Identity
I've been meaning to write about this since January, but kept on getting distracted. A wedding, buying an apartment, selling an apartment, and moving, not to mention working 40+ hours a week can be somewhat distracting.
The week after my wedding, it hit me: due to social norms and my adherence to an Orthodox lifestyle, I was being forced to actively question my identity- public and private. All of a sudden, I was being asked the same two questions by almost everyone I saw that week (and I saw A LOT of people that week):
1. Are you changing your name? How?
2. Are you going to cover your hair? How?
It's not like I only started to think about these questions after my wedding; on the contrary, they'd been on my mind for months before. But I just never quite put the two together to recognize what an impact it would have on my life and how difficult it would be to decide what my answers would be.
For both these questions, there are so many options. I can keep my last name, hyphenate both names, make my maiden name part of my middle name, or change my name completely by taking on my husband's last name or creating a new last name based on both. I already knew which options I would not take-keeping my last name was out of the question. Why? It just doesn't fit with my belief of what a marriage is. With all due respect to the women out there who have kept there last name or intend to keep it, having a different last name than my husband and/or kids makes things seem very individualistic- like I'm above, or somehow different than my family. A natural outcome of a marriage is forging one family unit (with or without children). Of course, each person within that unit is an individual and within each individual are seperate identities and shared identities, but the sum of the whole is greater then it's parts. As one unit, there should be one merged family identity.
Hyphenating was also not considered an option from the very beginning, but for more practical reasons. Just think about it: Rothschild-Jakabovics? What would the kids say? How would they fill out their SAT bubble sheets? They'd run out of room really quickly. For the sake of our family sanity, I couldn't do that. Some hyphenated names easily roll of the tongue, others, not so much...
But I still can't quite wrap my head around just dropping "Rothschild" completely. (Merging Jakabovics and Rothschild into one name also didn't quite make the cut.) I've lived 28 years with the name. I identify with it- not because of the history of the name itself (my family has no direct link to the wealthy and famous Baron), but because family means so much to me. If I drop the name, do I lose my intrinsic connection to everything that came before my wedding? What happens to everything I accomplished as "Elanit Rothschild"- the book I edited (royalties, baby!), the scholarships I won, the degrees I earned, the articles I wrote, and everything else out there associated with that name? And more simply, I've always been known by my initials, EZR (take a look at the name of this blog- there's meaning behind the words and phrase). Where does it all go? Does everything have to change?
These aren't easy questions to answer; if they were, my name would have already been officially changed. I continue to think twice when I introduce myself to colleagues and clients, when I am asked to fill out my personal information on forms, and when I sign my name. It's tough and I feel uncomfortable with the fact that it's been over two months and I am still undecided.
On the other hand, it continues to annoys me that people assume I changed my name. Out of blue, I received a statement in the mail from Macys addressed to "Elanit Jakabovics." I certainly didn't request a name change! They just assumed that since I registered with them and the wedding date has passed, that now my name has changed. But how do they know? How do the people in my community know? Or my family? Those who have written my name as "Elanit Jakabovics" haven't asked; they just assumed it was so. That bothers me.
It bothers me because they don't recognize the difficulty in all of this. They take it for granted, or it is just expected, that automatically change their name once they get marrierd. But that's not the case, especially not in the 21st Century.
It's a question of identity. Most men don't have to go through this process, but many women do. And especially Jewish women. At different points in our lives, we are asked to make changes to ourselves that force us to shift our perspective on who we are. It may seem petty or even insignificant to some, but in truth, at least to me, it strikes at the core of who I see myself to be, what image I want to project for myself, and how I relate to myself and others.
So the easy way out of this, it seems, is to shift my maiden name to be my second middle name. And as of now, that's the name I have associated with my email address. But I'm not sure it's going to stick. For one, it's a real mouthful. Will I just get tired of it after a while and decide to just stick with one middle name and one last name and be done with it? Will I go by one name professionally and another name socially? I don't want this to be difficult, annoying, and confusing for people, but it's difficult, annoying, and confusing for myself.
I haven't yet made any official changes- we're flying internationally next week and I didn't have enough time to change my passport before purchasing the tickets; that was a real good excuse to just push this decision further down the line. But I'm afraid that by the time I do decide, it will be too late from a public perspective, since everyone knows I got married in January, so what am I doing only deciding to change my name in May?
The hair covering issue gets to the same points. I don't feel strongly either way, so I'm covering my hair by default when I'm not at work and not at home (broadly defined to include my families' homes as well). Why? I don't know. I learned the sources and reasoning behind the halacha, I can't say I'm terribly convinced, but I'm doing it nonetheless. Some will think it's because of social pressure. But I can truthfully say that it's not. A friend of mine said to me a few days before the wedding that he would afford me tremendous respect if I didn't cover my hair after I got married, because, according to his logic, the reasoning doesn't make sense. I thought about that for a little bit- but I guess if I cared what others thought of me, I would specifically decide to not cover my hair so that this person would respect me more, right?
But regardless of how I practice, I still struggle with the meaning of it all. Why is it that women are forced to confront these issues head-on more often then men? I was pretty comfortable with myself before all this. I'm mostly pretty comfortable with myself now, but still feel unsettled about all of it. Am I blowing it all out of proportion?
The week after my wedding, it hit me: due to social norms and my adherence to an Orthodox lifestyle, I was being forced to actively question my identity- public and private. All of a sudden, I was being asked the same two questions by almost everyone I saw that week (and I saw A LOT of people that week):
1. Are you changing your name? How?
2. Are you going to cover your hair? How?
It's not like I only started to think about these questions after my wedding; on the contrary, they'd been on my mind for months before. But I just never quite put the two together to recognize what an impact it would have on my life and how difficult it would be to decide what my answers would be.
For both these questions, there are so many options. I can keep my last name, hyphenate both names, make my maiden name part of my middle name, or change my name completely by taking on my husband's last name or creating a new last name based on both. I already knew which options I would not take-keeping my last name was out of the question. Why? It just doesn't fit with my belief of what a marriage is. With all due respect to the women out there who have kept there last name or intend to keep it, having a different last name than my husband and/or kids makes things seem very individualistic- like I'm above, or somehow different than my family. A natural outcome of a marriage is forging one family unit (with or without children). Of course, each person within that unit is an individual and within each individual are seperate identities and shared identities, but the sum of the whole is greater then it's parts. As one unit, there should be one merged family identity.
Hyphenating was also not considered an option from the very beginning, but for more practical reasons. Just think about it: Rothschild-Jakabovics? What would the kids say? How would they fill out their SAT bubble sheets? They'd run out of room really quickly. For the sake of our family sanity, I couldn't do that. Some hyphenated names easily roll of the tongue, others, not so much...
But I still can't quite wrap my head around just dropping "Rothschild" completely. (Merging Jakabovics and Rothschild into one name also didn't quite make the cut.) I've lived 28 years with the name. I identify with it- not because of the history of the name itself (my family has no direct link to the wealthy and famous Baron), but because family means so much to me. If I drop the name, do I lose my intrinsic connection to everything that came before my wedding? What happens to everything I accomplished as "Elanit Rothschild"- the book I edited (royalties, baby!), the scholarships I won, the degrees I earned, the articles I wrote, and everything else out there associated with that name? And more simply, I've always been known by my initials, EZR (take a look at the name of this blog- there's meaning behind the words and phrase). Where does it all go? Does everything have to change?
These aren't easy questions to answer; if they were, my name would have already been officially changed. I continue to think twice when I introduce myself to colleagues and clients, when I am asked to fill out my personal information on forms, and when I sign my name. It's tough and I feel uncomfortable with the fact that it's been over two months and I am still undecided.
On the other hand, it continues to annoys me that people assume I changed my name. Out of blue, I received a statement in the mail from Macys addressed to "Elanit Jakabovics." I certainly didn't request a name change! They just assumed that since I registered with them and the wedding date has passed, that now my name has changed. But how do they know? How do the people in my community know? Or my family? Those who have written my name as "Elanit Jakabovics" haven't asked; they just assumed it was so. That bothers me.
It bothers me because they don't recognize the difficulty in all of this. They take it for granted, or it is just expected, that automatically change their name once they get marrierd. But that's not the case, especially not in the 21st Century.
It's a question of identity. Most men don't have to go through this process, but many women do. And especially Jewish women. At different points in our lives, we are asked to make changes to ourselves that force us to shift our perspective on who we are. It may seem petty or even insignificant to some, but in truth, at least to me, it strikes at the core of who I see myself to be, what image I want to project for myself, and how I relate to myself and others.
So the easy way out of this, it seems, is to shift my maiden name to be my second middle name. And as of now, that's the name I have associated with my email address. But I'm not sure it's going to stick. For one, it's a real mouthful. Will I just get tired of it after a while and decide to just stick with one middle name and one last name and be done with it? Will I go by one name professionally and another name socially? I don't want this to be difficult, annoying, and confusing for people, but it's difficult, annoying, and confusing for myself.
I haven't yet made any official changes- we're flying internationally next week and I didn't have enough time to change my passport before purchasing the tickets; that was a real good excuse to just push this decision further down the line. But I'm afraid that by the time I do decide, it will be too late from a public perspective, since everyone knows I got married in January, so what am I doing only deciding to change my name in May?
The hair covering issue gets to the same points. I don't feel strongly either way, so I'm covering my hair by default when I'm not at work and not at home (broadly defined to include my families' homes as well). Why? I don't know. I learned the sources and reasoning behind the halacha, I can't say I'm terribly convinced, but I'm doing it nonetheless. Some will think it's because of social pressure. But I can truthfully say that it's not. A friend of mine said to me a few days before the wedding that he would afford me tremendous respect if I didn't cover my hair after I got married, because, according to his logic, the reasoning doesn't make sense. I thought about that for a little bit- but I guess if I cared what others thought of me, I would specifically decide to not cover my hair so that this person would respect me more, right?
But regardless of how I practice, I still struggle with the meaning of it all. Why is it that women are forced to confront these issues head-on more often then men? I was pretty comfortable with myself before all this. I'm mostly pretty comfortable with myself now, but still feel unsettled about all of it. Am I blowing it all out of proportion?
posted by elanit | 4:47 PM
4 Comments:
Those are profound questions.
Identity is a tricky and slippery thing: I look at the name I choose to prefer as analogous with the clothing I choose to prefer - both convey impressions (rightly or wrongly) about me, and I choose ones which convey impressions which I want.
As a man who changed my name, I understand the annoyance with those who won't accept the change (there is a credit bureau which insists that my name is an "AKA," and there are a small number of people who insist on calling me "Dave")
To be fair, I assumed you changed your name when I started getting email from "E.Z.R.J." But admittedly, I was one of the people bugging you (I wanted to know how to address envelopes!)
I do have to disagree with the notion that women have to confront this in a more head-on fashion than men: try wearing a kippah at work for a couple of years, and we'll talk about the effect it has on perceptions of identity. I would say that the big difference is that women only have to confront this a smaller number of times: both of these are prominent, identifyable status changes at marriage.
Now, you could make the argument that there is an inherent sexism in the idea that men start changing their identifying behaviors at majority, while women change theirs at marriage. You'd be right, but it wouldnt' matter. :P The profoundly interesting thing is that all of these are options which are open to you: 100 years ago, that would not have been true.
One practical note: make sure to bring a copy of your marriage license with you on your travels, because Sarah got a huge amount of crap in Europe for having a different last name than was on her passport...
Second practical note: one of the things which I find hard to deal with regarding the modern custom of married couples not having the same name is finding them in directories, and figuring out who's married to whom when I know half of a couple... makes me nuts: I just don't have the brainpower for that.
has Andrew thought about taking on your last night? You could both be Rothschild Jakabovics.
But I hear ya. And I come from a totally non-religious family. My mother hyphenated her name, and growing up, I thought it was the most natural thing in the world. "Don't all mommies hyphenate?"
More than anything, I am annoyed by the double standard, and a reverence to traditions that we set thousands of years ago to denote clans -- and as far as women go, to denote what woman belonged to what man. That's the thing: yes, today, the same last name pretty obviously states "we are a family" but that patrilineal naming pattern definitely has roots in something very sexist and antiquated.
But then again,I have really just thought about this in theory. I am pretty sure I'll keep O'Phun, but who knows, I may hyphenate some day...
The biggest downside I see with hyphenation is that is postpones the problem one generation: when Ploni Almoni-Baker marries Plonit Cohen-Denwoody, what do they do then? Do their children get 4 names? eek...
This phenomenon is starting to happen: one of my male friends with a hyphenated last name married a woman with an unhyphenated surname. Interestingly, she decided to take his hyphenated name.
My solution? Pick a brand new name.
Very profound questions. I can definitely relate to the last name question. If not for the presidence set by my sister, picking a last name for myself would have been much harder. I have chosen to hyphenate for a few reasons. I will not give my child a hyphenated last name though. They will have Michael's and my shared name, and my name will also have an added name to it. IN that way, I keep the maiden name, yet I am linked to both my husband and child (linked in the sense of "Who's Plani Almoni's mother? Oh, Jane Smith-Almoni).
I can't tell you why I decided to cover my head (and why head and not all the hair). I know that at some point in my moving towards more tradition observances of Judaism, I decided that married Orthodox women cover their heads so I would do the same. For me, it brings me closer in my observance and reminds me of the other things that I should be doing (kashrut, tzedakah, davening, etc.). I certainly don't think less of anyone who does not cover their head, and feel that everyone should make their own decision.
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