‘Kissing Girls on Shabbat’: Gay ex-Hasidic therapist coming to OFJCC
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Sara Glass was only 19 when she married. As she describes in her memoir, “Kissing Girls on Shabbat,” she may have looked like a picture-perfect ultra-Orthodox bride. But inside, she felt shame, confusion and a desire that she couldn’t understand.
Twenty years later, as an out lesbian and clinical therapist, Glass is using her own experiences to reach others. She will discuss her memoir on May 22 at the Oshman Family JCC in Palo Alto.
“It has resonated with people — men, women, people of all genders, teenagers, young adults, older adults — so it’s just for anybody who wants to be more true to themselves,” she told J. on Monday.
Glass, who lives in New York City, will be in conversation at the JCC with Lani Santo, CEO of Footsteps, a nonprofit that supports Jews leaving ultra-Orthodoxy.
“Sara’s phenomenal,” Santo told J.
The book describes Glass’ early-teenage queer relationships in Brooklyn’s Borough Park, and the way she tamped down her desires out of shame, praying to God for forgiveness. It follows her unhappy arranged marriage to Yossi, the birth of their two children, and the increasing bleakness of her life as a wife in the Ger, or Gur, Hasidic community, which was founded in Poland and now is one of the largest sects in Israel.
With a history of mental illness in her family, Sara felt drawn to become a therapist. She decided to attend college, even though it went against what is expected of a Hasidic wife. Eventually she left her husband, married a Modern Orthodox man, earned a Ph.D. and, in a final step toward freedom, left that marriage and came out as a lesbian.
But it wasn’t a simple trajectory, and Glass rejects the idea that her book is about escaping a religion.
“I don’t feel like I ‘escaped’ my Hasidic community,” she said. “I feel like I was raised in a community I love, I miss, that has serious flaws and that wasn’t aligned with who I needed to be, and so I left.”
When her journey started, she felt she had almost no personal identity of her own, other than what was expected of her by family, friends and her religious community.
“I thought their needs were more important than mine,” she said. “Then I deviated from that and had to learn that I matter. My needs matter, my body matters, my rights matter, my children matter.” At that point, she lost compassion for her Hasidic community “and became more resentful and fearful and angry.”
Content retrieved from: https://jweekly.com/2025/04/25/kissing-girls-on-shabbat-gay-ex-hasidic-therapist-coming-to-ofjcc/.
