Good girls don’t ask, I was told

As a child, one of my favorite places was the forest outside town. I’d tag along with my brothers. We’d find a clearing and eat a picnic lunch, then spend the rest of the afternoon climbing trees, playing, and helping each other up when we fell into piles of leaves or mud. We’d pretend to get lost, and run through the trees, trying to find our way back to the parking lot, panicking and rolling with laughter all at once.

Little did I realize back then, that the years would pass and I’d one day meander through the thickets of my soul, never knowing if the next step would take me forward to freedom or backward to disaster.

I grew up the only girl in a house full of boys, where learning Torah all day was the one and only thing that mattered. Questions were encouraged, with one proviso — you had to be a boy. Good girls don’t ask, I was told. Good girls follow what they are taught and then raise their own kids to do the same. When a boy asks, it’s a sign of brilliance. When a girl asks, it’s a sign of weak faith.

But squelching my curiosity and thirst to learn, repressing those queries, caused me to start questioning the very path I was on, to shun the light I basked in.

I started scratching at the niggling feelings I carried throughout my childhood. Unbeknown to me, my doubts in emunah simply stemmed from a misconception of what emunah really meant — doing what we are tasked to do, with the information we’ve gained through learning, while always understanding that we can never know it all.

In the darkness of my own forest I slipped and landed in the undergrowth. I didn’t understand the magnitude of doing something seemingly as banal as switching on the air-conditioner or applying makeup on Shabbos, so I did it. I was sure the Shabbos candles on the table would never be diminished by my breaking the code of law.