THE GOOD RAV: A Chassidic Talmud Chacham and Rabbi speaks:

                                                   Generic photo of a rabbi. NOT the speaker

This is a transcription from a speech given by a chassidic rabbi, a paskening rov, who does not identify as gay but who has been very supportive of LGBT people. This was not a private answer, but something that was said in front of an extremely large audience. Any mistakes are mine and not the rabbi's. 

I’d like to start with my personal journey regarding Judaism and homosexuality. It goes back over twelve years. It was late Thursday night. I came back after a long meeting and my wife said to me “Why are you crying?” I told her I’m sad for a young Jewish man, an Orthodox young man in his mid-thirties, who’d been to yeshiva for a number of years. He had come around after making an appointment and cancelling it, and then making another appointment and cancelling that one too, and then again, until he actually took courage to come around. 

He presented me with three questions:

1) I have never been attracted to women. I have always been attracted to men. I know there is a commandment in the Torah to be fruitful and multiply. Pru urvu. I have to have children. Is it indeed incumbent on me to get married and have children?

2) To the extent that I am a homosexual in orientation, meaning that I am only attracted to men and not to women, how would you behave towards me if I came to your shul? Would you allow me to daven before the amud? Would you allow me to get an aliyah? Would you allow me to be part of the community? What would happen if you knew I wasn’t just a homosexual in orientation but I was actually active, and engaged in a relationship with another man? Would that make a difference to you?

3) If it’s true that the Torah in the Book of Leviticus makes it clear, unequivocal, that it’s forbidden to engage in male homosexual liaison, I have to ask the question; G-d made me this way or He allowed me to develop like this, nature, nurture, but at the end of the day, I never chose it. From a very young age, this is what I recall. This is who I am. But G-d says, “Don’t engage in male-to-male intercourse”, so that means that I am obliged and presumed to remain celibate for my whole life. I won’t ask you why would G-d should do such a thing, to allow a [gay] person to develop through nature, nurture, providence, biology - and at the same time, constrain him in such a way as to give him a commandment that means that he has to remain lonely, to live a loveless life, craving for closeness, intimacy, physical intimacy included in sexuality, nevertheless deprived, frustrated, living a life of misery.

[The young man] posed those three questions that night and I hope to answer those three questions here now…

With regard to marriage, I said to him what I thought then was the obvious answer. I still think it is and I am surprised that there are others who disagree. If anyone, man or woman, draws another person into a marital relationship knowing that the other person is heterosexual, if a gay person draws another person into a relationship knowing that the other person craves a normal marriage and they are gay and they don’t inform their spouse of their orientation, this is an ethical crime of the highest order. 

Even if they do achieve what might be called informed consent, such a marriage is, “generally speaking” (there are always exceptions to every rule) an unconceived marriage for a number of obvious reasons. Even though, halachically, a man is obliged to get married and have children, there are circumstances when a person is not emotionally or physically equipped to have children. If a person is not attracted to women, then this would mean he would be exempt from fulfilling the positive commandment “Be fruitful and multiply.”  Halachically, I explained that there is a category *, there is only a certain extent that a person must push themselves or expend his resources in order to fulfill any given commandment, including this primary commandment of getting married. If a person’s psychological infrastructure was such that it didn’t attract him to women, he is not obliged to steel himself and live in a marital relationship in order to have children.

Subsequently, even recently, I have realized how important it is that this message gets across. Firstly, because I myself have seen many cases where people have been encouraged by spiritual leaders, psychological counselors, lay leaders, to get married and very often these [gay] people have gotten married with the best intentions and subsequently, they’ve suffered the consequences. They, their spouses, their children. In the aftermath of an acrimonious divorce, things become extremely messy, extremely painful for them.

The other reason is, because only recently in a kiruv journal that’s published in Flatbush, it was suggested that people who go through therapy, even though they are going to have relapses, even though it’s almost inevitable that there will be relapses into homosexual conduct, should get married. I find this to be mind-boggling! I feel it is important that people should be aware that getting married is not just a privilege, it’s a responsibility and a duty, and if a [gay] person doesn’t have the ability to remain committed and is unlikely to be able to suppress his inclination in all ways and at all times, then it’s better that he doesn’t get married. On the contrary, to give up the dream of marriage and having children and bringing grandchildren to ones own parents is an extremely difficult thing, and those people who do that, knowing that they are not able to honour the marital vows, are in actuality doing an act of altruism, in depriving themselves of blessings that they themselves may crave, the blessings of family life and children.

With regard to the second question, I said to him, paraphrasing what my friend Rabbi M said, the Torah prohibition is not about orientation, it’s about actions. Clearly, whatever a person is, no matter what his orientation is, he should be welcome in shul. He should be a full-fledged member of the synagogue, and there should not be ostracizing and then, he’d never be disenfranchised. We should accept any member, man or woman, regardless of their orientation. 

There are, however, two types of communities. There are those communities that only allow people who observe the entire Torah to be part of their community. If you do even one sin, then you are out. Clearly, such a community would not allow an active homosexual Jew to be a part of their community. But the vast majority of Jewish communities today do allow all sorts of people, many of whom don’t keep a whole host of laws, to be part of the shul membership. And it must be added, people who are dishonest in business are allowed to be members of those shuls. Dishonesty in business is an infringement of a law against ones fellow man, an interpersonal crime, whereas homosexual relations are actually only a crime between man and G-d. There is no human victim here. It’s not in an exploitative context. 

Rambam, Maimonides, writes in a number of places, in his magnum opus, the Mishneh Torah, that forbidden sexual relationships come under the category of Bein Adam Lemakom, between man and  G-d. Therefore, in a community that makes room for people who don’t fully observe the shabbos or the rules of niddah, Taharas Hamishpacha, family purity and so on, there is no reason they should not  allow even practicing homosexuals to be part of their community, provided they [the homosexuals] are respectful to the ethos of the synagogue. But that’s true with regard to ALL people. We allow heterosexuals to be part of our community, sometimes we have shabbatonim for young boys and girls on Friday night, we don’t check up on them when they go home, and provided they are respectful to the shul,  they behave in accordance with the ethos of the shul, then of course they can be fully participant in the shul.

I believe that most people are not compelled to do things all of the time. There may be exceptions to the rule. In terms of assessing the severity or the lack of severity of a particular crime, you have to take into consideration the context. Today, even if people know something is forbidden, and they know that’s what the Torah says and that’s what the rabbi preaches from the pulpit. Even if they know that’s what they are supposed to do, they were raised in a society that disregarded these prohibitions. Generally speaking, they are classified in halachic literature as a tinok shenisba, a child taken into captivity. 

As condescending as the term may sound, Maimonides, in his Laws of Rebels, Hilchot Mamrim, chapter 3, section 3, used this term to describe second generation Karaites, who although they knew all their Jewish obligations and were quite familiar with the rabbinical tradition, and knew what they were supposed to do, nevertheless, since they were brought up in a society that disregards these rules and did not consider them to be binding , they weren’t held responsible to the same degree type as someone who had received an education right from a young age in keeping the laws of the oral rabbinic tradition. The same thing applies here. In western society where many people are brought up under the influence of the  Zeitgeist, according to which the sexual morality of the day doesn’t necessarily honour the Torah’s view, such people, where the cap fits, can also be deserving of the title tinok shenisba.

If I say nothing else but this, dayeinu. When G-d judges people, he does not judge them according to the objective category of the crime. He judges them according to their subjective circumstances.  Now, any heterosexual, myself included, who thinks about their own challenges, knows that he often slips and falls, even when he could have done better. Think about the plight of homosexuals, such as the young man I was speaking to on that night, who was constrained in a homosexual orientation such that he was not able to have any other outlet. How many of us would actually be ready to commit ourselves to a life of celibacy and avoid all transgressions at all times? I think if we look at ourselves honestly in the mirror and if we put our hands on our hearts, we will acknowledge that this would be a very difficult achievement. 

Therefore, understanding the circumstances and the context in which a homosexual finds himself is most important. If G-d judges people according to their circumstances, we too, should do so as well. While that does not mean in any way shape or form that we want to rewrite the halacha, the law, the Torah states explicitly that which it states, nevertheless, it does make a huge difference in the way we approach an individual who is confronted with a special set of challenges, circumstances which are most difficult.

I finally come to the last question I was confronted with that night:

Lamah asah H-shem kacha? Why did G-d make me this way? This question has been so powerful that some rabbis have felt compelled to assume that there must be some magical cure, or way of transforming homosexuals, making them into heterosexuals. Recently, some rabbis issued a Torah Declaration that said that reorientation must be possible for all people because G-d, who is merciful, would not create people to have them locked in an unfulfilling life, lonely and loveless, and that the only way they could get out of this [isolation] would be through a prohibition.

This argument, in my opinion, is theologically flawed, because we find that G-d actually has put lots of people in these circumstances.  We can find many people who, whether by providence or from biology, are in circumstances where the only way to escape misery would be through violating halacha. There are people who, because of physiological, biological, emotional or even halachic conditions, can’t get married, and such people have to live a celibate life. And the only way they are able to find intimacy and physical love would be if they were to violate the halacha.

There have been, in the past, many people who were constrained and unable to have children because of premature ovulation, and the laws of niddah affected their ability to have the blessing of children. That’s an example of people committed to keep the halacha who have even suffering childlessness their whole lives, in order not to transgress the halacha. There are people in around the world who have to give up a lot, to live in destitution, even die of poverty, in order not to break shabbos. The idea that despite the nisyonos that G-d gives people, we can somehow straightjacket G-d and insist, and say G-d would never do that, is not correct and not reflective of reality. Therefore I don’t think that is a statement that can be supported. I don’t accept that as the answer to the theological question [of why did G-d make me like thus].

How then do I deal with the theological question? The answer is very simple. I don’t. I don’t have an answer. The question is an important question but it doesn’t have anything to do with homosexuality or heterosexuality or anything to do with sexuality. It has to do with all of these and many more. It has to do with the general question in theology of why do great people suffer from infertility? Why can’t great people find love and spouses? Why do great people suffer from many tragedies, and great, small, or medium-sized difficulties in their lives? We have no ability to answer that.  Therefore, it’s important to place this question in the right context. It’s not unique to the sexual portion of Leviticus. It is something about the human condition and the way G-d created us.

In my own meetings with homosexuals, I have four goals that I do believe can be achieved, I strive to achieve them and to a large extent, I have achieved them:

1.     Someone who is homosexual should not lose his life from depression, from feelings of impotence, through drugs, through ephemeral relationships and promiscuity.

2.     Someone who is homosexual should not lose their family, through them alienating their parents and siblings, or through their parents or siblings alienating them.

3.      Homosexuals should not lose their rabbis, their communities, their place in their shul, either through their shul alienating them or them alienating their shul, or through identifying themselves completely by their orientation and going off somewhere else.

4.     Homosexuals should not lose their G-d, They shouldn’t feel that just because they have such a tremendous challenge and just because they haven’t always been able to meet the requirements of this challenge according to the Torah, therefore, it’s all or nothing. Strangely, no heterosexuals seem to feel that their failings make them that way [excluded from the frum community]. For some reason, this is a mistake that’s happened; that people feel it’s either all or nothing. We have to somehow make sure that people should recognize that G-d loves all Jewish people, and the Jewish community should make room in their home for every Jew. 

      As I said before, we should do everything in our power so that homosexual Jews should not lose their lives, not lose their families, not lose their communities and not lose their G-d.

 

FRUM FATHER OF A BISEXUAL DAUGHTER

This article originally appeared in the Jewish Week (10/11/2013), and is reposted here. Frum Gay Girl did not do this interview, but believes it will be of interest to the readers of the blog. You may read the original together with the comments generated at this link: http://www.thejewishweek.com/editorial-opinion/opinion/my-secret-father-lgbtq-child-not-what-you-think

I am a Modern Orthodox Jew, the product of a Torah u’Madda (Torah and secular) education. I am not sure what I expected to discover at this first-ever weekend “Shabbaton,” hosted by Eshel, for Orthodox Jewish parents of LGBTQ children last April. 

Our youngest daughter “came out” to us as bisexual more than seven years ago and we have guarded the secret between us, our two other daughters, and our son-in-law. We immediately embraced her and told her that we could never love her any less than we do -- which is the most you can love anybody. Many years have passed and we have long accepted our daughter for who she is.  We worry less about our daughter’s future as the rest of the world outside the Orthodox Jewish community accelerates to accept same sex-relationships. But we still worry how our extended family, community and Jewish world will react when we are “all out.”

Here’s the problem:  Our Torah -- God-given and True -- explicitly forbids male same-sex sexual relationships of a particular sort and although the Torah makes no direct mention of lesbian relationships, the Rabbis have forbidden those as well. So as long as my community and my friends don’t know, I have not had to deal with my “dirty little secret”-- the one I know but didn’t articulate before the Eshel retreat.

My secret isn’t my daughter’s sexual orientation. I could not be prouder of my daughter and have no need or desire to keep that a secret from anyone. My secret is that I do not accept the rigid Orthodox view of same sex relationships and I have been embarrassed to share that out loud in my relatively “conservative” Orthodox shul.

I know that humans don’t choose their sexual orientation much in the same way I know that the world is not flat and was not created in six physical days 5773 years ago. I am a doctor by profession. I have lived through the period where doctors thought autism was caused by “refrigerator mothers” who could not attach properly. Despite its patent absurdity, that now- debunked psychiatric hypothesis survived well into the 1970s. We know better nowadays.  Various psychiatric narratives also blamed mothers and fathers  for “producing” gay children.

Therapy to “cure” same sex attraction has been a disaster in so many ways. Science has progressed, thank God! I try to remember to thank God for revealing to us the amazingly complex laws of His world.

We now know that gender identification and sexuality are primarily biologically determined, likely during a critical period of fetal development. Anyone who still thinks children “choose” to have same sex attraction is ignoring science. Our tradition bends to accommodate new knowledge. The Rambam dealt with this issue in the 12th century when he asserted that we must reconcile scientific knowledge with conflicting Torah passages by reinterpreting scripture as long as the scientific “knowledge” does not contradict basic tenets of the faith.

So many LGBTQ children describe how hard they fought to try to be “normal”.  One estimate is that gay children are 8 times more likely than their heterosexual counterparts to attempt suicide. In Israel, nearly 25 percent of teenage suicides occur in LGBTQ children – can any sentient being think that young people deliberately put themselves in this psychologically painful and dangerous position volitionally? Really? 

My God and the God of our fathers and mothers, who watches over every human being, created my youngest daughter and one of my nephews with the capacity for same sex attraction.  And we are supposed to ignore them or reject them? What are their options? Celibacy? Torah Judaism embraces the inherent value of sexual intimacy in a marriage (even for infertile couples).

My problem, then, is with broadening the interpretation of the pesukim, or verses, that prohibit and label as abominable male–male intercourse of a particular sort – and using those verses to exclude same-sex couples from Orthodox Jewish life.

My Orthodox Jewish roots are deep.  If my daughter chooses to leave my faith, that would break my heart. If she chooses to spend it with the Jewish female love of her life in a community that allows her to continue to participate in its shul and celebrate her life milestones within an accepting Orthodox community, my life would be complete. If we teach our LGBTQ children that they must deny their sexuality in order to stay within Orthodoxy, we are literally driving them away. They have no choice in that particular dialectic.

Neither do it. Baruch Hashem, I am God-fearing and the continuity of my father’s faith, a Holocaust survivor, is a core value for me and my family. But if forced to choose between an Orthodoxy that rejects and pushes away my daughter or my father’s faith, I choose this: to bend my father’s faith to embrace his granddaughter. He probably wouldn’t have understood her situation very well. But I am sure that is what he and God actually want; they want all their children to stay in their “tent.”

These and many other thoughts surfaced during the intensely beautiful Eshel weekend I spent with other parents of LGBTQ children, all of whom were struggling within their various flavors of Orthodoxy (haredi to modern). Through a weekend of openness and sharing with parents who love their children no less than I, and hearing their stories of pain and joy, we created a Shabbos of healing. This was a traditional Shabbos with a traditional minyan. We had Torah learning and amazing sessions where we could feel each other’s struggles and hear from some who have dealt with this issue for more than a decade and who shared the joy of the continued Jewish engagement of their LGBTQ children.

I learned with Rabbi Steven Greenberg, the first openly gay Orthodox rabbi and later had the incredible opportunity to speak with him personally. I davened with a new “wholeness” in my heart.  Our love for our children fueled our groping for a way to bend our tradition to embrace what we know is true in our hearts. We cried, laughed, and sang together. By the end of our wonderful Shabbos together, we were wishing out loud that all the attendees lived together in the same physical community.

Our precious children were made the way they are by our God and the God of our fathers and mothers. Our Orthodox Jewish God loves his LGBTQ progeny no less than His other children. I am sure of this. This very same God wants us to find a way to reinterpret our pesukim, our rabbinic literature and our tradition today, with our current knowledge of LGBTQ issues. The roots of our tradition extend thousands of years nourishing the eitz chaim, or tree of life, whose living branches grow and extend with each passing day, just as our faith is renewed in our hearts daily.  At the Eshel Shabbaton, we parents were joined in a vision of creating the welcoming space in our precious Orthodox tradition in which our beloved LGBTQ children can breathe, thrive and lead Orthodox Jewish lives.

THE MORAH: Lesbian Chassidic Girls' School Teacher

I am in my late 40's. I am no longer a part of the chassidish community I grew up in, though I was a respected morah in the girls' high school until fairly recently. I am still chassidish, just a different kind of chassidish. I lost my job when I came out as a lesbian. Actually, that's not quite true. What happened was not that I lost my job. I wasn't rehired for the position I'd held for more than twenty years. No one said anything to me. But when it was time to hear about the new school year, there was a big fat silence.

I waited and waited, even past the beginning of the school year, because that was my income and I couldn't believe they wouldn't rehire me without at least saying something. When I didn't hear anything by the beginning of Tishrei [first month after school starts], I went in to see the principal, but she tried to avoid talking with me. Then, when she saw that I wasn't going to leave, she slipped out a side door and wouldn't talk with me later on the phone.

This was someone who had been my very good friend. I looked up to her like I looked up to no other Rebbetzin. I decided to try to speak with her again on a different day, so I came in unannounced and surprised her. 

She was not pleased. She folded her arms and pulled away from me. "I love you," she said. "We have been friends for many years. But I can't lie. I hate what you are doing to yourself. You can't deny that the Oibershter (G-d) would be very disappointed in you. Your soul is higher than this! The Rebbe would be very disappointed in you too. How can you allow yourself to behave in this way? You, who were a role model for the entire school in tznius and aidelkeit [modesty and refinement]!"

I felt tears coming into my eyes. I didn't want to cry in front of her. I wanted to be strong. I had been strong in the face of the many friends, family members and neighbours who had said hurtful things to me or even refused to have any contact with me after I came out, but in front of this one person, someone who had helped me through every crisis with my ex-husband, I couldn't be strong. I began to sob.

"I'm not going to deny it," I said. "I'm a frimmer yid (religious Jew) and I know that what I am doing isn't what G-d wants from me. But I also know that I am never going to get married to a man again. I also know I need companionship, friendship, help in my house with my kids, support and love. Will you condemn me to living my whole life alone?"

"You could have a girlfriend," said my principal. "But you could only be friends. Even if you lived in the same house. You couldn't ever be physical with her. That would be okay in the eyes of the Oibershter, even if other people in the community would look at you strangely and not allow their children to come to your house. And, even with that compromise, I could never have you teach in my school." I believe she thought she was making room for me, being accepting in her own way, but instead, it drove a stake through me. 

"Could you live like that?" I asked her, and she admitted that such a life would be a terrible nisoyon for her. "But my issues are not your issues," she said. "You have to battle this nisoyon [spiritual test of being gay] day and night, wth tooth and claw. Who knows - maybe this is why your soul is here on this earth? To have such a harsh nisoyon must mean that you have a very lofty soul."

I stared at her. I didn't know what to say. I felt completely crushed. To her, my life was not human and painful and challenging, but just some object lesson out of a story book, cut and dried, an easy thing to dissect, completely lacking real emotions and real human connections. "It's not a nisoyon for me," I replied. "My life is much better since I admitted that I am a lesbian. And I don't believe that H-shem created me the way I am and then cursed me to live alone. I don't understand what it all means. I do not deny the Torah, but neither do I know what everything means. I don't know why bad things happen to good people. I don't know why H-shem made me gay and also said that acting on my gay impulses is bad. I dont understand ANY of this."

"You made a choice. A choice which goes against all that Torah wants from us," she said. "Now you are stuck with it. You'll see. In time you'll have to come back, begging, because being gay isn't the life for you. You'll be empty. A shell." She turned away from me and didn't turn back. I got up slowly. I felt as if I had been run over with a steam roller.

"I did not make a choice," I said. "This life, this self, was given to me."

I cried the whole way home. Tears were streaming down my face. I was afraid that all the people walking past would see, so I pulled up the (never before worn) hood of my coat, to cover my face. It was hard for me to get a breath, and then, it started raining. I've always thought that H-shem was crying with me, that even if the principal couldn't feel how painful this all was for me, He could.

When I came home, my children asked me what was wrong. I didn't know what to tell them. We needed the money I make from teaching, since my ex-husband does not support us at all. Inside, I was frantic, while outside, I had to stay calm, not to upset the kinderlach (children). "Something upsetting happened, but we will be alright," I said. "Der Oiberhster vet unz helfn" [G-d will help us]. My children gathered around me and hugged me and patted my face. "We love you, Mommy," they said. We lit the fire and sat down with hot cocoa and snuggled, reading books. My oldest daughter made cookies and served them to all of us. "Here Mommy," she said, serving me first. "Life is still sweet, no matter what happened."

Later, my girlfriend came over to see how I was, and she also comforted me. And later still, several friends from the small circle of frum gay people I knew came over and reminded me, again, that I had support, and that many people loved me and that even if my home community denied me, I still had another community to fall back on and that they would be there for me, however many times I needed them.

HAPPILY MARRIED LESBIAN

Tell us a little bit about yourself?

Hi. I’m A, and I am an Orthodox lesbian. I am 38 and I have a wonderful wife as my partner, two amazing kids which are my pride and joy and am fortunate enough to live in a an Orthodox community that has been very warm and welcoming to me and my family. 

I first realized I was a lesbian when I was 16… well… really my first big crush was when I was 12, but the first time I knew without a doubt that I was a lesbian was when I was in a relationship with a girl when I was 16.  At that point I was just becoming frum and had a huge internal struggle that lasted years about whether I should become frum or give it up and be true to my heart.  I concluded that giving up Yiddishkeit was like giving up air and I eventually joined a chareidi community, married a man and started a family.  I told only the man I married, but not the rest of the community that I was a lesbian.  We were married 11 years, but ultimately it didn’t work out.

Yeah… it’s like that.

Tell us about your connection to Judaism?

I’ve always seen Judaism as a means to connect and communicate with our Creator.  One of my earliest memories as a child was sitting in my bedroom when I was about two and thinking it odd that there was someone there in the room with me, though the room was empty.  I used to talk to that presence and tell it about my thoughts.  Later when I was taught about what G-d was, it was clear to me that that was who I had been talking to.   I’ve always felt very close to Hashem, like He’s right there next to me every minute of every day.

What do you love about Jewish life?

I love being a part of community and connecting with mitzvot.  I’m a very tactile hands-on kind of person.  I love when I get to use my hands to do mitzvot like building sukkas or putting up an eruv.  I also love doing things where you can really see the ways in which your actions help individuals.  I love building and creating community.  I’ve always felt myself a pawn in Hashem’s plans and I love when I can see that Hashem’s put me in places in life to be able to step in and make a difference in another person’s Jewish experience.  I think I really like HaKadosh Baruchu’s world and His people. I love connecting with that. It brings me joy. It makes me feel like there is something important I can do with life. I think a lot of life is really difficult and muddy and complicated and complex.  I think I find that I tend to focus my efforts on the mitzvot that seem really clear and simple to me.

                                                                 This is a terrible idea!

What do you mean somethings are complicated?

Well… I think there are a lot of opportunities to do mitzvot and we all just do our best to fulfill them all to the best of our abilities.   Sometimes I worry about whether I’m doing it all right, doing it correctly. For example, one conversation I had with someone recently… How do you know when you are helping someone or hurting someone by giving tzedakah?  If a man on the street is clearly a drunk, comes up to you asking for a dollar to buy a sandwich, is giving that dollar helping him or giving him more opportunity to drink in excess?  We do our best and Torah guides us, but some things I find muddier then others.  But things like Hachnasas orchim on Shabbat are easier…just invite everybody and whoever shows up shows up!

What is Shabbos like at your house?

Well, in our shul there is a hosting committee.  A group of community members who are in charge of making sure everyone who needs a meal for Shabbos has one and we rotate shabbatot .  My wife and I are on the rotation and when it’s our turn (and often when it’s not) we like to fill our dining room up with as many guests as we can.  Especially on Yomim Tovim!    Often times we host a person or two over to sleep at our house for Shabbat who would otherwise have too long a walk to shule from their house or who is visiting from out of town.

What’s the craziest Shabbat you’ve ever hosted?

Well, that would have to be Teva Shabbat.   A few years ago my shul was doing a Shabbaton program about Jewish ethics around Tikun Olam, Sustainability and building stronger communities through community gardening.  We called it Educating from the Earth and we brought in two speakers for Shabbat, a Rabbi Greenberg from CLALwho would discuss Jewish ethics around sustainability and caring for the Earth Hashem has given us as well as one of the founders of the Jewish Farm School, Nati Passow, to talk about ways young Jews were finding a deeper connection with their Judaism through farming. 

 We had a movie on community gardening Motzei Shabbat and a program on Sunday to plant the seeds to start our own community garden.  At the time my wife and I had the two of us, our two kids and a boarder living in our small little house.  It was originally a 2 bedroom 1 bathroom house that we expanded by putting a play room and bedroom in the basement and another bedroom and office in the attic.  Anyway… small house.  The boarder we had was someone who had worked at the Teva Jewish Environmental Education program at Isabella Friedman for a couple of years and she and I were two of the main coordinators of the Shabbat program so of course we planned to host the two guest speakers for Shabbat.  We also had 3 community members who really wanted to be a part of this event, but lived too far away to walk to shul so we hosted them too. 

Quite a full household… but what made it really crazy was when my housemate came up to me and told me with great excitement that we were apparently fortunate enough to have the Topsy Turvy Teva Bus passing though that very weekend and they wanted to come to our program for Shabbat and needed someplace to crash.  So, besides the people already staying at the house we made room for another 6 more to join us as well, with their double decker bus parked in our driveway.  

                                                       You’re gonna put that where?!!!

But here’s the thing with that crazy story… As one of the coordinators I was on the phone with the Rabbi from CLAL and the founder of the Farm School coordinating who was speaking during the dinner and who was speaking during the lunch and what the program was going to look like and it hit me in the middle of the conversation… The Rabbi from CLAL, wasn’t just any R. Greenberg… it was R. Steve Greenberg from the movie “Trembling Before G-d”. 

                                      R. Steve Greenberg, first openly gay Orthodox Rabbi.

 I was really excited about this because there was a small group of Orthodox LGBT/Queer identified people in my shul community who had come out to my wife and I confidentially but not to anyone else in the community.  As a result, my wife and I knew who they were but they didn’t know each other.  So I’d talked to my Rabbi at my shul and created a side program that weekend.  We had a very quiet get together with all those people and R. Greenberg over seudah shlishit at my house.  My rabbi also knew other LGBT people that I didn’t know and all told we have about 10 folks at my house who all knew each other, but didn’t know that they all identified on the LGBT / Queer spectrum.   It was fantastic and beautiful.  We all sat around my living room and shared our stories about being Frum and Gay and how we found ourselves in this community concluding the Shabbat with one of the most moving Havdalahs of my life under the stars in my back yard right next to the crazy fantastic Teva bus.   I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this sort of thing.

What did that feel like for you?

There were two different feelings for me.  I felt good, as a community organizer, knowing that I had done something positive, and that something was made better by giving these people the opportunity to connect to one another.  And secondly, as an individual experiencing the moment, I felt empowered.  Whenever I go through an experience like that, I stop and look at myself in the past, and remember when I felt alone, thinking that there couldn’t possibly be anyone else like me… I lived with that loneliness for a long time.  When moments like that Seudah Shlishit happen… of having so many other LGBT / Queer Orthodox Jews around me I take that memory of sadness and loneliness and bring it into the in the light of the present and with that light shatter the sad memory.  It’s a feeling of relief, not having to question whether G-d loves me, cares for me, and has a plan for me.  

You mentioned that your shule is welcoming to you and your family, what do you think it is about them that makes them a welcoming community?

 I don’t know.  I think there’s just a culture there of being sensitive to difference in general.  There’s a commitment to really making sure every Yid who wants to be there has a space to be there.   There are some folks in the shul who have trouble making it up the flight of stairs to the 2^nd floor where the davening is, so my shul schedules a Shabbat once a month in the 1^st floor auditorium so these folks can be included.  There’s a person in my shul who’s allergic to perfume and rather than telling her too bad, the shul puts up signs that explain that someone is allergic to perfume and that if someone has come into the shul with perfume they should please go wash it off before entering the davening.  In as much as is reasonable, they make sure everyone has a way to access the shul and the community.  I think at first there were some in the community who were uncomfortable and it took time for these folks to warm up.  But after a little while I was just another community member like everyone else. 

What do you think it was that helped those community members to warm up who seemed uncomfortable at first?

I think being physically present and just going about being unabashedly there as a member of the community changed their minds to some extent.  I think time helped.  I think time gave them the chance to get to know me as a person and that made it hard for them to see me as just an issue. I think also having little kids running around the shul helped. It’s hard to see children as just a by-product of an issue.  And my kids are pretty charming.    

What were you afraid of when you came out to your community?

I was afraid of the unknown when I first came out. I was afraid I wouldn’t have a place to be.   I was afraid I was going to lose my Judaism because there’d be no community that would accept me, no place where I could still hold onto Torah and mitzvot, and I was afraid I would be pushed out of any places where I could experience Jewish life.

I started off in a chareidi community. I knew many people that I really loved and cared for in that community. I was part of that community for almost 20 years.  When I was getting a divorce, knowing full well that I was not going to try marrying a man again it seemed perfectly clear to me that there was NO HOPE with maintaining connection and friendships within that community. The first thing I did after I got divorced was try to find a different community.  I never tried to connect within my first community once I knew I was going to be out.  I ran.  I was convinced that I wasn’t safe.  

In hind sight, do you think that that was the right decision?

If I had to do it again, with all the knowledge I have now, I’d like to hope that I would try to gather the courage to ask the people I cared about whether or not they would accept me before deciding for them.

What do you like about being Frum and Gay?

I like myself. I always have. Even from a young age, I always liked who I was.  When I was married to a man I felt I had to cut off a huge part of myself in order to have access to my Judaism which was another huge part of myself.  I felt like I was missing myself and unable to be solid and real. The best part of being frum and gay is being able to be whole. I know who I am. I know what my strengths are. I know what my weaknesses are, and I get to bring the whole me, all of me, exactly as Hashem made me, everywhere I go.

What do you worry about?

I do worry about other gay Jews in places where they can’t find the ability to love and accept themselves, or find family and friends with the ability to love and accept them. I know what that does to a person.  I’ve lived it.  I’ve been very lucky in life to have ultimately found a community that accepts me and welcomes me, and I think that obligates me to make myself available to help others who don’t have that.

Can you share with me a story about being able to help other Frum Gay Jews?

Hmmm…  There are several online support groups for Orthodox gay Jews, and I try to connect with new people who show up in these groups.  There was one young man who came online during a very busy point in my life and I missed his introduction. The only thing he said was, “Is there anybody in [and he named the city I live in]?” and I totally missed it! I was dealing with some other stuff, but one of my friends, who knew I was in that city, gave Y [the young man online] my email address directly, and I invited him over for Shabbat. We weren’t sure if we would meet at shul or at my house, because he was walking from the other side of town, so I waited at shul for a while, and then walked home and there he was, sitting in the glider on my front porch and the first words out of his mouth were…. “You’re real.”  I knew exactly how he felt. 

UNLESS WE ARE KIND

We are fortunate to be interviewing R, a bisexual Jewish woman, an artist, a professor of anatomy and an activist. She says that the body is the template of all experience, and there are ways to think about that that can lead to a state of empathy." In short, she's very very smart about some things we could all stand to know more about. Can you tell you me about your life, growing up?

R: From the time I was twelve, my neighbourhood was all chassidic. It was a chabad neighbourhood, with a lot of orthodox people, and also a lot of Israeli immigrants, and religious sefardim. I didn’t know any gay people at all then, much less gay Jews. Since then, I figured out that I knew gay people even then. My best friend first came out as bisexual and then came out as gay! 

My grandparents had a drug store and considered themselves very modern, though they were observant. They kept kosher but they weren’t as observant as the people I know now. My brothers and cousins were all sent to cheder, but I didn’t get to do the Jewish milestones or have a Jewish education because I was disabled. I’ve talked to a lot of other disabled Jews who had the same experience. I was very jealous of my brothers.

In high school, I planned to make aliyah. I memorized a lot of Hebrew songs and poems and prayers. I still mostly know my prayers by the music. I can lose my place without the songs. I got into Betzalel (Art college in Israel) but it was right at the time of the bus bombings, and my family wouldn’t let me go. I was heartbroken. Three years after that, they ended up letting my little brother go, and once again, I missed out on Jewish exposure.

                                NO FAIR!
In my last year of high school, I met a lesbian. She was sitting in her station wagon, and I stood there staring at her and I really wanted to go up and talk with her and go sit with her in the station wagon. I felt very confused. I don’t even know that I was attracted to her, but I couldn’t stop looking at her for some reason.

In college, I moved into a chavurah for almost two years, and it was very observant, shomer shabbos, kosher, we kept all the holidays. There were nine of us. We were a quarter mile from the Hillel and we became one of the community rallying centers for the University. One guy from Poland spoke fluent Yiddish and we had decent folk musicians and dancers. It was really joyous. We had giant shabbos dinners every week and the house would just explode with people. Once, I spent two solid days making blintzes for Purim.

                                   Did I hear you say BLINTZES?

What is your family like?

R: I have two brothers. One is eighteen months younger than I am. He’s observant, and he was the lay rabbi at the Cheyenne Air Force Base, right next to the mountain where the nuclear missiles are. They only had a handful of Jews, and he ran the services for years.

My other brother was the one who was went to Israel when he was a kid. When I met his fiancé, I told her about my wife. My brother’s fiancé was very upset. She kept saying that G-d wanted me to get married and have children. 

                                Puppy blintz...er...blitz
I told her I had surgery when I was a teenager that meant I could not have children. “What does God want me to do now?” I asked, and she said, “G-d still wants you to get married and have children.” It was crazy! I felt like I’d been betrayed.

When they got married, my wife and I went for the oifruf, but I’d been told not to say that he was my brother, not to say that I was related to the groom. At the wedding reception, the entire family was seated at the front, but my wife and I were seated at the catering entrance, at the back with strangers. It was horrible.

Recently, I was supposed to visit my brother and his six children, but when I told him I was coming with my partner, he said I can’t come. He said that his kids would not accept me. He said they would be furious. It makes me upset: What’s worse? Either that statement that his kids wouldn't accept me isn’t true and he’s just making up a story to keep me away, or it IS true, and he’s fine with that kind of behaviour!

I try not to generalize and think that it’s a reflection on the religion. I’m part of the larger Jewish community and I don’t generally get exposed to this kind of behaviour. I’ve began to think about prejudice and frum Jews: gays and Jews aren’t two tastes that go great together! 

In the past, I just thought that it was specific to his dedicated asshole-ism, rather than a more general feature of Judaism, but now I’m not so sure.

                                Donkey blintz

Was there anything that changed your negative view of the connection between being gay and Yiddishkeit?

R: I’ve always felt in some ways detached from Judaism because of the early message that I wasn’t worth educating. Not a warm and cuddly relationship. 

Tiger roll blintz

Then I met this frum gay woman and I started learning a lot more about what happens to frum Jews who are gay.

                                Bad hair blintzes
What is your understanding of the way the community treats Frum Gay People(FGPs)?

R: The reactions that come the way of frum gay Jews when they come out are similar to other communities. I don’t know if you can trace it to the holocaust, because of the pressure to reproduce and make up for the lost Jews. We have always been so familiar, and we rely on each other for everything. Our insular ethos intensifies a lot of things. You can see that in a lot of other communities where people have been ghettoized and forced out of the general community. 

My partner has just written a book about gay steel workers, Anne Balay's Steel Closets and its similar because in the steel mill, it’s a continuous life and death situation, constant hard core risk, death by fire, and so people are there for each other. You have to absolutely trust that the person you are working with is going to lay down their life for you. Orthodox Judaism is a bit like that historically: All the external threats create this intense situation of life or death.

In that situation, everyone has to be all doing the same thing, or there is this fear that it’s all going to blow apart. It’s a lot of pressure, and that’s what causes homophobia in both places. There is a fear that gay Jews, or gay steel workers, aren’t really working on the same project because the gayness sets them apart. They become symbols of unreliable community membership, partially because there is secrecy involved. If you are under duress, you can’t rely on their honesty, and so you create distance. Then it becomes challenging to become a community member of the larger society (whether Jewish or steel mill) and do the milestones. If you aren’t doing the same steps as everyone else, what can they do with you? They are really homogenous communities.

It’s only a very recent idea that gay people have children. Very recent. Until the last ten or twenty years, it’s mostly been people who were in straight marriages and then came out afterwards who brought kids into the gay community. And that sets gay people outside the community, as outsiders. That’s like disabled people too, being forcibly kept out of the reproductive community, and as such outside of cultural acceptance.

                                 Are you calling me a FRUIT?
Do you think it’s possible or will be possible for frum gay Jews to live a meaningful spiritual life, and how does that speak to what you just said, about the internal pressures of closed societies?

R: There’s an essential problem. Of course it’s possible. The "otherness" of being gay is transformed by the community at large. It takes a while but it always filters down. The problem I see is because of the density of text in Judaism. If you are orthodox, you have an enormous legacy of interpretation, and on a certain level, there will be resistance to reinterpretation.

I think this ongoing legacy of interpretation is amazing and if anyone can do it, we can. But the project is exhausting, and there have been a lot of losses in the meantime, a lot of lost people who gave up from exhaustion and left the religion.

Are you afraid of anything?
R: Being in love. Stephen King, you haven’t written about scary until you have written about being in love. Letting someone else define the parameters of your love…that’s not so easy.

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

R: It’s the same thing I’d as of any religious community. Please try to remember that kindness should be the centre of belief. What is the point of being religious, if it’s not to remind yourself to be kind. Religion is a giant string around the finger, just to bring your attention to that one point. 

And if there is a G-d, I can’t imagine he’d want anything to do with us unless we are kind.

                                                                    Riva Lehrer Fine Art

Disclaimer: No blintzes were harmed in the making of this interview