The Anthropology of Frumkeit

 I took an anthropology class in college, before I decided a better, more reliable career would be teaching.(Reliable, maybe, but ask me how that’s going…)  I learned enough to know that I am what is called a participant observer of frumkeit. * As someone who grew up fully secular and became religious in my mid-20’s before settling down and having a family, I never feel as if I know quite what’s going on.  I married a Baal Teshuva.  Really.  It’s the blind leading the blind here, people.  

It gets better, though. Or worse, depending on your perspective.  When we were newlyweds we lived in a very geographically dispersed, mixed-observance community with a small, highly educated, Modern Orthodox contingent**, which, for reasons that my mother refers to as my black and white thinking, was not hashkafically my thing. I have won exactly one argument with my husband in the entire three years of our marriage and that has been the argument about where to live.  I had a baby and we moved. To an actual frum community.  Talk about culture shock.  I truly like the community I live in now, but I’m not here to sugar coat stuff.  I feel like a complete moron 99% percent of the time. As someone who has absolutely no idea how to function as a balabusta*** and is also incredibly self-conscious about not knowing things, I get lots of vital information from Mispacha/AMI magazine, imamother, and random offhand comments other women make. Obviously, my sources of information are foolproof. There are so many norms in frumkeit, especially for women, that I had no idea about until approximately one year ago.  So I’ve decided to do what anyone would do in this situation.  Start a blog and mine my struggles for comic relief.  First subject on my docket: Purim! Brace yourselves. 

*If you want to get technical, I don’t think I’m a true participant observer. As in, I’ve drank the kool-aid, become shomer mitzvos, Torah observant, etc. But allow me the liberty.

** If you know, you know.  In order to not have the entire M.O community under the age of 35 come after me I will not be identifying this location.  

*** Oh, I will be writing about this one later. Trust me.