Giving up my Kosher dreams

Until very recently, I harbored a fantasy of belonging to an insulated, tight-knit community like the Amish or the Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn. They seemed to really safeguard one another and their way of life. I wasn't digging the outfits so much but I thought I could swing the modest female dress code if it meant I lived somewhere that I felt 100% safe and protected every moment of the day.

Well, it turns out that my fantasy was blown up like an old Las Vegas hotel. Bad apples lurk among even the most pure communities. One bad Orthodox apple in New York slaughtered a young Jewish boy who was lost walking home from day camp. Then, once the community banded together to start looking for the missing boy, he cut up the body and tried to dispose of it in garbage cans. Gruesome stuff. How does an Orthodox man, presumably devout and isolated from the violence of TV, films and modern society, murder a 10-year-old and dismember the body?

Then the Amish. A dissident member was recently convicted of cutting off the beards of some men he felt wronged him. Obviously he made a better decision than Mr. Orthodox, but anger clearly runs deep and exacting revenge (presumably outside the code of Amish morals and life) didn't seem too far fetched to this gentleman.

So I have given up my fantasy of living on the fringes of Western society, cloaked in bad clothes but at ease with the knowledge that my neighbors had my back. Upon reflection, I think this strange wish began when Magnus was diagnosed with a peanut allergy and I was convinced he would be put in harms way by thoughtless teachers, school administrators, restaurant chefs and indifferent, uncaring parents. Obviously he still could be, but he could also be kidnapped, tortured or have his hair lopped off by people living among us who hide beneath a veneer of piety and devotion.

And truthfully, we all know I would last a day without a dishwasher and wine.