Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on January 22, 2015

I was 23 years old when I first started to drive. Its not that I was afraid;I wasnt allowed.Because I'm a woman.

I grew up in a small, densely populated village in upstate New York called Kiryas Joel. And in Kiryas Joel, woman dont drive. Its a village of ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Jews. In my hometown, women can't be jailed for driving like they can in Saudi Arabia. But driving is still forbidden. A woman who drives would risk being shunned, and her children expelled from the private Hasidic school. She could be excommunicated from the community.

Growing up, it never dawned on me that driving was a possibility. No woman in my family or neighborhood ever did. We were taught that our tznius, our modesty, would be at stake. But I think theres something else. For Hasidic women, being banned from the wheel means being tied to your husband and to your community. Driving gives you the keys to freedom and independence.

Once my husband and I left the community for a less restrictive Jewish lifestyle, I got my drivers license.

When my father heard, he said to my mother, She will kill herself and her children.

I wasnt thinking about this when I made my first long-distance drive to New York City with two female friends from Kiryas Joel. I borrowed a GPS and got on the road in my old, tan Buick. It was dark when we started to head back not ideal for a new, timid driver. I missed one exit, then the next, waiting for the distressed GPS to reroute.

I was wiping beads of sweat off my forehead while my friends chatted in the backseat.

Suddenly, without warning, lane dividers appeared. Cars started coming fromthe opposite direction.

The sudden two-way traffic made mefreeze. I was going in the wrong direction. I needed to back up, get past a divider, change directions.

In my mind, I saw my father pointing an accusatory finger at me. I saw death.

See the article here:

I'm a woman in America, and I wasn't allowed to drive

Category: Hasidic
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