Jews read sections of the Torah each week, and these sections, known as parshiyot, inspire endless examination year after year. Each week we will bring you regular essays examining these portions from a queer perspective, drawn from the book Torah Queeries: Weekly Commentaries on the Hebrew Bible and the Torah Queeries online collection. This week, Darren Lippman considers the similarities between Nazirites and LGBT Jews – two populations who are “set aside” in important ways.

Creative Common/Alexander Smolianitski

I first read Parashat Naso during my b’nei mitzvah class in early 2002, long before I discovered either my passion for Judaism or my love of writing. It’s no surprise, then, that after reading the extensive recounting of events in the Israelites’ camp surrounding the dedication of the Mishkan (the Tabernacle), my first thought was that this parasha was long and tedious: it begins with a census, continues with purifying the camp, and ends with dedicating the Mishkan, an event featuring identical offerings from each tribe.

Only twelve at the time, these three things seemed unrelated to each other or to me; even more when I looked at the specific cases therein: Husbands suspicious of their wives? Nazirites with holy hair? What did any of it mean to me? The Nazirites and the twelve offerings held my interest, but in the end, all I could think to say in the d’var Torah I gave at my bar mitzvah was that the identical offerings, each coming from a unique tribe, showed that no matter our differences, we are all equal before God.

Studying Parashat Naso at twenty, I see things differently. Now I see a relationship between the parasha’s three main events. Together they form a cohesive cycle beginning with exclusion (women, the disabled, and boys are excluded from the census, and that which is “impure” in the camp is placed outside of its boundaries) and ending in inclusion (each tribe gives an offering). This is a cycle that I’m journeying through now as I come out to my friends and family. I’m sure every GLBT person who comes out faces a similar cycle of exclusion moving toward inclusion. The Nazirite and the twelve offerings, however, are still what hold my interest the most.

First, the Nazirite: by his or her own choosing, the Nazirite enters into a pact with God to remain exceptionally pure during a year-long term. During this time, he or she abstains from wine, grapes, and vinegar, cuts neither hair nor beard, and doesn’t profane him- or herself by attending to corpses. At the completion of his or her term, the Nazirite’s hair is shaved and given as an offering, and the person, the term of the vow being completed, returns to life as usual. (Numbers 6:1-21) The Hebrew word for Nazirite, nazir, comes from the root nun – zayin – reish, which means “to set apart.” The Nazirite takes it upon him- or herself to be set apart from others, and through this, he or she is consecrated before God.

Similarly, we are each set apart as GLBT Jews; we are each in our own way a Nazirite. Unlike those who have chosen to be set apart, however, we are more like Samson from this week’s Haftorah, the famous Nazirite who was chosen by God to be set apart not for a year, but for life. Like him, most of us didn’t choose to be gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender, but were instead given this gift by God.

However, the Nazirite’s vow was almost always temporary and ours is not. We cannot shave our heads and return to “life as usual,” because our lives-as-usual are what set us apart to begin with. However, we need not be set apart forever, nor do we need to be set apart at all. Just as the priests channeled God to bless others (Numbers 6:22) and were blessed themselves (“They shall link My name with the people of Israel, and I will bless them,” 6:27), so too can we open our hearts to others and they will open their hearts to us.

This leads me to my second fascination with Naso: the twelve offerings.

At the start of chapter seven, the dedication of the Mishkan begins with all of the Israelites giving a single offering, as a whole, to dedicate the Mishkan, which is then followed by each of the twelve tribes giving their individual, and identical, offerings on twelve consecutive days. For a long time it baffled me why this would be: after all, did they not already give an offering together? Why must their individual offerings all be the same, and why must each of them be given in such excruciating detail?

Repetition is a tool through which writers can draw attention to the importance of what’s being repeated. Each repetition, our Sages tell us, indicates a nuance of meaning. Even with all of that repetition and even with seven years of new experiences behind me, I find the same meaning in this repetition today as I did at my bar mitzvah.

When I looked at the individual tribes not as tribes but as individuals, they each became a different facet of the whole for me — the whole that has already given a collective offering before the Mishkan. Every day, the next chieftain in line offers the same as the last, and each day it is as important as the offering before it. Just the same, if we take a step back and see each chieftain as an individual, the identical material offerings become — much like each of us — the same, but different. Instead of gold and silver, we have our hopes and our dreams; instead of choice flour with oil mixed in, we have our wisdom and experiences; instead of goats and bulls, we have our hands and our hearts. Yes, the words are all the same just as before, but now it’s easy to see that what is behind them is as unique and as important to the whole as the individual tribe is to the whole of the people of Israel.

Naso’s true beauty, far beyond my grasp as a child, is clearer to me as I become an adult. Naso is no longer just a bunch of unrelated numbers and repetitions; now it is a story that we all can relate to, one that begins with our being set apart and ends with our being a part of the whole. However, even if we all started this journey in the same place, it doesn’t mean that we’ve all reached the end at the same time. For those of us who have already attained that wholeness, let’s keep opening our hearts wider and sharing ourselves with others. For those of us still waiting for the day when we may give our offerings at the Mishkan, let us hold tight to the gifts we carry in ourselves and never forget the words still spoken not only to the whole, but to those of us still set apart:

“May the Lord bless you and protect you! May the Lord deal kindly and graciously with you! May the Lord bestow his favor upon you and grant you peace!” (Numbers 6:24-26)

Ken y’hi ratzon. May it be God’s will.

We know that for many families, Mother’s Day can be a tough time. If you know a mom (or dad) with an LGBTQ child who would like another parent to talk to, let them know about the Keshet Parent & Family Connection, a confidential peer support program for parents and family members of LGBTQ Jews.

When a child comes out, a coming out process begins for the entire family. In honor of Mother’s and Father’s Day, we bring you our first post in a series by parent leaders of Keshet’s Parent & Family Connection. The Connection is a confidential peer support program for parents and family members of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer Jews. We celebrate the support and love that these parents give their LGBTQ children – and the support they now offer other parents. This week’s post is by Francine Lavin Weaver, a Colorado-based educator and author, and member of the Keshet Parent & Family Connection in Colorado.

This is that time of year where we Jews anticipate, we count the days, we count the Omer, and we count our blessings. The idea of counting each day represents spiritual preparation and anticipation for the giving of the Torah which was given by God on Mount Sinai around the time of Shavuot. We actively count in our prayers each day from Passover to Shavuot – all forty-nine of them.

Francine Lavin Weaver and her daughter, Shana

On another note, wearing my many hats, I am a lifelong Jewish learner, teacher and family educator. I am a daughter, a significant partner, and a mom. I learn so much from my children every day. They teach me about life, and relationships, things that I never knew how to verbalize or incorporate when I was growing up.

A few years ago, my queer adult daughter attempted to explain to me what being queer was.

She said, “Mom, I identify as a woman. But, I have had and will have relationships with all kinds of people. I fall in love with the soul of the person, Mom…that entity that makes that person special. It doesn’t matter to me in what gender the person identifies.”

She then explained that being queer is stepping out of societal norms in regards to gender and sexuality — and even politics. This was definitely a new experience for me. To me, queer was a girl in my homeroom in Junior High who wore white socks — and saddle shoes. They didn’t have child development books about this when I was in college (pursuing my chosen career of special education).

I have always used my children as my barometer. If they were happy, they were learning, and they were healthy, then I was happy. My daughter is a very sensitive, caring young adult. She is a physical therapist in a rehab hospital. She volunteers her time to help older people stay in their own homes. She is a fun-loving, passionate social activist and I love her.

What a conversation we had. What a lesson it was. It was the beginning of many more lessons for me. I began to read books, I took classes, I joined the Keshet Parent & Family Connection in Colorado. The more I learn about LGBTQ issues, the more comfortable and proud I feel.

So, now, I anticipate, count the Omer, and count my many blessings:

My queer daughter is definitely one of them.

Creative Common/David Heise

The journey from Passover to Shavout is seven weeks. Counting each night, we count the steps towards revelation and still, suddenly, the time for receiving Torah is here! As I prepare for my own experience of revelation this year, here is what I expect to see at Sinai: I expect to see millions of Jews standing together. I expect to see cultural Jews standing next to Orthodox Jews standing next to our non-Jewish family members and friends. I expect to see families, of all different configurations, huddled together under one tallit or around a picnic blanket. I expect to see cisgender Jews and transgender Jews, Jews with matrilineal lineage and Jews by choice. I expect to see millions of people staring at the heavens, watching the thunder and lightning.  

In addition to being the day of revelation at Sinai, Shavuot is also an agricultural celebration that marked the bringing of bikkurim, first fruits, to the Temple. I imagine a time of great joy filled with song and sunlight. I see households celebrating together and praying for a successful continuation of their harvest. Like my view of Sinai, these households come in all shapes, sizes, and configurations.

Despite our reenactment of revelation at Sinai, we are no longer there, nor does the Temple exist today. Where are the places we connect to G-d and to community? They are synagogues and day schools, community centers and summer camps. I see these places just as I envision Sinai and the Temple – rich in diversity of people, of family configuration, of experience. I see children of queer parents celebrating their B’nei Mitzvah. I see LGBTQ people serving as rabbis, educators, and lay leaders. I see teenagers coming out in their youth groups and feeling safe.

LGBT Jewish Heroes poster, http://lgbtjewishheroes.org/

In a time where an unprecedented number of civil rights are being granted to the LGBTQ community, it is easy to forget how we got here. In the moment of revelation or offering, it is easy to forget the 49 days of counting since our liberation at Passover. What I see in our communities is the result of hard work. It is the result of our own bikkurim, those who came before us and offered sacrifices on our behalf. They are the result of those who stood at Stonewall and those who insisted that being out was not a disqualifier for participation in Jewish communal life. They are the result of those whose stories I return to in the book Lesbian Rabbis: The First Generation and whose stories educators celebrate when they hang posters from Keshet’s LGBT Jewish Heroes series on their classroom walls.

This Shavuot, celebrate the bikkurim of the queer rights movement that we enjoy – celebrate how are communities look now. Then, with one foot in the Temple, ask: “What are the first fruits I am bringing with me? What sacrifices will I make this year to move our communities forward?” And with one foot at Sinai, ask: “How I will I use this Torah to make Jewish communities more inclusive for all its members?” The answers sow the seeds for next year’s harvest.

Jews read sections of the Torah each week, and these sections, known as parshiyot, inspire endless examination year after year. Each week we will bring you regular essays examining these portions from a queer perspective, drawn from the book Torah Queeries: Weekly Commentaries on the Hebrew Bible and the Torah Queeries online collection. This week, Alex Carter sees the beauty of the delicate ecosystem of the Biblical wilderness – and in the unique queer culture we’re in danger of losing.

Creative Common/Kwong Yee Cheng

This week’s parsha, B’midbar, begins, as many parshiyot begin, with the words, “G-d spoke to Moses…” But this week, it specifies that G-d spoke to Moses “in the wilderness of Sinai…” It continues with a census of the men of military age, and with a description of how the tribes were to be arranged in the camp and for marching through the wilderness. Each tribe was placed in relation to the Mishkan, the Tabernacle, which was at the center of the community at all times.

But I want to focus on the very first line – “G-d spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai….”

In everyday speech, we almost never hear the word “wilderness” without it being accompanied by some variant of “lost in…” or “coming in from…” We normally think of it as a desolate place of isolation and loss.

But the Torah narrative gives us a different perspective. The children of Israel were in a wilderness, yes. But it was not a desert. It was not a place of desolation. There was vegetation, shade, and even water, to sustain the people during their travels.

G-d brought the children into the wilderness in order to create a people – unlike their neighbors, unlike any other community that had been seen to that point in human history. G-d spoke to Moses in the wilderness – at the burning bush in the book of Exodus, and throughout the remainder of the Torah.

So we see that wilderness can be a creative, expressive space, where the noise and confusion of “civilization” fades. G-d created a whole people in the wilderness; we, fashioned in the Divine image, can use the wilderness of social exile to think our own thoughts, honor our unique perspectives, and develop our own forms of expression, of worship, of living.

I celebrate the social and legal progress our queer community has made. We deserve to be recognized as equal and valuable members of the human family and the body politic.

But I worry that perhaps the lure of progress – of more acceptance into straight “civilization” – will lull us into assimilation and complacency. And we’ll forget the benefits of being in the wilderness. We are a people unlike our neighbors, unlike any other community that has been seen to this point in human history

Yet the queer community is in danger from the very legal and social progress we may celebrate. I worry that queer culture is yet another unique, delicate ecosystem in danger of destruction by appropriation or assimilation. In Washington, DC, the annual Halloween high-heel “drag” race is covered by local television stations. Formerly queer (read: affordable) neighborhoods are being co-oped and co-opted – bland yuppies with strollers are displacing the rainbow of queer expression. I’m not sure if this is good.

We are far too fabulous to want to be just like everyone else. Just as every tribe was arranged to have a different view of the Mishkan, with each person having a different view of the holy place, so we too should value and explore our community’s unique perspective on the divine, and on human relations.

Let us not forget to honor that creative wild space, and keep creating a unique and vibrant community. Let us keep creating rituals, ways of living, ways of loving. Let us not just rush into to the relative safety – the leeks and onions, if you will – of heteronormative civilization.

Let us not squander the gift of the wilderness. Let us not allow the pull of straight civilization to unravel the fabric of our community. For those of us who may yearn for, and attain, the trappings of middle-class respectability – let us honor and care for those who can never pass, or who don’t want to assimilate. The Jewish community has anguished over the assimilation issue for over a century, and still struggles with it. Let us lead the way here.

The world needs us to remember, honor, and preserve our wilderness. There may be times when we may need to go back there, for a little while, to regroup, to remember our uniqueness, to refresh ourselves at Miriam’s well. And then return to civilization and continue to fight, in our integrity, for our rightful place in creation, in a way that honors our uniqueness even as it affirms our commonality with all humankind.

As I write this, lyrics from the 1960s Zombies hit are running through my head: “Wild thing, you make my heart sing…”

Let us stay in touch with our “wild thing” souls. Let our hearts sing our unique song.

Rabbi Elliot Kukla

Coming out can be really difficult and it can be especially risky for those who are, or aspire to be, clergy. Nonetheless, this vanguard has helped open up the Jewish world, and we’re very proud to shine an extra light on their work, their ideas, and their stories. You can also read the first four posts in this series, about Rabbi Steve Greenberg, Rabbi Reuben Zellman, Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, and Rabbi Denise Eger.

How has being LGBTQ informed your work as a rabbi?

I work in a team of four rabbis at the Bay Area Jewish Healing Center, providing spiritual care to those struggling with grieving, illness, or dying, and I also direct the Healing Center’s hospice spiritual care volunteer program. The experience of being a transgender and queer person with a body and life trajectory outside of mainstream expectations is what led me to this work. I don’t consider being queer or trans a form of illness, but for me, being transgender and building a queer family and community has theological implications that also impact the way I respond to illness and aging. If we really embrace the idea that all of our various genders and desires were created in the image of God, we must believe that God wants and needs difference. This means that all bodies as they stretch, sag, shrink, grow, age and heal are divine; and all phases in the life cycle are holy and deserve sacred attention and care.

Not everyone will experience the estrangement from friends, family and religious community that often accompanies coming out as queer or transitioning, but all people, at one time or another, will get sick, will age, will have periods of disability and will experience loss. These experiences are inherently isolating – the world is for the well and when we are sick or bereaved we feel isolated from our families and communities, from media representations of what life is supposed to look like, and from day to day activities. When we come to age and to die our body will no longer fit comfortably into mainstream expectations for “normal” embodiment and we are often responded to with fear. Being queer helps me to access the feelings of isolation that many of my clients are experiencing in hospitals and nursing homes.

What should we, as members of the LGBT Jewish community, be focusing on now?

My answer to this question is framed by my work. We have put a lot of attention in the LGBTQ community towards access to marriage and adoption and other important life cycles that tend to fall in early or mid life, and much less attention has been placed on how we care for each other as we age, or when we are sick and vulnerable. I came out in the height of the AIDS epidemic in 1990 and saw caring for one another as an essential part of what it means to be queer, but memories are short and it is easy to forget how vitally queer people still need to advocate and care for one another in a health care system that is not always on our side. Homophobia and transphobia impacts the health care system enormously and we need good Jewish responses to this so that we are working to protect each other as we age and when we get sick. This means spiritual care resources for LGBTQ Jews who are suffering that addresses some of the spiritual challenges that queer people are likely to face as they age or get sick such as legacy to the next generation, fighting the invisibility of our histories, and finding meaning in self discovery.

We also need to advocate for education for health care and nursing home staff for the particular needs of LGBTQ people in vulnerable situations such as knowing how to ask about and respect chosen family members in end of life decision making, using pronouns of choice for trans people even when aging and illness may change their appearance away from their chosen gender, and protecting the rights of people who can’t or don’t choose to be out in all parts of their life when they are in a hospital or other institution.

Favorite queer Jewish figure?

Well I am a bit biased but I would say my colleagues and friends on TransTorah (an online resource for transgender Jewish resources and information): Rabbi Reuben Zellman, Jhoss Singer, Max Strassfeld, Joy Ladin, Ari Lev Fornari, and Micah Bazant. Check out all of their great writing, music, and art on the site!

What’s next for you? A project, a sermon — what are you working on that’s queer and Jewish?

A prayerbook for healing called “Mishkan Refuah: Where Healing Resides” was just published by the CCAR press and it includes some awesome prayers for stigmatized experiences of illness and suffering that many LGBTQ people can relate to including prayers for mental illness, male infertility, and gender confirming surgeries. I am excited to start working with these prayers with my clients. You can order your own copy for only 6 bucks through the CCAR press.

The Bay Area Jewish Healing Center’s annual bereavement camp, Grief and Growing, is coming up August 15. We welcome individuals and families of all genders and orientations who are grieving the loss of a person. All types of families and grief are respected and people often come from across the country to be with us at Camp Newman in Santa Rosa. Every winter we offer a training for people who want to be spiritual care partners to dying people called Kol Haneshama that is a wonderful opportunity to learn about caring and spirituality in a truly diverse group. You can find more information on either of these programs at the Jewish Healing Center’s website.

Creative Commons/Mike LaPlante

The teachings in this week’s paired parshiyot, Behar and Behukotai, are meant to prevent us from becoming greedy. At the beginning of Behar, literally “in the mountain” at Sinai, the first thing God tells Moses is “When you enter the land that I assign to you, the land shall observe a sabbath of the Lord. Six years you may sow your field and six years you may prune your vineyard and gather in the yield. But in the seventh year the land shall have a sabbath of complete rest, a sabbath of the Lord.” (Leviticus 25:2-4)

Why do we give the earth a shabbat every seventh year? The lifespan of the earth is much longer than ours, so maybe every seven years is enough! But we must give the earth a rest, and acknowledge that it does not belong to us. We are meant to be equal partners with the earth, and treat it with the same kindness we hope it will show us.

Later in the chapter, we come to the rules for the Jubilee year, which is to occur every 50th year, when “each of you shall return to his holding and each of you shall return to his family.” (25:10) This Jubilee year works in two ways: first, every person returns to the land that they lived on 50 years before, so that no individual gains all of the communal property and no individual is bereft. Secondly, this ensures that anyone who has fallen on hard times gets a fresh start, and if they have become indentured servants or slaves, “then he and his children with him shall be free of your authority; he shall go back to his family and return to his ancestral holding.” (25:41)

Giving both people and land a fresh start is imperative and ensures that we are all refreshed and protected, and able to move forward after our rest. We are not the owners of the land, but the protectors. In turn, we expect the land to shelter and protect us. We do not belong to the people who we work for; our employers are supposed to ensure that our pay and benefits give us access to a comfortable life.

In both the case of the earth and the former slaves, we are being asked to ensure that each gets the rest and relief each deserves. When we are individually commanded to keep Shabbat, each of us is expected to keep it for ourselves; but in these longer cycles of relief, we are being told to ensure that the earth and the disenfranchised get a Shabbat of rest. This goes beyond being a personal commandment; each of us may or may not rest on the seventh day, but everyone is obligated to protect the rights of those without freedom.

Now, many of us garden organically, buy local produce, compost and recycle. Many of us march for the rights of immigrants and domestic workers, campaign for universal health insurance and increased anti-discrimination employment policies — aren’t we fulfilling our obligation? Shouldn’t we, who follow these laws and work to care for our planet and its people, be individually rewarded?

After Behar’s description of these new cycles of shabbatot, Behukotai reinforces what the consequences will be, depending on whether we fail or succeed, in looking out for the rights of others.

The final parasha of Vayikra (Leviticus) begins with “Im behukotai teileichu v’et mitzotai tishm’ru va’asitem otam/If you will go by my laws, and if you will observe my commandments, and you will do them.” (26:3) As the book of Leviticus comes to an end, after we have been commanded to follow hundreds of laws, this final chapter begins with the word “if.” Not everyone will respect the earth and other people enough to ensure that all get their shabbat rest. In their greed, they genetically alter crops to produce more food, spray toxic weed and insect killers on their fields, and do their best to avoid giving their domestic workers the benefits they enjoy themselves.

Individually, many of us do the right thing — the movements for workers’ rights and environmental protection have gained momentum in the past few years. But we will only know the benefits of respecting all forms of life if all of us work together to repair our world. This doesn’t just mean standing up for our families, our friends and ourselves. This means standing up for the rights of all living things, especially the ones whose voices are the most difficult to hear. It is not just our responsibility to listen to what is widely reported, it is necessary that we listen for the voices that are suppressed, and be aware of how we treat those with no voice at all.

The beginning of our reward is the increasing number of people who are standing up for the rights of others who are not like them. More straight people are working towards equality for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender folks. More city-dwellers are heading to farmers’ markets for organic produce. More parents are choosing not to subject their intersexed children to surgery. More people are using public transportation and finding earth-friendly ways to power their homes. More corporations are competing with each other to appear on lists proclaiming their commitment to diversity and workers’ rights. This is the beginning of our reward — and as we help this momentum to grow, the beautiful, healthy, peaceful earth and society God promises us will certainly follow.

Rabbi Amy Morrison

Rabbi Amy Morrison first caught our attention when we heard that when she was a rabbinical student, she refused to take on any internship where she could not address LGBT issues. When we learned that Morrison works at Temple Beth Sholom in Miami, a city famous for both LGBT and Jewish life in a state not known for inclusive laws, we were eager to catch up with her about how she, and Beth Sholom, create a welcoming environment.

To what extent has being openly out affected your rabbinate? Any memorable responses from congregants or colleagues?

For as long as I can remember I have been on a journey to be true to myself. As a nurturer, a listener, a healer, a connector, and a spiritual seeker, being a rabbi allows me a chance to do all the things I love to do and be the kind of person I want to be. And in order to that with integrity I needed to be clear about being gay. At Temple Beth Sholom I have been fortunate to be surrounded by people who support me; and I have found that being open and honest attract the same.

We heard that prior to your ordination, you wouldn’t take any internship that forbade you to do work on LGBT inclusion, so clearly, this is a priority for you. So what successes – programs, classes, policies – in this area characterize your work at Beth Sholom?

Temple Beth Sholom and its leadership are always looking for ways to bring all types of Jews together under their roof and their success can be seen when you walk through the hallways. As the only out lesbian rabbi in South Florida and someone who does not cater to an exclusively gay constituency, Temple Beth Sholom is certainly making a statement. Once I joined the clergy I wanted to make sure that every pride event had a strong Jewish presence. In addition, I launched an interfaith LGBT group.

Beth Sholom will perform same-sex weddings, but marriage equality is not legal in Florida. In fact, Florida has often been held up as an example of a state with fairly homophobic legislation. Does that affect your work? Alternately, does Miami’s reputation as a city with a lot of Jews and a lot of LGBT people affect your work?

Without a doubt I am lucky to be in Miami and I worked hard to be here doing the work that I do. But by no means am I immune to gay-bashing, or anti-Semitism, for that matter. Though I am surrounded by warm and loving people, I am not living in a gay, Jewish bubble. I become most aware of the challenges in Miami when a teen sets up a meeting to talk to me about being gay or gay issues they are having at school – even the ones that are not gay. Some feel comfortable talking about gay issues or speaking out against xenophobic activity because they have had a chance to spend time with me and get to know how to deal with them.

What is one program, lesson plan, event, class, training, etc. that focused on or promoted LGBT inclusion that you would recommend to other synagogues, and why?

At Temple Beth Sholom we try not to focus on programs as much as on relationships. Statistics show that more people support same-sex marriage and other gay rights issues because someone they know is gay. Making sure that every community operates like an open tent, with safe spaces for each member to be true to who they are is key. The handicapped Jew, Jew of color, Jew by choice, and gay Jew should all always feel welcome and accepted.

Any advice for an LGBTQ rabbinical student?

Not everyone will be as lucky as I was, but my advice to rabbinical students would be don’t ever give up on your search to be true to who you are. When you are able to truly love and accept yourself, you will inspire the same in others. And they will thank you.

Creative Common/lifeonthe inside

An Israeli friend of mine had a provocative part-time job as a “selector” for TLV, a gay nightclub in Tel Aviv. He would point to people waiting behind the velvet rope and grant them access to the club. Friends were shown a certain favoritism; however, much like the selection of the Cohanim in Parashat Emor, those with “defects” were often prohibited from offering up their gifts to the dance floor gods. In Leviticus 21, the Torah specifies quite a long list of physical disabilities and ailments that would disqualify people from serving as priests. Long acknowledged as one of the more painful parts of the Torah, it elevates the perfect male body as one that is best to ritually serve God. Before the Hellenistic model of male beauty, there was Leviticus and the Temple cult.

As a regular attendee of the temple we call “the gym,” it is abundantly clear to me that the idealization of the aesthetic male form as godly is something that restricts us all, particularly gay men, even though gay men — to their own personal detriment — are often the most avid supporters of this kind of body worship.

Clearly, as human beings who age and whose bodies change over time, such an emphasis on embodied perfection inspires dread in all of us and has the potential to make us fear or ignore people who remind us of the truth of our imperfect bodies. In leading diversity workshops, people tend to point out similarities between the oppression of GLBT and disabled folks. For instance, they notice that in both communities there is a preponderance of people who are different from their families of origin, leaving both GLBT and disabled people at risk of having family members reject them or discriminate against them. Nor are their families able to equip them to engage in the so called “normative” world. There are many other similarities between the forces of heterosexism and ableism that create barriers for societal participation. Despite these issues and other legitimate comparisons, I have found that both GLBT and disabled people often shun the similarities.

While my colleague at the Interfaith Disabilities Network often addresses the homophobia in the disabled community, it is more appropriate for me to speak about the ableism in my own community. When I first began doing diversity work, I too was uncomfortable with the comparison. Like other gay men, the comparison made me cringe because of my own body issues and my self perception that I was failing to live the gay ideal. I also said things like “being queer is an asset, not a liability,” to avoid having my sexual orientation be seen as a defect. I was missing a valuable point: whether or not I saw it as a disability, it is how others often perceive sexual orientation — as something lacking. Moreover, it reveals how I once saw people with disabilities — also as people with something lacking, instead of understanding that our society was deficient in its inability to adapt to the fullest range of human bodies and minds.

When recognizing that it is society’s understanding that is what needs to change, it creates a clearer pathway for us to find each other as allies. Who better to understand each other in dealing with our parents’ (initial) disappointment when they discover their child is not who they had imagined? When we look at how some disabled people’s civil rights around marriage and adoption are limited in ways similar to gays and lesbians, who better to create solidarity? When looking at the history of persecution, particularly during the Nazi regime, we see that the same arguments, false logic and practices were used to target both communities. Both communities have had to redefine what sex means despite the larger community’s grave discomfort with thoughts of either group actually having sex. But it is my belief that everyone ultimately benefits from this conversation, especially if we listen. Furthermore, both communities are saying accept us as we are. We are created in God’s image as much as the perfect-bodied Cohanim and have lessons to teach the world.

A few years ago, I was helping a child prepare for his bar mitzvah, which was on Shabbat Emor. As we were reading together the text from Vayikra/Leviticus, we came across the difficult part of the portion. As he read: “Adonai spoke further to Moses: …No man of your offspring throughout the ages who has a defect shall be qualified to offer the food of his God,” (Lev. 21:16-17) he looked at me said, “I wouldn’t have been able to be a Cohen back then, would I?” Asking why he felt this way, he responded, “Well, I have dyslexia pretty badly. That’s a defect, right?”

This became the question we wrestled with for the rest of our preparation. He wanted to address this injustice, but another question emerged, perhaps even more challenging than the others. I asked him to think about how I view my queer identity, with all of its challenge and pain, as an asset: “What, if any, benefits come with having dyslexia?”

He looked puzzled at first and then he smiled. In his d’var Torah he ultimately spoke of how his dyslexia taught him to be more patient with others and a more compassionate person. This in turn made him a better brother, son, and friend. Just as importantly, he defied Levitcus’ narrow recognition of perfection and saw himself just as deserving to be in part of God’s worship. For me, this is what we have in store when queers and disabled people are able to come together — more of God’s perfection is revealed to a society whose ability to recognize it, is limited.

Creative Commons/Goxxy

We can start to answer these questions by looking at the Gemara (Oral Law) in Yevamot. There we learn:

Rabbi Akiva had 12,000 pairs of disciples from Gabbata to Antipatris; and all of them died at the same time because they did not treat each other with respect. The world remained desolate until Rabbi Akiva came to our Masters in the South and taught the Torah to them. These were Rabbi Meir, Rabbi Yehuda, Rabbi Yose, Rabbi Shimon and Rabbi Elazar ben Shammua; and it was they who revived the Torah at that time. A Tanna taught: “All of them died between Passover and Shavuot.” (Yevamot 62b)

It seems strange that Rabbi Akiva’s students died because they did “not treat each other with respect.” Rabbi Akiva taught that “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18) is the great underlying principle in the entire Torah. (Torat Kehonim 4:12 and Talmud Yerushalmi, Nedarim 9:4) It would be surprising that even just one student of this great tanna of the middle of the 2nd century did not learn such a basic lesson. What is the additional significance of the quantity of students who died?

It might be helpful to learn some more about who Rabbi Akiva was as a teacher. Despite his humble beginnings as a shepherd, Rabbi Akiva became a tremendous scholar. And while he had a tremendous effect on Jewish life, he was not without flaws. We learn in the Gemara that during the 24 years in which he accumulated these 24,000 students he did not see his wife once (Ketubot 62b-63a). There is no doubt that Rabbi Akiva loved his wife Rachel dearly. He gave his wife credit for all of the Torah they learned during his time away from her. And here is the issue. When his students first met his wife, he told them explicitly that they were all indebted to her. While living apart from his wife for all of those years, Rabbi Akiva did not show his students the daily habits of respect. How were his students to learn how to treat each other with respect if Rabbi Akiva did not model this for them? This is reminiscent of the adage, “Tell me and I forget, show me and I remember, involve me and I understand.” On Lag B’Omer we should take a moment and try to learn the lesson that evaded Rabbi Akiva’s students. How should treat each other with respect? It is clearly not enough to just talk about it. If we want to teach respect we need to model it.

Lately there has been a lot of conversation as to what is a legal marriage. Many hide their homophobia and bigotry behind traditional heteronormative assumptions of marriage of their own religious establishment. While it does not seem too respectful, in principle everyone has the right to marginalize someone who does not live by their religious standards. But in a country that claims a division between church and state this religious perspective must be limited to those who chose to live within that particular context and should have no bearings on U.S. law. It is for the very reason that marriage is a sacrament that the state should not get involved in limiting these rights to heterosexual couples. It is not despite the fact that I am an Orthodox Rabbi, but because of this fact that I think the government should allow same-sex marriage.

How are we any different from the students of Rabbi Akiva? How can we in the religious establishment hope to teach people about respect when we do not model it ourselves? Looking no further than the staggering rate of divorce in this country it is clear that traditional heteronormative marriage is not all it’s cracked up to be. And we the bearers of the religious establishment do not embody divine traits in working to bar two consensual adults who love each other from enjoying the civil rights of a heterosexual couple. Not modeling basic human respect seems to be a true abomination.

As religious people, we should welcome this “challenge” of same-sex marriage as an opportunity to define marital commitment in the 21st century. It seems that we are getting lost in the form of a wedding and completely missing the conversation on the content of a marriage. Who will guide the conversation about commitment? It is laughable to outsource the definition of a marriage to the state. Are we going to leave the conversation of commitment in the hands of politicians? We, the leadership of the religious establishment, want to be the ones crafting the conversation on what makes a life-long commitment work. And in the end we have to realize that we cannot just preach respect from our pulpits. It is not enough just to talk about, or even just to show respect; we need to find new ways to involve each other in building respectful communities. So soon, with Lag B’Omer behind us, we can all get married.

Shelby, third from left, at the Keshet Shabbaton

Maybe I was subconsciously hoping the sky would be teeming with a myriad of rainbows, the clouds would part, and beautiful, teenage, gay women would fall from the sky, dancing to the hora and studying Torah.

Well, that didn’t happen. However, the weekend Keshet had in store for me and other LGBTQ Jewish youth at the second LGBTQ Jewish Teens and Allies Shabbaton was equally as magical.

As a sixteen-year-old Jewish lesbian who attends a private Jewish high school, I had never been surrounded by peers I could relate to. I had never met another Jewish queer, and often struggled to balance my religion with my “identity.” In fact, identity was a concept I had never fully grasped. Is identity something pre-determined and constant, like fingerprints? Is it a sense of self, altering as we grow and become more self-aware?

Shelby

I did not expect three days and a small group of Jewish queers and allies to help me answer such difficult questions I had pondered all my life.

Our three-day long journey was filled with numerous moments that allowed these answers to unfold before my eyes. Perhaps it was the way that the other teens welcomed me with open arms, even though it was my first time at a Keshet event. I instantly felt connected to these people from day one. Although we each had our own backgrounds, hobbies, and personalities, we were all Jewish and queer, and that was enough to build relationships. Maybe it was the way the spirit of Shabbat filled the entire retreat center when everyone joyfully raised their voice to exclaim: “the birds in the trees are singing the song of Shabbat! The snowflakes on the ground are singing the songs of Shabbat… the queers in the shul are singing the songs of Shabbat!”

I began to answer my own personal questions during the Friday night story-telling program. Each person went around and spoke about what brought them to attend Keshet’s Shabbaton. Attempting to collect my thoughts, many answers ran through my mind. Yes, I was there because I wanted to make friends and to entertain myself over the holiday vacation. However, as a newfound friend finished speaking, I found myself sharing an interesting truth that I was unaware of until that moment. I had always had a safe space to be Jewish: with my school, my youth group (BBYO), and my Jewish friends. I often had a safe space to be a lesbian: with my family and my few queer friends. I knew how to be Jewish, and I knew how to be queer, yet I had never known how to be a Jewish queer, nor have I ever had a safe space to do so.

This realization has since allowed me to value the great gift Keshet has given to me: the space and ability to be all components of whom I am as well as a place where my religion and sexual orientation can coincide. Returning from the Shabbaton, I have discovered a greater sense of confidence and the ability to share what it means to be a Jewish queer with those who were not fortunate enough to attend such a spectacular weekend. My voice matters. As a young Jewish lesbian, Keshet has given me the tools and experiences essential to promoting social justice within my own religious community at home.

You can find other posts by LGBTQ Jewish teens and allies here, on such topics as coming out in an Orthodox day school, deciding to go “stealth” as a young trans person, being a professional ally to LGBTQ youth, and more.

In the hallways, in the cafeteria, they silence themselves in order to call attention to the silencing effect of anti-LGBT bullying and harassment. Below are some resources to help your school, youth group, or Hebrew school class participate in this national Day of Silence.

Courtesy of GLSEN

GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, has a series of good videos on what the Day of Silence means and why it’s so important to LGBTQ teens and their allies alike. You can also find an a great assortment of resources for bringing the Day of Silence to your community.

• The Jewish Community Federation and Endowment Fund (the Federation for San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma counties) offers a variety of resources – including organizing tips, information on how to find or start a Gay-Straight Alliance, and suggestions for post-Day of Silence programming, that can work well in a Jewish setting.

• In this essay, a Jewish teen details the homophobia he sees in Jewish youth culture. Share this essay and discuss with your youth group or day school classroom before or after the Day of Silence.

• See how other Jewish teens have committed to ending homophobia and transphobia in their Jewish youth groups. Share the following with teens, and use them to prompt break-out discussions.

1. Share this letter written about bullying by coalition of Jewish youth groups.
2. Watch a BBYO president explain why creating safe space for Jewish teens is so important to him.
3. Listen to a USY president talk about why personal difference is a strength and a virtue. (Be sure to watch the very end!)
4. Hear from a group of BBYO teens about why their commitment to stand up for each other is such vital part of their youth group experience.

• For more general information on how to create a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) at your Jewish school, and other ways to make Jewish space for teens more inclusive, check out this post for resources and ideas. And if you think it can’t be done, or need a little inspiration to take the first step:

1. Read this essay by Amram Altzman how he started a GSA-type club at his Orthodox high school.
2. Watch Keshet’s documentary film, Hineini: Coming Out in a Jewish High School, about the formation about the first Gay-Straight Alliance at a Jewish high school.
3. Read this article that explores the growing popularity of Gay-Straight Alliances at Jewish schools.

Creative Common/sea turtle

For gay and lesbian Jews, parshat Acharei Mot contains some of the most infamous passages of the Torah, but the preceding two, Tazria and Metzora (usually read together as a “double portion”) contain some of the most obscure. In these portions, we learn about the laws of leprosy (actually tzaraat, a skin disease similar to it but different in various ways), seminal emissions, and menstruation; here we are told the detailed method of sin-offerings and wave-offerings, and the methods of purity and contamination. Few people spend much time poring over the vivid anatomical and biological details of Tazria-Metzora. And yet, how can we understand the meaning of the Levitical sexual prohibitions without a sense of their immediate context?

In fact, while today one hears all sorts of expedient pseudo-rationales for why “homosexuality” is prohibited in Leviticus 18, a review of the preceding eight chapters reveals an agenda entirely different from those usually proffered in our times.

The extended sugya (topical section) to which Tazria and Metzora belong begins in the previous parsha, Shemini, which describes how the sons of Aaron, Nadav and Avihu, brought “strange fire” (eish zarah, which can also be translated as “foreign fire”) into the tabernacle, and were destroyed. The Hebrew text, in the first verses of Leviticus 10, is actually a bit ambiguous as to what happens; it’s not clear whether God sends out a fire to destroy the young priests, or whether they are consumed by their own creation. But the response is clear: a “team meeting” between Moses, Aaron, and Aaron’s remaining sons, in which new rules are set forth for regulating priestly behavior and maintaining the purity of the Israelite nation. In the context of what archeologists tell us regarding the cultic practices of ancient Canaan, which were varied, syncretic, and often ecstatic in nature, Leviticus 10:9-11 is perhaps most important. There, God says directly to Aaron:

Do not drink wine or strong drink, you and your sons, when you come into the tabernacle, so you don’t die. This will be an eternal law for your generations, so you can discern between holy and secular, and between impure and pure, and so you can teach the children of Israel the laws that God speaks to them through Moses.

This is both a clear retort to Nadav and Avihu, who invented their own ritual and mixed authorized and unauthorized sacrificial practice, and a prelude of what is to come for the next three parshiot. Israelite priestly worship is not to be an ecstatic bacchanal, in which distinctions are erased and the god(s) known in wild abandon. It is to be precise, mindful of distinctions, and separated from anything “unclean” or foreign. After those admonitions follow eight chapters of laws regarding exactly those topics: clean and unclean, pure and impure, permitted and forbidden. Chapter 11 spends 47 verses on which animals may be eaten and which are “abominations” (here the Hebrew word is sheketz, whose exact meaning, like that of Leviticus 18’s toevah, is unknown), before repeating the injunction “to discern between impure and pure.” Chapter 12, the first of Parshat Tazria, describes the laws of separation of the “impure” mother following childbirth; chapter 13, the specific diagnosis for tzaraat (59 verses) and chapter 14 (the beginning of parshat Metzora), its spiritual-physical remedy, which involves quarantine (i.e., separation to contain the contaminating agent) and special offerings and whose 57 verses are closed again by the injunction “to teach when something is impure, and when it is pure.” Finally, and ending parshat Metzora, 57 more verses, this time of chapter 15, describing how seminal and menstrual emissions render a person tameh (“impure”), and how tahara (“purity”) is to be regained after them. The parsha concludes, “thus shall you separate the children of Israel from their impurity, and they shall not die from it by defiling my tabernacle which is among them.”

Hopefully the general theme here is clear. This part of the Torah is not about what is “natural,” nor what is moral, nor what is ethical or unethical – but what is pure and what contaminates, what is proper for Israelites, and what is to be left to other nations. Indeed, Leviticus 18 itself is quite clear on this point. After reciting the prohibitions on incest, male homosexual behavior, bestiality, and sex with a menstruating woman – all of which seem to be equivalent in gravity – an explicit rationale is provided: “Do not impurify yourself with all these things, because with all these things the goyim, who I am sending away before you, impurified themselves, and impurified the land.” (“Impurified” is a bit clumsy, but it is meant to translate titamu, the same word as tameh; words like “defiled” fail to make the connection.)

It’s rare that the Torah provides such clear reasons for the commandments — and yet, how often are these reasons attended to today? This text is about ancient cultic purity, and the prohibition of foreign actions and mixtures which contaminated it. Not “homosexuality,” not the family, not nature, not morality. After all, what do menstruation, vultures, leprosy, and male anal sex have in common? Ethics? Hardly.

Let’s also notice how much more weight is given today to one verse in Leviticus 18 than the 47 verses of chapter 11, 59 of chapter 12, and 57 of chapter 15. Both religious bigots and anti-religious activists sometimes act as if the Bible is all about homosexuality, but a lot more of it is about leprosy. Presumably such subjects don’t suit anyone’s political or religious agenda – skin diseases don’t play a significant role in most contemporary spirituality, and menstruation is rarely a hot-button political issue – but it’s what’s in the text.

Sexual practices are forbidden not because of the convenient rationales one often hears today, but because they are maasei mitzrayim, acts of Egypt, and thus taboo for Israelites, who are exhorted to live a life circumscribed by distinctions. The prohibitions are part of Leviticus’s “Holiness Code,” which is chiefly about maintaining cultic and ritual purity – not ethics, not family, and not “nature.” Of course, we know from the archeological record that Israelite life was never so neat – the whole reason these practices were forbidden is that people were doing them, expressing their religiosity in unorthodox, hybrid, and “foreign” ways that were abhorrent to the priestly elite in Jerusalem. But as far as the text is concerned, the bumper stickers are right: God hates fags only as much as God hates shrimp.

If this world of purity and danger seems distant from our own, well, perhaps it is. Perhaps the Biblical obsessions with cleanliness and separation from other nations do not speak to us as they did to their original audience; that is a subject for a different conversation. But as far as the text is concerned, the meaning is clear. As Tazria, Metzora, and Acharei Mot all explicitly state, Levitical rules are about cultic purity. I wonder, though, why doesn’t the Religious Right also preach about separation from the unclean nations, or vultures, or menstruation?

Rabbi Jill Borodin

We spoke with Rabbi Jill Borodin of Congregation Beth Shalom, a Conservative synagogue in Seattle, WA, to find out how this congregation has evolved on the issue of LGBT inclusion, to become a place where the rabbi performs same-sex marriages and speaks publicly in support of marriage equality. Learn more about Congregation Beth Shalom’s LGBT inclusive offerings here.

What does Congregation Beth Shalom do for same-sex commitment ceremonies and weddings? I’ve read that in 2001 your predecessor took a year to deliberate whether or not to perform a commitment ceremony. I know you weren’t at Beth Shalom then, but can you speak to where you are as a community now? What did the process of that evolution look like? Was there community support?

You’re right – we do both commitment ceremonies and same-sex weddings. My predecessor did one, but I think that’s because he was only asked once. I’ve done three in the last eight years, and I’ve got another one on the calendar.

Same-sex weddings are basically the same at Beth Shalom as other weddings, except the couple has more leeway in choosing the language for what we call the ceremony: do they want to refer to it as a wedding, as a huppah – meaning not as a wedding – and so on. Everything else is basically as it is for straight couples: we have the huppah, the mikveh, the sheva brachot. We even mark anniversaries the same way, because couples are generally invited up for an aliyah together on their anniversaries. I guess there’s a small difference there, because we let same-sex couples determine their anniversary, in case they had a commitment ceremony and later a wedding, or something similar.

Until Washington passed marriage equality [in November 2012], I couldn’t do civil marriages as a clergy member. Now I can, and that’s great! Unlike straight couples, for whom I obviously require a civil marriage, for right now I’ll perform a religious wedding without a civil marriage. That’s just because it can be much more complicated for same-sex couples, given that they can’t get married on the federal level.

Happily, we’ve had very little pushback from within the congregation, as we began to do more same-sex weddings. It’s really clear to everyone that this is just who we are – we just don’t distinguish between gay and straight couples. I think it probably helps that we have a number of very high-level lay leaders who are out. It makes visibility very natural.

With marriage equality becoming a reality in Washington quite recently, what will change, if anything, about how Beth Shalom approaches weddings and commitment ceremonies?

Really, the only thing that will change is that I’ll be able to be the civil officiate for couples, too, which is definitely something I’m looking forward to!

Congregation Beth Shalom signed on to Washington United for Marriage. Were you active in the fight for marriage equality in other ways? Can you speak a little bit about why?

We had an amazing person running the effort for the Jewish community here in Seattle, so we were able to coordinate with the larger effort. We were involved in the marches, we helped the organizers of the phone banks, and supplied volunteers from within the community. We had a member give a dvar torah on the issue, which was great. And I spoke publically on the issue, too – I not only urged people to vote, but I wanted people to understand that marriage equality is an issue that we can understand in terms of Jewish values, so I spoke about how we can do that.

Especially as a part of the Conservative movement, which is still figuring out what lifecycle events for LGBT individuals and families might look like, we’re hoping you can share insight to help other congregations. Can you discuss some of the tachlis, the nuts-and-bolts, of how you work to actively include LGBT Jews?

We do LGBT programming – we’ve have a lot of success including LGBT relationships in our series on healthy relationships – but we don’t necessarily do a consistent amount of LGBT programming. I prefer to determine what the congregation’s needs are in any given moment, or see if there hasn’t been any specifically LGBT programming for a while, we’ll make sure to do some to send a consistent message of inclusion.

One of the things that has been really helpful for us is that we have a large population of out LGBT Jews who come to shul really regularly, so we’ve been able to tap into and make use of informal networks really well. People know us as an LGBT-inclusive space because of who comes to synagogue before anything else, is our sense.

We’re also careful to really use that LGBT lay presence. We have a mentorship program for people actively exploring Judaism, and we make sure to offer to match LGBT folks who are involved in this process with LGBT members.

We also did sensitivity training as part of a larger diversity training, and we focused a lot on the plurality of what families look like. This obviously includes LGBT families, but also single-parent families, multi-generational families, and others. One of the steps we found very helpful was switching our membership form, so now it says “Adult 1/Adult 2” instead of something like “Husband/Wife.” We wanted to make sure that our materials matched the reality of our community.

How do you let congregants or future congregants know about LGBT focused events or inclusive initiatives?

You know, we added the word “inclusive” to our mission statement, hoping people would know what that meant, but we’ve actually had the most success through just advertising our programming, and also through word-of-mouth. When we have something big coming up, I can ask people to put the word out, and everybody knows!

Inspired? Drop us a note if you have a story to tell and you may end up as next month’s feature!

Sidney, Australia memorial for LGBT victims of the Holocaust. Creative Commons/mulch.thief

Holocaust Remembrance Day, known in Hebrew as Yom HaShoah, falls this year on April 8^th. For those of you interested in adding some LGBTQ content to your observance of Holocaust Remembrance Day, we bring you the following resources.

• Watch “Paragraph 175,” a documentary film with unforgettable interviews with gay survivors and the punishments they suffered even after the war ended. The title refers to the law that made homosexuality illegal in Nazi Germany. (You can catch the trailer here.)

• Read The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals, for a comprehensive history of how the LGBT community was targeted by the Nazi regime.

• GLAAD, Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, has resources on their website for observing a moment of silence for gays and lesbians during Yom HaShoah.

• On the blog QJew, Lisa Finkelstein has collected a set of resources for understanding the history of LGBT people in the Second World War.

• Consider incorporating rituals from the Day of Silence and Transgender Day of Remembrance into your, or your synagogue or community’s, rituals for Yom HaShoah. These two holidays commemorate loss and persecution within the LGBTQ community, and can offer a variety of ways to commemorate LGBTQ individuals as part of larger Holocaust Remembrance activities.

• In this essay, Nicholas Artrip suggests that the siren sounded in Israel to commemorate Yom HaShoah might also stir us to think of how LGBT people were treated in the Holocaust, and how we might use our voices today to speak out for them.

• Check out an earlier post on our blog from Keshet staffer Dan Schulman about his trip to Germany, where he visited as part of The Germany Close Up Fellowship: An Open Program for LGBT Professionals.

Sarah Tuttle-Singer

You’re a writer for a variety of Jewish publications – in what ways (other than the very obvious one) is Jewrotica different? 

I’m a big believer in authenticity – in “owning your sh*t.” In other words, if you’ve got something provocative to say, then say it boldly, and don’t cower behind cheap metaphor. Writing for Jewrotica is a literalization of this – because unlike publishing on Kveller and Times of Israel (two sites which I adore!) not only is the content I submit on Jewrotica potentially problematic, but explaining the article in the context of the site also invites a secondary conversation. (Just ask my dad.)

That said, Jewrotica also understands that there are people with things to share that don’t want put a name to it. And that’s why it’s great that Jewrotica allows writers to use pseudonyms or submit anonymously. This definitely frees writers to push their boundaries in a safe space if they are uncomfortable going public with their experiences, interpretations, or fantasies.

I guess if I’m going to break it down, writing publicly for Jewrotica requires very serious intention – kavanah -  for me. Do I believe there should be a place where Judaism and sexuality intersect? Hell yeah. And that’s why I love being part of this site.

Jewrotica breaks down its content by a pretty large number of variables – from PG through XXX, genre, categories like “romantic” or “awkward” or “naughty,” but nothing indicating sexual orientation, gender, anything like that. Was that intentional? Does it change the experience of writing for the site or shaping its content?

I’m deferring to Ayo Oppenheimer, the founder of Jewrotica for this one:

“Our tags include queer / LGBT, just like they include other groups within the Jewish and sexuality spectrum. We are pluralistic and aim to be as inclusive as possible, and have published stories by gay and lesbian writers. Just recently, we published a prose poem by Arielle Greenberg Bywater called “Putting Out.”

In fact, all three of our Valentine’s stories, essays and poems this year were queer-focused and written by gay Jewish authors, so that sends a pretty strong statement. However, we’re open to suggestions about how to be more inclusive. Jewrotica is a website, an organization, a movement, but mostly its an evolution and an organic creation. If you have an idea, tell us. If you want to get involved, reach out. We’re all about pushing boundaries in thoughtful ways and would love to include folks in being a part of what Jewrotica will become.” [You can contact the Jewrotica team here.]

Favorite Jewrotica piece to date? Why? 

I think Hugo Schwyzer is a beautifully brutal writer who takes his readers on very complicated and visceral journeys. I love this piece.

This story was arousing and painful on different levels.

Why Jewrotica? What’s Jewish about it? 

Why not? What isn’t? Sorry, couldn’t resist answering that in a stereotypically Jewish way.

But seriously. Jewrotica is a conversation about sexuality – a work in progress, really. And while many people within our culture have absorbed stigmatizing stereotypes about sex, or feel that sex and spirituality have no place in the same conversation, Jewrotica seeks to change that.

How open is Jewish community to a publication like this?

Three Jews, five opinions. Depends on who you ask. A few Facebook friends have defriended me because they were uncomfortable with some of the content I was sharing – and that’s cool. Plenty more have subscribed. And submitted articles.

This rainbow sign says “Welcome!” in Hebrew. Photo via Keshet JTS

At an all day conference at the Seminary marking the one year anniversary of this historic decision, two rabbis offered a special kavannah, or guiding intention.

Rabbis Karen Reiss Medwed and Francince Roston wrote this kavannah to commemorate the occasion, using a traditional format and liturgical vocabulary. We bring you this kavannah to commemorate the sixth anniversary of the Conservative movement’s decision to ordain gay and lesbian rabbis, a major step towards making the Jewish world an more inclusive space for LGBTQ Jews.

Jordan Dashow, Tufts student and Keshet intern, and Joanna Ware, Keshet’s Lead Organizer and Training Coordinator, at Keshet’s LGBTQ Teen and Ally Shabbaton, January, 2013.

“If it doesn’t bring more love into the world, it probably isn’t religion.”

The date was October 13, 2010, and I was at Tufts University’s Coming Out Day Rally. At the rally, Tufts University’s Jewish Chaplain, Rabbi Jeffrey Summit, spoke about the importance of not just tolerating people’s differences but embracing them and told the crowd the statement quoted above. This message was so simple, yet so powerful — and so powerfully different from what I expected a religious leader speaking about LGBTQ issues to say.

Growing up, I attended a Conservative Jewish Day School from kindergarten until 12th grade. Throughout high school, I struggled to come to terms with my sexual orientation and my religious beliefs. I was forced to grapple with these issues alone, as my high school did not offer any support for queer students and in general ignored their existence. As far as I know, no one has ever come out in my high school (though one student who was already out transferred in) and homophobic comments, including the commonly repeated phrase “that’s so gay,” went unchallenged. Consequently, I never felt safe coming out in high school.

I decided to come out at the beginning of my time at Tufts University and within my first few days at Tufts Hillel, it was clear that my identity as a queer Jew would not be viewed as a contradiction but rather something to be embraced. The welcoming and accepting environment that I discovered at Hillel was the result of the amazing individuals who were involved, the welcoming staff, and the institutionalized inclusivity created by a permanent Hillel programming board position for Jewish Queer programming. Throughout my three years involved in the Tufts Hillel community, I have always felt that my Jewish and queer identities complement each other.

I have been lucky and fortunate to be involved in a religious community at Tufts that embraces me for who I am and has a long history of embracing queer students. As a result, I have not had to work hard to create a more welcoming Jewish community at Tufts. However, recent events at Tufts University have emphasized that not all religious groups on campus provide such a welcoming environment.

In response to a religious group being “derecognized” by the student government for discriminating against queer students (among others), Tufts Committee on Student Life created a new policy last semester by which student religious groups could apply for exemptions from Tufts nondiscrimination policy in their leadership criteria. A Student Religious Group could therefore choose, if granted this exemption, to bar queer students or female students or any other identity protected by the nondiscrimination policy from leadership positions.

Since this policy was created, I have felt a need to speak out, as a Tufts student, as a Jewish student, and as a queer student. While I have no doubt in my mind that Tufts Hillel will not apply for an exemption from the nondiscrimination policy, I still feel I have a responsibility to work to overturn this policy. This responsibility in the end derives from my own Jewish values, which have taught me to speak up when I see injustice.

As a member of the Coalition Against Religious Exclusion (CARE), the group on campus that is working to get this policy overturned, I have been inspired by the actions and passion of my fellow religious and nonreligious Tufts students. Ultimately creating a more inclusive environment in any institution, whether Jewish or secular, requires a strong group of like-minded and passionate individuals. While this policy represents a step back in the inclusive environment I have seen at Tufts over my three years here, I am confident that with the urging of CARE and its many supporters, the University will eventually overturn this policy. Until then, I will continue doing my Jewish obligation to make Tufts’ campus a more inclusive environment for students of all religious and social identities.

Creative Commons/Hawk Sugano

It was in that room that our small group, in honor of the approaching Passover, examined a passage from Torah Queeries. We read a piece written by Jason Gary Klein in hevruta (pairs) and discussed the ritual of storytelling, which Klein notes happens in a very ritualized way at the Passover seder, and which also happens less formally but with equal frequency in queer circles, where we are so fond of telling coming out stories. And, as Klein pointed out, our own narratives of oppression and liberation nicely parallel the story we tell each year at the Passover seder. During the discussion, my first time ever sitting among other queer Jews, I felt cogs turn in my brain that had been rusty from years of disuse. I felt sinews in my heart grow taut that hadn’t been stretched in a lifetime. I didn’t understand those feelings at the time, but in the two years since that beit midrash, I haven’t stopped thinking about our topic that night.

Storytelling is an incredible feature of the human animal. We are unique creatures in many ways, but it is our capacity to translate experience into memory, and then to transmit that memory to another through the act of storytelling that strikes me as nothing short of magic. We can know things that we have not ourselves experienced. This is how humans empower one another, how communities make each individual member stronger.

If you ask a neuroscientist, they won’t use the word magic. But they might tell you something surprising nonetheless. I was introduced to the work of neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux through NPR’s RadioLab hosts, who interviewed him for an episode on memory and forgetting. According to LeDoux, scientists have known for decades that memories are physical entities. When we store a memory, we are folding a tiny sequence of proteins in our brains. Our memory is like a giant linen closet. And each time we pull a memory off the shelf, we fold that protein chain a little differently before putting it back. That’s a stunning piece of neurology, that every time we recall an experience we alter it slightly.

As shocking and, frankly, disheartening as that may sound, Jews should know this to be true. Every year at the Passover table we change the story of the Exodus, sometimes with minor revisions, sometimes with wild reinterpretations. In the queer ritual of storytelling, our stories change a little every time, too. One thing that I have realized in telling my own coming out story is that it’s never a complete process. Every year I learn a new piece of the puzzle, an aspect of identity I hadn’t understood before.

The process of storytelling — the process of remembering and revising — is in fact a fundamental function of community. It allows individuals to refold experiences anew year after year. If we are, as John Locke claimed, the sum of our memories, then we change not only the story but our individual selves every time we remember the Exodus. We fold that protein chain a little differently than the year before. Our brains are literally changed by the process of storytelling.

It is significant, then that it is God who tells us to keep telling the story. In Exodus we are commanded again and again to tell the story in each generation. If you believe in an omniscient God, then surely God knew that revisions are inevitable every time the human brain uses a memory. It follows, then, that God must see some advantage in an ever-changing, unstable storyline. God wants that slight alteration in proteins to take place in our brains every time we gather in community. That is part of the dazzling sum of who we are.

When we remove ourselves from community, we lose the forum for storytelling and with it, we literally lose a piece of ourselves. Our community’s memories are absent from our brains and our own stories stay static, fixed, and lifeless. Without community, we halt the process of refolding. This is the devastation of isolation, that we become helpless to assemble a cohesive story line out of memories. Our Lockean identities are an absurd stream of consciousness, missing integral pieces. We are a linen closet in total disarray.

This is one reason that I’m thankful to have queer community this year at Passover, and year round. Just as the storytelling at the seder is an integral part of Jewish identity-making, so is queer storytelling to a queer identity. The pieces of others’ lives that I’ve heard have been stored in my physical brain and have literally become a part of me. Every Keshet Shabbat, every queer beit midrash, every community event, has been its own small queer seder. The story of the Exodus teaches us that simply leaving an oppressive land is not enough. Even liberation itself is not enough. It’s the storytelling that makes the people. It’s the continual refolding of memories that makes us who we are. When I walked through the door of the beit midrash, I was looking for community. I had no idea that I would also find missing pieces of myself.

Verses from the Torah about the human heart. Creative Common/Mike Goldberg

How can that be true? The Torah, as we know, is not written for or about transgender people, and in any case, “transgender” is supposed to be a noun or adjective, not a verb, an umbrella term for the millions of people whose gender identity or expression is more complicated than “male” or “female.” “Transgender” gathers gender-complicated people into a broad, simple category – the equivalent of “African American” or “Latino” – and implies that our identities, like those of other minorities, are a matter of fact that is not up for discussion. But though “transgender” has real advantages for describing ourselves to others, for many of us who identify as transgender, identity is an often-messy, ongoing process, not a simple, settled fact. For me, “transgender” isn’t just something I am – it is an active, terrifying, exalting process of unmaking and remaking a self that will never quite fit established categories of gender or identity.

Thanks to this process, my heart has been stretched and broken across the gender spectrum, assigned to and exiled from one identity after another, sacrificed for gender, enlarged by gender, squeezed in gender’s vise. That’s what I mean when I say that my heart has been transgendered. However I handle my gender identity, I will always have a transgendered heart.

As the Torah’s stories of Abraham, Sarah and their son Isaac show, you don’t have to be transgender to have a transgendered heart.

For example, at the end of Genesis chapter 17, God commands Abraham, then 99 years old and still named “Abram,” to circumcise himself, his son Ishmael and all the male members of his household. Until then, Abram’s identity fit neatly into Bronze Age patriarchal gender categories: a wealthy nomadic pastoralist, Abram was the unquestioned legal and spiritual head of an extended family unit, a husband, a father, even on occasion a military leader. Abram’s relationship with his family deity was unusually intimate, but all extended families had their deities, and in trying to keep his family’s deity happy (and thus to keep the blessings comings), Abram was doing what was expected of any man in his position.

Though Abram’s relationship with God had led him into decades of wandering, God didn’t unsettle his identity as a man, until God told Abram to circumcise himself – to undergo elective genital surgery whose sole purpose was to permanently reassign his identity. Circumcision transformed Abram from a successful Bronze Age patriarch into a kind of man who had never existed, one for which even the Torah doesn’t provide a word: a Jewish man, a man who, no matter how successful he is in patriarchal terms, acknowledges that his will and power is subordinate to the will and power of an invisible, omnipresent, supreme God.

Abram makes this transition by publicly cutting his phallus, the physical sign of patriarchal identity and power. By literally and figuratively cutting open whatever even today some would call his “manhood,” Abram grows into his truest self, a self defined not by patriarchal categories but by his relationship with God. God marks Abram’s transition by changing his name to “Abraham,” adding a syllable to signify that he is no longer just the head of his extended family but the “father of multitudes,” fountainhead, through his sons Ishmael and yet-unborn Isaac, of entire peoples.

Like contemporary gender reassignment surgery, Abraham’s circumcision doesn’t just change what his genitals look like (presumably no one other than Sarah and a concubine or two would have noticed); it changes who he is to himself, to his family, to God, and to a world in which he is now permanently “other.” Abram was a man among Bronze Age men, at ease in the highest echelons of society. Abraham, though, is something else; his identity is inexplicable to anyone outside his family. No one else will even know that he has become “Abraham” unless he tells them. (You can imagine the awkwardness of those conversations: “Peace be with you, Abram.” “Thank you – but actually, my name is Abraham now.” “Oh, why is that?” “Well, the creator of Heaven and Earth told me to take a flint knife and cut off – never mind. Please just call me Abraham.”) God doesn’t explain the rules governing Abraham’s new identity, doesn’t specify when and to whom Abraham should come out as his new self, and when should he allow others to mistake him for the man he used to be. If he doesn’t explain his identity, no one will understand or even recognize who he has become. And if does, he risks the rejection, mockery, hatred and violence so many of us encounter when we reveal our otherness.

Our father Abraham had a transgendered heart.

So did our mother Sarah. As the Torah tells us, by the time of Abraham’s circumcision, Sarah was “advanced in years” (she’s close to 90) and, not surprisingly, “had stopped having the periods of women.” (Gen. 18:11) But even when Sarah was young and menstruating, she was unable to conceive the child she desperately wanted. By her culture’s standards, Sarah’s inability to build up her husband’s house with children or provide him with an heir makes her a failure as a woman. But at the beginning of chapter 18, newly circumcised Abraham offers hospitality to three angels, one of whom has come to tell Sarah, long resigned to being her identity as an elderly, infertile woman, of her impending pregnancy – a public, culturally incomprehensible transformation of body and gender identity even more radical than Abraham’s circumcision. There were – there are – no words, no gender roles or social customs, through which to describe, understand, or relate to a woman Sarah’s age who becomes pregnant, gives birth, and nurses a child. As with Abraham’s circumcision, God marks Sarah’s transition from the familiar kind of woman she has been to this brand-new kind of woman by changing her name, which before her pregnancy is announced to Abraham had been “Sarai.”

When the newly-renamed Sarah hears the news that she will become pregnant, she has a marvelously human reaction: she laughs. But this isn’t just any laughter. It’s the special laughter provoked by the violation of fixed categories of identity. If you want to hear this kind of laughter from a three-year-old, say something like “the cow said `neigh’;” if you want to hear it from an adult, present yourself as not just as male or female but as something, like a pregnant Sarah or a pregnant man, that violates established gender categories.

Sarah’s gender-violating transformation from aged infertile woman to at least partially rejuvenated motherhood is surrounded by laughter. Nowhere in the Torah is laughter mentioned more frequently. Abraham laughs when God tells him Sarah will have a child. Sarah laughs to herself when the angel passes the good news on to her. When God asks why Sarah laughed, Sarah, presumably afraid of being thought disrespectful or ungrateful, denies that her laughter, but God says to Sarah, “You did laugh.” When Sarah bears her son, she says, “God has brought me laughter; everyone who hears will laugh at me.” (Gen. 21:6) Laughter is so central to the miracle that God commands that the child be named Yitzhak – Isaac – which means “laughter.”

It’s lovely to hear laughter in the Torah, but when Sarah says “everyone who hears will laugh at me,” she shows that she knows how fragile her new gender identity is, how likely the idea of Sarah as new mother is to provoke not only laughter but skepticism, doubt, and gossip. According to the midrash, Sarah was well aware of that others might doubt that she had in fact given birth to and nursed her son. That’s why Abraham “held a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned” (Gen. 21:8) – so that Sarah, like a transwoman I heard of who unbuttoned her blouse to convince police that she wasn’t a female impersonator, could prove she was a real mother (a real fertile woman) by publicly nursing Isaac.

Our mother Sarah had a transgendered heart.

Jews are children of Sarah, children of the transgendering miracle that led to the birth of the son God named “Laughter,” and we are also children of Yitzhak, children of the laughter provoked when the finger of God confounds human categories of identity, inviting us to grow into new, previously inconceivable modes of being.

Sarah’s miraculous pregnancy confounded the conventional categories that had till then defined her as a woman. But even as it complicated Sarah’s gender identity, Isaac’s birth reinforced patriarchal ideas about the importance of maleness. Sarah’s gender would have been transformed by any pregnancy, but according to Bronze Age conventions, she and Abraham could only become the mother and father of the Jewish people if the child she bore was male. Only a son could inherit Abraham’s family and fortune, and, because God had chosen Abraham’s family as the seed from which the Jewish people would spring, Isaac had to be male to inherit and pass on Abraham’s relationship with God. In other words, God used Bronze Age patriarchal conventions to create the Jewish people, establishing a link between Divine purpose and male privilege that continues to shape (and deform) Judaism and other Abrahamic religious traditions.

Isaac’s maleness was overdetermined, ordained by God, social convention, maternal and paternal longing, and the destiny of the Jewish people, and in terms of gender privilege, Isaac hit the jackpot. Even circumcision, which must have been a physical ordeal for his aged father, was easy for Isaac, the first Jewish boy circumcised on the eighth day after birth.

In addition to being painful, Abraham’s circumcision had been a bold step into the unknown, a blood-oath sealing his allegiance to an invisible God with no trace in human history, myth, law or custom. But Isaac was born into that allegiance. For him, God was not a mysterious voice from beyond the givens of family and society; God was a part of his family, a deity he inherited and whose favor he could take for granted, for without God, as his parents no doubt told him, Isaac would never have been born.

The only threat to Isaac’s status as Abraham’s son and heir was his older half-brother Ishmael, born to Abraham when Sarah, desperate to give Abraham a child, urged him to take Hagar, an Egyptian slave, as his concubine. When Hagar became pregnant, Sarah, rather than feeling her gender identity bolstered by giving her husband a child through a surrogate mother, felt that Hagar was looking down on her (Gen. 16:5), and treated her so harshly that the pregnant Hagar fled into the wilderness, where she met an angel who told her to go back, promising that her child would be a son, Ishmael, and give her many descendants. Hagar did as she was commanded, and Ishmael grew up and was circumcised as Abraham’s only son. Though God had already prophesied Isaac’s birth, many no doubt saw Ishmael for what he was: Abraham’s first-born son, and arguably his natural heir.

So it isn’t surprising that after Isaac’s weaning feast, Sarah demanded that Abraham “Cast out that slave-woman and her son,” as she seems to have called Hagar and Ishmael (Gen. 21:10). Abraham, assured by God that he should do as Sarah said, rose early the next morning, and sent Ishmael and Hagar into the desert with “some bread and a skin of water.” (Gen. 21:14) The just-weaned Isaac woke up to find his older brother gone. We don’t know how Isaac felt about Ishmael’s disappearance from his life, but it’s clear that his brother’s exile eliminated any competition for his father’s paternal affections, and cemented Isaac’s position as Abraham’s sole son and heir.

A few verses later, Isaac learns that Ishmael is not the only son his father is willing to sacrifice.

In chapter 22, the interlocking blessings that comprised Isaac’s gender identity – relationship with God, the love of his father, and his status as sole heir – lead Isaac into the nightmare our tradition calls “the Akedah,” the binding. The nightmare begins the way Isaac’s life-story began, with Abraham hearing the voice of God. This time, though, God is not foretelling Isaac’s birth but commanding his death: “Take your son, your favored one, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering.” (Gen. 22:2) As he did when banishing Ishmael, Abraham gets up early, taking Isaac and two servants on a three-day journey into the wilderness. When Abraham realizes that they are approaching the place of sacrifice, he sends the servants away. Now he and Isaac have to do their own shlepping. When Abraham saddles Isaac with “the wood for the burnt offering,” his son becomes curious:

Isaac said to his father Abraham, “Father!” And he answered, “Yes, my son.” And he said, “Here are the firestone and the wood; but where is the sheep for the burnt offering?” And Abraham said, “God will see to the sheep for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them walked on together.

They arrived at the place of which God had told him. Abraham built an altar there; he laid out the wood; he bound his son Isaac; he laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. And Abraham picked up the knife to slay his son. (Gen. 22:7-10)

As this excerpt shows, the Akedah narrative constantly highlights Isaac’s gender, repeating the words “son” and “boy” 12 times in its 19 verses, reminding us, even at the horrific climax, that God has told Abraham to sacrifice not just his child but all the hopes and blessings bound up with Isaac’s maleness.

Isaac probably wasn’t thinking about his gender as he lay there on the altar, but his gender is what brought him there. His status as favored son marked him for human sacrifice; his one-to-one intimacy with his father (how different this scene would be if Ishmael were still around) led him to unquestioningly follow Abraham into the wilderness and to accept being bound on the altar. The gender identity that has gave Isaac so much privilege and security has turned inside-out. His doting father has become his murderer; the God who upended the laws of nature to bring Isaac into the world has become his destroyer; and Isaac’s status as son and heir has made him a choice “sheep for burnt offering.”

Our father Isaac had a transgendered heart.

How many trans people have stared like Isaac into the pitiless faces of those who said they loved us? How many of us have suddenly realized that our families see as us not as children, siblings, parents, spouses, but as creatures that must be sacrificed to unyielding gods of gender, rage, ideology and shame? How many of us have longed to cry out to God, but cannot, because God, we are told, is the reason we must be sacrificed?

Given how frequently religion is invoked to justify for transphobia, it’s not surprising that practicing trans Jews are often asked how we reconcile being trans with being Jewish. Whatever conflicts some may see, when we read Genesis’ stories of the origins of the Jewish people, we see that trans and Jewish identity are profoundly connected. Like all Jews, trans Jews are children of Abraham, Sarah and Isaac, children of self-othering circumcision, of gender-category-violating miracles, of a child named Laughter bound like an animal on the altar to fulfill what his father believed was the will of God.

Our transgendered hearts are descended from those of our ancestors. The Torah is strewn with transgendered hearts.

-Donna Oshri, Golda Och Academy

Creating inclusive Jewish spaces is a great goal — but how do you do it? While the answer is likely different for every synagogue, school, and youth group, it’s helpful and encouraging to hear about others’ successes, triumphs, and their lessons learned. So we’re running this regular column, called “The Tachlis of Inclusion,” to spotlight practices and policies that have worked for Jewish institutions all over the country. We hope they inspire you. 

His mom was removed as troop leader because she is a lesbian. (Courtesy of GLAAD.)

In October 2012, the administration of Golda Och Academy, a Conservative Jewish day school in New Jersey, sent a letter home to parents, letting them know that the school would not be renewing its Boy Scouts charter. The reason? The Boy Scouts of America’s decision to ban gay scouts and adult troop leaders.

“It was a very short meeting,” Adam Shapiro, Dean of Students at Golda Och Academy, remembers about the decision to end the school’s relationship with the local Boy Scout Troop. “Everyone on our administrative team looked at each other and said, this is pretty obvious. And since we made our decision, basically all of the feedback we’ve received has been positive.”

Golda Och Academy sponsored the Boy Scout Troop 118 and Cub Pack 118 and offered them a place to meet. But the Scouts’ policy of discrimination has made what had been an otherwise harmonious match untenable. “The Scouts and the school have enjoyed a wonderful relationship for many years,” said Donna Oshri, Director of Marketing at Golda Och. Donna continued: “The policy of the Boy Scouts of America to exclude same-sex families from membership and adult volunteerism is in direct contradiction of our school policies, which place high value on inclusion. Our school has decided that it cannot act as the sponsor organization until that national policy changes. Golda Och Academy has worked hard toward making all families feel welcome and comfortable. At this point in time, the scouts represent a problematic image for many families. This decision is based solely on ideology, and not as result of any biased action or exclusion on the part of the leadership of Troop 118 and Pack 118. Rabbi Lisa Vernon and Mike Schatzberg have been stellar leaders to the boys, scouting, and to the school, and we commend their unfailing commitment and leadership.”

The school has since received a lot of attention for their decision.

It’s encouraging to see that actions like these might not be falling on deaf ears: the Boy Scouts of America is currently debating formally abandoning policies that exclude gay members or participants, as well as permitting individual troops to decide whether or not to permit gay members.

Of course, it’s not only the actions of individual schools, communities, and troops that may affect the BSA’s ultimate decision: other forces have also been at work. Throughout 2012 and into 2013, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation has been organizing against the Boy Scouts’ discriminatory policy, working with scouts and parents who have been forced to leave the organization because of their sexual orientation. They’ve also been collecting and posting the testimony of former Eagle Scouts who are now protesting the policy on the GLAAD website.

Meanwhile, the National Jewish Committee on Scouting recently voted to determine if they should maintain the ban on gay scouts and troop leaders. The vote was 27 to one in favor of overturning the ban, with one abstention. Though the Committee’s vote does not directly affect the BSA’s position, it was reported back to the Scouts’ Religious Relationship Task Force, and will hopefully affect the outcome of the ultimate decision.

What will happen to the policy is anyone’s guess, but for some, a strong stand against exclusion and discrimination is the most important thing.

“We had had a big push from within the student body last year to create a Gay-Straight Alliance. Clubs and activities are for the students, by the students, so we knew that this was something the students really wanted,” explained Adam Shapiro. “So we have a GSA now, which is not that common in Conservative day schools, and their main focus is on creating safe space within our school. Given that emphasis, the decision to step away from the Boy Scouts just seemed natural.”

Drop us a note if you have a story to tell and you may end up as next month’s feature! You can read the previous posts in this series, on the Israel Center for Conservative Judaism and The Beth El Synagogue Center.

[Below is the full text of the insert. You can also download a pdf version to bring to your seder table.]

Every year, Jews gather at seder tables around the world to remember, retell, and reconnect with the story of our collective redemption. Passover compels us to ask ourselves how we are moving out of Mitzrayim, the narrow straits of oppression and brokenness that still mar our world, and toward liberation in our lives today. As mothers, fathers, parents, and family members of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) Jews, we are inspired by our tradition’s story to strive for LGBTQ recognition, freedom, and acceptance.

Allies can have a powerful voice in that struggle, supporting LGBTQ people in their coming out process and helping others to understand the importance of justice, fairness, acceptance, and mutual respect for people of all sexual orientations and gender identities. The role of allies is critical to the work of creating a Jewish community that is inclusive, safe, and supports all Jewish children, teens, and adults to be fully themselves.

At Passover, it is the family’s responsibility to retell the story, to inspire each new generation to accept the task of living out our values, of remembering that we were once strangers, and therein find an obligation to those on the margins of our own societies. As gay and straight parents and family members of LGBTQ children, we invite you to join us in considering our role in assuring LGBTQ liberation for generations to come.

Who are the Four Allies? Which one are you?

1. The ally who asks what “LGBTQ” means: The first step to taking bold action and advocating on behalf of others is to approach with curiosity, humility, and openness. An ally is open to learning new things and challenging their own assumptions.

2. The ally who stands up for a friend: The lives of people we care about, our friends, family, and colleagues can be powerful catalysts for action.

3. The ally who speaks up about equality: When we speak out against injustice because it’s the right thing to do, regardless if someone we know and care about is affected, we act on behalf our core values.

4. The ally who comes out as an advocate to move equality forward: As allies, we are often insulated from the vulnerabilities that LGBTQ people face in the world. However coming out publicly as an ally can also mean taking a risk on behalf of the values and people we care about.

What are the Four Questions we could be asking ourselves? Consider these:

1. What other social movements for equality have you stood up for?
2. When have you been an ally or seen someone else be an ally?
3. What kind of ally would you like to be?
4. What are you risking by being an ally? What is on the line for you?

Jews read sections of the Torah each week, and these sections, known as parshiyot, inspire endless examination year after year. Each week we will bring you regular essays examining these portions from a queer perspective, drawn from the book Torah Queeries: Weekly Commentaries on the Hebrew Bible and the Torah Queeries online collection. This week, Amy Soule explores the many meanings of the Biblical imperative to keep the altar light burning.

Creative Commons/Nutmeg Designs

“The fire on the altar must be kept burning; it must not go out…The fire must be kept burning on the altar continuously; it must not go out.” (Leviticus 6:12-13)

In ancient times, these verses referred to the sacrifices people were making as an act of worship. Having a perpetual flame on the altar symbolized that God was being continually worshipped by our ancestors. Today we worship very differently, without making any animal sacrifices. Why do these verses remain relevant to our modern lives at all, let alone as liberal GLBT Jews?

Today we have an extremely modified version of a fire that is always lit. It manifests itself through the ner tamid (eternal light), a visible symbol in every synagogue. Some may treat this as ironic, since it helps represent God’s presence rather than any actions of our own that demonstrate God is perpetually worshipped, while others may call the eternal light “a symbol of a symbol” (Torah Queeries: Commentaries on the Torah), though it has great potential to be much more symbolic than any fire our ancestors kindled in ancient times.

We live in a world where it can prove easy to doubt God’s presence. Looking at the eternal light as we enter our places of worship can serve as a reminder that God will always be there to help us through everything we encounter during life’s tumultuous journey.

Something else that intrigues me about the mention of the eternal light in our parashah is that the terms translated into English as “on the altar” can also be read as “in him” according to the original Hebrew.

Looking at this alternative translation communicates a message that all of humankind should remember. We all have a light shining within that God has entrusted to us to nurture during our lifetime. Furthermore, no one should be led to feel they have to extinguish their light; God alone should be responsible for anyone being called home.

Some may look at the word eternal and be intimidated by it but making sure our lights go on doesn’t have to be a daunting mission. Tamid means always in modern Hebrew, but its meaning in biblical Hebrew is much more expansive.

According to biblical Hebrew, tamid can be translated as “performed regularly” or “necessitating regular maintenance.” Looking at it through this different lens can mean that we have to make time to nurture our souls every day. It can be hard to set aside any time to accomplish this but it’s necessary if we want to avoid “burning out” (whether that means depleting our energy reserves or actually thinking about, let alone attempting, and possibly succeeding at, suicide).

Others may fear that “eternal” means “unchanging” but it doesn’t have to. We can evolve while maintaining our inner light. Also, our light will be different according to the circumstances we’re in.

Sometimes our souls will be shining at maximum strength because we have achieved something significant or something has happened to lift us higher than we ever dreamed was possible.

Other times our light may seem like a flickering ember due to difficult contexts we are in. It is at these times that we have to strive toward matching our lights to the ones shining in our places of worship and ask God’s presence to come into our lives and help us through everything we are facing.

Looking at the verses about the eternal light in their whole context can indicate something else interesting. They seem to be connected to the sacrifices of gratitude and well-being that our ancestors offered many millennia ago.

According to this, maybe the light we’re not supposed to extinguish is the one of our gratitude. No matter our emotions, chances are we have something to be grateful for (perhaps our physical well-being, in keeping with the context of our Torah portion). If we can concentrate on that, maybe our internal light can slowly rekindle itself and grow strong once more.

Something else we can learn through analyzing the context the verses about the eternal light appear in is that they involve repetition. Our scripture is known for being sparse in its words; it doesn’t make any unnecessary repetitions. So why do we hear about the eternal light two times, let alone in consecutive verses?

One of our most revered sages (Rambam) states that the initial reference is directed toward the priest (making sure our leaders always have the right attitude toward their sacred profession) and the second one is directed toward the lay people (as a reminder to ensure the clergy don’t “burn out” through lack of enthusiasm for their jobs).

It’s easy for me to interpret this as saying that we are all responsible to help each other through negative experiences and making sure people never get to the level where they feel desperate. Having a strong, glowing light shouldn’t be a privilege reserved for some élite group of people; all of humankind deserves to live according to their maximum potential and anyone can help anyone else, no matter why they may be different.

As GLBT people, we are all affected by suicide. Many of us, and our peers, have seriously considered suicide due to depression instigated by experiences we’ve had because of our difference(s) and many more have been impacted by it since it has taken the life of people we care very strongly about. According to that, due to the message of our parashah, we are called to help through any means possible.

Doing this doesn’t have to be hard; sometimes, doing a random act of kindness can help people way more than they may expect. I’m not sure how many stories I’ve heard about a random hug or other similar action saving somebody from suicide or self-injury.

At the very beginning of the Torah, God said “Let there be light.” It then goes on to state that visible light (the sun, moon and stars) were created later. Perhaps our Torah portion helps explain this discrepancy.

Maybe the light God created right off the top was the light that shines within each human being. It may be invisible but that doesn’t mean it’s not supposed to be as strong as possible. God wants everyone to let their light shine as best it can. Make time for yourself, get inspiration wherever possible and help others, since it’s not always easy to go it alone.

Creative Common/Chang’r

But we’ve got the story all wrong. I’ve been saying this for years, poo-pooing people’s feel-good glow of freedom during this season, but no one wants to listen to a curmudgeon during Pesach.

I realize I’m being a buzz kill, but the Passover story is not about liberation at all. We conveniently truncate the line, “Let my people go.” That’s not even the end of the sentence. Every single time the line appears in Torah, it is followed with the words, “That they may serve me.” God was not interested in the Israelites’ unfettered freedom. The story is not about liberation. The story is about servitude. God freed the Israelites for the explicit and solitary purpose of allowing them to serve a different master.

As the liberation-loving people that we are, we have co-opted the famous phrase. Once I realized how prominent the second half of that line factored into the story, I got a funny feeling, like the first time I learned that our American ancestors on the Mayflower did not weather the Atlantic Ocean in search of separation of church and state. That’s another story we’ve stripped of its complexity, rendering it virtually unrecognizable from its historical truth.

So what are we to learn from the Exodus, we queer people who fancy ourselves modern Israelites suffering under a stuffy heteronormativity, strangers in a strange land?

For one thing, I think the phrase, “That they may serve me” is helpful to keep in mind. Obviously I am not suggesting that queerfolk become religious. But we can be mindful that we, like the Israelites, are not truly seeking unfettered freedom. When the Israelites were freed in order to serve God, we were freed to serve the greater master, the greater ideal. We were no longer enslaved to a life of serving the lesser thing. This is truly the goal of LGBTQ liberation — not that we may live without rules, but that we may live under a rule greater than the rules of patriarchal establishments, homophobic laws, gender binaries, and safety concerns.

Another relevant aspect of this story is what happens after the climactic splitting of the sea. Once free, the Israelites immediately begin bickering: “We’re thirsty. I’m tired of manna. Where did Moses go? Oh, look — something shiny!” For the ancient Israelites and for modern people, the gain of privilege comes with a price: loss of perspective. Once free the Israelites lose their sense of unity, their willingness to work together for a greater ideal. Scenes follow in which tribes brandish swords against fellow tribes. The dramatic exit from Egypt becomes a footnote in a larger narrative of bloodshed. The freed wanderers wring their hands and wonder, “Is this truly better than dying in Egypt?” Around this time every year, rabbis across the world will denounce the Israelites for their ingratitude, but I think it’s a valid question.

That one of humanity’s earliest liberation tales so pointedly illustrates the cyclical nature of liberation and oppression is a sad statement on human nature. Long before queer politics drove home the point, the book of Exodus taught us that privilege is easy to become blind to when you are the one holding it. It’s no coincidence that straight white able-bodied cismen are the least likely to use the word “privilege.” They are the least likely to know they have it.

Sadly, LGBTQ communities are at times blind to the privileges that we hold, and too willing to wield them in a way that harms others, despite our own status as second-class citizens. We are too often a movement that favors the white, cisgendered, middle class. Our most visible advocates portray our cause using traditional family structures — monogamy, marriage, and kids — while leaving behind people whose ideas of love and family make us uncomfortable or push our limits.  This is not a queer ideal. And it’s not a Jewish ideal either.

Moses’ negotiations with Pharaoh can be instructive to queer politics. For several chapters Moses and Pharaoh negotiate the terms of the Israelites’ release. Pharaoh tries just letting the men go, then just the adults, then all of the people but not the animals. Did Moses rewrite the bill, deleting any reference to the bathroom needs of hoofed animals, and then get his proposal passed? No. In a stirring image of inclusivity, Moses tells him, “Not a hoof shall remain behind.”

Pesach is a holiday of liberation, yes, but it is based on a story with a greater vision. It is a story that reminds us to ask ourselves if the values that we are serving are truly the greatest values possible. The story of Exodus provides a yearly reminder to search ourselves for privileges invisible to our own eyes, so that we may see our power over others before we turn liberation into a footnote in a never-ending story of oppression. And Pesach is a yearly reminder that we do not negotiate at the expense of others, that liberation is not a zero sum game, that civil rights do not exist in fixed quantities to be doled out sparingly, and that, in our journeys toward freedom, we are not allowed to leave a single hoof behind.

Here’s a selection of LGBTQ haggadot that can be easily downloaded and brought to your seder table. While all of these resources provide lots of LGBTQ material, some may be more appropriate for your seder. If you’re interested in crafting your own seder, consider any haggadah designed to be “open source,” which will easily allow you to skip or add sections. If you’re looking for a more conventional seder that simply includes LGBTQ content, look for a haggadah that describes itself as “traditional.”

If you use any of them, let us know how it went.

The Stonewall Seder is the result of several reinterpretations of a ritual originally designed for Gay and Lesbian Pride weekend. Now it’s a full seder, developed by a committee of laypeople at B’nai Jeshurun in New York City. Read the “user’s manual” and some historical background here.

Developed by JQ International in collaboration with Hebrew Union College’s Institute for Judaism & Sexual Orientation, the JQ International GLBT Passover Haggadah integrates LGBTQ Passover traditions within the spirit of the traditional Passover experience, including an LGBTQ-specific seder plate, the four LGBTQ children, the Prophetess Miriam’s Cup, and much more.

Ma Nishtana: A Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, Ally Haggadah follows the traditional structure of the Passover Seder but contains readings and discussion questions pertaining to LGBTQ identity and life.

Creative Commons/Rachel Barenblat

Rabbi Rachel Barenblat’s haggadah – also known as The Velveteen Rabbi’s Haggadah for Pesach – is a thorough resource all on its own, but as an “open source haggadah,” you, as a reader or participant, are encouraged to help write it anew each year by adding your own material.

Still not sure that these haggadot are right for you? Try making your own! Head over to haggadot.com to assemble various sections into a haggadah that works perfectly for your seder! There’s an entire section of LGBTQ resources you can include.

Plus, you can join in the work on The Neverending Haggadah – “the world’s largest crowd-sourced haggadah!” Add your story to the growing number of modern twists on an ancient tale.

March 28 | Colorado:
Keshet’s Queer Seder
Want the full LGBTQ Passover experience? Join us in Denver on March 28 for our annual Queer Seder. This event combines a traditional seder experience with exciting and creative new traditions. Registration closes on March 22.

March 26 | Wasington DC:
Parting the Waters: A Prop 8 Passover for Love, Liberation, and Justice
March 26 marks not only the second seder, but the challenge to Prop 8 being formally argued at the Supreme Court. Celebrate at Parting the Waters: A Prop 8 Passover for Love, Liberation and Justice, a night that promises to be a lively social justice seder focused on marriage equality for a multi-faith, multiracial, intergenerational, LGBT and allied crowd!

Stay tuned for our haggah insert on being an LGBTQ ally!

Creative Commons/Alexander Smolianitski

The blessing that one recites before studying Torah is:

Baruch ata adonai, elohaynu melech ha-olam, asher kiddishanu b’mitzvotav, v’tzivanu la-asok b’divray torah.

Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Sovereign of the universe, Who makes us holy with mitzvot and gives us the mitzvah of engaging in the words of Torah.

We don’t ask the Divine blessing for obeying Torah, or hearing Torah, or even reading Torah, but rather for engaging with Torah. It is the process of engagement – the passionate give and take – that is sacred, not the specific content. In a world in which biblical fundamentalism is on the rise, it’s important to note that the Jewish relationship with our sacred text is interpretive. Our task is to take Torah seriously, not necessarily to agree with its literal content. Sometimes when we study Torah, we are struck by the eternal quality of its message; at other times its words seem tightly bound to a particular cultural moment and place. Torah is both ancient and contemporary – that is its gift.

This week’s portion deals with the human urge to connect with God. It details several different kinds of animal offerings for the altar. The offerings symbolize profound human feelings such as gratitude, awe, happiness, well-being, remorse, repentance, and faith. In ancient Israelite society, different events or circumstances called for specific animal sacrifices carried out in the ancient Temple in Jerusalem according to the ritual guidelines spelled out in this week’s portion. Since the final destruction of the Temple in the year 70 CE, Rabbinic Judaism has decreed that prayer, study, and loving-kindness by ordinary people has replaced the detailed ritual of priestly sacrifice. Thus, this portion illustrates both the timeless quality of Judaism, the human soul’s yearning for connection with the Divine, and the evolution of Jewish practice through time, in this case the change from animal sacrifice to a different mode of expression.

Understanding that the Torah is paradoxically both eternal and time-bound is a core insight for queer Jews. We know that some of the Torah’s words seem homophobic, sexist, insensitive to disabled people, violent, and sometimes merely of a far away time and society. It is tempting to turn away from Torah altogether. Yet, like our forebears with their offerings, we yearn to connect, to engage, to be part of our people and its ancient truths.

Ironically, it is this very reflection, our self-awareness of our complex relationship with Torah, that is the holy sacrifice of our day. We bring to Torah the same profound human struggles – our feelings of desire, shame, pride, loss, hope, and thanksgiving – that underlie the sacrificial system described in this portion. But we do not live in the world of the ancients with its ancient rites. We live in the world of communication.

So it is through our mindful study, our discussions with others, and our engagement with the past and the present, that we catch a glimpse of God.

Creative Common/Paolo Crosetto

In January 2013, the author of this post attended a shabbaton organized by Eshel. These reflections originally ran on his blog, Orthodox, Gay, and Married Jew. We’re grateful for the opportunity to share his powerful post.

Like angels in the sky
in a garden full of glory
the galaxies so brilliantly related
ultimately high
on that first page of our story

The shabbaton started with davening on Friday night. I had been to support groups in the past, both for JQY or Jewish Queer Youth (an organization based in NYC whose primary objective is to give support to young men and woman struggling with issues related to being LGBT; please see www.jqyouth.org for more information) and a non-religious (and non-agenda driven) support group for gay married men (if you would like information about this group, please email me). When I went to these groups, which had about 10-20 people, I was scared and overwhelmed.

Fast forward to Eshel. Walking in on 120 or more people made me feel like a deer in headlights. At first I stood in the back of the shul and observed. I couldn’t bring myself to sit down. As davening continued with the singing of kabbalas Shabbos, I suddenly found myself feeling the warmth of the room rush through my body. There were opening remarks that further made me feel like I was finding a new family.

By the time Maariv came along I gathered the courage and decided to find my way to the middle of the shul. As I walked toward one of the few open seats I was greeted with wide and welcoming smiles. People vigorously shook my hand and said good Shabbos. I was part of something rich. A feeling of camaraderie took hold of me that I had never felt before.

So listen brother, listen friend
Just a little smile, a helping hand
And we all will find a loving kind humanity
We must teach our children to
Treat your fellow friends like they were you
And then we all find some peace of mind and unity

I found myself thinking, “How can most of the world and specifically many in the Orthodox Jewish community shun us?” This was more beautiful a davening than I had experienced in many years. Growing up ultra-orthodox I had davened in the frumest [most observant] of yeshivos and shuls in the world. The achdus [unity] I felt here far surpassed other davening experiences.

How can the rabbis be judgmental of people? People who kept a secret and burden to themselves in pain and agony for most of their lives? People who come together in a show of love with struggles a heterosexual person can never even imagine or relate to? Where is their heart? They pity the agunah who can’t get married (but potentially has the ability to). They pity the world’s other sorrows. It is more comfortable to look away and be silent when it is something that cannot be related to.

Ages rushing by
Writing chapters full of sorrow
Webs of self destruction, we are weaving
Because if we don’t even try
There’s no hope for our tomorrow
So what’s it all worth if we are not achieving?

There were workshops that educated and inspired. My favorite was the rebuttal of a recent Rosh Yeshiva‘s essay on homosexuality that was both factually wrong and hashkafically incorrect. I humbly suggest “al tadin es chavercha ad shetagiya l’mkomo.” This translates to “Do not judge a friend until you reach his place,” commonly known as, until you walk in his shoes.

There was a beautiful and intimate program led by rabbis, professionals, and community leaders. This allowed small groups of people to talk about feelings that arose over the weekend on a very personal level. I was inspired and heart broken by things that came up in that group.

Lastly I wanted to talk about the closing sessions. Perhaps this was the most moving of the entire experience for me. As the attendees entered the auditorium, everyone was asked to create a circle. Everyone interlocked with the people on both sides of them. Either they put their arm around the next persons shoulder or they held their neighbors hand. This became a circle of love. A circle of intimate connection. A circle of a people, many struggling to fit in on some level having an electric burst of energy pass from soul to soul.

We sang songs as one. I imagined Hashem smiling down at us and accepting our songs up to the depth of his heavens.

One of the leaders then spoke and thanked various individuals who spearheaded the Shabbos event.

He then said something that moved me to tears and I cry as I write this. I paraphrase, but this was the idea. He first talked about the strength of the people who came to the event. He talked about how brave they are because many did it at risk to themselves on various levels. Here is where I choked up. He asked everyone to take a moment to think about the people that could not be there. People who are scared. People who suffer quietly and have no one to turn to. I added in my mind, people who fear their communities, families and friends reaction to their potential disclosure. People who end up conforming to society’s norms. They live out their years in various stages of pain and denial, yearning for an intimacy they will never have. I hear from too many people who reach out to me through this blog. People who are married. People who are single and looking for love and guidance. Lastly, people who are single and dating (women). The married people talk about how their families feel their depression. They don’t understand. Husbands or wives not understanding the lack of intimacy that is being shown them. They feel caged and frightened. Single men and woman that are confused and have many questions. These people are your brothers, sisters, parents, children, and close friends. I do not judge. I can only speak from my experience and what people have shared.

One year ago that was me. I had lived 35+ years, married, frum and with a pain that pierced the depth of my heart. I was terrified to go to the Eshel shabbaton. This year I went. I went with the world knowing my secret. I went with a million pound burden lifted off my shoulder. I left exhilarated, knowing that I am loved for who I am, not for who the world wanted me to be.

When the leader asked people to step into the circle to share, I was scared. I knew what I wanted to share but I couldn’t gather the strength. Finally as they were about done, I stepped in and shared the feelings I shared above. Before I could even finish, there was a beautiful and rousing sound of applause that gave me a final burst of emotion.

Children, teenagers, adults of any age, please know that there are many people who were in your shoes. Know that you are not alone. Reach out to people that can help you and love you. You cannot learn to love others until you love yourself. Learn to love yourself. Release the burden.

I left the event hugging and kissing the new friends I made, feeling inspired, a sense of responsibility and for the first time in a while a surge of hope.

One thing makes me smile
now at last a happy ending
a universal union undivided
just a little while
we will join the angels singing
peace and love across the world united.

Lyrics are from Unity by Mordechai Ben David

Eshel will be holding a retreat for Orthodox parents of LGBT children, April 26-28. You can find more information and register here.

These teens have shared their written words, and now we’re excited to for you to meet them in this short video! We’ll continue to run regular columns form LGBTQ and ally teens — stay tuned!

Creative Common/David Burton

In the traditional Jewish community, queer people are often asked “What is your justification for being a queer Jew?” as if queer Jews are a controversial idea rather than a life form. This question may in part stem from an internalization of the model of Sinai, in which ideas are set forth or decried based on covenantal aims. Yet in the parshiyot of Vayakhel-Pekudei, we find a different model for what it means to be a sacred community, one radically different than the model we see at Sinai, and one that tends toward acknowledging people as bodies as well as ideas.

Moses has been instructed to create a mishkan, a dwelling place for the Divine. He asks the people to bring gifts of precious metal, colored yarn, tanned animals skins and jewels to beautify the shrine. The pattern for the mishkan has been set by heaven, yet it is human wisdom and physical activity that weaves the pattern into a multifaceted reality. We are told “all the women whose hearts stirred them up in wisdom spun the goats’ hair” (Exodus 35:26) and “Moses summoned Bezalel and Oholiav [the chief artists] and every man who was wise of heart.” This wise-heartedness allows the people to bring the plans for the sacred shrine to life. Unlike Sinai, when the role of the people is to receive, here the role of the people is to give, and for each to give a unique and personal gift. The design Moses has received cannot live except through the hands of the givers, workers, and artists who join together to weave, shape, build and forge all the necessary pieces of the mishkan-puzzle. When the mishkan is built, it holds something of each person in it.

The words in our parshiyot suggest that “wise-heartedness,” the knowing that comes from inside, has something to contribute to the body of sacred knowledge. Queer people, like other marginalized people, have often spent a great deal of time becoming wise-hearted: knowing and skillful in understanding the workings of their bodies, hearts and spirits. They have had no choice: this skill is a necessary defense against the many people who misunderstand, demonize, or ignore them. Only by knowing themselves can they accurately know which of the images others have thrust on them are false. The gifts they bring to communal understanding of self, sexuality, love and community are powerful. Their embodied wisdom is not simply an idea to take or leave, it is an expertise in being, one that the community needs in order to build.

Indeed, one way all of us become wise-hearted is by learning how to love. We learn this from our parshiyot as well. At the center of the mishkan, on either side of the most sacred altar, are two forms, two cherubim, facing one another across the sacred emptiness above the altar (Exodus 37:7-9). A cherub is a kind of angelic creature, and the name “keruv” or cherub, means “one who draws close” or “one who is intimate.” The Talmud tells us that these cherubim are male and female, and further, that they are embracing in an act of lovemaking. However, it is noteworthy that the Torah does not specify the gender of the cherubim, only that they are glancing at one another while also sheltering one another with their wings. Although the exact spot at which the Divine is said to rest is empty, it is framed by bodies in an act of union and eyes in the act of seeing one another. As Bible scholar Avivah Zornberg noted in a lecture, “God is at the point where the two gazes intersect.” The cherubim, like those who give to the mishkan, provide a throne for the Divine through an embodied act of love. They too teach us about the wisdom we gain from the experience of intimacy with self and other.

When the various cloths, objects and utensils are finally completed, Moses sets up the shrine. The Shekhinah, the Divine Presence, enters the shrine in such thick tangibility that no one else can enter (Exodus 40:34-35). In a sense, confronted with the reality of what the people have made, God becomes a body, a specific entity in a specific time and place, just as humans are specific to time and place. God has learned from, and nested in, the gifts of the people. It appears that the magic of chesed, of self-transcending love, has worked; the mishkan really becomes a receptacle for the sacred. The Shekhinah, who is said to be the sum total of the community of Israel, takes up residence in the place prepared for Her by the entire nation.

Sinai has a great deal to teach us about how to act in the world, but so does the mishkan. The mishkan, with its freewill gifts, its dedicated artists, and its entwined cherubim, teaches us the power of embodied and specific love. If these parshiyot could speak to queer people, they might ask, not “What is your justification for being?” but “What gifts are you bringing to sanctify and beautify the altar?” And this is indeed the right question.

Jenni Person and her kids

Books have fundamental power for our kids. Story time is a way to compellingly deliver the values we wish to instill in them. Books come alive, ideas flooding into minds, fueling connections and other ideas, feelings and sense memories. Expand the power of these books with the participation of a parent and children’s literature knows no bounds. And so I seek books that reflect and reinforce the reality and true diversity of my kids’ world, which we can share together. So, as I’ve written about in columns and blogs before, it’s always been important to me to have plenty of books about Jewish families and experiences. Then within that, we need winter scenes that involve palm trees and beach rather than snow, because, like other Jewish kids here in Florida, my kids don’t know from a white Chanukah and they do tashlich barefoot on the beach.

A few years ago I looked for books that truly reflected our community, which happily has lots of LGBT families and single-parents-by-choice. I was frustrated back then by a lack of books with two moms or two dads. Those that did exist seemed more instructive and less story-driven. They were about what it means to have two moms, rather than a story about a kid who just happened to have two moms. I declared back then that this was outdated – that gay parenting is no longer such a novelty – and that a real need exists for kids’ books that feature kids with LGBT parents simply as a fact, not a lesson. These books weren’t showing my kids reality as it exists for them, and it wasn’t giving me a chance to help instill this basic value in them: our families look different from each other, and that’s not just not a problem – it’s a part of our lives, and a nice one, at that.

Which brings me back to Purim Superhero, a new book published by Kar-Ben Publishing, and the winner of Keshet’s national book-writing context. When I first heard of Keshet’s contest for a Jewish children’s book featuring a queer family, I was absolutely thrilled for all of the reasons above. Now that I see the finished product, all I want to do is celebrate it and get it into the hands of every Jewish family and school in the world, and I hope there are more to follow. [Editors note: Readers can donate a copy of the book via the Keshet website.]

In the book, main character Nate turns to his parents, Daddy and Abba, for unconditional love, support, and problem solving. Peer pressure dictates that he must be a superhero like his friends for Purim. But encouragement from, and the intellectual freedom of, his family teaches Nate that he can get creative with the social standards and define his own rules. Oh, and by the way, Abba and Daddy are both men, heading up a household together amid lots of other families at school and synagogue. For me another big plus here is that the book goes even further to abolish hetero-normative family structure and binary gender measures and roles as Daddy and Abba also seamlessly take on traditionally female roles of household sewing and being a teacher.

The Purim Superhero is refreshing and empowering and I look forward to more books like it.

Jews read sections of the Torah each week, and these sections, known as parshiyot, inspire endless examination year after year. Each week we will bring you regular essays examining these portions from a queer perspective, drawn from the book Torah Queeries: Weekly Commentaries on the Hebrew Bible and the Torah Queeries online collection. This week, Rabbi Jacob Staub looks  at the narrative of the Golden Calf in search of a welcoming tradition.

Creative Common/ParaScubaSailor

I remember vividly the way, as a nine-year-old student at an Orthodox yeshiva in the Bronx, I was troubled when we first studied Parashat Ki Tisa. How could the Israelites have been so myopically impatient?! They had been witness to the plagues. They had been delivered out of Egyptian bondage. They had sung God’s praises on the shore of the Sea while watching their Egyptian pursuers drown. And now, asked to wait a mere forty days while Moses ascended Mount Sinai to receive the Torah, they couldn’t wait? And. . . they needed a golden calf to worship?

I was an exemplary yeshiva bochur, at the top of my class, the pride of my teachers. My parents made no secret about having named me Jacob Joseph so that I would be a great rabbi like Rabbi Jacob Joseph, and no thoughts of rebellion had yet arisen in my mind. And so, I assented to my teacher’s traditional interpretation of the narrative: Aaron was right in characterizing the people as “bent on evil.” (Exodus 32:22) They had already murmured about the shortage of water (15:22-25) and bread (16:2-36). They were a stiff-necked people with a slave mentality. The Israelites could not enter the Promised Land until those born into slavery had died out in the wilderness and a new generation, born in freedom, had emerged.

A year or two away from my first conscious reflections on my attraction to other boys, I nevertheless internalized the message. We are sinners and descendants of sinners. We are fortunate to have been chosen to receive the Torah, and only through obedience to its commandments can we overcome our base inclinations. Otherwise, we are doomed to our sinful lives.

Decades later, long after I had become a Reconstructionist rabbi, this parashah continued to trouble me, year after year. I even published an article about it. (“Bless Us, Our Father: Parenting and Our Images of God,” The Reconstructionist [Spring 2000].) I would become angry at the God portrayed in the story. The Israelites, who were presumably several months into a new form of worship of an imageless God, revert to their prior practices, under the guidance of Aaron — who does end up Kohen Gadol (High Priest). As a result, God wants to wipe out the entire people. Moses convinces God not to do so, and instead, Moses directs the Levites to slaughter 3,000 people, followed by a God-sent plague.

If such a God (or Moses, for that matter) were to come to me for counseling, I would recommend anger management therapy! Clearly, the people who authored this text experienced God as an autocratic, ruthless tribal chief — not anyone in whose image I would want to be created. I would prefer to worship and emulate a Being with some compassion, who forgives our limitations, supports us as we falter, and calls us back as we stray.

I yearn for an image of God who forgives a sinful people, but I yearn even more for an image of God who embraces difference rather than condemns it. Moses, up on the mountain, was teaching a kind of worship without molten gold calves and joyful dancing. Some of the Israelites in the valley below were worshipping God by dancing around a golden calf. Can we imagine a story in which Moses respects difference rather than exterminating it?

One definition of the verb “to queer” is “to question all norms.” If we are going to queer Jewish traditions, there is no more important and formidable place to start than at Ma’amad Har Sinai — the narrative of the Sinaitic revelation of the Torah. According to rabbinic tradition, it was here that the 613 mitzvoth were commanded, here that the one, true way (halakhah) to worship the one, true God was revealed. This is the text that provides the foundation for the assertion that there are divinely commanded norms — and the mandate for enforcing those norms, even unto death.

Yet, at the very moment when Moses was receiving the Torah, the text reveals that there were other alternatives. Later interpretations have labored hard to explain the magnitude of the sin of the Golden Calf. The Israelites, however, were not such terrible people. According to rabbinic interpretation, only they, among all of the 70 nations, were so virtuous as to respond, “Na’aseh venishma”/ “We accept the Torah from God sight unseen and commit to doing whatever God commands us before we hear the details.” And they were following the instructions of Aaron, Moses’ brother, soon to be anointed High Priest of Israel, (32:2-6), contrary to his semi-truthful account when Moses later grills him (32:22-24).

It is not so difficult, then, to imagine that the Israelites were worshipping in ways that they thought were acceptable and were surprised by the fervor of Moses’ condemnation. And not so farfetched to imagine that Moses might have descended after forty days, delighted in his people’s enthusiasm, and patiently set out to teach them a new way of worship that was still unfamiliar to them.

Why was Moses so short-tempered and intolerant? According to many contemporary Bible scholars, he wasn’t. Five hundred years later, after the Assyrian conquest of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, the leaders of the Kingdom of Judah set out to write a history that blamed Israel’s defeat on the sins of King Jeroboam, who had made two golden calves for the temples in Bethel and Dan (I Kings 12:25-31). Until then, worship had taken place throughout the land in local shrines; now, worship became centralized in Jerusalem, where the leadership could control it. In the wake of the traumatic Assyrian invasion, difference and diversity was suppressed — even retroactively back to the retelling of the Sinai narrative.

So, Moses was portrayed as intolerant by writers who, in their own time, were seeking license to stamp out contemporary diversity. We have no record of what Moses might really have been like. Perhaps he was patient and forgiving. Perhaps, his experience as an outsider in the palace of Pharoah, in the Land of Midian, and even among the Israelites (with whom he had never lived) sensitized him to difference and softened his heart. We don’t know that he was, but neither do we know that he wasn’t.

I close with a poem that I wrote several years ago on the topic (published first in Zeek [July 2005] and more recently in Ashe: Journal of Experimental Spirituality 5/4 [Winter 2006]: 408-409).

Golden Calf

Jacob J. Staub

From the valley below, the ebullient notes of celebrants,
the beat of tambourines liberated after four hundred years of abuse.

Sing unto the One,
Who smites the tyrant,
Who hears the cries of the oppressed,
Who parts the Sea and plants the seeds for generations yet unborn.

Ana, pool your gold. Adonai, give it to God.
Hoshi’a, smelt it down. Na, cast the throne.
Ashira, link your arms. Ladonai, circle the fire.
Ki, spin into oblivion.
Ga’oh, let go, let go, let go.
Ga’ah, God is One, we are one.
With broken bodies of former slaves, we undulate,
following the Source enthroned into the wilderness of promise.

And up over the ridge, the Levites wait, in formation,
swords on thighs, servants of the Lord, privileged
to follow orders, to do as they are told.
A martial clan descended from the heroes of the Battle of Shechem,
they wear their forebears’ medals proudly.
They have been instructed in the proper use of herbs and oils,
in the dire consequences of disobedience, of initiative, of openheartedness.
In formation, they await the signal from Moses, down from the mountain,
to charge, to slay three thousand defenseless, spent from a night of celebration.

Moses claims that You love only him,
that we were spared because he intervened,
that You do not like our offering.
Moses, who has never seen Your face—
not in the silent, steamy eyes of Tzipporah,
from whom he stays cloistered,
not in the bloody foreskins of his sons,
whom he ignores in the name of his holy work.
Moses, who doesn’t touch.
Moses, who doesn’t dance.
Moses, the bridegroom of blood.

Guide him please, Holy One of Compassion.
We don’t need another Pharaoh to lead us into freedom.
Love him doubly, forgive him his wrath.
He was taken as an infant from his mother.
Only You know what befell the lad in the palace,
but below, all we see is his sweltering rage.
Otherwise, as You surely can foresee,
generations will mistake
fervent worship for idolatry.

To celebrate Purim this year, we bring you two very different Purim-themed, drag-related stories.

The first is a retelling of the Purim story… by some very funny drag queens. The Purim story as you’ve never heard it before!

Check out part one here:

And part two here:

Plus, check out “High Healing: A Purim Message,” a 2006 send-up dvar torah by the Rebbetzin Hadassah Gross, the drag persona of Amichai Lau-Lavie. The piece originally ran as a part of the Torah Queeries collection. The Rebbetzin was writing about the Conservative movement before the decision to ordain out gay and lesbian rabbis, and her writing delivers the promised “kick in the tuchis!”

High Healing: A Purim Message

This morning, just after a fitting for my Purim gown, I visited the “closed-door” meeting of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Conservative Movement’s Rabbinical Assembly, a rather tedious affair, even with the agenda focused on as flamboyant an issue as gay rights. As an observant, Orthodox woman, I was pleased to observe the moral leadership of the committee’s rabbis, and I was impressed with their deep commitment to Jewish law. How well they take care of Judaism, I noted, and yet, I also wondered to myself, how well are they taking care of the Jews?

Perhaps the Conservative Movement’s rabbis can learn a lesson about responding to people’s need for modernity from Yisrael Meir Lau, Israel’s former Chief Ashkenazic Rabbi and my esteemed friend, who held a press conference this morning in Tel Aviv to promote a new Kosher McDonalds chain in Israel. The new restaurants will have blue signs, not the usual red, making it easier for those of us who keep kosher and are starved for new attractions to locate these safe dens in Israel’s malls. Rabbi Lau said: “Blue is the sky, blue is the prayer shawl. Blue is the flag of Israel. Blue is not red. There must be a clear difference, a sharp difference.”

I too love blue, and am deeply moved by the rabbi’s poetry and conviction, as well as his dedication to focusing on the important issues – meeting the people where they are and with what they want – McDonalds, sadly, in this case. But the bigger picture here is what matters to me – the insistence on the fundamentals of Judaism while being flexible to the needs of the times. Perhaps the Conservative rabbis can take an example from these blue signs and look for creative solutions to their halachic challenges?

Not that I am comparing Kosher McBurgers to gay Conservative rabbis, of course, but I am struck with these two stories, how “sharply different” they are while also very similar. In your bed or on your plate – what is “in” and what is “out”? Red or blue, kosher or treif, heterosexual and queer, Prada or Gucci – everyone is obsessed with labels. Certainly there is a time to honor labels and boundaries – but there is also a time to peel away the label and reveal the surprises that cannot be labeled, or that do not fit snugly into “small,” “medium,” or “large.” Purim night is upon us – the perfect opportunity to lose the labels, let loose, and put the fun back in fundamentalism – in strict accordance with Jewish law! This holiday is, in my opinion, the holiest one of the year. Although often neglected, Purim is dedicated to the courageous peeling away of labels, unmasking the safety of the familiar and entering the delicious territory of the unknown. Oh, how I love Purim!

I want to encourage each and every one of you – saint or sinner – to piously observe the important laws of Purim – especially the ones that ask us to go beyond the law, peel the label, turn the table, and drink the night away. Yes. Drink, kinderlach, or whatever it takes to blur the differences until you don’t know the difference between blue or red, Mordechai or Haman, Jew or Gentile, man or woman, straight or gay, meshugena or mentsch. From this upside-down folly, taken seriously, much redemption is born to the soul! Some Kabbalists (my third and fourth husbands, for example) taught that in the future days, the only two holidays to remain on the Jewish calendar will be Yom Kippur and Purim – two days that are complete opposites but are both days of sacred transformation. Our ancestors understood that the only way to live with laws is to break them from time to time – or nothing will ever change.

Purim is also my birthday. Named after Queen Esther (whose real name is Hadassah), I was taught early on in life to honor my inner queen, glamorous and proud, bold and loud. This Purim, I want to encourage you too to come out of your skin, your closet, and your familiar face, and to walk in someone else’s shoes for the night. This is the lesson of Purim. Imagine wearing a cross. Or cross-dressing. So many opportunities for creative role-play! Discover your inner queen, or policeman, or geisha, or even your inner gay cowboy, or Conservative rabbi! And of course – lubricate. The Purim law is – everything in moderation, including moderation.

I am planning to dance in the streets of Manhattan this Purim, and to crash the party at the Conservative Movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary. Why not? The Conservative Movement needs some style, and a kick in the tuchis, and I have the perfect heels, Prada of course.

Creative Commons/Nedral

Parashat Terumah opens with G-d speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai and commanding him in meticulous detail regarding the construction of the Mishkan, or “tabernacle,” the portable dwelling place of G-d’s presence that the Israelites could promptly assemble, dismantle, transport, and then reassemble during their sojourn in the desert.

G-d tells Moses: “Daber el Bnai Yisrael veyikchu li terumah me’et kol ish asher yidvenu libo tikchu et terumati./ Speak to the Children of Israel and have them bring Me an offering. Take My offering from everyone whose heart impels him to give.” (Exodus 25:2) Hashem continues by commanding Moses to acquire fifteen materials for the construction of the Mishkan — each item a gift or offering (terumah), and each to be brought by someone “whose heart impels him.” The offerings include gold, silver, and copper; blue, purple, and red-dyed wool; flax, goat hair, and animal skins; acacia wood, olive oil, spices, and gems. This lengthy description of the offerings necessary for the Mishkan emphasizes the multiplicity and diversity of color and material, a symbolic acknowledgment that sacred community cannot exist without embracing the unique experiences and identities of all Jews.

The glaring contrast between the luxurious aesthetics describing the Mishkan and the profound displacement of our people is intentional. It is at precisely this juncture in our history that our people achieved what many Jewish sages characterize as the height of human achievement. The Mishkan becomes the standard from which melachah, (constructive activities prohibited on Shabbat and holidays) and thereby major halachot (Jewish laws) concerning Shabbat, are derived.

Why does the construction of the Mishkan occur during this period of strife and disaffection? What motivating force drives the desire to give offering to Hashem at the height of exile? It is the same drive that propels gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, genderqueer, and intersex (GLB/TGI) Jewish refugees from oppressive communal environments to renew the empty realms of their hearts by turning to Hashem, transforming derelict emotional landscapes into the Binyan Adei Ad (everlasting home) that their souls crave.

While a superficial glance at Parashat Terumah may give us the misleading impression that it is simply a verbose list of materials and building instructions, these lavish descriptions serve a profound purpose: to remind us that even in the midst of the most severe and abiding wilderness, we not only continue to be bound by G-d’s commandments, but often find ourselves in greater need of them than before. Two of the most powerful verses in this parasha are G-d telling Moses “Ve’asu li mikdash veshachanti betocham/ They shall make Me a sanctuary and I will dwell among them” (Exodus 25:8) and “Veno’adeti lecha sham/ I will commune with you there.” (Exodus 25:22) This entire parasha is a prescription for allowing the Jewish people to receive Hashem’s tender loving presence during hard times!

The weekly maqaam (a type of melody) we use in several Mizrahi (Jews of Middle Eastern origin) traditions provides us with melodies and tunes to express the main theme and emotional state of each parasha. The maqaam for Parashat Terumah, Maqaam Hoseni, (hosn, meaning beauty or splendor) focuses on the expression of beauty. This maqaam allows us to transcend the often bleak situations of our physical realities by evoking the lush qualities of the Mishkan, thereby emphasizing the rich possibilities of our spiritual lives. This message of transcendence resonates powerfully with many Jews who struggle to reconcile traditional Jewish observance with self-affirmation as GLB/TGI people.

In my outreach work as an observant Jew, I receive frequent phone calls from people who feel abandoned by G-d, whose inner emotional landscapes invoke images of that same wilderness in which the Israelites found themselves. The psychological “homes” of these callers have been devastated by the rejections and aspersions they have received from their communities. While other callers report unexpected, positive responses and affirmation from their rabbis, loved ones, and community members, it is the former group, whose spiritual needs seem most dire, with which I am most concerned.

Cast out of familiar territory, these Jews often find themselves wandering in a spiritual desert. More liberal religious environments fail to satisfy many of them, because they crave the intensity and lifestyle immersion of traditional Jewish experience. Yet returning to their previous religious environments would require negation of self, disconnection from the very spiritual nakedness and sincerity that form the basis for a meaningful relationship with G-d. So these Jews find themselves adrift, traveling far from past sources of religious nourishment in search of a place in which they can integrate their psychosocial and spiritual selves toward the achievement of wholeness and well-being.

Many of the GLB/TGI Jews who contact me have renounced religious observance altogether, expressing anger at G-d for the bigotry they have experienced in Jewish communities. Yet in Parashat Terumah, Hashem makes the potent assertion that it is precisely during moments of rejection and despair that prayer, relationship with the Divine, and spiritual observances are essential to restoring our dignity. The rage and pain that so many people express often deepens their sense of isolation. Yet it is not Hashem who has spurned them; it is not Hashem who has cruelly propelled them from the sheltering warmth of their social networks. The harmful actions of other people are not direct statements of Divine Will, regardless of assertions to that effect by those who inflict emotional and spiritual damage upon others in the guise of religiosity. In Parashat Terumah, G-d offers these embittered outcasts the gift of a safe space, filled with luxurious beauty and sustenance, to nourish them as they journey in search of places where their values as GLB/TGI people are not pitted against their devotion to Jewish observance.

This crossing is arduous enough that we cannot afford to take any opportunities for spiritual enrichment for granted. Parashat Terumah provides us with an empowered model for survival precisely because both our traditional observance and our GLB/TGI experiences are integral to our existence. It may be a Friday night Shabbat gathering in a small living room containing a handful of similarly devoted friends, or the quiet peace of lighting candles alone in your kitchen with your same-gender bashert. It may be laying tefillin at home in the morning as a trans man who finds himself unable to pass in a small community where everyone knows his history, or lighting candles to welcome the Shabbat Queen as a trans woman carrying on the legacy of her foremothers. These simple acts of affirmation define us in the same way that the Mishkan defined our spiritual ancestors in the desert. To my fellow travelers in this struggle for spiritual affirmation, I urge you to turn toward Hashem, to allow yourselves to receive the awaiting bounty of your own private Mishkan.

Creative Common/Minjung Gang

That’s when I took on the dreaded “r” word. You know — the word that describes a rabbi’s partner. A rabbi’s female partner. Because, you know, once you know that someone’s a rabbi’s partner, what else do you really need to know? There are so many rights (and rites) denied to me as a lesbian, in the world in general as well as in Judaism. This one word, which frankly somewhat offends my feminist sensibilities with what I believe are the implications it carries about the appropriateness of defining a woman (or anyone) through her partner’s profession, has not been one of them. It’s a word my partner’s congregants sometimes use, though most of them aren’t familiar with the term. It’s something tossed out with a grin by Jewish professionals, as though it’s somehow extra-cute to call me a rebbetzin when the rabbi I’m partnered to is female.

Maybe one day this can be a term I embrace, but clearly, I’m definitely not there yet.

In the interim, I’ve been drawing great strength and no small amount of random smiling from a lesson bequeathed to me by the woman who is the partner of a previous rabbi for this same remote synagogue. The shul where my partner works is out on what my New York-bred mind calls “the frontier,” and Jews grow pretty hardy there, hardy enough to laugh at themselves and certainly hardy enough to remake terminology they don’t like. The previous partner-of-a-rabbi didn’t like the word “rebbetzin” either, but she fashioned an awesome, and I think feminist, repurposed version. She wasn’t the rebbetzin, she explained to people — she was the rebbetzOUT!

It doesn’t hurt that “rebbetzOUT” makes me feel like a gay rock star on top of the supportive partner of an amazing member of the clergy, or just a bit like the Peanuts’ Lucy, pointedly letting others know when the doctor was in… or not. Nobody prepares you for these odd, out-of-the-way problems life throws you every once in a while, but the solutions can be a whole lot of fun.

Photos: Bonnie Rosenbaum

My mother does not practice Judaism and does not read Hebrew. But every year for Hanukkah, in a heroic act of motherly love, she ships appropriately-themed gifts across the country for both myself and my Labrador. The dog got a stuffed dreidel. I got a ceramic placard with the words of Asher Yatzar. I’m not sure she knew what it was.

Like most Americans, I was raised with what I consider a completely normal level of neurotic shame surrounding bathroom functions. An integral part of my toilet training were the instructions to close the door behind me, pull up my pants when I’m done, and don’t talk about what I did afterwards, especially not at the dinner table.

And, like most gender-variant people, that primer of bathroom shame was coated with an extra layer of fear and confusion: Will I scare someone in the ladies’ room today? Will I be safe in the men’s room? Is sitting down to pee an affront to my already insecure masculinity?

As a girl child, I experimented with standing to pee, mostly out of curiosity. I failed miserably. As an adult, I experimented again, mostly out of a sense of obligation that this was something I should want. Admittedly, the first time I used a stand-to-pee device was an unforgettable experience. I faced the toilet fully pantsed, unzipped, and stood in awe of the perfectly aimed stream. It was exhilarating. It was transgressive. It was intoxicating. But it was also a lot of work. Where to wash the device? Where to store it stealthily? And, most importantly, as a person profoundly disinclined to needless physical exertion, why should I stand when I could sit?

Bathrooms for me are a strange clash of expectations, a confusing mix of shame and fear. And accordingly, I hid the Asher Yatzar placard for several months, too embarrassed to hang it anywhere visible.

Over the months, however, the guilt of disrespecting a gift so lovingly and thoughtfully given began to gnaw at me. Unwilling to display the words, I resolved at least to try reciting them after each bathroom use. If I was using the gift, that would count as an acceptable show of gratitude, right?

And so, after washing and drying my hands, I began to recite:

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם אֲשֶׁר יָצַר אֶת
.הָאָדָם בְּחָכְמָה וּבָרָא בוֹ נְקָבִים נְקָבִים חֲלוּלִים חֲלוּלִים
גָּלוּי וְיָדוּעַ לִפְנֵי כִסֵּא כְבוֹדֶךָ שֶׁאִם יִפָּתֵחַ אֶחָד מֵהֶם
אוֹ יִסָּתֵם אֶחָד מֵהֶם אִי אֶפְשַׁר לְהִתְקַיֵּם וְלַעֲמוֹד לְפָנֶיךָ
.אֲפִילוּ שָׁעָה אֶחָת
.בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְהֹוָה רוֹפֵא כָל בָּשָׂר וּמַפְלִיא לַעֲשֹוֹת

“Blessed is God who has formed the human body in wisdom and created many orifices and cavities. It is obvious and known before You that if one of them were to be opened or closed incorrectly, it would be impossible to survive and stand before You at all. Blessed is God, who heals all flesh and does wonders.”

The number of berachot for special occasions is breathtaking. We have formulas for seeing a rainbow, hearing thunder, seeing an ocean. Thanking God for natural wonders makes a certain amount of intuitive sense. But thanking the Almighty every time we pee seems like a stretch, particularly if you’re slinking out of a place of shame and confusion, not sure which door you were supposed to have used, or even which direction you were supposed to have wanted to face.

And rabbis, of course, have had many debates about the Asher Yatzar, delving into detailed quandaries that surely move the most studious yeshiva bocher to blushes and giggles: What if someone is catheterized? What about bowel movements during childbirth? Does one who is incontinent recite the blessing?

When I was first introduced to the concept of Oral Torah, I was warned that rabbis talk about everything; that the Oral Torah should not be thought of as a book or an anthology, but a veritable library of human knowledge. I eyed the mysterious tomes of Talmud on our synagogue’s dusty bookshelf and wondered if that could possibly be true. And sure enough, Rabbi Abaye quotes the bathroom blessing in the first book of the Talmud, and his descendants centuries later dutifully take up his line of thought, debating the best way to thank God for peeing one’s pants. No blessing is too messy, too small, or too human.

I can’t say that reciting Asher Yatzar has undone a lifetime of learned bathroom shame. Or that it has even ameliorated the myriad of ways in which the female body is shamed both in mainstream and queer cultures. Nor has it untangled my own peculiar variety of bathroom qualms. But it has opened the door a little, brought a word of gratitude into a place where there was none. The Asher Yatzar frees my mind from the entanglements of my complicated human communities, and allows me to reflect for a minute on the beautiful, messy, gendered complexity of my human body. And that’s a gift for which my gender-variant soul can be grateful.

Creative Common/yanni

It’s one thing to break down barriers of oppression. It’s quite another to build up a community of shared liberation. This is what Moses and the People of Israel are learning in this week’s Torah portion, parashat Mishpatim.

A shared sense of community sometimes arises naturally out of shared oppression, but when liberation happens – and we start to experience the brisk wind of real freedom – that sense of community often quickly dissolves. Freedom is hard work. Self-governance is hardest of all. People under the yoke of oppression seldom think about this in the face of all of freedom’s obvious benefits, but oddly enough, once you’re out in the desert and having to find your own food and make your own laws and mediate your own conflicts, there can be a strange yearning for the old days in mitzrayim, the narrow place.

At Chochmat HaLev, the synagogue in the San Francisco Bay Area where I used to work, there are many different ways that our community members engage with Jewish practice. There is room for any number of different interpretations of Jewish law and tradition by those among us. Some of us observe Jewish laws very closely; others of us would be hard-pressed to recite even a dozen of the 613 mitzvot. Still others don’t consider themselves Jewish (or do now, but didn’t grow up that way). The standards to which we hold ourselves in our covenant with G-d are very different. So how much more do we need to hold ourselves to common agreements about how we treat each other!

There’s a lot of fragmenting among LGBT folk. In fact, many people doubt whether we are or should be a community at all. Some of the same people who followed trans women and drag queens into the streets during the Stonewall Riot, and are reaping the benefits of the political liberation movement that followed, now abandon transgender people in a crabs-in-the-barrel scrabble for legal protections that only gender-inclusive legislation can guarantee for all of us. Freedom is seen as a limited commodity, with each group’s rights coming at the cost of the others. There is no queer Sanhedrin, which is okay by me, but in the absence thereof those of us who care about community and see these sorts of divisions happening need to sit down with our neighbors and find some common ground. Like it or not, we do have common interests, and some agreement about the standards by which we treat each other will help us keep moving forward.

It would be easier if G-d would give the LGBT community, through a queer Moses, one set of laws that we could all agree on, and clear consequences if we don’t. G-d enjoys challenging us to do it ourselves, I think. We are a bigger family than the Israelites were as they wandered in the desert after leaving Egypt. We are a family with many more individuals and much more diverse backgrounds and experiences. One set of laws about how to behave in our personal lives will not cover us all. So more than ever we need to make agreements with each other to respect, honor, and support each other’s diversity, to have compassion for each other, and to treat one another justly.

What does it mean to you to treat others justly? Much of Mishpatim deals with how one treats one’s subordinates; at the time, that meant servants indentured to pay off a debt. A parallel situation today is the employee-employer relationship. What are the obligations of an employer to their employees? I’m struck by how many LGBT advocacy organizations don’t provide domestic partner benefits or transgender-inclusive health care to their own employees. Does your congregation provide fully-inclusive benefits?

And how about how people living in poverty are treated in the the Torah? Many LGBT people give generously to visibly LGBT-related causes (which I am grateful for, as a beneficiary of and contributor to those causes), but it’s less well-known that many LGBT people care about other things too. We all need housing, for instance, and transgender-inclusive health care is less than meaningful if few people can afford health care at all. And what does Mishpatim say about how we compensate each other for the hurts we cause? How do we, LGBT Jews, hurt each other? To whom do we owe recompense, and how much?

Considering these things – boring, but vital; frustrating, but rewarding; political and complicated, but heartfelt if we do it right – is part of what it means to build a community. When we have begun to turn our attention from battering at the things that hold us back (not, mind you, that that important work will ever be entirely finished) we look forward, in trepidation and awe, at the task of moving from liberation to freedom. An essential part of that task is making community. Otherwise, there is no “we” to be free.

Which of you came up with the term “Jewcore,” and can you please define it as a musical genre? Can you discuss some of your various musical influences?

RR: “Jewcore” loosely refers to anything within the rock realm that has Jewish influences. It is a description that makes sense for us in this fortunate era of complicated genre classification. For me, the Jewish part of it is liturgical and other traditional tunes, and Israeli songs. As of a little more recently, I’ve been listening to klezmer bands, like the Klezmatics. The rock part of it is pretty eclectic. I listen to some classic rock, like the Doors and Jimi Hendrix, and as of more recently punk bands like the Dead Kennedys and Limp Wrist - yes I know, I got into punk way after the fact. I also like the Israeli riot grrrl bands Hamachshefot (The Witches) and Poliana Frank. The artists whom I would actually call influences though, meaning ones I have listened to long ago enough for them to be considered an influence, are the Smashing Pumpkins, Nine Inch Nails, Sleater-Kinney, the Distillers, the Smiths, and They Might Be Giants. But oddly enough, I grew up on showtunes and most of my music collection consists of jazz.

SHH: I think we all collectively came up with the term “Jewcore” as a way to describe our sound to inquiring minds. Our community in Brooklyn has coined the term “Transcore” to refer to bands like ours that have all trans* members and sing about trans* experience, so we just took that to the Jew level. That asterisk, by the way, denotes that the word “trans” in this context does not just mean “transsexual” but all folks that identify under the “transgender” umbrella – there’s great information here. I use the term “Jewcore” to reflect the unlikely combination of Jewishness with punk rock, rap, or hardcore – like what Schmekel does or what our friends Yiddish Princess does or what Moshiach Oi or SoCalled does. When you think “Jewish music,” you don’t think the kind of sound that we or the other bands I mentioned make.

In terms of influences, I love bands that think outside of the genre-box that they’re categorized in, like Against Me!, the Dresden Dolls, Modest Mouse, and Tool. I think it’s artists like those – that play with genre and keep genre flexible, that produce really interesting and ever-relevant sounds.

NS: I don’t know who came up with the term “Jewcore.” I have referenced our sound as queercore, transcore, and “yidcore.” Lucian has used the term Schtickrock to describe us as well. I guess it doesn’t matter what you call it really. Our music is influenced by a large catalog from punk to polka, klezmer, and even some good ole rock and roll. Our lyrics talk about our experience as queer, trans* Jews. I would say that that more or less can define some aspect of “Jewcore.” My personal influences come from classic rock and lots of punk and ska, I could list some here but it hurts my head to think of all the bands and musicians I pull from.

LTK: Frank Zappa, Oingo Boingo, Tom Lehrer, Sondheim, Gang of Four, The Red Elvises, and most recently a prog-punk band from Chicago called Paper Mice. And Stravinsky, always Stravinsky.

Photo by Amos Mac for Original Plumbing magazine.

Can we talk for a moment about the infamous matza photo shoot with Amos Mac? What was that like? What were the responses – in general and, you know, from your mothers?

LTK: Dirty jokes are the matzoh meal that holds my family together, so even my grandma laughed at the pictures. Actually, she’s a psychologist and used to be a sex educator back in the ‘70s, so it’s hard to shock her with something as innocuous as a bunch of half-naked Jews covered in unleavened bread. As for the rest of the world, I was surprised that some of our fans interpreted those pictures as sexy. In fact, The Advocate called us sexy and reprinted one of the matzoh shots. Personally, I was going for ridiculous. Is sex really a viable option when there are dry crumbs involved?

RR: I’m sure my parents have seen these pictures but we never mentioned them. Honestly they do scare me a little because my other career is teaching, so I just hope they don’t get into the wrong hands. But hey, you live once; how many people can say they posed naked for an international magazine with matzohs?

NS: I felt like a schnitzel by the end of that shoot. Before we did the matzoh photo, we took a photo of Ricky pouring wine into my mouth and I got covered in it. Then we rolled around in matzoh… plus the lights, I was ready to be served. On the plus side, my boyfriend really enjoys the picture.

SHH: I have to admit I was pushing a lot of my boundaries posing for that shoot – there were more than a few moments with that picture in particular in which I felt, exposure-wise, like I was at the gyno. We all sang Echad Mi Yodeah [Who Knows One, a traditional Passover song] for most of that photo, to loosen up (of course). The shoot was in a massive warehouse with dividers between studios, so the entire first floor heard us singing about knowing one G-d, two tablets, etc. It was a unifying moment for me with the band — being stark naked on the floor with matzoh shards, singing about HaShem.

I’ve heard you’ve been upset after certain interviews that focus more on your bodies then your music. Do you get tired of educating the public on gender issues?

LTK: To be honest, at this point I just find it boring, which is actually a privilege. I’ve been pretty much done with physical transition for over two years, and I’ve been with the same boyfriend for almost as long, so I don’t have to think about the fact of my trans body on a daily basis anymore. It still comes up in random ways, such as dealing with doctors or bureaucratic paperwork, but since I’ve mostly come to peace with my body, I don’t feel like talking about it all the time. I’m definitely at a different place now than I was when I wrote the lyrics for the “Queers On Rye” album.

RR: Yes. I get tired of it both with the public as a performer, and as a regular person. I also happen to occasionally do some educating at LGBT Jewish retreats and I don’t mind educating in a time and place where that is the intended goal. I just don’t like being asked about my body in a casual social setting, or when press is more interested in our transitions than our music.

NS: The focus that many non-trans people put on trans and gender non-conforming bodies is sometimes overwhelming. As Ricky said, when there is a time and a place, sure we can talk about it. We are people also and do other stuff. In this case we are a band that performs and plays music about many subjects besides our bodies.

SHH:  Because I identify as transgender/genderqueer and thus outside of a recognizable gender, I am often pigeonholed as a man or a woman or depicted using language similar to the term “a he/she.”

This happens, unfortunately, within the queer community as well as out in the general public.

I recognize that I will forever have to qualify myself to people who have never before met a trans* person and that until olam haba [the world to come] becomes olam hazeh [this world], educating will be a fact of life, but I am especially tired of teaching specifically transmen about why I’m not one of them and qualifying the existence of genderqueer as a separate gender. It’s really disheartening to me that so many trans* people have internalized the sexism and binary mentality that made it difficult for them to realize themselves to begin with.

Can you discuss the queer Jewish music scene? Where can people go to find new bands and artists?

RR: The Shondes, Athens Boys Choir, Y-Love, Isle of Klezbos, Metropolitan Klezmer, Yiddish Princess, Gay Panic, GLTR PNCH (pronounced “Glitter Punch”), and Evan Greer are all great artists to check out. And I’m sure I could name more if you give me some time. Some of those are queer and Jewish, some just queer, some just Jewish. Where to go is wherever they are playing.

NS: There is an amazing NYC/Brooklyn queer and queer Jewish music scene. Multiple nights a week one can find a venue playing rad music .

SHH: I feel really lucky to live in New York City and be inside what I consider the pulse of queer Jewish music. The big names in klezmer — the Yiddishist scene in general tends to feel pretty queer — are all here playing in synagogue basements and concert venues around the city. A lot of Jews For Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ) events, like their annual Purimschpiel, bring in queer Yiddishist artists and klezmorim. As far as how to find out about new bands and artists, I’ve found Facebook groups an immensely helpful tool to get to know my community and all the innovation happening in it. Currently, I belong to Young Jewish Brooklyn, Brooklyn Jews, Thursday Night Chulent, Trans* and Judaism, and Punk Jews and all of these groups in one way or another have turned me onto artists and musicians I hadn’t previously heard of touring both across the country and around NYC.

I’d love to get more personal about what being a part of Schmekel means to you – to be making music as part of a Jewish gender non-conforming group.

LTK: If we’re getting personal, to me being part of Schmekel means having three siblings to rock out, celebrate the holidays, get through hard times, go on road trips, and joke around with. Schmekel is home to me, which is probably not a sentence that a lot of people have uttered.

RR: This didn’t start out as a political statement, but Jewish trans visibility is certainly important. Mostly, I like making the kinds of music I like and singing from a queer perspective at the same time. And also everything Lucian said.

NS: Ditto to what Ricky and Lucian said. I am not actually a musician at all… I picked up the bass for the first time in 10 years to get to make music with these folks. Ricky and I were in a band when we were 17. It kinda sucked in that awesome high school garage band way. I continued to always want to be a rockstar… but never thought of pursuing it, till Schmekel happened.

SHH: Schmekel to me has been an experience of pushing myself to take my art and my identity in two presently disparate groups seriously. It has been a process of coming together with three other people with varying degrees of shared experiences in the Jewish world and in the trans* world and working together to build bridges with each other and others around us. It’s been an amazing opportunity to have come to such a family space with this band and to have seen the fruit of that relationship be a Yeshayahu-worthy vision of Jewish unity across religious convictions and personal identities.

Given, amongst all of you, your many and varied experiences of inclusion and exclusion in Jewish community: what would you like rabbis, teachers, and other leaders, to know?

NS:  Hold the judgement. It is the purpose of people in leadership positions to help facilitate a supportive environment and assist those in search of a relationship with community and G-d. It is not their, or any other person’s, place to judge or dictate how one should pursue their path. Leaders and teachers and rabbis are there to present halacha, discuss, assist, and support. Not to shut down, excommunicate or pressure an individual in any specific direction. Also, take the time to educate yourself: it is hard to self-advocate all the time. When someone is coming to you, they are probably coming for support and guidance, and it is worth it to be in the know about what the community needs are to better help.

RR: That gender is complicated. I would love for rabbis to read some gender theory books and talk to queer and trans people and the doctors and therapists who deal with us, and formulate an informed opinion about how they want to define gender. There is a movement of acknowledging gender in Judaism as a social category and not just a biological one among halakhically committed Jews, and that movement also has insightful things to say that I would love for other rabbis to check out. Let’s face it, our existence presents a challenge to their observance. It also presents a choice to either take the easy route and dismiss our experiences and insist that our queer and trans identities aren’t real, or do the work that it takes to keep us Jewish and to keep us safe and emotionally healthy. They don’t need to compromise their religious practice, but the Jewish thing to do would be to learn about our experiences and respect us as human beings. I would like for teachers to know that teachers often gender-police their students without being aware of it, and it is damaging. I encourage them too to educate themselves about the experiences of their queer and trans students.

SSH: I would like Jewish leaders to know that kol yisroel arevim zebazeh [all Jews are responsible for one another] applies to all Jews everywhere and that “Jew,” thank G-d, comes in many profoundly different manifestations — all of them Torah sanctified. Education — Trans* 101 workshops, learning about queer sexuality, patriarchal oppression as well as how gender is a mutable idea rather than a static fact — has to be a priority to understand each other. HaShem put us all together as Am Yisrael — the idea that the mere existence of one Jew invalidates the existence of another is not a productive way to bring about the messianic era and will only deter the healing that klal yisrael [the entire Jewish community] was created to bring about for the world.

You can catch Schmekel at:

Werk Those Pecs: Valentine’s Edition
Saturday, February 16th, 2013
SlateNY, 54 W. 21st St.
Doors at 9pm

A benefit for Werk Those Pecs, an organization dedicated to raising trans visibility by funding gender-affirming surgery, supporting queer businesses, and showcasing queer artists.

When Heather Has Two Mommies, a children’s book whose title character has lesbian parents, hit the bookshelves in 1989, its author, Lesléa Newman, did not expect too much. She had trouble getting a publisher and never imagined the book would ever see the light of day.

The book itself is a sweet story about a little girl named Heather. One of her moms is a doctor, the other, a carpenter, and together, they do the kinds of things all kids love to do with their families: hang out at the park on nice days, bake cookies on rainy days. Heather learns in school that families come in all shapes and sizes: some of her friends have step-parents, some have only one parent, and some have brothers and sisters. To those of us (like this blogger) who grew up in a post-Heather world, it can feel a little strange that this charming child caused such an uproar.

This groundbreaking book just celebrated its 23^rd birthday!

LGBT-inclusive children’s books published since Heather’s debut owe a debt of gratitude to Lesléa Newman for paving the way. (See our earlier post about the first Jewish children’s book with gay characters, The Purim Superhero, that was just published this month.) Indeed, Heather Has Two Mommies has had a permanent effect on children’s literature, for all its ongoing controversy – and that controversy has had an effect on its author: “All the protest against Heather Has Two Mommies inspired me to become an activist…. My work in the world is to do tikkun olam, to repair the world, make the world a safer place for others, and I take that very seriously.”

Listen to Lesléa Newman share how Heather Has Two Mommies came to be.

Lesléa is the author of more than sixty books for readers of all ages including picture books, middle-grade and young adult novels, poetry collections, and short story collections. Her latest book, October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepherd, came out this past September. You can see a video preview here, and read more about the book here. For her work, Lesléa was honored by Keshet as an LGBT Jewish Hero.

Jews read sections of the Torah each week, and these sections, known as parshiyot, inspire endless examination year after year. Each week we will bring you regular essays examining these portions from a queer perspective, drawn from the book Torah Queeries: Weekly Commentaries on the Hebrew Bible and the Torah Queeries online collection. This week, Rabbi Seth Goren revisits the commandment to be fruitful and multiply, and what Judaism demonstrates about families of choice.

Creative Common/dMad

The giving of the Ten Commandments is a vividly spectacular event. The combination of lightening, thunder, smoke, and blaring horns at Mount Sinai echo and flash across time, setting the perfect backdrop for the divine enunciation of Aseret HaDibrot (as they are called in rabbinic texts).

But Jewish tradition teaches that the First Commandment given in the Bible appears not in this week’s Parshat Yitro, but all the way back in Genesis 1:28. After their creation, the first human beings are commanded to “be fruitful and multiply.”

This directive takes on an even greater prominence when contrasted with the fertility struggles faced by the early progenitors of the Jewish people. For Sarah and Abraham, Rebecca and Isaac, and Jacob and Rachel, the push to conceive and bear children is so central that it serves to highlight the procreative command that is said to apply to all of humanity.

In some modern Jewish contexts, especially in the aftermath of the Holocaust, the centrality of biological reproduction manifests itself as what has been called “pediatric Judaism.” For such communities, the focus on raising and educating children supplants all other aspects of Jewish life, leading to the virtual educational abandonment of progeny when they complete high school and effectively ignoring the needs of young adults, the elderly and everyone in between. Although space is made for those who become parents through adoption, it ultimately excludes all those who are neither under eighteen nor caring for those in that age range.

In an era when GLBT parenting is increasingly commonplace, but still far from common, this emphasis on children can be alienating for queer Jews. Those who either cannot or choose not to enter into formal, legal parenting relationships may find themselves on the sidelines, effectively excluded from the centerpiece of Jewish life.

Legal hurdles can make this particularly aggravating. In some states, same-sex second parent adoptions are prohibited, while other jurisdictions, such as Florida, until recently barred adoption by openly gay individuals entirely. Even outside the U.S., in countries that have legalized same-sex marriage, one of the benefits often not conferred has been the right of same-sex couples to raise children as co-parents. In this way, secular legislation, Jewish tradition and the First Commandment all have the effect of marginalizing many. While strands of our tradition may advance the example of biological children resulting from an opposite-sex relationship, there are, at the same time, parallel examples of taking on parent-like roles outside the scope of the traditional model. In doing so, these mentors confer essential benefits on their protégés, allowing them to succeed in ways that they otherwise would not.

Take, for example, the relationship between Moses and his father-in-law, Jethro, which is developed further this week. After Moses escapes and flees Egypt, Jethro takes him in, gives him a home, and eventually guides him in how to lead the Israelites after the Exodus. Indeed, it is the diversity of Moses’ parental figures, from his biological Israelite parents to his adopted Egyptian princess mother to Jethro, that gives him an astounding breadth of experience and an ability to exercise leadership so effectively.

And Moses isn’t alone. Eli, the high priest at Shiloh, takes the future prophet Samuel under his wing and elevates him to a position of eminence above that of his own sons. In binding herself to the childless Naomi, Ruth leaves the land of her birth and flourishes under the tutelage of her mother-in-law. When Abraham leaves his home for the Land of Canaan, he takes with him his nephew Lot, eventually giving Lot his choice of grazing lands and rescuing him when he is taken as a prisoner of war. These illustrations show the wide array of relationships that our heritage embraces and sets out paradigms beyond strictly parent-child relationships.

The ways in which we shape and mold the generation that follows us are manifold. Some of us will pass on our genes by having biological children. Some will become adoptive or foster parents, while others will play more informal — but similarly invaluable — parental or mentoring roles in the lives of others, transmitting teachings, experiences, and instruction. And each of these relationships has an honored and respected place in our people’s history and tradition.

And two of the top stars of this genre, Billy Jonas and Naomi Less (whose website has a rock star worthy url), are putting on a concert just for you.

Jewish Rock Radio is streaming a series of six online interactive concerts, and each concert benefits a great Jewish organization. We’re grateful that two of the concerts will directly benefit Keshet’s work for a fully inclusive Jewish community. You can catch Billy Jonas on January 30^th and Naomi Less on February 6^th, both at 8:30 EST. Pay what you can and listen to a great 30 minute concert.

Billy Jonas

Meet Billy Jonas
“I am so excited to be able to support Keshet in all their endeavors! I believe that music is a vehicle for opening the heart and the mind — and in the journey towards creating a world that accepts and embraces people of all sexual orientations and persuasions, open hearts and open minds are what we need the most.”

When Billy Jonas hits the stage, all bets are off. Is it a musical conversation? A sonic celebration? At a Billy Jonas show, the ensemble is…everyone. A “neo-tribal hootenanny” with a generous dose of audience participation, a Billy Jonas concert mixes conventional instruments (guitar, bass, marimba) with homemade creations (using buckets and barrels, keys and cans, bells and body percussion). The big-tent festival quality of Billy’s music facilitates connection and community while fostering inspiration and, most importantly, fun! Watch Billy Jonas perform his song “One” at a live show.

Naomi Less

Meet Naomi Less
“I passionately advocate for the full legal rights for LGBT citizens and believe those with privileges are morally compelled to advocate for those who do not have them. I promote the mission of Keshet by producing music that tackles issues of LGBT inclusion and leading workshops that help educators and parents address, not evade, sexuality and gender. I’m super proud that the curriculum I co-created with Dr. Shira D Epstein,”Addressing Evaded Issues in Jewish Education,” is now a core part of Keshet’s own Training Curriculum!”

It’s impossible to define Naomi Less. She’s a songwriter, an activist, a rocker, a worship leader, an educator, and much more! Naomi is the founder of Jewish Chicks Rock and Jewish Kids Rock, as well as a Storahtelling founding company member and Director of Education and Training. Naomi builds Jewish rock programs across the U.S. that encourage the next generation of voices to speak out and be heard. She tours worldwide with her band, sharing music from her album, “The Real Me,” a tour through her own personal wrestling with self-worth, religion, and being oneself! Watch Naomi Less perform “What You Give.”

Don’t miss these two amazing concerts!

 “I feel really isolated at my high school… it’s good to come to a place like this and finally feel like I’m part of a community.”
– Frankie, 18

“Being in a place where so many of us share the same labels means we can shed them at the door – Here, I don’t have to be the Jewish kid, or the gay kid; I can just be myself.”
– Sky, 18

Teens and staff at the 2nd LGBTQ Teen and Ally Shabbaton

Sentiments such as these were common at the Jewish LGBTQ and Ally Teen Leadership Retreat in early January, a joint project of Keshet and the Isabella Freedman Center, with support from the UJA Federation – and the second ever event of its kind. The weekend was a follow-up to the first LGBTQ Teen and Ally Shabbaton in August, when about a dozen LGBTQ Jewish  teens and allies met for the first time to share their stories and make new friends. This winter, those teens, along with some new additions to the group, came together not only to create new memories as a now inseparable group of friends, but also to develop their leadership skills. They also came together to begin to plan and design a future event that will attract close to 100 Jewish LGBTQ teens and allies, to create and connect a critical mass of change makers for the queer Jewish teen community.

As a BBYO professional, I was privileged to be a part of staffing both of these gatherings. As the queer Jewish teen voice gains momentum, I am excited to learn how I and my organization can continue to be a part of the larger conversation on how the Jewish communal world can be more actively inclusive of, and better advocates for, our queer Jewish youth. As Rabbi Steve Greenberg, one of the weekend’s speakers, said: It is not enough to simply put a rainbow sticker on our doors and call ourselves inclusive. If we as Jewish youth professionals want to honestly say we are doing everything we can to fulfill our commitment to pluralism, and to work in accordance with the seven Jewish values Keshet articulates, we must take action now to provide a welcoming, loving home for these teens within our communities.

My experience this weekend reminded me of just how important and urgent this mission is. However, my interest in these issues did not start there.

On the first night of the retreat, we kicked things off by going around the room and sharing our personal journeys of what led us to be part of such an event. As a straight ally and adult staff member, my story was a little bit different from most. Unlike many others in the circle, I have never had to come out to my family and friends to reveal my true gender or sexual orientation. I have never been discriminated against because of who I loved or what box I wanted to check on a form. These issues have never been “my” issues but they are issues faced by a lot of people that I love, and issues that I have come to care about deeply.

Last year, when one of the teens I work with came out to me, the question of how to be the best and most supportive ally possible became a professional, in addition to personal, one. Suddenly, I was not just an adult who happened to know and love a lot of queer adult friends. Now, in my professional role as someone who works with youth, I was being trusted with a teen’s deepest secret about his identity that he had not felt he was able to tell anyone else.

I felt honored that he was confiding in me. But I didn’t feel prepared. I knew immediately that I would forever be a part of this boy’s story. The words I said, even the facial expression that I made, would impact his feelings of confidence and acceptance, and his decision about whether or not to further the coming out process. I didn’t want to screw up!

In the end, I trusted my intuition. The conversation went well, and I was privileged that he continued to confide in me throughout the rest of his coming out to family and friends. However, the experience made me question why there wasn’t more specific training for staff who work with teens on how to handle situations like these, and why there weren’t more resources out there for Jewish LGBTQ youth that I could point him to.

Coincidentally, this experience also took place just as I was beginning to look for a topic to study for my capstone project in BBYO’s Professional Development Institute, a graduate program where I am working toward an MBA in nonprofit management from Indiana University and a certificate in Informal Jewish Education from Hebrew College. As I approached my final year in the program, I was charged with identifying a research topic that would culminate in a proposal to BBYO on how to enhance or improve some aspect of the organization.

It was beshert. Though I contemplated topics like a cost analysis of kosher food at conventions or best practices for hotel contract negotiations, I knew it was a “light bulb moment” when I realized I could explore how my organization and others like it can better serve LGBTQ youth within our programming.

Half a year later, I have immersed myself in trying to come up with some good answers to this question. It turns out that even though BBYO and many Jewish youth groups have already won half the battle by pledging our support, there is still a lot of work to be done and many questions to be answered. For instance, what is the best way to train staff in using sensitive language, or combating homophobia? What are some best practices for gendered rooming at overnight conventions? Does a Gay-Straight Alliance have a place in youth groups?

Ultimately, I think taking up this challenge in our organizations comes down to one main tenet of our religion: Do not stand idly by. A first and critically important step is signing the pledge by the same name. I am proud that many of BBYO’s teen leaders and staff have already pledged their names both individually and as a community. But it’s really about more than that. We cannot wait for blatant bullying or harassment to occur before we decide to take action. We must not stand idly by now, as teens are slipping through our reach and succumbing to feelings of loneliness and despair, maybe knowing that we will “tolerate” them, but not knowing that we will embrace them.

As I’ve talked to teens and adults to seek perspectives on these issues and guidelines on how to move forward, many ideas have come to the surface. I look forward to talking to many more people about successes and challenges within their organizations and welcome readers to contact me at jleving@bbyo.org as my exploration continues.

Creative Commons/Alexandre Baron

The Torah shares with us the lengths to which Abraham went to make his visitors feel at home and indeed to transform the relationship of host-visitor into one of equal partnership and respect. Genesis 18:1-8 records Abraham insisting that his three unexpected visitors stay for a while and the subsequent rush that he and his household underwent to prepare an elaborate meal for them. It was Abraham’s intent to make his home, which was the model for the way of life he was introducing to the world, maximally inclusive and welcoming.

To be inclusive does not mean to forsake one’s values or religious principles. To be inclusive means to welcome all people without reservation as colleagues, fellow community members, friends, and family. It is to internalize the truth that all people are created by God and endowed with inestimable value and worth and deserving of the utmost respect and then externalize that truth in the way we act and organize ourselves and our institutions.

Inclusivity can and must transcend denominational boundaries in the Jewish community. Inclusivity cannot become the banner of only one movement but rather must be the common denominator linking all Jews and the varied ways Jews practice their Judaism. Thus, it was with a great amount of excitement that my congregation, BMH-BJ: The Denver Synagogue hosted the 2013 Keshet Training Institute and sent members of our staff to attend. The Denver Synagogue is the oldest and largest Modern Orthodox congregation in Colorado with a history going back more than a century.

When I was contacted a few months ago by Keshet, inviting me to participate in their Training Institute, it dawned upon me that this presented a wonderful opportunity for partnership and collaboration. It is relatively easy to use words like inclusive and welcoming but actions speak much louder than words, and I wanted to make it unequivocally clear that our synagogue, like Abraham’s tent, is open on all sides. I was tremendously pleased that Keshet agreed to take me up on my offer and partner with us. I believe this is the first time a Keshet Training Institute was held in an Orthodox synagogue and I pray that it will not be the last.

In 1901 BMH-BJ hired its first rabbi, a young graduate from rabbinical school in New York and a recent transplant to America from Vilna, and relocated him to the wild west of Denver. This rabbi, Hillel Kauvar, became the first traditionally minded rabbi in Colorado to offer sermons in English. The synagogue understood 112 years ago that in order to live up to its mission of providing a true home for people who sought the embrace of traditional Judaism it would need to recognize a reality that few other synagogues wanted to come to terms with – the decline of Yiddish as a spoken language. This tradition of living inclusion to its maximal extent within the construct of halakha, Jewish law, continues today and the partnership with Keshet for the 2013 Training Institute is another link in that chain.

Creative Commons/Dennis Wilkinson

When I heard that there was going to be a workshop on “De-stigmatizing Stealth” at the Keshet LGBTQ youth Shabbaton, I was a bit skeptical.

As a trans* person who had done an extensive amount of thinking and research on the issue of being stealth, I was sure there was nothing anyone could say that would make me lessen my opposition to the practice of trans* people living in their preferred gender roles full time, and not telling people that they were assigned a different gender at birth. (A note on terminology: These days there isn’t just one type of transgender body or identity. Some people are transgender, transexual, bigender, a-gender, genderqueer, etc. The trans-asterisk is used as a way of recognizing and respecting this diversity, while still keeping a condensed title for the community as a whole.) The topic is a heated one both in trans* and queer communities and in the larger culture. On one hand, I understood the desire to be stealth. If you are a trans* identified person who has gone through so much to transition, and you acknowledge that you are and have always been, say, female, then why would you want to keep coming out all the time, and permanently call attention to your gender identity and choices?

But as I always saw it, trans* people have a responsibility to come out to people and live openly as trans* people. I was sure that this second option – not being stealth, but rather always coming out – was the moral high road. It was our responsibility to bring visibility to an incredibly underrepresented minority. The importance of continually coming out seemed an extra burden assigned to one the day they decided to start using their preferred pronouns, but it was a burden I felt was necessary. The idea of “de-stigmatizing” stealth made me a little suspicious.

In the workshop, we were led through an activity where we imagined ourselves in two scenarios: one speaking with our friend’s grandmother, and the other a club or organization at our high school interviewing us for membership. In both situations we were supposed to think of three responses to the other person saying “So, tell me a bit about yourself.” We discussed what parts of our identity we disclosed and what parts we didn’t. This, of course, prompted the question, “Why?” Why not tell the other participant in the conversation that you were queer, or that you were Jewish, or anything else for that matter? The answers varied. Some based their decision off the listener, deciding what to put forward based on the other person’s age, relation to them, politics, and the like. Others said that it just didn’t come up, or that it wasn’t something that was in the forefront of their mind. There was a real diversity of responses.

Everyone has their own reason for being stealth. It’s not just that coming out is hard/awkward, sometimes it’s dangerous, sometimes it’s just not that relevant to the conversation. Whatever the reason, I realized that no one should have to disclose their full biological history (or any other kind) to someone whose business it just isn’t. I was changing my mind, softening towards the idea that maybe being aggressively out, as opposed to stealth, wasn’t necessarily a responsibility or requirement, but wasn’t being out still the “right” thing to do?

Gender-Stealth, Religion-Stealth: My First “Aha!” Moment.

Later I was talking with a friend about how I no longer desire to be “out” as a convert to Judaism either. That is not to say that I want to stop being identified as Jewish – I want to stop being described as a different and, to some minds, lesser-than Jew. I was tired of explaining the story of why and how I “decided to become Jewish.” I was tired of biting my tongue when I wanted to say that I never had to become Jewish, because Jewish is what my soul has been all along. I grew weary of being looked upon with judgmental eyes and fielding questions about my Jewish knowledge and observance, as if it was some sort of pop quiz to prove my Jewishness.

I was tired of all eyes watching how I dressed, spoke, carried myself, all breaths held as they searched for signs that there was some deceptive disconnect between who I said I was, and who I actually was, who I used to be. I knew I’d fail if I didn’t meet some stereotype. I was ashamed that I began to question myself and allowed these questions to slowly chip away how valid I felt in my identity. I was comfortable in my own skin, and didn’t feel like “convert” was a necessary labeling. I didn’t feel a need to highlight the differences between myself and my peers; I’d rather just focus on the similarities.

And at the end of the day, my background is nobody’s business. It doesn’t affect them and shouldn’t affect how they relate to me. I had already gone through a transformative process to have the powers that be legitimize my identity; I didn’t need anyone else’s validation (and I no longer needed to hear “I would’ve never known,” or, “You don’t look like a ______.”)

In the face of all these complaints, I realized what I had to do. I had to try on being a “stealth convert.”

Was I betraying my roots, erasing my history, being selfish?

I’m not sure. I don’t think so, though. Maybe not every person needs to know that I wasn’t “born and/or raised Jewish.” But if I were to encounter a person considering conversion, and wondering what the process is like or how it feels to come out on the other side, I would tell them my story. For those I didn’t choose to disclose to, it wouldn’t make me a liar, poser, or “trap.”

Replace every reference in the above paragraph regarding my own Jewishness/“convert” with “Transgender;” “other Jews” with “queer community;” and “Gentile” with “cisgender.” Now you can join me in a groan over how silly I was being attaching stigma to my trans* brothers, sisters, people who choose to be stealth, instead of continually coming out.

I’m not sure how final my decision is on the matter of being stealth, either as a trans* guy or as a “convert” to Judaism; but in the mean time I’ll choose who I want to or don’t want to disclose to, and I certainly will not waste any of my time judging those that choose to keep that part of their lives private.

So my friends, I submit this article anonymously. A way of affirming and embracing that being stealth, in any context, is an intensely personal choice and should be respected (even if you don’t necessarily agree). Maybe one day I’ll reveal my identity, maybe I won’t, but either way it is my journey and I intend to take control of it.

LGBTQ Jewish youth: Let us know if you’d like to write for the Keshet blog! We want to feature your voices as you explore your experiences, speak your minds, and challenge your communities to be more inclusive. You can read a previous post in the “Jewish LGBTQ Youth Voices” series on “Senior Year: APs, College Prep, and Coming Out in My Orthodox High School.”

Creative Commons / Tom Magliery

Milk may have been designed as a secular movie but if you recall one of its (in)famous lines, you might also be reminded of God’s commandment to the Children of Israel before the final plague was visited on the Egyptians: “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

Exodus 12:21-23 gives our ancestors their first collective mitzvah. They are asked to slaughter a sheep and smear its blood on the lintels of their home to ensure their homes will be protected when the Angel of Death appears.

They are, in effect, asked to “come out” as Jews – to demonstrate to their neighbors a visible sign of their Jewishness – in order to save their lives and gain their freedom.

According to the parasha, all of them followed God’s ordinance. I have to assume it’s because the Torah can hardly fathom anyone making a different choice (since so many places implore us to “choose life”). However, I have to wonder if they were all obedient. What if someone didn’t want to perform the slaughter and mark their lintel because they objected to God’s bloody course of action? What if someone refused to visibly separate themselves from the Egyptians because they were born in Egypt and felt that they belonged equally to the Jewish people and to the Egyptians? What about fear of reprisal once the bloody deed was done? What if someone objected because God was asking the Children of Israel to accept far too much on the strength of an untested trust in an invisible entity?

If you’re not able to come out even to yourself, coming out to God, or anyone else for that matter, seems daunting. If we read Exodus 12 as a collective “coming out” of the Hebrew people in Egypt, we may also understand “coming out” as a mitzvah and an act of faith. This act of coming out seems to be between God and the Hebrews, but sometimes even facing oneself with such a truth is hard. How many of our unknown ancestors had questions like this: “Why do it? Can God honestly care? Why were we created like this if we are simply to be judged and mistreated for being different? Why do we deserve freedom right now? Why was 400 the magic number? Maybe we’re simply being tested?”

In the present day, when LGBT rights seem to be facing severe challenges, it can also be hard to envision coming out as an act of faith. Oftentimes, once we realize we’re different, we avoid anything religious at all until we’ve come to terms with being different socially and politically. Sometimes people around us tell us we’re undeserving of anything good that life has to offer, and others are fascinated if we have any religious inclinations.

Jewish life can also fixate on difference. Around our Seder tables each spring, someone asks why this evening is different from every other night. Parashat Bo tells us why the last plague sent by God is different from all other plagues. Through the other nine, God had an unspoken accord with our people: they were left alone without having to do anything. When it came to the last plague God asked them to do something very scary that could help them. Our collective action to slaughter an animal and drip its blood on the lintels of our homes forged us in difference from our Egyptian neighbors.

Coming out is never easy; sometimes it seems riskier than remaining closeted. If we can remember that living as we were created to live is a mitzvah, perhaps it will be easier if we’re new to it. Now and again, such honest actions can help inspire others to make steps toward admitting their own truths aloud in public. I learned this lesson just before my school’s winter break.

When I came home from Montréal Pride in 2006, I started to wear jewelry I had purchased at the event: a simple cord emblazoned with fierté (Pride). Since then plenty of people have asked me why I wear it. If it’s someone I realize I won’t ever see again, I generally tell them it’s because I’m LGBT (they can guess if they want). Sometimes, if I’m talking to someone I’ve known for a while (and trust me, some of my very good friends don’t even get it) I tell them it’s a religious obligation. Just before winter break this year, someone in my class noticed my jewelry and came out to me as transgender. Ze told me something ze had never voiced to anyone. I could hardly believe ze trusted me enough to share this self-awareness; I pray that ze will be able to continue living as God created hir and to continually affirm that ze is one of God’s children.

We can come out any way we want, whatever next step in the unending process of coming out is ours to take; whether we’re flying a Pride flag at home, making people clear about why we’re using certain words to discuss things, wearing clothes or jewelry to be visible or even simply wrestling with God alone and fighting to come to terms with our difference. In each of these coming-out statements we are involved in something sacred.

Coming out is an act of faith and a mitzvah. It doesn’t mean it’s easy but that’s the reality suggested by Exodus 12. God understands it’s a large step. If it wasn’t so large, it wouldn’t be our very first mitzvah, right?

On some level, perhaps our early sages realized this too. According to a Talmudic discussion, some, including Rashi, stated that the Torah, if it was to be purely recognized as a legal code, could start with Parashat Bo, since it contains our initial mitzvah as a people. Other sages argued that starting our calendar in the month of Av was our first mitzvah, but since this command doesn’t appear to be issued as an imperative (it is stated in future tense instead), the jury is still out on that mitzvah. Perhaps, in the long run, it doesn’t matter whether the mitzvah of coming out is first or second; all that matters is that we realize something core to our self-understanding is viewed by our scripture and God as holy.

Published by Kar-Ben Publishing, an award-winning publisher of Jewish children’s books, The Purim Superhero is the sweet story of a boy named Nate who has a Purim dilemma: he loves aliens and really wants to wear an alien costume for Purim, but his friends are all dressing as superheroes, and he wants to fit in. With the help of his two dads, he makes a surprising decision.

We had the chance to catch up with author Elisabeth Kushner, the winner of Keshet’s national book-writing contest.

Elisabeth will be reading from her brand new book on February 3 in Berkeley at one of our book release parties. If you’re interested in holding a book release party for The Purim Superhero in your area, Keshet can help! You’ll find a Do It Yourself Guide and other resources here. Plus, you can buy your copy of The Purim Superhero online from Keshet or Kar-Ben (e-versions too!) today!

The Purim Superhero parties are happening across the country (parties will be added to the Keshet website as they are scheduled):

2/2: Miami at Next@19th
2/3: San Francisco Bay Area at Afikomen Judaica
2/17: Denver at Mizel Museum
2/24: Boston at the Leventhal-Sidman JCC

Tell us about the process of writing the book, including the inspiration!

I wrote this book because of the Keshet contest. I’d been thinking for a long time about a Purim picture book, because I was a librarian at a Jewish day school. I wanted to integrate what kids were learning in their classrooms about holidays with what we were reading in the library. There are lots of Chanukah books, and some Passover ones, but I could find very few Purim books other than re-tellings of the Book of Esther, and the kids already knew that story! It’s as if all books about Christmas told the story of the Nativity. It’s the customs of Purim, which are really kid-friendly, that would make the good stuff of a story. It really drove me nuts every year that I had nothing to read these kids. So for years, I thought about this book I’d wanted to write, but it never got anywhere.

Years later, I kept hearing about this contest Keshet was having. I was no longer at a day school – I was working at a public library – and was also writing for the Scholastic.com website as a book blogger, so I was very involved in world of kids’ lit. I thought, “If I weren’t so busy, I’d write that book.”

I finally stopped and said, “I’m a Jewish lesbian mom who was a librarian at a Jewish day school. I know a lot about this stuff, and I’ll feel really silly if I don’t do this.” So I took a few weeks to work on it, and with the additional element of queer family members, it took shape really quickly, especially since Purim is all about coming out and being who you are.

I wanted it to be a book where the parents being gay is not “the problem.” I know it’s hard for a lot of people in a lot of places, but that really hasn’t been my experience or my family’s experience, and it hasn’t been the case for a lot of my friends, too. Our kids have regular kid problems.

Just as there are Purim stories other than the Book of Esther, there are kid-in-a-gay-family stories that aren’t about a classmate or teacher’s homophobia.

So what was your response when you found out you won the contest?

When I found out that I won, I did a little happy scream and was totally thrilled. I was home with my daughter, who was ten at the times, and she kept asking what, what’s going on? I told her, and she was excited, too. Then I had to take her to the orthodontist, so the only people I could tell were my sister-in-law and little niece, because that was the only number I had stored in my cell phone!

It felt especially good to tell the friends I’d asked to beta-reader the book as writers and parents.

What does it feel like to be the author of the first LGBT inclusive Jewish children’s book in English?

Somehow that hadn’t quite sunk in. I knew that was why Keshet was having the contest, but it didn’t sink in that that would make me the first. I’ve been thinking, surely I’d read a children’s book that incorporates both the LGBT aspect and the Jewish aspect, but I guess not! It’s an unbelievable honor.

What does this mean to your own family?

They’re touchingly proud of me. I’ve started doing some PR for the book, which means I’m starting to travel for it, and they’ve been very supportive as we make the scheduling work. My daughter is in middle school, so she doesn’t identify so totally with me as a younger kid would, but she’s been very sweetly happy for me.

What are your hopes for this book?

I hope it will be well-known, and I really hope it has legs, that it lasts. Really, I hope kids will read it and enjoy it. And I really hope that librarians in Jewish day schools will read, enjoy, and use it! Really, I wrote the book for myself, five years ago.

I’m curious if there will be any controversy over it – I have no idea. It feels like the state of being gay and being a gay family is less and less of an issue in the kinds of communities that will see this book anyway.

We talked about what your hopes are for the book, and we talked about the process and inspiration for writing the book. Can you tell me what you’ve learned, or hope to learn or continue learning, from the process of writing this book?

One thing I’ve learned already from talking with a staff member at Keshet who told me her family is really excited, and she’s excited to read it to her child. I’m really honored that it’s going to have meaning for families like mine. I think I just figured out that this is going to affect people! I didn’t write it as therapy, I wrote it to be a good book. But from my own life, I learned a book can be a friend. I’m just starting to realize that this book is going to be a point of connection with other people.

One more thing I’ve learned from this process is how amazing it is for something I wrote to be illustrated. When I saw Mike Byrne’s illustrations for The Purim Superhero, I felt like in some ways I was meeting Nate, his family, and his classmates for the first time. It was a little like meeting someone in person who I’d only corresponded with – I was surprised and felt totally familiar with the characters, at the same time. And I’m crazy about the cover, which is sweet and heroic at the same time. It should’ve been obvious if I’d thought about it, but the “picture” side of writing a picture book has been a really wonderful discovery and I appreciate so much how the illustrations are doing half the work of making Nate and his world come alive!

Other things you’ve been working on that our readers should know about?

I’m working on a novel, but as it turns out those take a long time. I’m also working on another book that takes place in the same world as Purim Superhero, but on Shavuot—I’m really into underrepresented holidays!

I don’t have an author website yet, but anyone interested can follow me on Facebook or Twitter.

Welcome to our fourth installment of “Queer Clergy in Action,” spotlighting lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rabbis and cantors. This behind-the-scenes look at queer clergy covers both those who have paved the way and up-and-coming trailblazers.

Coming out can be really difficult and it can be especially risky for those who are, or aspire to be, clergy. Nonetheless, this vanguard has helped open up the Jewish world, and we’re very proud to shine an extra light on their work, their ideas, and their stories. You can also read the first three posts in this series, about Rabbi Steve Greenberg, Rabbi Reuben Zellman, and Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum.

Rabbi Denise Eger was one of the first out gay rabbis ordained, receiving her ordination from Hebrew Union College in 1988. Since 1992, she has served as rabbi at Congregation Kol Ami, a community she helped found, which is dedicated to serving the LGBT and wider Jewish community in West Hollywood, CA. She is a founding member of the Religion and Faith Council of the Human Rights Campaign. In 2009, Rabbi Eger became both the first woman and the first gay rabbi to be president of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California. We caught up with Rabbi Eger about her work, her inspiration, and an exciting new role for her.

How has being LGBTQ informed your work as a rabbi?

I have served as a rabbi for 25 years of the LGBT community in Los Angeles. I was among one of the very first openly lesbian or gay rabbis in our country and serving in our community. I have had the privilege of being part of shaping the LGBTQ Jewish community in Los Angeles, the U.S., and with my friends in Israel.

What should we, as members of the LGBT Jewish community, be focusing on now?

I believe that we ought to be working not just in big cities but helping LGBTQ Jews in smaller communities and towns strengthen their Jewish LGBTQ networks. I believe we ought to be creating Jewish more opportunities for our young Jewish LGBTQ teens to have safe venues whether at Jewish summer camp or through USY, NFTY, BBG, and AZA. I think NCSY too needs help and resources to be a safer place for our LGBTQ teens.

(Editor’s note: Keshet has partnered with the youth organizations of four major Jewish movements in America and with Jewish camps across the U.S.)

Favorite queer Jewish figure?

Rabbi Allen Bennett – who was Harvey Milk’s rabbi and who was really the first openly gay rabbi. He worked tirelessly to help defeat passage of the Briggs initiative in the ‘70s in California, which would have banned gay teachers in public schools. He helped create the positive dialogue in the Reform movement on opening up and welcoming LGBT Jews back into the fold and served as rabbi of Sha’ar Zahav in San Francisco in the early years. He just retired as a rabbi of the Reform synagogue in Alameda, CA and is serving a progressive congregation in Europe! It took so much courage to be openly gay. He is a friend and inspires me to this day.

What’s next for you? A project, a sermon—what are you working on that’s queer and Jewish?

My current and next project is that I am nominated to be President Elect of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, which is the largest rabbinic organization in the world. It is the International organization of Reform and Progressive rabbis worldwide. Luckily I have come to a place in my own life where I can integrate all the disparate parts of my identity, as a mom, as a rabbi, as a partner, as Jew, as a baseball fan, as a lesbian! Isn’t that the goal?

Creative Commons/Peter Pearson

The exodus from Egypt has symbolized the movement from servitude to freedom for generations. Whether for African-American slaves or for our own gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender elders, the story resonates far beyond its Israelite particularity to any struggle for liberation.

20 years of inspiring and provoking

Welcome to our third installment of “Queer Clergy in Action,” spotlighting lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rabbis and cantors. This behind-the-scenes look at queer clergy covers both those who have paved the way and up-and-coming trailblazers.

Coming out can be really difficult and it can be especially risky for those who are, or aspire to be, clergy. Nonetheless, this vanguard has helped open up the Jewish world, and we’re very proud to shine an extra light on their work, their ideas, and their stories. You can also read the first two posts in this series, about Rabbi Steve Greenberg and Rabbi Reuben Zellman.

Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum

Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum is no stranger to accolades – but this year, she’s being fêted not only for her accomplishments, but for reaching an important anniversary. Rabbi Kleinbaum was installed as the first rabbi of Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, the world’s largest LGBT synagogue, in September of 1992. She arrived at the height of the AIDS crisis, and quickly made a name for herself by addressing the community’s tremendous loss with compassion, leadership, and spiritual guidance. In the years since, Rabbi Kleinbaum has made civil rights for LGBT Jews – and the inclusion of their voices as part of the religious conversation – a major part of her rabbinate. This year marks her 20^th anniversary at CBST, and the filmmaker David Sigal has put together a video in honor of the occasion, including interviews with politicians, famous rabbis, and of course, her mother, who immediately offers some sweet baby pictures of this indefatigable leader:

This video pretty much says it all, but we had a few more question for Rabbi Kleinbaum, so we quickly caught up with her, amidst all the celebration of her work.

1) How has being LGBTQ informed your work as a rabbi?

Completely interwoven. I am most interested in helping to create a Jewish community in which traditional understandings of the primacy of heterosexuality and rigid gender binaries are rejected. I don’t just want a Judaism in which there is inclusion of GLBT people – where the pie is just divided differently. I want to change the nature of the pie itself!

2) What should we, as members of the LGBT Jewish community, be focusing on now?

How to use the power we’ve acquired and the resources we have to address profound issues of race and class in our society.

3) Favorite queer Jewish figure?

Kate Bornstein

4) What’s next for you? A project, a sermon – what are you working on that’s queer and Jewish?

My life. That’s my new project, which is definitely queer and definitely Jewish.

Joseph is a popular biblical character to “queer” — because rabbinic midrash claims he curls his hair, paints his eyes, and is as beautiful as his mother, Rachel (Genesis Rabbah 24), and also because he is one of the rare biblical men known for not sleeping with a woman (the lovely wife of Potiphar, who attempts to seduce him). But it’s not the living Joseph I want to queer — it’s the dead Joseph. Joseph’s bones, to be exact.

At the end of Parashat Vayechi, the very end of Genesis, Joseph lies dying. He has moved his entire family to Egypt to save them from famine, and he has rescued the whole land from hunger. Though his father, Jacob, was buried in Canaan, Joseph will be buried in Egypt. He is, after all, an Egyptian vizier. However, Joseph commands his family to take his bones with them when they eventually leave Egypt and return to the land of Israel: “When God has remembered you, you shall raise up my bones from this place.” (Gen. 50:25)

This exacted oath is especially poignant when we realize that Joseph has spent his entire life being raised and lowered. He is elevated above his brothers, then thrown into a pit; he is made head slave of an official’s household, then thrown into prison, then suddenly made viceroy over Egypt. The burial and raising of his bones is one more reminder that Joseph is a symbol for the circle of life and death, victory and defeat, despair and redemption. Like the grain he stores to feed the hungry, Joseph is cut down and replanted again and again. But why does he need to do it one last time? Why does he want his bones disturbed?

The bones of Joseph represent memory. By insisting that he be buried in the land of Israel, not immediately but generations later, Joseph forces his descendants to remember their promise over time, and thus to remember their identity. Only by remembering can they one day be free.

In fact, in later midrash, memory of the location of Joseph’s bones is crucial to the Exodus. Jewish legend holds that the Egyptians sink Joseph’s coffin in the Nile so the Israelites will never be able to find it, and thus will never be able to leave. Only one descendant of Jacob remembers where the coffin is. This one person is Serach, the daughter of Asher (mentioned in the Bible but only fully fleshed out in midrash). Serach, it is said, was blessed by Jacob with impossibly long life, for it is she who first told Jacob that Joseph was alive. During the Exodus, while the Israelites are packing, Serach shows Moses where Joseph’s coffin is, so that Moses can fulfill the promise of his ancestors to take Joseph’s bones out of Egypt (Midrash Tanhuma Beshalach). The aged Serach has preserved the knowledge of the location of Joseph’s bones for 400 years. Along with the bones, she has preserved the knowledge that a redeemer is destined to take the people out of Egypt. Without her, the people could not have remembered. Without her, no redemption could have taken place.

Only recently have I come to realize how crucial memory is to my identity as a queer person, and how deeply the history of GLBT folk has been suppressed. On my reading list has been Sappho, who showed me women loved women and poetry in ancient Greece; John Boswell’s Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe, where I learned that same-sex marriage ceremonies occurred all over Christian Europe until the fifteenth century; the poetry of Jewish scholars of Muslim Spain, which often expressed love and admiration for young men; and books about how Native American tribes made space for “two-spirited people.” I now know that the same-sex unions of the United States have had their counterparts in ancient and medieval Ireland, Romania, and Greece, that some notion of a “queer” or “transgendered” identity was accepted by Navajos long before I was born, and that Jews were writing what might be called queer literature hundreds of years ago. Ritual and spirituality can be and have been applied to GLBT people, many times over.

To me, this simple yet radical information has been like the discovery of Joseph’s bones beneath the Nile. I no longer feel that acceptance of queers is the ultramodern “tolerance” of a 21st century society. Queers are part of the fabric of time, just as Jews are. This knowledge is what makes it possible for me to leave my own Egypt; to envision a future where Joseph’s bones are buried in honor, in a land where I feel at home.

So as Genesis comes to an end this Shabbat, and Joseph is buried in an unknown location, I will know that he will come to light again, as he always does. The man as beautiful as Rachel can be hidden, but he can’t be forgotten. So too, I pray that all my ancestors will one day show us their bones.

I want to dedicate this d’var Torah to the historians, literary critics, archaeologists and anthropologists without whom I would know none of this. We are told that Serach bat Asher comes in many forms, and appears throughout history whenever we need her. To me, these wise and dedicated folk are Serach bat Asher, and I am grateful for their work of memory.