But by fifth grade, I was completely serious. School was a nightmare I couldn’t escape. I wouldn’t wear pants for gym class because I was uncomfortable wearing pants in front of the boys. I wore my hair shorter, like my friends from Bais Yaakov, when all the popular girls in my class were wearing it long and loose. I wouldn’t talk to the boys. I wasn’t trying to make a statement; I was just doing what felt right to me. But my moral courage didn’t impress the group of kids who took it upon themselves to torment me at every opportunity.

“Why can’t you be science partners with Justin? Are you too holy to work with a boy?”

“What’s the big deal with you and pants? You’re so weird.”

It was painful to endure. School was my personal house of horrors.

The next step? Launching a full campaign to switch schools. My parents resisted. I was a bright student, and they didn’t want me to lose educational opportunities in my school, which had a stellar secular studies program. And Bais Yaakov? I might as well have asked to go to school on the moon; the people there were light-years away from the circles my parents found acceptable. But I refused to back down. Refused to go to school. I told my mother that until she got me accepted to Bais Yaakov, I wasn’t finishing sixth grade.

Eventually, my parents gave in and arranged a meeting with the principal of the local Bais Yaakov. I remember sitting tensely outside his office, gripping the edge of a hard plastic chair until my knuckles turned white, davening that he would accept me. To my utter relief, he did.

Bais Yaakov was a big change, but I knew right away that it was the place for me. The warmth, the lessons on authentic Yiddishkeit, and even the extracurricular programs were full of meaning, focusing on middos and shemiras halashon. Yes, it was exactly what I wanted… but I also sometimes found myself disappointed. These girls were frummer than I was, so they should automatically be better than me. Kinder. More genuine. Right? That realization that “frum” doesn’t always mean perfect was a lesson that would follow me through every stage of my transformation.

At first, it was confusing to see the other girls as flawed human beings who were sometimes mean. I’ll never forget a game of machanayim when one girl repeatedly aimed the ball at my stomach — hard.

I finally told her, “You can get me out, but please be careful. It hurts.”

She shrugged and said, “Too bad. That’s the game.”

And I thought, Aren’t middos supposed to mean something here?

Still, I felt safer. The environment fit. The subjects were taught with heart and purpose, like we were learning how to live, not learning because someone had to fill in their teaching schedule. Here, Yiddishkeit felt real, beyond the thin “Israel” and “Hebrew” gruel I’d been fed since pre-K. And the teachers were incredible.

In seventh grade, I was drawn to my Navi teacher, Mrs. Blum, with her regal air, her unfamiliar (to me) head covering, and her slight accent. She was authentic, refined, and sharply intuitive. I quickly learned that she was what my friends called “chassidish.” I never found out how she ended up in Bais Yaakov, but it was my first time meeting someone like her. I admired her, spoke to her, and always left her classes on a high. Looking back, I think that’s where my shift really began. Something inside me responded, and I felt a strange sense of coming home.

In a rush of teenage enthusiasm, I started wearing more modest clothing, clothing that mirrored the refined look of this teacher, and I saved my babysitting money to buy my own beige tights, just like hers. By eighth grade, the beige tights were an official statement. And though, as I grew older, I realized that there was more to this path than just my clothing and eased up a bit, it was a start. This was who I was becoming.

My mother didn’t take well to my new and improved wardrobe. When she first saw my (dark) beige legs, her eyes almost rolled out of their sockets, and she shrieked, “What are you trying to do?! You want to give me a heart attack?!”

She was petrified, watching her teenage daughter transform into something unfamiliar. We didn’t live near any people from the yeshivish community, much less anyone chassidish. My parents were wary of chassidim in particular. They didn’t understand them, couldn’t fathom why they dressed the way they did, and considered it “primitive” to be so different in modern-day America.

“Why on earth do you want to look like them?” my mother demanded, incredulous.

My father, less attuned to the nuances of female hosiery, didn’t realize what was going on at first, but when I declined to join them at our yearly baseball game, he understood. My teenage rebellion was devastating for them.

Over the next two years, I began to gravitate toward girls in my community who were more chassidish. Most of them didn’t attend Bais Yaakov, but I met many of them when I worked as an assistant at a camp for children with special needs in the Catskills. Even though we went to different schools, I would visit them on Shabbos afternoons and Sundays. Their homes were vibrant with Yiddishkeit. Their Shabbos wasn’t the quiet routine I was used to — it was alive. There was singing, laughter, and warmth. Even the food had meaning. Every kugel was a minhag, connected to a story.

Nothing was “just because.” And I found it beautiful.

But what struck me the most was the way the families lived. Many of the fathers were plumbers, electricians, or accountants: working men. During the week, they wore regular work clothes, but on Shabbos, you saw who they really were. The first time I saw my friend’s father wearing his shtreimel and beketshe, I was stunned. To me, he looked like a malach.

I’d come to know the litvish world, which, to my black-and-white teenage mind, often felt divided: You were either klei kodesh and dressed like one all the time, or you were a working person and you dressed like that, even on Shabbos. But here, there was a kind of equality. Whatever your job might be, your first identity was that you were a chassid.

And I loved that.

The role of the chassidish women fascinated me, too. I watched how the husbands looked at their wives with respect. I could feel the mutual admiration and sense the partnership. The wife was the queen in her home, and it was also clear to me that husbands were the kings. The women looked up to their husbands with joy and pride. “Tatte” was spoken about with reverence and devotion, and the children echoed their mothers’ feelings.

My home was fine, but it didn’t have the spark of these chassidish houses, so full of life and meaning. Everything, from cooking to preparing for Yom Tov to setting the table was done with geshmak (a new word I learned early on). I began to dream of a home like the ones I was observing, a home filled with light and love, little girls with warm smiles and little boys with curly peyos bouncing on their shoulders.

Unsurprisingly, my parents weren’t on board with my plan.

“You want to give me a heart attack?!” my mother cried, echoing her reaction to the beige tights. The idea of her former “probably doctor or lawyer” becoming chassidish and living a completely foreign lifestyle frightened her. I knew she felt rejected and hurt, but I couldn’t figure out how to mend the rift that was growing between us.

When I finished school, I attended a local seminary, where I had incredible teachers. As I approached the stage of shidduchim, I spoke to one of the rabbanim I had become close to in seminary.

“You should take care of your own shidduchim,” he told me. It was an obvious next step, but one I hadn’t thought of.

My rav gave me some phone numbers to call. I started speaking to shadchanim, sending out my résumé, and doing my own networking. Eventually, a shadchan suggested a boy from a heimish family who wanted to be more chassidish. It was exactly what I wanted.

We met at a discreet community member’s house (a far cry from the horrible dating stories some of my friends shared) and it wasn’t long before we got engaged.

The chasunah was beautiful, albeit another shock for my parents. Navigating between both sets of parents would have taxed the skills of a high-ranking diplomat, and I was just a fresh, giddy kallah. My in-laws insisted on having both fathers walk my chassan down to the chuppah, while the two mothers would walk me down, in accordance with the chassidishe minhag. That was perfectly fine with me, but difficult for my father to accept. And when I explained how long the mitzvah tantz might last, my sedate, home-from-weddings-by-11 parents were horrified.

But with finesse and a few tears, we made it through the wedding intact.

It was after the chasunah that the real shock came — moving into a chassidish community that wasn’t very close to my family.

I thought I knew what I was getting into. I’d spent so much time at my friends’ homes, in their neighborhoods, at their tishen and simchahs. But living there? That was a whole new world. You can spend years visiting, attending Shabbos meals and simchahs, and still be unprepared for the social nuances. When people would ask, “Who’s she from home?” I thought they meant, “Where is she from?” I had no idea it meant, “What’s her maiden name?” Even knowing when to wear a tichel versus a sheitel led to some immediately noticeable blunders. I will forever be grateful to the woman who quietly explained to me that most women in my neighborhood wore sheitels when going shopping.

Yiddish took a long time to master. I’d learned as much as I could, but speaking it fluently, naturally, was another story, and I always felt self-conscious when other women did a subtle double take at my heavy accent. Culturally, there were differences, too. When I first moved, I wanted to blend in, but I soon realized that my favorite brown skirt with the floral pattern stood out. People weren’t rude, but I got some odd glances, the uneasy sense of, you’re a little different. I thought I’d left that feeling behind when I switched to Bais Yaakov, but here it was again, just in a new form.

The years passed, and the children came, quickly and easily, baruch Hashem. My lively brood looked just like those of my neighbors, except for the reality of another challenge I faced: not having family nearby. Everyone else on my block had mothers, sisters, cousins; people to help, to babysit, to lean on. They were genuinely kind, but they didn’t always realize how lost I sometimes felt without that network.

But there were also things that felt so right. The spiritual level left me on a high. The awareness about things like technology, for example. If you didn’t have a smartphone, you weren’t considered weird or behind the times (the vibe I got from my own family). On the contrary, you were respected.

And then, there was something completely new for me — having a rebbe in our lives. Growing up in a home that didn’t look to daas Torah for guidance, I was now getting used to having one person who knew the full picture of our family and each individual, who guided us, cared about us, and even knew exactly which part of the kugel each of my boys loved to receive at the tish (the crunchy corner, obviously), and that gave me a tremendous sense of security. It was something I hadn’t known I was missing.

Despite the original fierce opposition, my parents eventually came to accept my choice to join the chassidish community. They learned to see the beauty in how I’m raising my kids — the warmth, the values, the sense of purpose. Today, they visit us for Yom Tov and kvell over the grandchildren (which always helps).

It’s been more than a decade since I started my new life, and I look like I’ve “made it.” My kids are in good schools and yeshivos, and we’re part of the community… but there’s always that flicker of impostor syndrome. The little voice that sometimes whispers, “Do you really belong here?” Because choosing this life — as beautiful as it is — rather than being born into it, creates a sense of being slightly “other” that never fully disappears. I’ve had people tell me, “You chose this life, so you can’t complain.” And that hurts. I chose to become chassidish because I wanted to grow closer to Hashem, and chassidus felt like the path I needed to take. I once thought that when you take a step forward spiritually, people would recognize that, but it’s not always that simple.

Yet I don’t want to sound ungrateful, because I have so much hakaras hatov to Hashem for placing me here. The chesed in this community is beyond words. When I was on bed rest, I didn’t ask for help. I didn’t have to. People just showed up with meals, babysitting offers, and rides for my kids to school. It was a tidal wave of kindness and warmth. The heart in the chassidish community is enormous.

So yes, even though there are moments that sting, there’s also so much love.

And when I look at my kids, I see children who belong.

I listen to my toddler chattering in Yiddish. I see the way my boys daven with a geshmak. I watch how my girls talk to the Rebbetzin with respect and awe. I laugh at the way my son once told me, seriously — after I refused his request for a parrot — that he wanted to ask the Rebbe.

“Because if the Rebbe says yes, then we’re getting one!”

And when I light the candles on Friday night, surrounded by more shining faces than my parents ever imagined, I know that everything has led me here: To this home. To this family. To this kind of Shabbos.

The one I used to dream about.

Now come to life.

I still…

worry about the future. I daven that my past shouldn’t affect my children’s shidduchim. But I’m proud of my journey, and I also believe that Hashem will help me marry off all my children at the right time.

Because…

I didn’t grow up chassidish, each new stage of life is a learning curve. Getting my daughters into high school, the boys into yeshivah, shidduchim… even something as simple as an upsheren was completely new! When you’re part of a community, you don’t realize how much an outsider has to learn.

When you see…

that someone who joined your community is making a social error, point it out. Don’t let them embarrass themselves. But do it with compassion (and in private!).

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 978)