"Go back to where you came from," the woman yells.

I am at Wal-Mart, trying to put orange juice into my cart. She comes closer; her finger is waving inches from my face. "I can tell," she rants, "from your hair covering and your necklace [a Star of David], that you're not an American." (I am.) "Go back to your own country." I am in such shock; I stammer a reply only somewhat coherent.

"I should hit you for being here," she screams, her face in mine, and I think: "Please, please hit me." It's not that I can handle her, although I can. It's that I want nothing at this instant—not a winning lottery ticket, not to be skinny, not world peace—more than to have her arrested. And when I play this over and over in my mind hours, days later—through dinner, during the kids' baths—I wonder if I could have enticed her to actually hit me. In my mind, I scream "assault" as dozens of police place their hands on her head and lower her into a patrol car. I see her in jail begging for mercy.

Her finger is waving inches from my face

Instead, I finish my shopping in a world much blacker than the one I woke up in this morning. Suddenly, every person I see is telling me: "Go back to where you came from."

In a few hours I will return home, but it will take some time to catch my breath. To make sense of it, I will tell every friend I see. Everyone will be shocked, but no one will have a solution. Days later, when I have replayed it over and over so many times it is now a familiar movie, my hand will nonchalantly touch my head covering, similar to the beautiful sequined scarf that the lady also mocked that day.

Ironically, I have only recently started covering my hair. It is the one step I swore, years earlier, I would never take. It is another step in a long journey I have completely loved. On Shabbat and during the winter months I wear a gorgeous sheitel (wig) that I named Lola. It always makes me feel just a little bit better. But Texas summers are brutal; kids here break eggs on the blacktop just to watch them sizzle. The air does not move but the heat wraps itself around you and squeezes. For these months I have a collection of scarves lighter, easier than Lola when the humidity chokes and the trees won't move.

I am proud of that difference

I look in the mirror. Today my scarf is bright pink with little flowers, and I feel a sense of pride.

Pride because we are different. Because I am proud of that difference. Because I am proud that in the face of bigotry, we are who we are. I am Jewish. I have been for thousands of years. And when we "look Jewish" because of a long skirt, or funny nose or sideburns hanging under a black hat, more power to us. No one has to like it, and no one gets a vote.

I call my Rebbitzen and set up a weekly study session. It is my own private slap-in-the-face to this lady.