The first time I met my rabbi (different from our rabbi), my spiritual leader and part of the beis din, the rabbinic court that converted me, I reached out to shake his hand. He didn’t run away or anything but he didn’t shake it. He just averted his eyes in a way that clued me into a rule I wasn’t aware of…the rule about men and women touching. My friend I., the baal teshuva who led me back to my childhood dream of becoming Jewish because of his own spiritual return to his Jewish roots, had tried all manner of subtle conversation to try to explain a law that the rabbi managed to teach me in one movement.

I’m Hispanic. I know, isn’t it obvious? Well, no. To Jews that I meet in purely Jewish situations, at first glance, I am a darker skinned Jew, probably of North African or Spanish extraction. To Dominicans who see me on the street, I am a light-skinned Dominican, possibly half-white and of questionable Spanish linguistic skill. And to those who know me, I am first and foremost, a Jew, then Dominican and then American.

Growing up Latina means that I come from a people who touch. We touch for emphasis. We touch to show affection. And though my mother rarely touched me in positive ways, I learned from observation that we were a people who always made a point with a touch. This, I think, is the idea behind the mystique of a Latin lover. We, as Latinos, know how to touch.

As I became more comfortable and went farther away from my mother’s iron rule, I became the most touchy-feely of my friends. I hugged strangers, acquaintances and friends. I hugged random cute guys. And at my most risque and with utter naivete, I sat in the laps of my guy friends and ruffled their hair. I was unwittingly flirtatious and at the same time, unable to conceptualize the differences and boundaries between boys and girls. I didn’t grow up around boys so I didn’t understand the power that my touch had, especially, over my male friends. I played with my power and with it, I toyed with many a guy friend’s heart.

The first Jewish guy friends I made friends with after deciding to convert were not as subtle as my bestfriend, I.. Over years of practice, these guy friends had honed the art of touching only their closest female relatives and after that, only men. A great number of my guy friends also were Kohens, who take on different levels of kedusha (holiness) in Judaism. As a rule, Kohens cannot marry converts and so all at once G-d blessed me with the perfect Jewish girlfriends. Here were boys that I could treat just as girlfriends the way I had always treated most of my guy friends.

I flirted with these Kohens, I divulged all my deep dark secrets and I made some of the greatest friendships of my life. In a very short time, I made the safest, dearest, deepest friendships I had ever had with men. I didn’t know at the time that these friendships were very special because in Orthodox Jewish life it’s not common for members of the opposite sex to connect on that kind of level unless they are discussing marriage.

At first, it was incredibly difficult to refrain from reaching out and ruffling their hair, excruciating not to reach for a hug and so as I have with much of my culture-to-culture clashes, I learned to adapt. At the same time, I was honing my ability to stop touching everyone. The nerves in my body hurt so ferociously and so often that I didn’t dare touch anyone. In response, my students taught me the art of the air hug. They would reach out in the air in front of me and pretend to hug me as a way to compensate for the teacher-to-student hugs that had become the norm in our classroom and that had been sacrificed to fibromyalgia. I turned this air hug on its head and began calling it “the shomer hug.” I would “shomer hug” Jewish guy friends, the way that other people would carelessly blow kisses at one another.

Because of fibromyalgia, being shomer negiah was truly a blessing. All at once, I was doing so much for my emotional and spiritual health. Because it was such a rarity to touch anyone, touching became…well, amazing. It became shocking and exhilarating. The club of people that I let touch me was so small and sensitive. I became hyper-aware of when people touched me in any way. I didn’t deny my male relatives the “luxury” of touching me and even in excruciating pain, I would let members of the same sex hug and hold me. All at once, I began to understand how and why touch could be one of the most intimate of the five senses.

Every single time someone touches me, I think about it. And I cherish it. I have learned boundaries. I have learned to be bashful. (No more, ahem, laps.) I have known the exquisite pleasure of marveling at the fact that the only man who touches me on most days is my husband and that’s a very special and exclusive club to be a part of, indeed.

I tutor at a Catholic university where a fundamentalist Christian student asked me how “a fundamentalist Jew” keeps up with all those rules. Judaism is all rules, rules, rules, he said. And I smiled. I didn’t know how to explain that from so many of the rules, a once thoughtless girl learned so much about herself and others. (And how to think about not embarrassing herself and others.)

And that praying before eating a fruit, reminded me to be thankful for having the indulgence and blessing from G-d to be able to sit afterwards and chew an expensive and sometimes painful mouthful. (I also suffer from TMJD, a painful jaw dysfunction now exacerbated from fibromyalgia and vice versa.) I thank G-d gratefully after I survive my IBS, (yes, yet another) an often debilitating digestive system disorder, in the privacy of my bathroom. In fact, even when I’m angry at the wo/man upstairs, I am thankful for rules that structure my life in such a way that I sweat the small stuff and find awesome value in the little things.

And so though, I didn’t kiss my husband in front of everyone at the end of my wedding ceremony and my little sister did, when I look at her wedding pictures, I laugh simultaneously at the “scandalous” photo of her kissing her husband from the direction of two cultural perspectives who value the human touch and so, wield it powerfully. You see, some Jews call it a “G-d consciousness,” but I call it having a keen awareness, a sensitivity, to all the little pleasures and minute beauties in the world.