Mindy Budgor wanted to become the first American Masai warrior. There was pushback. Courtesy of Murdoch Books

(Haaretz) — Mindy Budgor spent three months in training with Kenya’s Maasai tribe, fleeing rampaging elephants, drinking fresh, warm goat blood, and learning how to live at the mercy of the elements. All this was supposed to toughen her up so she could trek for days, evade wild animals and survive on only what she killed herself. But it didn’t quite prepare her for the brutality of the response to her book about becoming “the first white, female, Jewish, American, Maasai warrior.”

Warrior Princess – a pun, she says, on her self-avowed JAP status – relates how, as an aimless 27-year-old from Santa Barbara, California, she travels to Kenya on a two-week volunteering trip, where she encounters Maasai warriors for the first time.

Inspired by their fearless confidence and sense of identity, as well as turned on by their “perfectly chiselled” physiques, Budgor, now 32, is personally offended when Winston, a tribal chief, tells her, “Women aren’t strong enough or brave enough to do the work we do.”

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

That, to Budgor, is the equivalent of a direct challenge – part of the same trajectory of formative traumas that saw her deemed too fat to be a figure skater and the wrong gender to be an ice-hockey player.

She becomes determined to prove him wrong and return to Kenya to become a warrior herself.

To read more, go to Haaretz. 

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

$90 → $180 $180 → $360

$360 → $720

Other amount