THE LESBIAN PROFESSOR: NOT OUT TO FAMILY AND FRIENDS

I’m not out in the community where I live in England. I’m Israeli. I grew up in a religious family and we are Ashkenazim. I was married for a very short time to a man, but I had no children. We didn’t get divorced because I was gay but for different reasons. I was about thirty-eight when I realized I was gay. I was reading a book and only halfway into the book, I realized it was about more than “friendship” between two women. One of the heroines in the book had a life much like mine, and I started to look back on my own life and learn a bit about what it means to be a lesbian. It was a revelation. This is who I am!

In a way, it was a relief. It was hard, too, because at that time I was the only Orthodox woman who was gay that I knew. Besides, you know the stories about the woman who has so many cats and lives all by herself on the other side of the community? I didn’t see myself like that, a crazy cat lady. I’m allergic to cats! I’d never met a lesbian in my life. I thought I’ll probably live by myself for the rest of my life. I thought that’s okay. I still think so.

Back then, in the 90’s, I thought I am different from everyone else in the Orthodox world.  I had this feeling that I don’t want to get married to a man. Now what? Where do I go from here? I found out a very important detail about myself and then there’s nowhere to go!

Well, I got older and nothing happened. I kept it to myself. I got my masters in Jewish Studies and I started to do research. I didn’t even know how to get on the internet at that time, the web was in diapers, but I still started to look for a forum within the Jewish world. I knew I wasn’t going to become non-frum because of being gay. My question really was: How will I live now? I even thought about doing my dissertation about it. I did research, and I realized I can live by myself. It’s not such a big deal in halacha, and worse comes to worst, someone will slap me! Someone will try to shame me! But if someone hits me, I will hit them back! (I’m a tough Israeli).

Ultimately, I knew I’d have to go back to Israel to find out more about being gay. I returned to Israel and I started to look around and I started learning about LGBT life, mainly through the internet. The first time I went out to do something with my knowledge, there had been an ad in paper, The Pink Times. Someone put an ad in there, that they were looking for educators to help youth. I thought, ‘I am an educator and a counselor, so maybe I could help youth.’ I went to the first meeting and there was a famous woman there, and some other people, all gay, all looking gay. I told them I was frum. And they said, “We do not want of your sort. Because you try to make us frum.”

I left that meeting thinking I was definitely the only person like me. I felt I had to leave, but the next time I wanted to explore, I went online, and there was IOL, (Israel on Line) and I found a forum, and on the forum was the first openly gay, young frum lesbian, and she said to me, “You’re frum!” I was so shocked! I realized I wasn’t by myself! There was more than just me.

The community was very very small at that time, but a year later, a group of women started a frum lesbian forum and slowly, it grew. Then I left again for England, and that group created Bat Kol. I kept in touch with everyone through that group, and I was as supportive as I could be. I couldn’t always get to the meetings, because I worked overseas.

I am in my sixties now. I live as a single person in a Noah’s ark of people, because everyone surrounding me is coupled, all heterosexual. I have no gay friends in this town. I don’t know any one. Plus, my gaydar is bad.

                                Gay or just very very happy?

I met my last girlfriend thirteen years ago, online. We were together for seven years. I had one other girlfriend, but she was my first girlfriend and it didn’t last. With a same gender partner, there is warmth and wit and intelligence.  You don’t have to say too much to be understood.

One member of my community is a shadchanit [matchmaker], and she tried once to set me up, and I asked her not to anymore. I told her that where I am, please don’t bother. And at my age, it’s a little more complicated anyway. So then, the shadchanit got off my back. I’m closeted, but on the other hand, sometimes people do understand things without needing to be told. I don’t need to have a sign on my nose.

My family don’t know I am gay, but I did come out to my niece. She told me her mother (my sister) thinks that I am gay. And my cousin called me one day, after looking at my Facebook page and asked me if I’m gay, and I said yes! I won’t lie. I’m not a liar. But as long as I don’t have a partner, there’s no reason for me to come out.

    But, if you don't look at Facebook, you won't know I'm gay...

My mother, I think, A”H, did not like my ex-girlfriend. Maybe she knew but didn’t ask. Just like in the American army. My father is in his 90’s and I don’t feel the need to come out to him. If he asks me, I would not lie, but there’s no reason for me to come out. I don’t ask myself a question like that, what would happen if I came out to my family, because I would be completely utterly alone and lonely if they rejected me.

I do not have close friends in the community where I live now. I do have close friends but they don’t live here. They live in Israel and I am out to them. It doesn’t work that easily to meet people here. I can’t always be running back to Israel. I work here now. 

I used to work in Jewish education for the Jewish Agency but now I am the head of the Hebrew department at an English university. There are a lot of gay people in academia. At university, I have no problem if someone knows I am gay. I’m me. That’s all.

There are two sides of me and they live very peacefully together. I don’t see any problem. The only thing that is hard is that I am by myself. I don’t even wish for a partner, but just someone that I can be completely me with. And she should live nearby! I do have a non-Jewish friend who I met through my ex. She’s not gay but we are good friends. One of the things I like to do is go to estate sales, and she knows the area very well, and I get to see unusual places. There’s wonderful things to see and find in these old houses in England. Her husband sleeps in on Sunday and she is happy to go out with me. And I can talk with her about everything, because she knows that I am gay. That loneliness is the hardest part of my life. I have no conflict with being frum and gay.

In Israel, I belong to a group, not Bat Kol, that are gay. Some are married to men, some are ultra-orthodox, and it’s a very eclectic group. We meet twice a year, at least one Shabbat a year, and it’s a wonderful group! Thank G-d for all these smart phone apps and skype, so we can talk as much as we want. That’s something that didn’t exist before. The people in my group don’t see any problem with being frum and gay and neither do I.

I don’t know what is the best part of being frum and gay! I have no idea how to answer. At least I know who I am and I am not confused. I don’t see the contradiction between these parts of myself. I have grey hair and blue-grey eyes. What’s hard about that? That’s who I am. No contradiction but different parts of myself.

I did all the confronting when I was eighteen, and I was a student. I had to ask myself then, ‘Why am I frum?’ and then, when I realized I was gay, I had to confront the gayness, and from that moment on I just live my life, as I am.

If a young woman would come to me and say I feel I am gay and I want to stay frum, then I would help her find a way to do it. I try to be the best D I can be and it’s not a conflict in my life. I try to do the best I can, combining all elements of my life, but it’s not a constant plaything for me. My mind gets to rest.

I don’t have the need to belong to a group but it’s nice to know there are other people beating with the same feelings and expressions. At some point, my group did talk about what’s okay, what’s not okay. We all read the same books and articles and the gemarah. We had many talks on the subject of lesbian women. I wonder if anyone can get to the pages where we did that discussion online? Maybe that information is buried after all these years? Well, it was nice to be able to talk with people about these subjects. I was really really closeted back then, and during those online chats, it was like being able to be all the parts of myself, and yet still a bit secretly because we used screen names. And then, when we finally met the actual people in the group, not under a screen name, that was very nice. It was suddenly true that we had known each other secretly for 15 years, but under nicknames!

I think the integration of frum gay people is happening already. In many communities. I would still like to see that if two women walk down the street and go to shul and they are a couple, it would be exactly like a man and wife going to shul for holidays and Shabbat and no one would think it is a strange thing. They would see them as a family. Here in England, once in a while, there’s a gay minyan, but it’s not in walking distance, so I can’t go. I wish that whoever wants to live openly, can live openly just like anyone else. If they think they need to break a glass to live together, then so be it. Anyway, that’s what I am seeing - in some communities, gay couples are accepted just like any other family.

There’s an Israeli group on Facebook called (translated) “I’m a Frum Feminist and I Have No Sense of Humour.” It’s not even a year old, but in the last seven months, almost five thousand women and men have joined. In the last few months, the changes they have brought on have been incredible! Even fully Orthodox shuls have allowed women to dance with Torah, and many other things too, and suddenly it’s become, why not? That’s the attitude I want to see towards the frum gay community. Normalcy. If two women in Satmar want to go into the shul with their little boy or girl, it should be normal. My grandparents were Satmar.

Yehuda Meshi Zahav, he is the head of Zaka. Twenty years ago, he was the leader of all the anti-zionist guys that gave the Israeli police the worst time ever. They demonstrated all over Yerushalayim. He was horrible. But suddenly, after a terrorist attack that happened right in front of him, he realized that Israel was not such a bad country. He was completely anti-zionist, but he changed his perspective and now helps the country.

It should be just okay to be yourself. Young girls who suffer from their families because they are gay, should just find acceptance. I can feel the change. I can see change in the frum community. In less than a generation, the change will be there.

GIRL FROM CHASSIDIC FAMILY TALKS

Thank you for agreeing to talk with us, F. I know it's scary, and I want to thank you for your bravery in being so open. Could you tell us something about your life?

F: I'm in my early twenties. I grew up in a frum chassidish home. I went to a Yiddish speaking school and didn’t learn science. Until a year ago, I hadn’t even heard about evolution. My whole family was and is very frum. Still, when I was 14, my friend and I used to sit in the park and imagine what it would be like to be married. Her husband would be a basketball player and mine would be a guitar player. That was a very innocent time.

                                SLAM DUNK!  or....

When I was 14, I was really into the spiritual aspects of Judaism. I loved learning chassidus and I loved talking about it and thinking about it. I loved shabbos. I was always the one who asked a lot of questions, which my teachers simultaneously loved and hated. My questions were thought of as troublemaking, but at least I took an interest.

 My little sister recently wrote in my phone, “Chana Miryam is the best. But really H-shem is the best.” I thought this was really interesting, because she’s having this sassy moment but then she’s like, “Oh no! G-d is watching!” I think I was like that as a kid. I was sassy, and questioned, but I worried about the consequences of H-shem watching.

But when I was 14, I was sexually assaulted. I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t understand what had happened to me. I didn't have the words to describe what had happened. I thought I would get in trouble. If people knew, I would never get married! It would get around! That girl! The one who asked questions and sat in the park! Stupid reasons.

 When I was 15, I was hospitalized. My parents tried to hide that from the family and from my school. They were afraid of ruining the family name, didn’t want people talking about me, wanted to protect me from what people would say, wanted to keep my reputation clean. It was something that wasn’t talked about. I still don’t know anyone who went to a psychiatric unit in the frum community, even though I’m sure people have gone. 

When we finally told the school, they asked why I was in that facility. My parents had to talk to them about the rape and the principal responded really coldly. She didn’t hug me.  She wouldn’t even look at me. No one knew how to respond. I felt like an outcast. Like everything about me was weird and I didn’t fit in anymore.

 My friends were freaked out and scared of me. They went to the principal crying about me, and the principal told me I had to be silent, that I was a bad influence and was scaring the other girls. I wasn’t allowed to speak out about my experience at all. I started getting resentful. I felt hurt about the way the community was dealing with me. I felt like sh-t.

 The whole experience was made worse for me because I didn’t know that Jewish people had sex. We didn’t have sex ed in school. Rape isn’t sex, of course. It’s violence. But I didn’t understand anything about it, and it made me angry at the community, cheated. 

I still hate the principal of my school. One day, I was crying to her because I wasn’t a virgin anymore. And she was so technical with me and cold. She said, “It’s like you ate bad food and now you need to vomit it out,” and the implication was: Move on. Get over it. At the hospital no one treated me that way. I felt accepted and supported.

 After a year, when I came back to the frum high school, it was no longer my world. I didn’t feel safe. I knew too much. I couldn’t transition back.

What connection do you have with the gay world?

F: My best friend is queer, and a good portion of my friends identify as queer and/or gay. I had an argument with my father on Shabbos and I panicked. I thought, “My dad thinks I’m a lesbian!” This is scary because he is an Orthodox Jew who is extremely homophobic. I’m afraid my dad will read my diary and see that my first kiss was with a girl. That would cause a big fight, and our relationship would be ruined. Or whatever relationship we have now.

 That’s worrisome because if I am a lesbian, everyone will point at me, and treat me differently. There’s a stigma in the secular world about being queer, but in the Orthodox world, it’s amplified and much much worse.

To tell the truth, my first kiss was with a girl. After that, everyone said, “Now you are a lesbian! I knew you were all along!” I said, “No. I’m not.” I think I’m really afraid of ever being categorized under any term, since I don’t think I fall into any category. I like boys. I like girls. I like people! Those categorizing words are so scary where I come from.

 Where I come from, tv watching was so looked down on, so now I don’t like to watch tv. The same thing with words like LESBIAN. It’s very big and very scary. I’ve been with a girl, but I’m against labels or calling myself a lesbian. I’m afraid of the Chassidic world getting freaked out and I don’t want to do something that will make my father and my community mad at me.

 Do you know anyone who is both frum and gay?

F: Yes. But from what I’ve seen, it’s very difficult to do. It’s the most difficult thing. Keeping Judaism relevant while living a different lifestyle is 100 times more challenging. And the community talks all the time about those frum gay Jews. Everyone is homophobic, even people you wouldn’t expect. Even my best friend from high school openly admits being homophobic and doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with it. The other day, she said, “I can’t deal with that! I’m so homophobic!”

 Why did she think that was okay?

F: When she heard my first kiss was with a girl, she was really weirded out.

She did that really narcissistic thing that straight people do, which is, she immediately thought, “Oh no! F’s in love with me!” She thought I wanted HER. I wanted to say, “You aren’t indiscriminately in love with all of the men in the world. You are selective and I am too. In fact, the last person I’d be interested in was you!”

It’s hard to hate her for this, though, because I didn’t know how to be respectful either when I was younger. She doesn’t know anything other than being homophobic.

What is it about your connection with your father that makes you afraid to tell him about your sexual identity?

F: Sometimes, people shave their beards but no one excommunicates them, right? Bacon and non-kosher meat are exactly the same al pi halacha and yet, chazer seems so much worse, to the point that it seems like the evil of all evil. Gay has the same kind of stigma, an extra negative connotation, as if it’s extra sinful and extra scary within the frum community. I wouldn’t tell my father because even modern, non religious Jews are afraid of the gay, let alone my conservative, republican, orthodox, Chassidic father.

My father keeps on sending me articles about getting married young! He’d like me to have children, and this is what my body is built for, to bear fruit. I do want to have kids. But not right now. I can’t help but worry that I’m getting less fertile by the second, and that’s silly, but it’s the way I grew up and all my friends are getting engaged and having babies, making families. Other peoples’ thoughts live in my head.

I am scared to connect myself with “sexual deviance”, because it’s a scary idea in our community. I don’t think my father would be able to hear it. He couldn’t hear that I’m not as frum as him. He couldn’t hear that I was dating. He could never hear that my sexuality is fluid. He just doesn’t want to know.

What do you see as the attitudes of the community towards frum gay people?

F: I was babysitting my sister and helped her to make girl power pamphlets. She wrote “I like girls sooo much”. She’s five. 

My father made a face, and said, “I hope that’s not from hanging around at [name of frum gay family]”. Now the gay is contagious! He laughed as he said it, which was frustrating, because that laugh indicated he thinks the whole lifestyle is silly.

At school, when everyone thought I was a lesbian, people said, “Oh, that’s that dyke girl.” At yeshiva, boys think someone is gay and they say, “He’s super gay” and not in a good way, as in “He’s a weirdo. Don’t hang out with him.”

Have you experienced many frum Jews who are tolerant?

F: No. 

When I was talking about men objectifying women, my father said, “The halacha set up a system to prevent that. You deny the system/rules, but then you get mad when you are a victim of objectification. That system is set up to protect you. You get mad when you aren’t protected.” That’s really skewed.

When I was 16, my mother said, “You should be careful how you dress. Especially given what happened to you.” That is so messed up. This is the understanding of women, promiscuous, deserving of whatever happens because they aren’t aligning themselves with the system designed to protect them. I consider that illogical, irrational and self-righteous. That’s the same tone I hear whenever I hear people talking about someone who is gay. A complete misunderstanding of the issue.

What would you like to tell the frum community?

F: I’ve always been really afraid to leave the community . When I was younger they said once someone has tasted chassidus they can never leave the lifestyle and be truly happy again without it. I believed this. I was scared that I would leave and that my life would be shallow and meaningless. We used to talk about people who had left and were unhappy. But really, I was unhappy. I wasn’t happy or confident or supported as a person. I always felt like I needed to repress myself.

But now, I really am happy and I am not fooling myself. It’s really offensive when you write off my choices as not really mine, but just an influence of my yetzer hara, as giving in, rather than actively choosing life and health. Living a frum lifestyle is a beautiful thing, and I highly respect people who live that life, but I would ask for the same respect for my own choices.

I’m happy for people who make a frum lifestyle work for them. I want all the frum people to be happy for me too. I hate how I feel silly and shallow when I say I am applying to colleges. My friends are making humans and I am going to school. I love what I am doing and I want them to see that I am happy and healthy and have made good choices for me. I want them to give me the respect that I give them.

GAY AND MARRIED FOR 25 YEARS

                                This photo is not the person doing the interview.
It's true. I have ten children and I've been married for twenty-five years. I went to the most chassidish schools. I got married when I was sixteen. Growing up, we spoke Yiddish. My children and my grandchildren all speak Yiddish. Just from looking, maybe you couldn't tell that I am gay. I would be invisible, and not just because of the way I dress or because of any of those things. I would be invisible because I am not out to almost anyone. I look like all the other bubbies and mommies on my block.

It's just too scary for me. I am afraid. I have too much to lose.

I am terrified that someone might hear me talking on my phone one day, or somehow, just from looking into my eyes, know what I am thinking.

I went to a library, not one near my house, but in the city. It's not allowed to read goyishe books. I said I was going to the women's doctor. The office is right nearby. I sat all the way in the back of the library, down low, between the shelves, and I had there a little pile of books about being gay. I put my purse on top of the books, so if someone went past, they wouldn't see. In the bathroom, I changed the way I cover my hair, so no one would see me and know what kind of person I am, where I live, who my Rebbe is, and tell on me.

When I opened the first book the librarian gave me, there was a photograph of something I had never seen before.* I didn't even know how to look at the picture. I couldn't understand it. I read the words and I didn't understand those either. I felt like I was stupid. I felt like I lived in a foreign country. I began to sweat with terrible fear and I looked all around me but no one was there. No one was looking. But I thought someone was looking, so I got up and I went to the bathroom and I hid in the stall for maybe a half hour. I felt like the worst kind of pervert. I think I cried. I did cry.

When I went back to the place I had been sitting, the librarian had already put the books away. I thought that G-d was making it harder for me to do a sin. He was giving me a chance to change my mind. So I thought about it and decided that I would only take one book to look at, not a pile. But then I thought about the pictures in the book. Even the cover made my face burn.

If someone saw me there, without even reading books like that, I could have lost my kids. I could have been kicked out of my community. My mother and father would have sat shiva. They still might sit shiva. I still might be kicked out of the community. I still might lose my kids. Why am I doing this interview? It's dangerous. I should stop. But once you open your mouth, it's hard to close it again.

When we were first married, I had to go to Manhattan, to bring a document to where my husband worked, and he didn't want me to be seen by the other men there, so he came outside. There were two women there, in the doorway, touching each other, kissing, and I looked away but looked back again. I couldn't help it. My man said not to look because they are gay. I didn't know what that meant. But it made me feel funny inside myself. I wanted to do what they were doing, I wanted to be them. They looked happy. But I thought it was probably a bad thing, a goyishe thing. But still, I said to my husband,  "I think I am like those people."I didn't know anything about gay at all. It bothered my husband. He said something about looking at dogs when they are doing things, that it makes your children like dogs too. Even when he walks in the street, he doesn't look up. He doesn't look at me, or anyone else either.

I don't even know, for sure, if I am gay. I think I am, but I've never been with a woman. But I like women, I feel more comfortable with women, and I don't know so many men. My father is a good man. He is a refined man. He makes the cholent for my mother before shabbos and he bakes the challah too. He's never raised a hand to us. He wouldn't hurt anybody. But everything he does, he asks a sha'alah. He wouldn't be happy if I ever came out. He would die.

My mother is from Europe. She sits and peels vegetables and says tehillim from memory all day long. She doesn't have fancy jewelry or anything fancy at all in the house. She raised me to be like her, not to be any other way. When she lights the shabbos licht, she prays that all her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren are yirei shomayim. And what would she think, if I told her I am gay? I'm not even sure my mother knows what gay is. I can't imagine explaining it to her. We don't ever talk about those kind of things. I might kill my own father and mother, chas vecholilah, if I said I am gay.

So why say anything? Why do anything at all? I am already not so young. When I was younger, a girl, I felt like I was connected to many other girls and I could talk and I could be myself with them, relaxed and...I don't know how to explain it. It wasn't such a big thing, a touch, a word.  I didn't know I wouldn't feel so friendly when I got married. I thought getting married, it's supposed to be even better. But for me, even though my husband is a good man, a holy Jew and a baal chesed, it isn't better. He says it's not right for men and women to be close. My husband doesn't use my name. He calls me "di mame" in front of the children and nothing at all in private. It's not very Jewish of me, but I sometimes think I'd like someone to love me and touch me, just because. It's so lonely.

Per request, this interview is not illustrated with people's faces.
(* The book was The Whole Lesbian Sex Book)