Twice Blessed: Jewish and Gay in the 21st
Century
An examination of
contemporary gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered Jewish communities.
By David Shneer and Caryn Aviv
Gays and lesbians have long struggled to find their place
within organized religion. Meanwhile,
the central texts of most major faiths condemn and/or harshly criticize
homosexuality. In recent years, gays and lesbians of all faiths have begun to
carve out unique spiritual practices within the structures of their religions.
Judaism is no exception; all of the major denominations have wrestled with how
to treat gay Jews, while gay and lesbian Jews have worked to create spaces in
which they can be both homosexual and Jewish.
In the following article, the authors use the word
“queer” to refer to lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgendered people.
They employ the term intentionally, rather than using the more common
“same-sex” or “same-gender” when describing relationships, commitment
ceremonies, and so on, in order to avoid the dichotomy of sameness and
difference.
In the past thirty years, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and
transgender (GLBT) Jews have transformed the face of Judaism and Jewish
communities in America. Following the
feminist revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, GLBT Jews, sometimes referred to as
queer Jews, have made significant changes in the way American Judaism and
American Jewish communities address questions of family, identity, sexuality,
and gender.
These same queer Jews are also at the forefront of the GLBT
political movement that has remade the face of American culture, politics, and
society. It is no accident that Jews
are in the vanguard of such political activism, since queer Jews have a long
history of working for queer rights. Magnus Hirschfeld, a German queer Jew,
coined the term “transvestite” and inaugurated the first political movement for
gay rights at the turn of the twentieth century. Another queer Jew, Mark Leno, pushed the San Francisco city
council to pass a law requiring city health insurers to cover medical
procedures particular to transgender people.
Queer Jews are visible icons in American cinema, on the stage, and in
literature; and a queer Jewish couple was the first same-sex pair to grace the
pages of the New York Times’
Weddings/Celebrations page.
Queer
Jews are also leading Jewish communities toward change, rather than waiting for
those communities to act. Some
communities are taking steps towards actively expanding their scope and
programming to include this new constituency.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, and other centers of
progressive activism, queer Jewish issues are “hot” among mainstream Jewish
organizations. In other metropolitan
areas, queer Jews use mainstream organizations as incubators to develop their
own institutions.
One of
the most visible changes in American Judaism in the past 15 years came when two
of the country's largest rabbinic organizations, the Reform movement's Central
Conference of American Rabbis and the Reconstructionist Rabbinic Council, gave
their rabbis permission to perform same-sex Jewish weddings. The rabbinical
seminaries for both of these institutions ordain gay rabbis. The Conservative movement still does not
allow openly gay rabbinic students to be ordained, but seems to have adopted a
de facto “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. From all edges of Jewish society,
queer Jews are pushing mainstream Jewish institutions to accommodate and adapt
to the presence of queer Jews, and to do so with dignity and respect.
At the same time that queer Jews are demanding inclusion in
the rituals and institutions of American Judaism and American culture, they are
also forming their own institutions and cultures. The number of groups that have the words lesbian, gay, bisexual,
and transgendered and “Jew” in the title is increasing exponentially.
Nationwide, there are dozens of synagogues, gay
Jewish havurot (community groups),
queer Jewish conferences, Internet groups, and other self-consciously created
social spaces. One estimate puts the
number of GLBT synagogues worldwide at 65.
Moreover, there are now institutions that cater to a diverse queer
Jewish community and reflect generational concerns, such as parenting classes
and educational and camping programs for queer families. There are also groups for gay Jewish youth,
aging queer Jews, same-sex interfaith couples, and GLBT Jews-by-choice.
Queer Jewish politics has also begun to include
transgender people, who undermine the very notion of masculine and feminine,
male and female. The issues and
challenges transgender Jews face to make homes for themselves are only just
beginning to emerge. Several Jews are at the forefront of transgender politics,
theory, and culture. Leslie Feinberg,
Jack Halberstam, and Kate Bornstein, all writers, activists, and performance
artists, are just a few of the many transgender Jews who work tirelessly on
behalf of the burgeoning transgender rights movement. At the beginning of the 21st century, we are
witnessing an increasingly visible, flourishing, diverse, and assertive queer
Jewish culture that is no longer defined simply by the external oppression of a
homophobic and heterosexist society.
The ever more specific identifiers embraced by queer Jews
suggest that as an organized group they are finding differences within
themselves. One of the major shifts has
been the emergence of a queer Jewish “post-Stonewall generation”--individuals
who have come of age in a empowered, unapologetically queer culture, unlike
their predecessors who fought for tolerance and recognition and struggled to
establish institutions and lives of integrity with little community support and
few role models. GLBT Jews are also
having internal debates over the price of inclusion in established Jewish
organizations. Queer Jews struggle with
choosing between the desire to integrate into established Jewish communities,
changing them from within, and the comforts of creating and maintaining
“separate” spaces for queer Jews, what some have termed “assimilation” versus
“separation.”
Such a polarized picture of queer Jewish politics, however,
does not accurately portray the political and social changes queer Jews are
making. Queer Jews’ calls for
integration are often transformative
rather than assimilationist. The transformative integration of Jewish
institutions and communities is most visible within queer Jews’ personal
institutions. Queer Jews are at the
forefront of redefining conceptions of family, relationships, and
community. For queer Jews, creating
family involves both adopting dominant social norms—a couple with two kids and
a picket fence—and moving beyond the mere assimilation of traditional
definitions by undermining the assumption that family is determined solely via
biology. Queer Jews have devised
creative means for making families that involve reproduction, adoption,
co-parenting, extended families, friends, and lovers. The construction of queer families means making conscious,
deliberate choices all along the life course, and the activism of these
groundbreaking Jews has forced all families, and Jewish institutions, to
rethink the definition of family.
Queers have also irrevocably changed the meaning of
marriage.Most queers marry, because
they want to, because they want to express their love publicly to their
communities, because they want to bring two lives into one. Queers do not marry for tax breaks or to
make parents happy. Queer Jews have
returned the idea of kavannah, of
intentionality and desire, to the creation of Jewish families.
Although profound change is happening
at the levels of community and family construction, and as much as positive
representations of queer Jews have begun to pervade American culture, queer
Jews still suffer from pain, stigma, fear, and alienation from families and
Jewish communities. Simcha Sandi
Dubowski’s film, Trembling Before G-d, documents
the pain and ostracism that queer Orthodox people face in their daily lives
from their closest community and from the religion that shapes their
lives. But it is not just Orthodox
queers who face difficult choices everyday.
Queer Jews of all ages and in all Jewish movements, from budding
rabbinic students to radical lesbians (and in a few cases, these describe the
same people), continue to struggle with the closet, coming out, coping with
fear, and enduring stigmatization.
Although many in the post-Stonewall
generation have found ways to integrate their multiple identities, some queer
Jews still struggle with the seemingly irreconcilable tension between being
Jewish and queer. Despite the
persistent struggle, queer Jews continue to form their own communities and
simultaneously integrate into existing ones, and for the first time, the Jewish
world is looking to these leaders to chart a path toward a reinvigoration of
Jewish life in America. These leaders
will create queer Jewish resource centers in all major communities, while
ensuring that all Jewish institutions, from old age homes to teen-youth groups,
open their doors to queer Jews.
Caryn Aviv and David Shneer are co-editors of Queer
Jews (Routledge, 2002). Caryn Aviv is an Assistant Professor of Sociology
at the University of California, San Francisco and Director of the Program for
Collaborative Care at the UCSF Breast Care Center. She also teaches leadership
development to teens at Congregation Sha’ar Zahav in San Francisco. David
Shneer is Assistant Professor History and Judaic Studies at the University of
Denver and former Director of Education at Congregation Sha’ar Zahav in San
Francisco.
