We’re incredibly grateful to Yiscah for sharing this excerpt from her forthcoming book, 40 Years in the Wilderness: My Journey to Authentic Living. She describes her book as her “memoir of the joys and struggles with my own spirituality, gender identity, and commitment to living true to myself.” You can learn more about Yishcah here and learn more about the book here.
July 1981 – 30 years old – Long Island, New York
On July 3, 1981, I wake up to my thirtieth birthday stressed, exhausted, deflated. I wake up to this nightmare of reality every day. I ask myself, “Why is this day different than any other day?” I answer, “It isn’t.” I ask myself, “Am I really in Patchogue? Why am I not waking up in Israel? Is this really my life?” I recall how ten years earlier I celebrated my twentieth birthday on my first visit to Israel. Why is this day different than any other day? Today, on my thirtieth birthday, I am more aware than ever before of my own suffering.
Each morning when I realize I am awake, as I observe the Jewish tradition, I utter a statement of thanksgiving to God for the blessing of waking up to another day of life. The very first words a Jew utters, while still in bed, are “
modeh ahni
”—I thank you. Each morning I somehow muster up the wherewithal to utter modeh ahni. The very first two-syllable word that my breath releases into the world each morning belies the truth. My life is a curse. Even grammar betrays me. The Hebrew language is gender defined. So, not only am I saying “modeh,” thank you, and not meaning it, I am using the masculine form of the verb, and not “modah,” in the feminine. Even my lie is lying. While my lack of thankfulness is the essence of the lie, even the way I express it is not in truth.
I imagine what my life would be like if I could say modah ahni and mean it. I imagine what miracle it would take for me to wake up feeling grateful for the blessing of life, rather than cursed. I imagine waking up so grateful that my very first words would be to simply say to my Creator, “thank You,” and to really mean it! Impossible!
And I know. I know exactly what my life would have to be like for that to happen, and I also know that I might as well dream to sprout wings and soar upward into the sky. In those years, the reality that my body could actually become that of a woman, literally, totally evaded me. I had no idea that as a caterpillar, entrapped in my own skin, I could indeed undergo a metamorphosis and emerge into a butterfly.
So, I wake up in hiding, I go through the motions of the day in hiding, and I go to sleep in hiding. I am petrified that someone will find out who I really am. After all, I myself am petrified of who I really am!
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