I’ve known my good friend Danielle since we were kids and she’s been a client of mine also since I’ve been doing hair. She’s Jewish and comes from a pretty warm and welcoming but strict jewish household. Both of her parents are jewish and hoped Danielle would also eventually marry a jewish man. Alas Danielle has a high criteria for the men she dates but their religion isn’t usually at the top of her list. She looks and values things like commonality, attraction, ability to laugh, and share similar insights on life and culture and history. Spirituality is also on her list but maybe not so much as a specific religion as much as a belief in other lives and dimensions. I love this about Danielle. I see it with other friends and clients where you think you find a great person to share your life with because they might be the same religion or nationality but in reality they’re assholes. Danielle wasn’t about to settle for that but instead met and eventually married for love. She followed her heart and went against family and tradition. I remember doing her hair on the day of her wedding, kosher wedding by the way. She was marrying a gentile but was keeping her faith and values that she grew up with. She has a strong sense of self and believes in her family history and where “her people” came from but also welcomed and still welcome all walks of life. She told me that her father wasn’t coming and that he didn’t approve of her union. She was devastated, and I was also. I had a hard time understanding how a parent could love their child, teach them to be loving and accepting of people, yet not accept the decisions they make when all grown up and living their lives. Especially when it came down do her seeing past a wall of “one way” religion and wanting to marry for love. How could he not be there to share in his daughters future happiness? I didn’t know him all that well but was pretty sure I didn’t like him. Danielle being the strong woman she is went forward and with the support of the rest of her family, married this man. Her mom though not thrilled was there for her, and to my surprise, her father also. He showed up at the last minute and became the father he was supposed to be. He was there for his daughter and he made her day that much better. I now liked him. He showed character by doing what I thought was the right thing by his daughter. That’s the beautiful part of the story, but on a funnier note is what Danielle reminds me to this day about. At the time of her wedding my hair was long, brown, and wavy/curly. Long past my shoulders. I believe I also had a goatee or beard. I don’t remember when she said this, but I will never forget it. “It’s not bad enough that my father had to accept my marrying a gentile, but then to see me dancing with Jesus too?!?” That would be me who she was dancing with..
Sidebar.. Danielle ended up divorcing her husband years later. Not because he wasn’t jewish or that their backgrounds were just too different for them to make it work, but because he was an …………