TO BE A PLAYER

Hi M. Thank you so much for joining us this evening. Can you tell our readers something about yourself?

I am involved with gay programming and advocacy at the United Nations, and I have private patients as a social worker.  And I founded and run a non-profit organization supporting LGBT Jews and their families in the Orthodox community. I think that being Jewish is very essential to who I am. Those are the values of the household I grew up in. My relationship to spirituality is seen through a Jewish light and with Jewish language.

                                Whoops. Wrong conservative religion...

When I think about being gay, I think about people being lonely. I think about a young kid questioning, trying to understand, being lost.  Consequently, being gay to me took on a sense of duty, it became my communal life and communal calling. My community is very much a queer life. Most of my friends identify as LGBTQ or queer. I think about this as my communal life, and this has become my contribution to Jewish community.

Ironically, I don't really think about my own romantic life when I think of my gay identity. Don't get me wrong, I want to be in love with somebody, and I hope that person is as wonderful as can be. I hope to be part of a couple and part of a family, but the gender of the participants of that family could never define it. Based on practicality, given who I am, that person is probably going to be a man. However, I may meet a non-gendered person and fall completely in love with that person. Would I then be gay? Who knows! But much like my Jewish identity is inextricably tied to the destiny of the Jewish people, my gay identity ties me to my beloved LGBT community. 

What was it like, growing up in your family?

I have parents who are still together after getting married at twenty and twenty-one, and I am the first of five children. I have two sisters and two brothers. Both my parents are from orthodox rabbinic families. I guess my family is quite a rabbinic family, with a yeshivish bent. All of my grandparents identify more as misnagdim, Lithuanian, except for my grandmother who grew up in Poland and was part of the Belz dynasty.

Who wore it best?

Yichus! So who were you closest to?

As a child, I was very close with my mother. As I started to learn mishnayos and gemorrah, though, I became very close with my father because he used to learn with me, and then as an adolescent, I wasn’t so close to anyone! Normal! In my twenties I became close to my mother again, and in my late twenties closer to my father and now I am close to both.

Are you close to your siblings?

I am very close to all of my siblings. We are all very close.

 What is your favourite childhood memory?

Turning six! I love Miss Piggy and my mother invited my whole class to my birthday party. She bought me a huge Miss Piggy ice cream cake. I felt, then, like my mother really saw me. She GOT me, and I felt so proud. It was a wonderfully happy time.

What was your coming out process like in such a frum family?

For me, when I was about three and a half, I began identifying as someone who was really a girl and not a boy. I would tell that to anyone who would listen to me. I would tell the shabbos guests! I believed I would go to sleep and wake up as a girl. 

I identified as a girl! In terms of me coming out as non-gender conforming, I was always able to express myself, even as a young child. 

I did not talk about my sexuality to my parents until much later. 

It wasn’t until I was twenty-one that I remember being in the car with my mother, driving to Brooklyn, and my sisters were beginning to shidduch date, and I casually told my mother that if I happened to be dating a boy, and that person was not invited to any of my sisters’ weddings, then I would not come either. That’s how I came out to my family!

In terms of coming out to myself, because I was so gender non-conforming so young, gender was always fluid to me. I didn’t see myself as a gay man for most of my childhood. I saw myself as someone gender non-conforming. I saw my sexuality through that lens. I also didn’t know any other gay people. It was very innocent and very personal. In later years in college, I felt more comfortable identifying as a gay man.

When I was twenty, I became very close with a woman who went to Stern College. It was non sexual/non-romantic, but one day, she challenged me. She said, “I’ve known you for four months, and you’ve never identified as a gay man, but it seems sad that you don’t feel comfortable saying it. But if you ever just need to call someone on the phone, even in the middle of the night, then call me and say, “I AM A GAY MAN!” And I will be very supportive.”

I did not come out right then, but I did eventually. I told her my concerns about having children and what my family would look like, and at the end of the evening, I finally vocally admitted to being a gay man, and I began to be comfortable with that identity. It was not until I met other gay men and saw how we were so similar, and when I learned more about the gay community, all of that solidified my identity as a gay man. But it took a while.

                                Where have you been all my life?
Did you have hopes and dreams that needed to be rethought when you came out as gay, and how do they fit with your Jewish identity?

My hope and dream of having a family and having children doesn’t need to be rethought, because I still hope for that. But what did need to change was the Jewishness of that hope and that dream. I think for a long time the image of this dream involved a Jewish wedding, a chassunah, as central to the beginning of my family life, and it did involve all of the traditional, meaningful elements. I had to give that up. It’s still hard to give that up. (There is a long silence) Even if I date and marry a man, there will be no walking around my partner seven times, and no badeken, and so I wouldn’t be able to have those in my wedding. Having to give that up is hard. It was always a powerful image in my mind. Whatever I have would be different looking wedding and the meaning of the wedding would be different.

How did your parents have to reshape their world?

My parents had to rethink almost everything. They had always seen me as their firstborn who would give them a lot of nachas. They are dealing with giving up and mourning that dream, but then re imagining a new dream and realizing that too. It’s a huge challenge. I really feel for my parents in term of that process because there’s no clear path, no one they know has done this before. And me being their son, I can’t help that much. They probably need outside help. It breaks my heart.

My son and my son-in-law, the Rabbi, such a cute couple!

Do you have a dream about some kind of formalized future plan for gay Jews?

Yes. I think the best of Jewish history tells the story of people who were valued for what made them special. We have a lot of special and different children, and we have learned to appreciate them in the schools and in the homes and in the larger community. That which makes them different makes them valued. I believe that gay kids, or gender- non-conforming kids can still have value within the community. We, meaning the Jewish community, can learn to be a system that values differences. If you are left handed and the majority of the kids are righties, then you will have a hard time working in a company with all right handed equipment. It would be great if the company gave them special jobs, suited to who they are and their special abilities. It’s not necessary to rip out the old equipment.

                                That could be painful...

What do you think Frum Gay families could look like in your dream for the future?

I would hope that their dreams would be rooted in reality. The people who are shaping that dream are the role models for the community today. It may be tempting to think of Frum Gay People (FGPs) adopting the dream of the classic Jewish home with children in yeshiva and a picket fence, but some of those fantasies are based on a hetero-normative model. I think there’s something that is dishonest about that dream. It’s uninformed. I just don’t know what works for gay Jews now. I’m looking very hard and specifically to LGBT adults and the way that they are living their lives and for what works for them and through those narratives, we can hopefully construct a dream. Until then, I try to hold off on formalizing or defining the family construct for frum gay Jews. I think families need to be based in some sense of history. As we see the gay community receive their rights and prejudice goes away, we can begin constructing these family units, and we can learn what we can do to avoid mistakes. Let’s hope that process is mostly supportive and positive. Hopefully families are all in this together, and since we love each other, we should be in this together.

                                Is this way mizrach?
Do you have particular role models?

Well, today is the anniversary of the "I have a dream" speech, so it's been on my mind. I am so inspired by Martin Luther King, his speech and the struggle for civil rights. It’s something that is so recent and it’s a source of endless inspiration. 

                                I have a dream too!
But in terms of people, I am inspired religiously by Rabbi Yosef Dov Soloveitchik. I often ask my friends whether they had a Rabbi who inspired them religiously; who, when they heard that person’s thoughts, they were spiritually aroused. Sadly, few of my friends have had that experience. In Rabbi Soloveitchik, I am lucky enough to have had that throughout my teenage years, listening to the thousands of tapes my grandfather owned of the Rav's shiurim in hashkafa. I was so inspired and turned on and felt connected to his messages and philosophy. I still am.

My grandparents inspire me. My father’s father was very poor but he built a few businesses, and eventually, he built communities. “If you want to make change you have to be a player”. To him, a “player” is someone who is involved and identified with that involvement. A player has a voice and a vested interest. He takes responsibility for his surroundings and community. He is not just someone who lives in the community. He is someone who shapes the community. My grandfather’s way was through philanthropy, and when he came to a community, he would invest in it and immediately become a “player.” He was the president of a school and shul and one of the builders of the Orthodox community. Someone who people really listened to.

                                Shaping the world from a young age.
My other grandfather, my mother's father, was a renaissance man. He was a Rosh Yeshiva, and close to many of the Gedolim, but he also went to Princeton and the opera, and he enjoyed the great novels and listened to Barbra Streisand! 

All of his boys ended up learning in Lakewood. He straddled many different communities and he made it seem so easy and beautiful. He did it so gracefully. It has always been a struggle for me to balance those things, and yet he made it into a dance. A thing of beauty.

                               Nanuim with a chossid
What are you afraid of?

I am afraid of not knowing my grandchildren. The biological timeline doesn’t look good for me in terms of really having a relationship with my grandchildren. Given the influence that my grandparents had on me, it's terrifying and sad to think that I won't be able to have that with my own grandchildren. Let's face it, if people still live for the amount of time they live for currently, it doesn’t leave me a lot of time to connect with my grandchildren. I’m thirty-four years old. I think that if I have children in five years, then by the time that child is thirty, I will be almost seventy. And that’s when my child would be thinking of having children. The math just doesn’t look good. That makes me sad.

 What makes you very happy?

I love performing. I love musical theater, telling over a story with words and song. And I love my friends; I love experiencing good things with my friends, good music, the beach, good food. And I love the idea that I may, in some way, be able to make a difference.

What is your favourite current memory?

A really happy, exulted time is when the Rabbinical Council of America publicly put out a statement taking down their endorsement of Jonah (* a type of damaging reparative therapy). It was a personal goal of mine to change the policy of the RCA. I had worked on that for almost four years. I wanted to get the endorsement off so badly, and four years later, it happened! I remember the night when I got a text, and I saw the RCA statement. I was so happy and proud of my community, the RCA and myself. I was so proud of what we did. I felt that I made a difference.

What have you accomplished in your life?

I saw a potential world that could happen sooner. I always knew there could be a world where LGBT people could live and have a place, and I saw that we didn’t have to wait until so much more damage could happen. And I knew it from when I was twenty. I saw the possibility, and it helped with making it happen sooner. The world always bends towards tolerance. Whatever amount of suffering was alleviated because of me, because of what I’ve been able to create, that is my greatest accomplishment. I am confident and proud that this safe space for LGBT people in the Orthodox world happened sooner, in part because of my efforts.

I think that too often people are satisfied with a sense that it will all change, eventually!

There are so many people who are not ok. Who are oppressed. You need people to demand to be heard, to create a pressure to change, to create momentum, and I was part of that. I helped with the energy to make that happen. I made support resources for LBGT youth in the Orthodox world, and now Jewish Queer Youth ( JQY) is almost bar mitzvah. In those thirteen years, so much has happened in such a short time in terms of resources: the support groups, the training for mental health professionals, the phone hot lines (551-JQY-HOPE (551-579-4673)), the youth groups, the orthodox high school groups, the creation of Temicha , a group for Orthodox parents of LGBT kids, the Jewish holiday parties with over three hundred people, the Purim party with over four hundred people, and it’s all kosher and beautiful! I helped found and organize the Eshel Shabbatons ( ESHEL) where people  are meeting each other, finding other queer Jews! Today, we are an active and dynamic LGBT community. It’s bubbling and boiling! It’s unbelievable. It's exciting! If that’s not an accomplishment, then I don’t know what is!

In terms of the changes within the rabbinate, there have been some real changes. It’s not as satisfying, though, because straight rabbis are not yet using words of acceptance and self esteem. However, at least their tone has changed. Approaching them is safer, reparative therapy has lost acceptance, and these are all positives. These are all big accomplishments. These are things to be proud of.

After one hundred and twenty years, what would you want your best friend to say as your hesped?

I’d want him to say that M was a player, but in the sense my grandfather meant, that I tried to make the world a better place for people who desperately needed it. That I was able to express emotions in a way completely unique to me, that I made people’s lives sweeter or better because of who I am, whether through words or song or performance. That I was a person of passion. That I was rooted in the rational, but I respected the passions that underlie life, whether they are explainable or not, and I found them holy and cultivated them That I respected gedolim. That I was a force to be reckoned with. For good! That I filled a niche. That I did something that was needed and that only I could do. I didn’t let the status quo stop me. If I saw something wrong, and thought it could be changed, that I created the pressure for change. I didn’t go along with the pack and instead, my will was enough to create a vision for a new way. And maybe, maybe, maybe, that I was a wonderful father, a wonderful parent, and that I could take all the love and specialness from my parents and grandparents, and put it forward to create my own family. It hasn’t happened yet, but maybe.

If you could ask the frum community one thing what would it be?

Um. Lets see. Ha ha. I think it would be a complicated request, but I’d try to …I would ask them to look in at their own community and see who has the least power and who has the smallest voices, and then ask how can we work to be the voices and the advocates of the powerless and the non-privileged, however threatening that may be. Structure and institutions can be threatened by the damage that victims may cause. While I understand the fear of what you worked on crumbling, what we work on isn't worth anything if it causes harm, even to one person. We cannot hurt the many on the backs of hurting some. We must empower the victims, especially those we are most threatened by.

Unfortunately, I see the opposite in orthodox institutions. We too often relate to the abuser and are threatened by the abused. This is an endemic problem in Orthodoxy and must be addressed. I think we can do better than accusing the weakest and the least powerful. It’s not Jewish. It’s not the way we need to behave as ethical Jews. We need to somehow know how to help those who have no power, and those who are suffering in the communities we build.

Honestly, those who are in power don’t need as much help. Can we re-prioritize from helping those with privilege? Let’s start talking about those who have been harmed, those who are telling us they are hurting. Maybe they don’t even have a voice: Women, LGBT folks, abused children, people with intellectual or mental health challenges, any of those people. Hear their protests, admit our possible role in their suffering, and let the infrastructure help the powerless, rather than protecting the privileged.

                                Helping the weak makes you strong

MARRY AWAY THE GAY

Hi Y. I'm so happy you agreed to do this interview. Thank you! Can you tell us something about yourself?

I’m forty-six years old, female, and I identify as soft butch, or androgynous, although, over time, I’ve embraced my feminine side. I work as a licensed Marriage & Family Therapist within the LGBT community, and with a lot of Jewish people and it’s very rewarding and exciting work. I have a lot of friends and family. I’m settled and "out". I’ve come a long way from when I lived in the closet in the Chabad community and I was scared and didn’t know what was going on with me. My life is good now.

 What was your childhood like?

I remember when I was little, I wanted to be exactly like my father. I wore my pants below my stomach and wore a tie like he did and a belt and I wanted to be a lawyer, like him. I identified strongly with him.

My mother died when I was ten and my father remarried a few months later. We were sent away and I never went home again. My father doesn’t want a relationship with me. I got sent away to frum schools because they didn’t want us around. I have a younger sister who is still frum.

My sister is very pro-gay. Her favourite show is Glee. She’s part of the fan club! And she’s very supportive of me. She was friends with a frum lesbian couple and she was very close with them. She’s pretty open minded.

Some frum people have been okay. There are some people who accepted me for who I am, and then there were some people who distanced themselves from me. I had some homophobic incidences and I had one very close friend who rejected me absolutely. People used to say they would “daven for me”.

What’s your connection with yiddishkeit?

I go to a gay shul. I just went to tashlich for Rosh Hashana, and I’ve been an active part of that shul.  When I was younger, I was part of the Chabad community. I went to frum schools and seminary and then I got married shidduch-style, at the end of my second year of seminary. It was the thing to do. I went out with a few guys and then I met my ex-husband. He seemed like a lovely person.

 I didn’t know what gay was back then. I knew I was different, but we were so segregated, the girls never talked with boys at all. I didn’t know I wasn’t going to be attracted to men. But right away, after I got married, I knew there was something off. I missed being with the girls a lot.

I was married for over twenty years, but four years into the marriage, I had a major crush on a woman, and only then was I able to figure out what gay was. 

But I was so horrified and mortified that I was gay that I didn’t say a word to anyone for the next seven years. During that time, I was super depressed and felt suicidal. In 1998, I came out, first to my best friend and then to my therapist, and then to my ex-husband.

 My ex-husband was kind of relieved to find out that the problem was not him, and he was quite supportive.

He said, “We need to find you someone.” We still stayed married for another ten years, and we had four kids together. He’s a good dad, a good person.

 I tried to be straight, but I definitely felt like I wanted to find a female partner. I also craved those deep female friendships I’d had earlier, but within the Chabad community, as a married woman, it was very challenging. When I came out as a lesbian, it was much easier to find close female friends. It’s been very very nice.

I got divorced at the end of 2007, and since then, I got my Masters degree in psychology and became licensed and developed some dear female friendships. My life now is much more rich than it was, and I am much healthier.

                               The tea is all kosher AND organic!

 Do you miss anything about frum life?

The sense of community in the general community is not as strong in the secular world. I really wish I was going to synagogue and seeing the same people all the time, and experiencing that warmth. I miss the close family unit. Some of my kids live with my ex and some live with me. 

 I don’t miss experiencing many of the people in the frum community making me feel different.

Nobody put two firecrackers up my nose and exploded them. This is just how I am.

After I came out, I had already moved away from yiddishkeit a lot, but in the past year, I’ve begun, again, to reconnect with Jewish friends and now I am more aware of my need for a Jewish partner. I have a lot more in common with Jewish people. They understand my culture and me. It would be nice to have a partner with whom I could share Shabbos dinner and other holidays and Jewish events. I’m aware of my strong connection to Judaism.

Recently, I met someone Jewish. She goes to shul and her kids are in Jewish schools. Having a Jewish partner would be so nice. I am feeling hopeful. I’ve been looking for a long time.

                                Girl, you think YOU'VE been looking for a long time?
What was it like, being married to a man but knowing you were gay?

It was very challenging. I tried to be straight, I tried to see if I could “fix” myself. I tried that for years, and it just doesn’t work. 

I wasn’t attracted to my ex-husband and I didn’t feel a strong emotional bond. It felt like I was married to my brother, or to a good friend. I cared about him and he is a good person. I didn’t want to leave him because we were such good friends, but I still felt something was painfully lacking between us. The good thing about being divorced is that I still have a good friendship with my ex and he has a new wife, so we both have what we needed. It’s a much better situation now.

 Do you think you can have a good marriage if one of the partners is gay?

For me, some very significant things are lacking in such a marriage. It was painful, and it’s hard, having to resign yourself to that lack. You want to be attracted to your partner. You want to feel a bond, feel that your partner is into you. But with one of the partners gay, it’s not that fulfilling. I suppose you could do it, but it would be difficult. The issues would include loneliness, feeling like you aren’t able to meet your full potential, the sense that you aren’t meeting expectations, not feeling like you are with someone who enlarges you and connects with your deepest self. I didn’t feel like I was in a real marriage. I felt like I had a friend, rather than a life partner. I think it was very hard for him as well. He deserved to be with someone who was attracted to him. I don’t think it was fair on him. It certainly didn’t work for us.

 You’d been married for twenty years. What led up to your divorce?

I had promised myself when I turned thirty that I would stay married for another ten years, and then, when I turned forty, I allowed myself to get divorced. I said, “It’s my time.” We tried two years earlier, but my ex couldn’t handle it emotionally and I stayed to support him and then, two years later, I tried again.

 I basically waited until he gave the green light, that he could handle it. It was something we had discussed for a long time. We had gone back to visit our former home in Sydney, Australia, because we were living in Miami at the time and on the way, we stopped in Los Angeles for a five day visit, and my ex-husband said, “If you agree to move here, then I think I could handle getting divorced.”

                                              Parked outside the shul...

The idea was that we would buy a duplex, and he would live upstairs and I would live downstairs, but when he got remarried, he bought himself a different house, and now I own the duplex. I have tenants upstairs and in the back house. It definitely helps. He has a much larger house, but at least I have income.

Right now, my ex is putting my license plates on my car. He just helped me buy a car. He didn’t want me to get ripped off. We are still very close. In fact, I was just helping him with something he is working on.

In what way did your frum ex-husband change his views about homosexuality?

He sees how much I have struggled with being gay, how I tried and tried to be straight and how it didn’t work. For years! He’s seen how hard it is. He’s seen my whole journey. He knows I had a really hard time and it’s hard to be closed and not be compassionate when you really are a caring person. Part of that was that I was so open with him and I let him know how I felt, all along the way. It makes a difference, because, after everything, he really cares.

It sounds like you really have a good relationship with your ex. Do you have any advice on how to negotiate a peaceful co-existence with ex-partners?

My situation is good because I learned about communication and basic empathy. I tried not to get defensive, and own my own part in the demise on our marriage. I tried to think about the impact on my ex. You have to really try to look at the other person’s situation and think about how they are feeling. It’s painful! I tried to see how upsetting everything must be from his perspective, and then I asked him how I could help him and make him feel better. I think one of the most important things is not to be defensive. I tried to avoid criticism and attacking. It takes a certain level of maturity to be able to do that.

Just kidding! Can you tell us about your experiences with therapy, especially within the frum community?
I had a therapist who gave me a book called “Coming Out Straight” to help me to be straight. It was such a bullshit book. It talked about “same sex attraction disorder” and it talked about how to cure something that isn’t a disorder but just part of life. I didn’t even return the book to her. I threw it in the garbage. It was one of the worst books I’ve ever read. She was a frum therapist and she thought there was something wrong with me. She was part of the reason I became a therapist, so that there would be good and knowledgeable therapists for LGBT people in the frum community.

Don't even THINK of reading that book!
There was a different therapist who said I can’t be gay if I’ve never had a relationship with a woman because I’d never had any experiences. At the time, I didn’t realize how heterosexist she was being. I did tell her that I am definitely a lesbian. What I said to her was, “How does a 16 year old boy know that he is straight?” She was also not so respectful about my Jewish life, about my Chabad beliefs. With therapists, you need to find people who are culturally sensitive, both with Judaism and gay life.
Women's support group (NY area)
Frum support group for parents of LGBT individuals
Bruce Aaron (midwest LGBT and frum affirmative therapist)

                                What can I tell you? I love quiche!
What was the best day of your life?
When I got licensed as a marriage and family therapist, it was a really great day. It was an accumulation of many years of work. It had been such a long road and it was a big accomplishment, and it came at the end of a whole journey, becoming okay with myself and feeling comfortable with myself. To me, it’s not just a piece of paper, but it’s a symbol of being in an emotionally healthy place.

If you could ask the frum community anything, what would you ask?
Please find a way to include people who are frum and gay. Sexuality is at the core of who we are. It’s really essential to find a way that people can have both identities, and not find themselves excluded. People end up giving up being frum because of the intense rejection, and because being gay is where they find love. People can’t live without being loved. Find ways to make people feel at home, loved, accepted, part of the community. Help people feel that they aren’t just tolerated, but are a wonderful and blessed part of the community, so they can reach their potential.

Y, thank you for being such a good sport about letting us do this interview and add goofy pictures to what is otherwise, a serious and mature discussion.
For anyone interested in finding LGBT affirmative therapy in Los Angeles, Y is a great resource:
Yisraela Hayman Therapy