Opinion | Leaving the Modern Orthodox Faith Did and Did Not Change My World

But I felt I was missing out. The modest dress code at my all-girls religious school required long skirts. What would it be like to wear jeans? To date an actual boy? Despite my exposure to pop culture, I was sheltered. I had a monster crush on the singer Ricky Nelson, who I did not realize was dead. I had no clue about sex. I conjured a ruddy-cheeked Australian boy I imagined would move in next door, eventually appearing at my window to take me away from all this.

You might not infer any of this from meeting me now. I’m queer, nonbinary, politically far left, lusty about life’s pleasures and effusively irreverent. I live with my cats and my non-Jewish partner. I eat treyf and go Saturday road-tripping to my heart’s content. “I’m ex-Orthodox,” I often say, gaily.

And while technically accurate, “ex-Orthodox” has a scandalous ring to it. It implies wholesale rejection. Escape can be necessary for people leaving much stricter folds of Orthodoxy, but it wasn’t for me. At a fundamental level, I knew I didn’t need to fear familial rejection, even for choosing to part ways with strict Jewish observance. Because I didn’t need to cut any ties, the “ex” in “ex-Orthodox” is simply an additive layer, just beneath my present. An integration, not a disavowal.

Even though I am no longer observant, my religious upbringing is still essential to me. I love ancient Jewish texts and Orthodox deep cuts, that hyperspecific trivia coded for those who share my background. I’m still close with my Orthodox family. As my sister once put it, “You eat treyf, but you’re tight with God.”

She was right.

Fragmentation is central not only to the experience of a shifting relationship with faith but also to queer experience. For some of us, queer life is split in two — a before and a since. Likewise, for some of us who grew up steeped in faith, when there comes an opportunity to test the bounds of our inherited doctrine, we take it, knowing we might never return to the life we once lived. We wonder whether God, in the form of lightning, will strike. More often, I suspect, we simply step over a threshold into some vast unknown.