Chapter 2: The Jewish Question

As Charlene walked down the aisle towards me at our beautiful wedding, I got my first twinge of discomfort for what I was getting myself, and more so Charlene, into. I was standing at the “altar” in front of a non-sectarian, woman, justice of the peace, and it seemed comical.

I grew up with a very clear vision of what a wedding ceremony looked like and it wasn’t this. It included a chuppah and rabbi and a lot of Hebrew. And family and friends and neighbors and more rabbis, which I had none of here. None were invited, and if they had been they would not have come. The whole thing felt make-believe to me. 

But not to Charlene. She was walking down the aisle looking into my eyes with love and trust, handing herself wholeheartedly to me and my care. I was the happiest I’d ever been and sick to my stomach at the same time.

Because at that moment I had the clear visual realization that my two worlds, my light-filled and happy Charlene world, and my dark and shadow filled Jewish world, were hurtling towards each other like two meteorites, and I had no plan. I was not ready to give up either of  those worlds and they were completely incompatible. But that’s not what I had told Charlene. I had told her it wasn’t going to be a problem at all.

I now had to figure out a way to integrate my perfect wife Charlene, who I loved and cherished more than my own life, with my Judaism, which was in my dna literally and figuratively, and my family and tribe, which were not welcoming of outsiders. 

And balance Charlene’s desire for children with my aversion to having non-jewish children and breaking the over 3,300 year old chain since the Revelation at Mount Sinai that I was part of. 

Accomplishing a healthy integration of these two worlds through Charlene’s conversion would require a strategic and detailed plan, and an enormous amount of patience, maturity, wisdom, emotional intelligence and awareness, and understanding for how difficult a path for us, but especially for Charlene, it would be. But I didn’t have a plan. And I didn’t possess those character traits at the time either. 

And more than anything, a healthy integration required honesty to begin with. But I had lied to her. I had lied to us. I had told her that my Judaism wasn’t going to be an issue and we’d live happily ever after. 

I had put myself between a rock and a hard place, making a commitment to my soulmate and love of my life that I couldn’t keep without removing big pieces of my dna and belief system. I had never stopped believing in the fundamentals of my religion, even though I wasn’t observant at the time and was utterly disillusioned with the haredi lifestyle. 

The thing is, although Judaism was definitely a mountain of a rock, with rules dating back to Mount Sinai, in place for thousands of years, Charlene was not a hard place. Charlene was the softest, most agreeable person to those she loved. That was one of the dualities that made her so attractive and exciting to me. 

On the one hand she was a fierce and fearless warrior. Moving by herself with no support system to another part of the country. Her equine and other athletic accomplishments and abilities. Her ability to physically kick my ass. Her ability to take on challenges and new careers with grace and ease. Her fighting for what she believed in. How she would always be moving forward, making no excuses for herself and accepting nothing but success. 

And on the other hand she was oh so soft and tender. So feminine and submissive to her man. So forgiving, understanding and ready to see the good, only the good. So loving, desirous of harmony, peace and happiness.

She had learned from past relationships that men took advantage of her because of her desire to make them happy. And her soft heart that only wanted to love and be loved. And part of her attraction to me was her certainty that I truly loved her wholeheartedly, in a totally real way, the way she loved me, and that I was different from the others and would cherish her, not trample on her gentle heart. 

As I started living life with Charlene while also living in my Jewish shadow world, I started making compromises that always put her second. I would go visit family or do other Jew things and ask her to wait in the car and in general be uninvolved. I delayed us starting a family, her most fervent desire, giving all sorts of excuses. I disrespected her and took advantage of her easygoing goodwill. Because it was the easy way out.

Instead of responding to situations using the happy, positive value system and emotional language that I had built with Charlene, I started acting from my weak, and damaged self, my shadow world self, avoiding difficult decisions and conversations, becoming increasingly inconsiderate and ugly to Charlene. 

This is how I left the Garden and lost my way. I still loved Charlene with all my heart but there was an emotional disconnection building, what the prophets describe as a “foreskin”, covering my heart. I was beginning to see her through the lens and emotional world that I used to live in. The ultra orthodox world where I had been emotionally disconnected since childhood. A world where duty and responsibility trumped everything else. Where appearances and outward behavior were all important, and internal alignment and authenticity were irrelevant.

I was a very responsible and giving husband, always providing, and filling her stated needs, as well as whatever I thought of as her needs without her even asking, because that was a defining aspect of the Torah way of life and my upbringing. Husbands were good providers. 

But I started seeing her and treating her as a responsibility to be handled and accommodated, rather than the unique gift from God that she was, to be cherished and honored. Because I was no longer living in her light, in her world of love and happiness. I was living in the darkness of my shadow world, the world of duty and misery. In the priestly blessing, the priests pray to God that He turn His face to us and provide us shalom, or peace. I had turned my face away from her and removed Shalom from her. She was now facing my alter-ego, Sol.

We decided to go see the local Chabad Rabbi, in Rockaway, New Jersey and talk about our options. His first question to me was “did you put on tefillin today?” The question hit me like a ton of bricks. As a haredi 13 year old in Brooklyn, New York, I remembered seeing these weird Chabad guys in the streets putting tefillin on what seemed to be “goyim”. I now realized I was that goy. I had never seen myself that way. In my warped self-view I was still a haredi jew, maybe just a little irresponsible sometimes.

I had a flashback to over two years earlier, the day I stopped wearing tefillin. At that time, I was living partly in my dingy studio and partly in my beautiful house in Brooklyn, depending on the direction of the wind. I had been getting progressively worse with daily davening and putting on tefillin, doing it later and later in the day. At that time, I had been remembering right at sundown, the last moment to put on tefillin, and quickly stopped what I was doing to get them on.

And then one day it was 15 minutes before sundown and I had to stop and put on tefillin. But they weren’t there on the credenza in my office! Where they always were. I had left them in Brooklyn. I scrambled to my car to drive to the big shul in West Orange, down the street from my office. I was hoping the door would be unlocked, and that I’d find a pair of tefillin I could grab for a minute.

As I waited for the light on Pleasant Valley Way, under the overpass for the I-280, I could see the shul on my right, a few hundred feet down the road. And at the moment sundown hit and I was out of time, (orthodox jews always know the exact time of sunrise and sunset every day because it’s relevant to prayer schedules), I noticed the license plate of the car in front of me. “LOSTSOL”. And in case, I might have missed the blatant message from God, He even made sure to spell “soul”, using my business name, Sol. Knowing my penchant for good spelling. (If there’s one thing Charlene was absolutely, embarrassingly awful at, it was spelling).

You might think a message like that would get me thinking. And it did, for a minute. But it didn’t stop that day from becoming the first day of me not putting on tefillin for the next two and a half years. Until this day at the Chabad, the day I started putting tefillin on again. The day Charlene’s and my difficult journey would begin towards making peace between my two worlds. 

But at that time, we were far from making peace between the two worlds. The troubles were just beginning. The Rabbi basically told us that Charlene would have to move out and go to school. But that she could start with a nightly class twice a week for people thinking of converting. We started with that. Charlene was fascinated and took to it right away. 

I attributed this to a few things. Her father was born technically Jewish, although raised Catholic, and she had a Jewish soul. Her mother had in fact called Charlene her “Jewish baby” when she was young. When asked later why she called Charlene that, she would only say it was a feeling that she had as soon as Charlene was born. 

And on a practical level, because Charlene was nothing if not practical, Charlene was desperate to move forward with a family. Always moving forward. And at this point she realized that the only realistic path forward for her having children with me that would not result in my being torn in two was her conversion. 

She could have been angry at me and condemned me for lying to her and trapping her. And now she was only getting older and entangled in a mess. But that was not her way. She moved forward without bitterness towards me, or self-pity for herself, making the best of her and our situation.

This went on for six months until I had enough and wanted the conversion completed so we could get on with our lives. The Rabbi looked at me like I was a moron and said, “Shalom I told you she’d have to move out and go to school”. I said “what about the last six months of classes?” He said that was just for her to decide if she wanted to move forward. I started getting a little aggressive and pushy. The Rabbi got upset and said if I was going to act that way he wouldn’t deal with me.     

I was very bullheaded back then, part of what Charlene loved about me. That I was pushy and got what I wanted. She didn’t want a pushover that couldn’t protect or provide for her. She didn’t like when the force of that bullheadedness was focused on her but she did value the trait and understand that if she wanted a man with it, she would have to live with it as well.

But there was no getting what I wanted here. Charlene moved out of our house in West Orange and moved into an apartment in lower Manhattan with a friend and former co-worker of hers from the horse stables at Chelsea Piers. And commuted daily to the Chabad mothership in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, for school at Machon Chana, a school for baal-teshuva girls and women.

Instead of being supportive, kind and considerate to Charlene, and understanding and appreciative of what she was going through for us, I was ugly, selfish, and immature. And twisted. I was lonely, upset that she was “abandoning” me, and resentful of her. And instead of her being angry at me for marrying her under false pretenses and dropping her into this mess, I was angry at her for the inconvenience I was being put through. I had nobody to take care of my marital needs, my food, the house. And it was her job.

We were living separate lives. And our relationship was very shaky. We would see each other Sundays and here and there but it was not regular. And more importantly we were not sleeping together. Although I just wanted the jew certificate so we could get on with our lives, Charlene was taking the process very seriously.

Charlene had taken to her life at Machon Chana as she did everything. With enthusiasm and positivity. She made friends, was learning a whole new world, and was very excited about Judaism. She said she had been looking for this her entire life. She had grown up Catholic, and been exposed to a few other Christian denominations over the years through various friends, and her two exes, but none of it spoke to her the way Judaism did. She felt she was now drinking from the fountainhead, where it all originated. This is when she first started viewing Judaism and Torah as the Tree of Life.

This just made me more insecure and unhappy. I was miserable and lonely and she was enjoying her new life without me. Not wanting to live off of me while not living with me, (as she was with all her relationships before), she had taken a job as a nanny while in school to cover her portion of the rent at her friend’s place, and her very minimal other expenses. So I didn’t even have financial responsibility or involvement with her, (which I never would have used as leverage, but at least it would have made me feel needed). 

Looking back with perspective, I’m in awe of Charlene’s character. Her humble view of herself, her resilience, strength, optimism, positivity, hard work, happiness. And always future-oriented, forward motion, while learning from the past but not dwelling in the past, living only in the present. How I wish I was wise enough back then to understand who this spiritual giant was that God had gifted me. Like Rabbi Akiva who left home at 40 due to inspiration from Rachel, the woman that loved him, and started to learn from scratch and build a new life for himself and his Rachel.

Charlene was now already 35, biological clock ticking louder by the minute, and she was married to a man who said he loved her and had promised her babies. She had built and ran a major show stable and school while competing nationally, and had a long history of many other accomplishments and life experiences. And yet she had now basically gone back to being a teenager, back in school with teen and young adult women, learning and building a whole new life for herself. 

And instead of making her own babies as had been promised to her, she was working as a part-time nanny, just as a young student would do, to support herself while in school. Even though she could have taken money from her husband which she was entitled to and I would have been happy to pay. But she didn’t want to give me the opportunity to suck her into my negativity in the same way she didn’t want to take money from her exes when she left them. And she was this way without complaint, bitterness, anger, or resentment at the position she was in. But rather with excitement, happiness, and enthusiasm.    

I guilted and pressured her every time we talked to the point she avoided talking with me. And although the Rabbi didn’t dislike me as a person, he thought I was terrible for Charlene and encouraged her to move on. He saw a sincere and wholehearted woman who was transforming herself through a spiritual journey, tied to an immature, emotionally disconnected and damaged man who just wanted the rubber jew stamp so he could get his wife back in the bed and kitchen, and get on with his life.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, her conversion was completed in April of 2001, almost two years after our Disney wedding. I thought we would get religiously married the next day. But the Rabbi refused. He said she was now like a newborn baby in a spiritual sense and needed some time before we married. He rightly felt I was going to corrupt her. He thought she should take it slow and live as a jew without me for a while.        

And Charlene wasn’t pushing the marriage either. She was having second thoughts about me. She was still going to Machon Chana and living in Manhattan. The Rabbi suggested she go to Israel for a year, (without me), and she was on the verge of making that decision. I was panicking. I had lost her to the other side. The light side.

Judaism was a responsibility and burden to me. And I had dragged her into it. And treated her and the process in a deplorable manner because of how miserable and dark that world was for me. Because of my years of discontent in that life. And I thought she would join me in my dark Jew world. But that’s not the world she joined. Because she could never live in a world like that. She lived in the Charlene love and happy world.

And the Chabad style Judaism that she learned was a love and happy brand of Judaism. She had the diametric opposite view of Judaism that I did. I saw it as dutiful to the point of painful. She saw it as loving to the point of full connection. Although the rules were the same, we were practicing different religions. And although I had introduced her to the Tree of Life, she was now connected to it and I most definitely wasn’t.

I wish I had joined her in her spiritual journey but I didn’t. Out of fear and weakness due to my built up resistance and conditioning. I stayed holed up in West Orange working and living my life without her, never once going to Crown Heights to learn or grow together with her. While she learned and grew daily without me. 

And instead of being a supportive, positive, soulmate partner presence in her life, I would torment her with phone calls that were basically a list of complaints for all the inconvenience in my life due to her absence. 

Ironically she was now living not only in light-filled Charlene world, which she had always been, but also in light-filled Jew world. And the dark Jew world I lived in was not appealing to her or the Rabbi. She was about to give me up for her Judaism!  

And then 9-11 happened. And soon after, Charlene agreed to come back to me and the Rabbi agreed to marry us. He was very unhappy about it and repeatedly warned me to take her conversion seriously and become a good jew myself. And of course I agreed.

We again rushed the wedding. This time because I didn’t want the Rabbi to change his mind. But because I was arranging, not Charlene, it was just ten men, (required for a quorum to make it religiously binding), for a quick chuppah ceremony, including the Rabbi, in a shul basement. They were mostly strangers that were already there, besides two men that I asked to come. And a plate of cold cuts that I bought from the deli. I had succeeded in capping off a disrespectful and inconsiderate 18 months with the most unmemorable, unmeaningful religious wedding ceremony I have ever personally been witness to.

Ironically because I was resentful and embarrassed that I was marrying a convert. I had allowed my own learned tribal xenophobia, from years of conditioning, to cause me to torment Charlene. After all she went through because of me and for me, I was blaming her for the inconvenience and irritation.

I also felt very threatened by her love and closeness with her non-Jewish family in Florida. For one, I was worried about the Christian and otherwise non-Jewish influence on Charlene. If anything it was the opposite. Charlene was secure in her Judaism and its loving connection with God. What I should have been worried about was my negative influence on her Judaism. Later with the kids my psychosis in this area would only get worse before getting better.

Plus, her family was very unhappy that their precious daughter and sister lived far away up north and would have loved for her to move back. Her mother and one sister actively encouraged this multiple times over the years, so I wasn’t delusional to feel threatened.

It may sound a little like there was a cult-like control thing going on but it wasn’t like that. I never tried to stop her from visiting or talking with her family. Also I was never manipulative, (not that I could be if I tried). I never gaslighted or twisted facts or events to fit a false narrative or to control her. She saw me coming a mile away and always made her own decisions in these matters. I was just threatened by it and would be very wary and non-encouraging of her trips.          

As I look back at my behavior during this period, I’m crying and disgusted with myself. I'm overwhelmed by feelings of guilt and shame and regret. I can’t even relate to the part of myself that acted in that way towards Charlene and am baffled at how I ever did. I feel like it’s not me, but a different person. 

If only Charlene were still here to tell me again now as she had a hundred times before how she forgave me years ago and that this was the road we were meant to travel together and everything was alright. If only she were still here to hold me again now as she had a hundred times before and murmur in my ear how much she loved me and how long ago she forgot about these events. But these events are fresh in my mind now like they just happened and she’s no longer here to relieve the pain.   

Charlene loved me so much and so wanted to move forward that she made excuses for me, thought the best of me, and overlooked my repeated cruelty and disrespect. I didn’t deserve that grace and forgiveness from her. And she didn’t deserve that ugliness from me.

King Solomon’s Woman of Valor only "repays his good but never his harm all the days of her life”. And she never repaid my harm. She never initiated a fight or acted with bitterness or vengefulness towards me. She never held past events against me. Even though I gave her countless reasons.

But she did always repay my good. She was so grateful, for even the smallest of things and constantly felt the need to repay and contribute in any way, even if it was just with kindness and consideration. She never acted entitled to anything, even things I was obligated to do. Because she lived with love. And in that world, she was grateful for everything she received and never had expectations. 

She hardly ever made demands. And even requests were rare and very softly delivered. She much preferred I do things for her voluntarily, out of love than because she demanded, or even asked. She would gauge my level of emotional involvement with her based on my voluntary actions. If she had to ask or demand something she couldn’t tell what my true feelings for her were, and she didn’t like that.

I can confidently say that King Solomon personally never met a woman that fit his full description. Because he says “A Woman of Valor who can find”. Well he was right. I didn’t find her either. She was dropped into my lap. But I am here to testify with this chapter that my precious and beloved Charlene was the woman that King Solomon envisioned. And he with his thousand wives and all the wealth in the world didn’t have her, I did. 

It was now the beginning of 2002. Charlene was jewish according to the strictest orthodox guidelines, we were religiously married, and she was back with me in West Orange, New Jersey, (living next door to the big shul where I tried to grab a pair of tefillin 18 months earlier).

But our jew problems were far from over. Yes most of my family was now talking to me again, (albeit not all), and we were members of an Orthodox community. But it was now baby time and I was most definitely not in the Garden. I had forgotten the Garden even existed.