COMPASSION ISN'T ENOUGH

Can you tell me a little about yourself?

I am 41 years old. I grew up frum (religious) and I am frum now. I am a doctor who works mostly with patients from the frum community. I’ve been in practice for over 19 years. I grew up all over the United States, and I didn’t move to New York until I turned 13 years old, and that was my first exposure to East Coast frumkeit (religion). 

What’s your family background as far as yiddishkeit goes?

 My mum’s family is yeshivish, and she grew up in the Bais Yaakov system and my father’s side is part modern orthodox and part chareidi. They are all Hungarian.  We went to Hebrew Day Schools and then, in Monsey, I spent two years in a Bais Yaakov type school. They made me gay They did! 

It was a very big culture shock to come from out of town and then come to those New York views on Judaism. Outside New York, you don’t have the luxury of judging other Jews based on their observance. In Monsey, I got suspended from school for not blindly following rules. I got picked to be the class treasurer, and we worked hard to earn money for a hard-cover yearbook. The school tried to steal our money and give it to the boys for their yearbook. I refused to give it because I was the treasurer and I got sent across the street to the boys building to face the rabbi, the death sentence of our school. When I made eye contact with him, the Rabbi called me chutzpah’dik (disrespectful) and then forced me to give back the money by suspending me from school and appointing a new treasurer.

I also got suspended another time for reading a romance book. They told me at that time that I was the reason three Gedolei Hador died!

I didn’t take it seriously, though it spurred on my independence and my lack of respect for adults. I began calling myself an agnostic. I knew that people had a desperate need to follow rules even if the rules were hurting other people, and I also knew that people in authority could take advantage of people’s weaknesses and victimise people with almost no shame. I decided I did  not want to be a victim but neither did I want to be a perpetrator.

Tell me about coming out to your frum family?

I come from a family of people who don’t talk about things much, so I can’t say what my mother said when I first told her. I am sure she said all of the things that she thought were the right things to say, but her face looked brittle and fragile. I can also say that for years after I came out, no one in my family except for my nephew, ever said the word gay out loud. 

My nephew says that he is down with the gays. I think my nephew helped my family get used to the word. I remember once I came to visit and I saw some kind of book, maybe it was gay poetry on my bed, and when I asked who put it there, my nephew said he found it at a garage sale and thought I would want it. I know my Mom heard that. I know that he softened things in his family because he was so accepting and it was so normal for him and he was so loving about it. He loves throwing around the word “gay”…he just texted me and asked me why a particular store in New York is overrun by lesbians and why we gays always get the good things.

Fast forward to now: My mom has gotten to the point where she came to my partner's home for yontiff to meet the family. We took a walk and I asked her how she felt seeing the evidence of how much my partner and I loved each other. She stopped dead in her tracks, burst into tears, hugged me, and said “How do you think I feel? I am so happy for you. Happy that you found someone who you love so much and who loves you so much.” Now, my partner calls my mom on the phone, and calls her shvigger, and my Mom sometimes text messages my partner random thoughts and observations. She wishes her good yontiff.

Once, my crazy partner decided she wanted to know how my mom feels about me being gay, since my mom never actually told me. So she called my mother! My mother said “That’s putting someone on the spot. I’d like to call you back after thinking about it!” I’m pretty sure I know the tone she used, the scared, possibly annoyed tone.

When my partner told me she did this, I was convinced my mother would never call her back because avoidance is an Olympic sport in my family. We’re kind of dodgy. However, my mom called her back and answered her question and said, “I want her to be happy. I will love her no matter what.” I know what tone of voice she used for that too. It’s her teary one.

What made you think you are gay?

I didn’t wait until I thought I was gay. I waited until I knew. I was in love with one of my best friends in high school but I didn’t know what it meant. My friends and I used to go to the Village on Sundays and hang out, and once, we saw two gay men holding hands and then kissing each other. It was the first time I ever saw something like that. I didn’t think that had anything to do with me at all. 

I didn’t know anything about sexuality in 9^th grade. I had no idea what anything meant. Anything sexual I saw, I thought it was for non-Jews and eventually I would learn what Jews did, maybe in Kallah classes. So maybe that’s why we were taken aback when we saw the men, because it was sexual and personal and strange. But it didn’t have anything to do with me at all. I was full of silly little girl shock and giggling and curiosity.

My question of whether I was gay or not popped up repeatedly through 9^th grade all the way through college. Once in a while, I would ask my therapist if she thought I was gay, and she would say, "What do you think?" and I wouldn’t be able to answer the question. I didn’t know anyone gay and as soon as the question was turned on me, I put the question away on a shelf. It usually popped up around an attraction. I never acknowledged the word “attraction”…it was more like an intense relationship with a woman that felt strange to me, even given how close girls were in the frum community.

What was it like falling in love with your friend in 9^th grade?
I didn’t know I was in love. It was horrible! I wish I knew I was in love. For all of the women I was in love with when I was younger, if I had known what was going on, my life would have been so much easier, but also soooo much harder. It was adolescent and post adolescent torture not to know what was happening to me. I wanted to be around that girl all the time, think about her all the time, want to know everything about her, everything that ever happened to her, it was all consuming and I was a teenager, and I wanted that feeling to be returned. We are still good friends now, and we are both still intense people. For a while she returned my feelings, but perhaps not to the same intensity.

                                  We did NOT practice kissing. We didn't. Why would you think that...
I remember when she fell in love with someone else, when we were in college already. I was devastated. I think maybe that’s when I knew I had been in love with her. I watched her fall in love with someone else and I knew that’s exactly how I felt towards her. It was a really horrible feeling, especially to have no words for any of this. It never occurred to me that I was really gay and that that was an option for a frum girl. If I had had those words there could have been freedom in that.

                                                But what about all the girrrrrls?

What’s it like, being in a relationship with a frum gay Jew now?

A gift. I had given up hope of finding someone frum and I’d almost given up hope of finding someone Jewish and I never thought I’d find someone who matches me so perfectly, frumkeit wise. If I’d made a list of what I needed yiddishkeitwise, that would be what I get in this relationship.

                                Hi honey! I'm home!

Why did you think you wouldn’t be able to find a frum partner?

I shidduch dated men for over twenty years, until I came out to myself. I could have married two of them, one proposed and one was ready to, if I would have let it happen. He was a really nice guy and I kept wishing that I could like him like that, because he was soooo nice, but no matter what, I just couldn’t do it. 

It was after my first date with a woman that I understood all my years of dating men. I never understood what attraction was so I never understood what lack of attraction was. I never understood chemistry. I never realized the level of anxiety I was feeling on dates was past what was normal. Even on my worst date with a woman, I never felt that anxiety.

I didn’t think I’d be able to find a frum partner, because I guess, after being out for a couple of years, and going on retreats and being on dating websites and believing that I was seeing whatever was out there, I didn’t think it was possible. I knew that there was a handful of frum gay people who were out, but not more than that. Many were already taken and many I’d dated. Others weren’t my type.

How did you meet your partner in the end?

I’m so smart. I met her at the first ever Eshel retreat, almost four years ago. I saw her speak and I was a wreck. I was new to coming out, and it was my first time being around any frum gay people and whatever she said that night made sense in my head.  Year later, at another Eshel retreat, she spoke again, and I felt like she was the one for me, but I was too intimidated by her. I didn’t think she dated my type (femme). So we became "just friends", until I began to artfully pursue her, and then I won her heart.

What’s good about being a frum gay Jew?

I’ve matured and stretched more than anything else in my life has matured and stretched me. I’ve been forced to see the grey areas in people and the world, in my relationship with people I love, with my religion and with my Higher Power. I am wayyyyyy more open minded. I used to have a stick up my behind that is now half-way removed.

What’s not so great about it?

All the losses.

I lost my community of choice. I lost my best friends. I lost a place that was the only place that ever felt like home to me. I lost black and white thinking. Maybe that’s not so bad though.

I like the mainstream and I don’t see why I can’t live in it. But somehow I’ve been forced out of the mainstream and into the fringes and I have a resentment about that. I don’t consider myself out of the mainstream. I consider myself pretty normal.

What do you see as the biggest issue for gay kids growing up in the frum community?

I’m not sure if this is exclusive for gay kids. I think it’s true for all kids in the frum community. They grow up without a sense of healthy sexual self. Whether you are heterosexual or homosexual, wherever you are in the spectrum, if there’s no healthy outlet within the confines of the frum community to explore who we are sexually as children, and there’s no language given for it, then there are a lot of unhealthy consequences. I see a lot of patients who are sex addicts or who have sexual dysfunction, low self esteem, dysfunctional marriages, all kinds of unhealthy stuff. It goes on. 

This is how you catch the baby when the stork drops it.

I talk about sexuality all day in my practice. Sexuality has a huge impact on people's lives. Everyone’s lives. It only becomes especially frum people because frum people struggle with the difference between secrecy and privacy. Or tnius and secrecy. But with secrecy comes shame. Shame breeds all kinds of mental health issues.

Was/is it hard for you to come out in the frum community and why?

In one way no and in some ways yes.

As soon as I really knew I was gay, I knew I had to come out to everyone who was close to me, because I am not a duplicitous person by nature. I can’t live a dual life. So I knew I HAD to come out and it was immediate. I had no choice and it wasn’t that difficult of a decision, and I have a lot of people in my life who are really loving and supportive irregardless of where they are on the spectrum of religiosity. The parts that are more difficult  have been work related, and related to how some of my closest friends who are more chareidi are responding to my relationship with my partner.

                                What did you say? You're going GRAY???

It’s almost made me afraid of coming out. It’s made any time I am coming out to someone a more scary process now than it used to be, because I have suffered significant losses. Now I am scared, because I know what I can lose.

Even though I am out and some of my patients know I am gay, the sh*t has not hit the fan yet. I think once it does, my practice is going to be significantly affected. I think I will lose patients and referral sources. I don’t worry too much about it, because I think that being out is the right thing to do. I believe that G-d will take care of me. When I am in a good head space, that’s what I believe. Not when I am in a roaring panic head space.

Can you talk about some of the losses you have experienced?

I am going to cry if I talk about this.

I had the kind of childhood and life that never felt like I had a home until four years ago, where I was living in a yeshivish community surrounded by friends of twenty years. It was like a womb. Even though hashkofically I was to the left, everyone was very warm and loving and accepting and I had hundred of meals to go to, invitations all the time. The most important people were my best friends and their kids, who I was like an aunt to. And every day was the same and it was good. It was my first real home ever. Every shabbos morning, walking to my best friend's house for coffee before lunch, I would pause for a minute and thank H-shem for where I lived. And all of that’s gone now.

My best friend got a psak from her Rov that I am no longer allowed to have contact with her children as soon as I move to live with my partner and we haven’t talked since that psak. Her choice, not mine. I don’t know how to ever talk to her after that. A couple of my other close friends got similar piskei halacha about never being able to meet my partner. So, it was like four years of being surrounded and told about this loving accepting G-d and seeing all of this work that they were willing to do on themselves and all of the mussar that they listened to, but in the end, they only meant that their version of a loving and accepting G-d was only for people who aren’t gay. That’s what it feels like. Even if that’s black and white thinking, that’s where I am at right now. And I know that this has nothing to do with H-shem, but I do feel like most of the reason I ever wanted to be frum was the sense of community. The best and only good part of being frum, for me, was community, and now my community just booted me out. I’m not sure what’s going to keep me frum now, as I walk right into Yom Kippur.

Did you or your partner do something that might have been construed as unpleasant by the frum community where you lived?

No way. My partner is more frum than me. I think she is intrinsically more respectful. She angers less easily than me. She’s naturally tznius, inside and outside, while I have always struggled with tznius, even before I came out. 

That can’t be what pushed them over the edge. I think our relationship becoming serious was what pushed them over the edge. That’s what was considered “unpleasant.”

The frum community knew that we were very close. They knew we wanted some form of commitment. They never saw untznius behaviour from us. They never heard untznius words. We both grew up in strictly frum communities. We don’t act differently than any other frum couple in the street. We relate modestly to each other and we are as tznius as we were raised to be. That’s natural for us.

So, you weren’t rejected by your friends until you were in a relationship that began to mimic, in some ways, a straight marriage. Why do you think that is triggering for the frum community?

When I was on the phone with my best friend before Shabbos, I would be cleaning the house, or washing the dishes or peeling or cooking and at first, she laughed, because I'd never done those things before. Now I began to look like a frum mother. 

                                    Just kidding. 

My friends began to learn about my relationship and the home I was moving into, a busy frum home, with normal frum expectations and work levels. Before yontiff, I was doing the same thing my friends were doing. I think that was scary for my friends because they want to think about the gay part of me as being “other” but, instead, the gay part of me integrates me into the frum community more strongly. That makes being gay both real and very very scary, because I am more like them as a result of being in a relationship.

But for them, it’s all about the aveirah (sin). How I am dealing with the aveirah part. They just can’t reconcile the part that I am doing all these mitzvos, all of these beautiful things that I couldn’t before, making shabbos, having a lot of guests, lighting candles with my partner, going to shul, davening (praying), all of these things as part of this relationship which is, they think, an aveirah. They would rather reject the whole thing.  I barely understand this myself.

So, ironically, when you are finally able, after all these years, to have a Jewish family and to live a full Jewish life like your friends, you are rejected by the Jewish community. How insane is that!

You know what’s insane? How black and white people think about kefirah…because, in my relationship with H-shem, I am not flaunting the fact that I am doing an aveirah. I am not proud that I am defying His will in this area. 

I am proud that I doing the best that I can to be healthy with what I have, for my life, for the me that G-d made. And I believe that He knows that. I think that people think that making shabbos with my partner means I am a kofer (heretic), and then they kick me out of the community, when ALL I WANT is to be part of the frum community. Why would a kofer want, so badly, to be part of a chareidi community? I'm not hurting anyone else. They have a childlike view of these concepts. They haven’t been forced by life to see the grey.

                                Did you say GRAY again? 

Can you explain what you mean by “forced out of the Jewish community”?

I am most comfortable in a chariedi community. That’s where I grew up, and feel most comfortable. But there’s no way that any Yeshivish community will ever accept me and I am not comfortable in the modern orthodox community. Most, even many modern Orthodox communities wouldn’t accept me, but I am not comfortable in them anyway. Right now, I stay in a chariedi community where, when I wish people good shabbos in shul, they straight out ignore me and snub me. Where I do not have a shabbos table or an invitation to eat with my partner. But I’m not leaving.

I’m stubborn. This is the only place I feel comfortable. Because I believe in the good of people and it has to get better than this. I believe that people want to do good. They want to do right. And maybe, if I hold on and do the right thing for myself, it’s going to get better not just for me but for everyone. Or maybe they will wear me down. I don’t know.

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

For me, being selfish, since I want acceptance in the chariedi world, (I know it is beyond idealistic!) it’s not enough to ask for compassion. No one in the chareidi world does anything without a psak, without a Rov telling them that halachically, they have to do it, or at least how to do it. What I would want…well, I don’t know if we have a Gadol who is large enough, a real Gadol Hador, …but I would want a few chareidi Gedolim, or as Gadol as you get these days, to start dealing with the reality of frum gay Jews, and start looking at the piskei halacha with more of an inclusive, loving attitude. 

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