My First Weird Neighbor Encounter

Yesterday I had my first sort of weird encounter with an Israeli- in this case, one of the neighbors.  I unthinkingly walked out carrying my tallit bag on its own, so although the fabric is rather unusual for that sort of thing, it was pretty clear what it was.  So my neighbor (I think he's in the next building over) who was about to go for a walk, it seemed, came over and asked if I wore tzitzit.  I decided to be simple and just say yes, rather than giving details, since a. it isn't really his business, and b. my spoken Hebrew is lousy, especially when I'm nervous.  Thank goodness, he decided that this was kind of neat, rather than weird and/or horrific, but he became rather curious and asked if he could take his walk with me as I walked to shul.  Then he proceeded to be surprised at how far away shul was (around 20 minutes- not that long a walk really), and also to try to persuade me of the wonders of living in Israel.  He first claimed that unlike America, it's safe for women to walk around Jerusalem at night alone- I replied that I do that in New York, too (and there, I don't have to worry about police searching my home without a warrant, as happened to my roommate's sister's boyfriend recently here).  THen he decided that I'd meet a nice young man at yeshiva- I said I had one back in the states, to which he decided that he too would decide to move here.  I lapsed into quiet, because really, I had no idea how to answer that one in Hebrew without getting totally flustered.  Luckily at that point shul wasn't so very far away...  Still, could have been Much worse.  

Funny- here I am, in a place where Judaism is a majority culture, and in order not to get really awkward conversations and weird looks (there were people who came by our hakafot at the egalitarian minyan I was at yesterday basically to gawk- just a few of them, but they were pretty obvious. One of them had a camera, which I found majorly disrespectful, but not being a real member of the community yet, I didn't want to say anything, since I imagine that that could stir up some difficulty, and I don't know their approach to such things yet.  Still, I have to think about how to hide myself and my identity here, in a way that I rarely have to do in the USA.  It is uncomfortable, both in the ways that I have to limit myself or get awkward questions if not worse, and intellectually/emotionally, feeling like my life is unacceptable.   I wonder if this is the faintest shadow of what folks of alternative sexual orientations have to go through...