect of Hasidic Judaism, the pair had been set up by a matchmaker, who assessed their piety, financial assets and family standing. The meeting was almost entirely scripted and Glass, who was called Malka then, had no say in the matter.
"We were sitting at this little bench — he in a black fur hat and black suit, me in a long dress, very little makeup, low heels — across from each other," she recalls.
"I was taught by my teachers to order Diet Sprite because then if you spill it, it won't stain. He was taught to tip the valet. We had these rules about how to behave.
"If you looked around the hotel lobby, there were 10 other couples that looked just as awkward and stilted as we did, ordering the same drinks."
Glass' prospective husband, Yossi, was 26 and considered an ageing bachelor. Their courtship comprised six awkward dates in that same lobby.
"We had never touched. We had never lived together. We didn't really even know that much about each other," Glass says.
"But he proposed and I said yes."
Glass knew that marriage meant she would be expected to play the part of the obedient wife, bearing children and honouring God as per her orthodox teachings.
She also knew it meant burying the part of herself she feared most: her attraction to women.
Glass — who has just published a memoir called Kissing Girls on Shabbat — describes her upbringing in her Hasidic community in Brooklyn in the 90s as like "a black and white film from the early 1900s".
"Everything in the world was banned … We couldn't watch TV or movies, we didn't have any screens in our home, we couldn't listen to pop music, anything that would involve engaging with the secular world."
As a teenager, Glass would rebel in small ways, like painting her toenails or wearing thigh-high socks instead of full-length stockings.
But at 15, she fell in love with a girl and knew it was an unforgivable transgression.
"I realised that that would be a battle I would have to fight really, really hard in order to overcome," she says.
"And I thought I would be able to, that it was a test from God and I could control the desire."
But though she "prayed, repented, fasted", she fell in love with another girl at 19.
"She would sneak into my bedroom at night, and we had a six-month relationship. But we knew that as soon as one of us was matched with an appropriate young man, it would be over," she says.
Then came the blind date with Yossi in the lobby.
After agreeing to marry Yossi, Glass began bridal classes, which taught her about her marital duties.
She learned how to purify herself in a ritual bath after she menstruated and how to count the days after her period. She was not allowed birth control.
"There's a very detailed set of rules about what a woman is supposed to do with her body and how to be intimate, and those are secrets [withheld] until you're engaged," she says.
"I never had sex ed; I didn't know what it meant to have sex. I had never seen a naked boy or man. But after I got engaged, I started to learn what would be required of me.
"I kind of knew man parts were different, but I actually could not visualise male anatomy, couldn't draw it, had no idea what it looked like. And I didn't, for some reason, realise that I would have to have a male body interact physically with my body and penetrate my body.
"I found that out 72 hours before my wedding."
Glass dreaded intimacy with her new husband but believed it was too late to back out.
"I had already committed. We had a wedding hall, we had guests flying in from all over the world," she says.
Her wedding was traditional, carried out in an Orthodox synagogue that divided men and women. She wore a white, modest dress and was surrounded by her female friends and family members, who danced around her in a circle.
She realised then that "whatever happened from there on out would be completely up to God and my husband".
"Pregnancies, intimacy — nothing would be mine."
It didn't take long for Glass to learn exactly who she had married.
Yossi's commitment to orthodoxy came above all else — even his wife's health. Soon after their wedding, Glass fell pregnant and miscarried, but her husband refused to call for medical help when she was bleeding because it was Shabbat.
In 2005, Glass gave birth to a son, named Avigdor. She was only permitted by their rabbi to use contraception for a few months after he was born and fell pregnant again quickly, this time with a daughter, Shira.
"I had two young kids and I was trying to live in the community, married to my husband, being pious and devout," she says.
Yossi had initially agreed that Glass could pursue further education when they were married, but he reneged on his promise and permitted her only to study skills she could bring back to the community.
Glass began a Master's in social work at Rutgers University, though Yossi instructed her to read Jewish theology texts every day to ensure her secular education did not "contaminate" their home.
Through her study, Glass began to learn about the outside world from which she had been so sheltered.
"I started to get exposed to the world and to realise that some people actually enjoyed having sex and that it should be consensual … that some people value joy and free will," she says.
At 24, she decided to leave her husband, but it wasn't an easy process. In Orthodox Judaism, only a man can choose to divorce his wife.
She appealed to rabbis, friends and family members for help. All of them advised her to stay in the marriage.
Finally, through negotiating with her in-laws, she convinced Yossi to grant her a divorce.
But to procure the divorce document, known as a "gett", she had to agree to raise her children within the Orthodox community. And if she was deemed not pious enough, she would lose custody.
"I was really afraid … I didn't know a lot about myself, but I knew that I was not going to lose my children," Glass says.
"I barely even knew what it meant to love someone, but I loved those kids more than anything."
Suddenly alone and without experience in managing money or a home, Glass struggled financially.
She had some support from her father and was working as a social worker, but she knew she needed more to provide for her family. She began using every spare moment to research PhD programs.
In 2010, she was introduced to another Orthodox Jewish man, Eli. He was caring, empathetic and enthusiastic about her pursuit of a PhD. They dated for 18 months before he proposed.
"I said yes, because I loved him, and yes, because I was drowning, and he was my raft," Glass writes in her memoir.
Eli supported Glass while she completed her PhD and helped her set up a private practice as a clinical psychologist. But their marriage was marred by depression and grief, especially after Glass's sister, Shani, died by suicide in 2013.
Glass told her second husband about her attraction to women but promised him it was just a phase. As the years wore on, however, her sexuality became increasingly hard to repress and she knew her second marriage had to end.
At 32, after a romantic encounter with a woman, Glass finally found herself able to admit that she was a lesbian.
"I was gay. I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs," she writes.
"The knowledge had been inside me all along. I just wished I had been allowed to look for it."
Thirteen years after the birth of her son, Glass was finally able to appeal the conditions of her first divorce contract and extricate herself from the Hasidic community.
For the first time, she began to live as her authentic self. She had relationships with women and even had another child, a son born via IVF.
It took years, however, to come to terms with her religion outside of Hasidism. At first, she wanted "nothing to do with it".
"But now … I do feel connected to certain parts of Judaism, particularly to the values around being a good human being," she says.
"I learned to consider the needs of others and to fight for their rights."
Today, Glass is a psychotherapist specialising in treating complex trauma. She also dedicates time, both personally and professionally, to mentoring and supporting queer youth.
"I just feel like this is what I'm meant to do. I'm meant to never stop speaking about what queer people go through," she says.
"That's how people find hope. They look at my story and they say, 'Oh, I can envision a different future'."