I was in fifth grade the first time I was ever told to “speak like a lady.” During lunch at my Modern Orthodox elementary school, a boy in my class started hurling sexist insults at one of my friends. As a loud-mouthed feminist in a class rife with little misogynists, I jumped in to defend my friend, and a screaming match broke out between the boy and me. We threw petty insults back and forth; I peppered in some jabs at his character (essentially calling him a sexist prick), for about five minutes. Our argument ended when our principal pulled us aside to reprimand us for fighting.  

She lectured my classmate about his behaviour, barely acknowledging his sexism. I mentally prepared myself for her to admonish me for causing a scene. But, unexpectedly, she turned to me with an anger in her eyes that I had never seen before. Putting a finger in my face, she said, “And you! Speak like a lady!”  

I repeated these words over and over in my mind for the rest of the day. Speak like a lady—what did that even mean?! Be silent? Be submissive? Let men walk all over me? I spent the rest of the day seething but recognizing that familiar anger. It was the same anger I felt every day sitting behind the mechitza as the boys read from the Torah, or watching the girls be dress coded over skirts half an inch too short. I felt the same anger every time I was spoken over and disrespected by a man in my Jewish studies courses or when I was warned by a teacher not to let my principal see me in pants.  

Every day I felt furious, in some way or another, at how normal sexism was in this place. This specific interaction with my principal made me realise why. I was not the perfect, silent, polite, young Jewish lady that this school had hoped to form me into. And this fed a deep well of anger in me that had been growing for years.  

While on the surface this anger was directed at my school, there was a deeper resentment festering in me towards Judaism. Even though my objections were to the socially conservative world of Modern Orthodoxy, I attributed the issues of one denomination to all of Judaism. I thought that Judaism didn’t hold space for my feminism. So, I tried in vain to reject it. But, at the same time, I loved the Judaism I experienced in my religiously observant, feminist household. I love Jewish rituals, T'filah, and Tanakh. These Jewish practices were a fundamental piece of my soul. It enraged me that my school was trying to shut me off from these things because I was a woman.  

This anger fuelled all my endeavours at this school, be it academic or social, up until sixth grade. Every time someone said something sexist in my class my hand would shoot up instantly. If a boy spoke over me, I would speak louder. My school was tiny. My grade shrank every single year, until we were only ten students. I feared being the only girl left in my classes, as it would mean losing the last shred of solidarity I had at that school. Despite often having felt a disconnect with them, these girls were my lifeline, and I knew all my friends were transferring out. I begged my parents to let me switch schools for seventh grade. They agreed and gave me the choice between two other Jewish private schools.  

The first option was another conservative Modern Orthodox school that closely resembled my current school in a way that made me feel uneasy. The second couldn’t be more different: a non-denominational, intensely pluralistic school, which had been sardonically labelled “the hippie school” by many others in the Jewish private school world. Did I want to subject myself to another six years of the same frustration and anger? With only the briefest moment of hesitation, I selected “the hippie school.”   

My first day of this new and exciting school felt like my first day on Mars. I could wear pants. An Orthodox woman who wrapped tefillin led T’filah. Every Monday and Thursday, during our morning Torah service, girls were called up for aliyahs and would even read from the torah. This place could not have been any more different then where I’d come from.  

Now, four years after that first day, my entire relationship with Judaism has changed drastically. The anger and resentment that got me through elementary and middle school has been replaced with a sense of belonging. I’ve learned that Judaism has always had a place for me, it just took a change in my environment for me to see that.  

Judaism has a lot of power to uplift people within the community. And women can only access that when we enter a space that allows us to engage with tradition in the way we see fit. The issue, at least for me, with Modern Orthodoxy is not the emphasis on tradition. Rather with how some people use tradition to suppress women into silent members of the community.  

At my old school, embracing one part of my identity meant suppressing the other. But now, I exist in Jewish spaces such as egalitarian prayer minyans where girls lead just as much (and often more) than boys. Where religious classes explore biblical women’s perspectives. These spaces not only accept my feminism, but uplift it. Today I know I could not be a feminist without my Judaism or Jewish without my feminism. What I once saw as opposing aspects of myself, I now see as complementary and beautiful pieces of my identity.