Both men and women were squelched in our homogeneous world-the women, more so. Two years later, I entered an arranged marriage to a bearded man I barely knew and joined a Hasidic community. The great beauty of it all is that the only criterion for participation is simply to be yourself. I often marvel at the wonderful messy cacophony of our heterogeneous American society. In no time my voice disappeared into an ancient unison choir that sang only one tune. I submitted myself with a sense of wonder. A life in the Law looked to me like prayer in motion. I was soon introduced to Jewish Law, which dictates every detail of daily life, even on which side to lie down when going to sleep and exactly how to tie your shoes. Thus began their overtures offering enticing wisdom, sumptuous free meals, and promises of the sublime. Two days later, a local Hasidic family called and invited me to their home. That homoerotic buzz in such gender-divided communities-looking back, I know that was part of the attraction. At the sidelines, two women in wigs and long clothes were whispering, each into the ear of the other, warm breath inside a cupped hand, a soft hand on a soft shoulder. But we didn’t want our parents’ benign conflicted Judaism. I was 16, and Anne and I were just a couple of Jewish children of 1960s liberals flirting with religion, probably to annoy our parents. I could almost sense the feeling of their damp white shirts, the smell of their sweat. Now the Hasidim-Jewish ultra-orthodox in untrimmed beards, yarmulkes, and black suits-were singing and dancing their ecstatic all-male dance. I had dragged girlfriend Anne to a local synagogue to see them that day in 1972. I know what it means to retreat indoors and try to establish your only domain. I know what it’s like when only men can speak in public, or when you have to cultivate a demure façade just to get by, or how to raise daughters when their few female role models are models of self-sacrifice.

I try to tell myself that my own past was different, but I know what it is to be a woman in a fundamentalist world. I see them when I pass covered women in my city.

Ghostly veiled women follow me-moon faces encircled in cloth, floating eyes. I worry that the media leaving them invisible speaks of a larger disinterest, a shrug, a yawn, whenever women at home are bled in any way of the freedom to just be. When I first read about ISIS taking over a whole area of Iraq, I searched without much success for news coverage that even mentioned half the population who now can’t show an inch of skin, go out of their houses, work, drive, or go to school.

Leah lax book