No matter how I tried, I couldn’t save my sister

As told to Shevy Moses

“Don’t judge me, Tamar, please!” Leah begged.

My younger sister was sitting cross-legged on her bed, hunched over a brightly lit screen, her turquoise throw draped around her shoulders.

I swallowed hard. “But Lay Lay,” I replied, calling my sister by her family nickname, “why?”

“Just cuz.” Leah shrugged, trying to appear indifferent. “I need these videos, okay? I need to do this.” Her voice rose in desperation. “Please, Tam, believe me. I’ll, I’ll stop watching soon….”

I nodded uncertainly. Would she? Did I really believe her?

Growing up in a “broken home” gave me resilience. The fact that both of my parents chose different streams of Yiddishkeit could have left me confused, but I saw it as a choice. Two paths ahead of me, neither more correct than the other.

Ma’s path was easier. It was the path I’d been raised on. Eat whatever you want, as long as there’s Hebrew writing on the package. Listen to whatever, watch whatever. As long as you keep the mitzvos, all is great.

Tatty’s path seemed so stringent. Only eat certain hechsherim, never, ever watch a movie, and only listen to Jewish music. And not to mention his standards in tzinyus. Why should I follow him? Especially if he didn’t live at home anymore.

But living two lives was complicated — pretending to be a goody-goody Bais Yaakov girl at Tatty’s house, living it up at Ma’s. It didn’t feel right. And besides, who was I kidding? I wasn’t living it up at all. Those movies I saw? They made me feel ich inside. I wondered why I couldn’t just have the best of both worlds.

Through it all, Leah watched me. Four years her senior, I was supposed to be my sister’s role model. She copied me. She looked up to me. I tried to ignore that gnawing feeling that I should be better, and decided that Leah could choose her own way, just like the rest of our siblings. I thought about Mordy in the US Navy, Danny in university, and Tehilla married to a chassid in Yerushalayim. They’d chosen their paths, just as I would mine, and Leah hers.

So we watched movies together late into the night. We experimented with different kinds of music. We played beauty parlor and made up our faces like some of the actresses we adored — and then hurried to wash it off before Tatty saw us.

Ma didn’t notice, she was too busy worrying about money. Money to pay for Danny’s university bills — why didn’t he just get a loan? Money for Mordy to replace his uniform — what was the guy doing with it? Money for Tehilla’s rent — she still had no job. And school fees. Tatty must have helped, but all I knew was Ma’s pinched face and sad eyes.

With me and Lay Lay in the middle of all this, we did what we liked, and no one seemed to notice.

Until I went to seminary. I honestly don’t know how I got accepted. Maybe it was Tatty’s new connections? They really shouldn’t have accepted a girl like me. One week in, and I was fed up. There was no one to talk about the latest music with, unless you counted Fried and Shwekey. No one to discuss my favorite films with — they’d look at me in horror until I pretended I was joking. But there was no leaving. I was stuck.