The Struggle Over My Sheitel, Marriage and Yiddishkeit

By Miriam Goldstein, as told to Dovid Zaklikowski

It had been the most transformative weekend of my life. I returned home from my first Shabbaton with energy pouring through my veins. I was like a teenager jumping up and down, screaming at the top of my lungs. Rah, rah! How wonderful Yiddishkeit is!

I immediately set to work creating a new wardrobe: dark stockings to compliment the shoes I had purchased in New York, necklines up-to-here and hems down-to-there, and, to top it off, “Jewish hair,” as my husband Jerry so aptly called my new wig.

When my rapid metamorphosis into an Orthodox woman was complete, my husband and children looked at me in shock. This was not the person they had driven to the airport a few days before. “I definitely want my money back!” my husband exclaimed.

Still soaring on the winds of inspiration, I was blind to my family’s misgivings. The changes did not stop at my clothing. I wanted Yiddishkeit to permeate my home. I wanted the kitchen to be kosher. I wanted to celebrate Shabbos as I had seen it in New York. I wanted my family to become a perfect, frum family. I wanted it all, and I wanted it now. In the Goldstein home, there was a conflict brewing.

It didn’t take long for me to recognize that I was alone in my enthusiasm. My poor husband just didn’t know what to do with me, and I didn’t know what to do with him. The situation was totally unreasonable.

In Akron, Ohio, where we lived, there was not a single Orthodox Jew. The closest shul was an hour away, which made it difficult to keep in touch with someone who could guide me in this journey.

In the early 1970s (and even today), there was no manual for “How to Become Observant in 10 Easy Steps Without Leaving Your Family and Friends in the Dust.” I was working with only my own intuition and resources to guide me. The situation was toxic, almost dangerous.

The Hairy Issue

It was easier to change dishes than attitudes. Our home became kosher; Shabbos was introduced. I withdrew the children from public school and began making the two-and-a-half-hour round trip to the Jewish school in Cleveland each day.

Looking back, I’m amazed at how patient my husband was with all this. He did not believe in parochial education, yet he didn’t protest when I insisted this was what was best for our four children.

Strangely, the thing that upset him the most was my sheitel. It was a visual statement, constantly before his eyes, of my commitment to being frum, different from him. For my part, I clung to the sheitel. It embodied everything I was trying to accomplish for myself and my family. Had I taken it off in a weak moment, I felt, it would have been the beginning of the end.

During one heated moment, I asked my husband if he married me for my hair. He was just about ready to say yes, when I continued, “Speaking of hair, you had much more when I married you!” My bout of inspiration was clearly having a great effect on my marriage.

Things started to get better when our family began to travel to Cleveland every Shabbos and yom tov. There, at the home of Rabbi Leibel and Rebbetzin Devorah Alevsky, we got hands-on lessons in celebrating the holy days. Observing their children, my husband and I agreed that we wanted our own kids to have the same peaceful, uncomplicated aura.

My husband became very close with Rabbi Alevsky, and I became Rebbetzin Devorah’s student. Her mother, Rebbetzin Shula Kazen, a feisty woman who had gone through hell keeping Yiddishkeit in the Soviet Union and survived to tell the story, was always there for guidance and sound advice.

As the months went by, I watched my husband with a secret feeling of glee. He seemed to really be enjoying the time we spent with the Alevskys. I was sure that it was only a matter of time before he grew a beard and put on a black hat. Thinking only of myself, I failed to realize that he was far from being ready to commit.

One day, I was complaining to a rabbi about my husband’s slowness to take on mitzvahs, when he interrupted me: “Are you eating kosher? Is he stopping you from keeping Shabbos? Is he letting you send your kids to a Jewish school?”

I told him that he was. “Then what do you want from him?” he said. “He gave you everything you want and maybe even more. Why are you bothering him? You have everything. Just leave him alone.”

I wasn’t asking my husband the right questions, he said. I had to see things from his perspective, to understand his emotional needs and make sure that, in my fervor, I wasn’t unintentionally hurting him. “Did you stop to listen to what he’s really asking from you? Simply stop and listen.” It was particularly important, he said, that my husband should never be made to feel embarrassed about the fact that he was less observant than I was.

I realized that I was being a hypocrite. I was teaching my children not to start all their sentences with “I want,” yet here I was, doing it myself. I wanted my husband to become a new person. I wanted him to become frum. I wanted him to be a Chassidic Jew. It was total, unadulterated greed.

The Alevskys helped me to see that I didn’t have to choose between my spiritual growth and my marriage. Deep down, my husband and I didn’t have any “religious differences.” We’re both Jewish; I wasn’t introducing anything foreign into his life. It was the way I introduced it that was the problem.

There was no need for compromise, but there was a need for change. I needed to change my perspective and attitude. Slowly, I learned to take the emphasis away from myself and plug in to my husband’s experience. All he wanted was a place in our lives, and it was very painful for him to come home and feel alienated.

So, things started to change. Shabbos in our home began at candle lighting time, but our meal began when my husband came home from work. It was a fact of our lives, and we were happy to work with it.

I made it clear that even if he never became observant, he would always have our respect and a place in our home. This was manifested physically in his seat at the table, where no one else was allowed to sit. Until today, if one of my children accidentally sits there, they jump right up as though there were hot coals on the chair.

My husband loves his place, which, of course, is much more than a chair at the head of a table.

Treated Like a Mensch

Throughout this journey, my commitment to my marriage and to Yiddishkeit was uncompromising. Seeing that I did not budge on either issue, my husband developed a greater respect for me and for Judaism.

When we were still living in Akron, I told him that I needed to live in a place where there was a shul. “I want us to live together,” he said, “so let’s start a shul where we live.” He was instrumental in establishing the shul in Akron, which, for the first ten years, met in our living room.

Many a Shabbos morning he would come downstairs and find that he was the tenth for the minyan. He would stay until someone else came, and then he would drive to work. Later, when we moved to California and there was no shul in the area where we wanted live, he helped to establish a Chabad presence there.

It turned out that his dislike for the sheitel was simply aesthetic. He just wanted me to look nice. I purchased a beautiful wig, and the issue was resolved.

Years later, when I felt he was ready, I asked him if he would like to take on one mitzvah. He agreed, and to my surprise, chose a mitzvah that even I had hesitated over. Something like Shabbos or kashrus would have made more sense to me. But what did I know? We both accepted on ourselves the mitzvah of Mikvah, and it changed our lives forever.

Ten years later, a diverse crowd attended our son’s Bar Mitzvah celebration. Despite the separate seating, my husband was extremely proud of the event. He kept his sense of humor throughout, which seemed helped him cope with his discomfort.

At the end of the evening, he got up to speak. After years of tension, I learned that he recognized my efforts to respect him and treat him like a mensch. “I may never call my wife Miriam,” he declared, “but I will always be proud and honored to call her my wife,”

My husband finally did change—without my intervention. My youngest daughter, who continued through seminary in Chabad schools, was able to reach her father’s heart in a way that I couldn’t. Thirty years after my first Shabbos in Crown Heights, he began observing mitzvahs on a daily basis.

For My Husband…

Over the years, I had the privilege to meet several times with the Lubavitcher Rebbe. It was during “dollars,” when people would line up and the Rebbe would say a few words to each person and hand them a crisp dollar bill to give to tzedakah. I was told to keep any requests to a minimum, and I had so many things to ask that I never thought of mentioning my husband. My husband probably wouldn’t have wanted me to talk about him to the Rebbe, I reasoned, and the Rebbe couldn’t possibly be interested in hearing about him.

Yet, without fail, the Rebbe always handed me an extra dollar for charity, saying, “This is for your husband.”

The last time I went to see the Rebbe, an individual we were close to was unfortunately caught up in some wrongdoing and imprisoned. I said to the Rebbe, “I would like to ask a blessing that [this individual] should become a free man soon.”

The Rebbe seemed to ignore what I said. He gave me a dollar for myself, and then, as always, another for my husband saying, “Your husband should become a free man soon.”

There are those who are prisoners in a physical sense, and there are those who are prisoners to their own desires and ambitions. I realized that, though they had never met, the Rebbe understood my husband very well, perhaps better than I did.

The custom was to exchange the dollar the Rebbe had given you with one of your own, and give that to charity, saving the original. When I felt that the time was right, I gave my husband the dollars the Rebbe had sent him. I wanted him to appreciate how precious they were.

Today, we have been married for close to 50 years. My husband is fully observant and even runs some of the programs and services at our Chabad house in S. Diego, California.

In the end, what made our marriage really work was our sense of humor: the ability to laugh at our own weaknesses, which we made good use of. Looking back, I see that my husband’s observance should never have been an issue in our marriage. As I like to say, I always had the cake. His mitzvahs are just the icing.

Born and bred in Crown Heights, Dovid Zaklikowski is a writer, author and historian. He lives with his wife, Chana Raizel, and their five children, Motti, Meir, Shaina, Benny and Mendel in Crown Heights. His books are available in Jewish bookstores, on HasidicArchives.com and Amazon.com

——-