This is why I left my life as a rabbi’s wife in the Charedi community to make my non-binary transition

When I was six-years-old, my mum announced that I had to stop wearing trousers. I remember feeling quite upset by the news. I had always recoiled from skirts and dresses, and was particularly happy in my dungarees. Even then, trousers just felt right, part of who I am.

Meanwhile, my identical twin wasn’t upset by the trousers ban. She has always been very girly, very femme. Around the same time, our grandparents bought us bicycles and I chose a boy’s model with a horizontal cross bar. The bar on my sister’s bike was slanted.

Having twins was very much part of my mum’s trousers prohibition. I was born into a secular Jewish family in Leeds, but she saw our birth as some sort of miracle and finding religion was her response. She and my dad, a dentist, had started becoming observant Jews.

It was a slow transition but by the time I was 10 we were fully fledged Charedi, or strictly Orthodox, Jews. Modesty is the guiding sartorial principle for Charedim, which – for women – means skirts and dresses that fall below the knee, arms that are covered to the elbow and high-cut necklines. Trousers are a no-no because women are forbidden from wearing men’s clothing. And once married, women cover their hair with a scarf of wig. My mum opted for the latter.

Readers who’ve watched My Unorthodox Life, the Netflix hit that centres on former strictly Orthodox Jew Julia Haart as her family acclimatise to their new non-religious life in New York, will know marriage is central to this carefully regulated world. It is usually arranged by a professional matchmaker, a shadchun, and some couples only meet once before their wedding night when they are expected to consummate their union.

You could say I was luckier. I met my ex-husband on five occasions in the space of a week before I agreed to marry him, aged 19.  

I was in the bath, one of the few places where I felt I had some personal space, when my mum announced a shadchun had found a possible match for me. My immediate response was: no thanks. I didn’t feel attracted to boys and I had no desire to become a mother.

But she pressured me a little – said I should just go out with him and have some fun. It didn’t mean I had to marry him, she said. She hadn’t had a matchmaker, of course, so maybe she really believed her words. In any case, I was very obedient back then and it didn’t take long for me to cave in. 

I drew the line at make-up, saying that I wouldn’t dress any differently from normal. Normal for me then being a long denim skirt and a plain t-shirt. I still hated dresses and the fussy, feminine clothes from which I had recoiled as a child.

Looking back, on those five rushed dates, my first romantic liaison, I can say I felt some sort of attraction for my soon-to-be-husband. But I think it’s because I was so interested in the male gender, curious about him, but not about sex with him. I had no time to ponder anything: the pressure from the shadchun to agree to marriage was great.