Thanks to the provocative Israeli film, “The Secrets,” featured in the ” title=”Michlelet Mevaseret Yerushalayim”>Michlelet Mevaseret Yerushalayim (MMY) where I would spend the year with my head buried in various religious texts. Now, with less than a hundred days to go, I’m starting to panic.
While I am accustomed to the rules and rigorous standards that accompany life at an Orthodox, all-girls institution (I recently graduated from Yeshiva of Los Angeles), this was a whole new ballgame – I was playing with the big boys, well, girls. When I received my acceptance packet from MMY, I quickly flipped to the section detailing all the standards they require of their talmidot (students). While I knew the dress code would force me to cross every religious t and dot every modest i, seeing it in writing made me break a sweat. Shirts that covered my collarbone and my elbows, skirts that cover the knee while sitting or standing, and no open-toed shoes…I rushed to my closet to find that I was in dire need of a new wardrobe.
Now, every time my friends and I enter a store, we must tear our eyes away from the just-too-short summer dresses and those oh-so-cute jeans and head towards the ankle-length skirts and crew-neck shirts. As I stand in my closet and finger all the clothing with which I much part in a mere 69 days, I remind myself that in Israel, I won’t be working on my outside, but rather, my inside.
In the meantime, I’m trying to keep my tantrums to a minimum and my skirt lengths to a maximum.
