GITTEL'S DAUGHTER: The child of an Orthodox transwoman

 NB. The author of this interview is not related to the author of the previous post. It is purely coincidental that they are appearing around the same time.

M: My birth father is a lesbian. Her name is Gittel (names have been changed to protect the privacy of all of the individuals in this interview). I don’t see myself telling just anyone this story.  Usually people have a harder time hearing I am not religious than that my birth father is transgender. They’ve heard of Off-The-Derech but they haven’t heard of transgender. But I should start the story at the beginning.

I grew up Orthodox in a large city in the United States. I have an awesome family. I’m nineteen and the oldest of seven. Even though my step-dad is not my biological father, he feels like my father. My mom remarried when I was three years old and I had a very normal childhood. I didn’t think there was anything different about me. I went to religious school and youth group and I was very social.

 Growing up, we always referred to my birth father as “Daddy”. My brother and I never asked where Daddy was, but in 5^th grade, I wanted to send my daddy a letter. I showed my mother that I had a letter but my mother said she had to discuss it with a psychologist first. Afterwards, I never brought it up anymore. It wasn’t an issue. That year was hard for my parents. I used to yell at my dad, “You’re not my real dad.”

Later, in 10^th grade, I had an advisor, because I had a tough time in school. There were a lot of talks with my parents. My dad was really pushing me to go to classes, and at some point, the advisor said, “You don’t have to listen to him. He’s not your real father,” and I responded, “YES HE IS.”  He treats me like his daughter, no questions asked. I was three when my mother married him, and they had another five kids together. He treats me the same as the other kids.

When I was younger, and also when I was in high school, my mom always said my birth-father wasn’t ready to be a father. I honestly thought he was mentally ill. I thought he was locked up somewhere. So I didn’t think too much about him. When I was about fourteen, or maybe fifteen, I found pictures of my dad, because my mom had cut up pictures of me and him (baby pictures) and removed them from the album. I put these pictures in my purse and carried them around with me. I don’t know why. I wasn’t missing anything. I was always told that I looked like my daddy, so there was that. I would prefer not to look so similar. I would prefer that there wasn’t such an obvious relationship. It’s funny, because my brother was told that he looked a lot like my step-father. But he’s also Gittel’s son.

 Not long after I opened my first Facebook account when I was sixteen, I got a message from someone saying, “I know your birth father. I know he hurts.” A whole lot of stuff, giving me information that I clearly didn’t want to know! I showed it to my mom, and I asked her if I should read it or delete it, and she said she would prefer that I delete it. I messaged this lady saying please don’t message me again. But then she messaged me again with even more details that I didn’t read.  Who does that to a sixteen year old? It’s not something you message someone about on Facebook! I thought, for a little bit, that maybe it was my birth father, using a fake account, trying to get to me.  Then I figured out it wasn’t.

Just before I turned seventeen, when I had gone out with my friends, my parents called and said they wanted to talk with me. I was freaking out. I thought I did something wrong!  Then, when I came home, they told me that my grandfather wants to fly me to the Belgium to spend a month with him. I said, “You scared me! I thought something serious happened! You called me to come home!?” But then they told me they wanted to tell me why my original parents got divorced.

 My parents were worried that when I traveled to Belgium, my birth father would find out that I was in Europe and try to contact me and they wanted to be the ones who told me the story. Until then, all my life, my mom always told my brother and me that the reason she got divorced was because my birth father wasn’t fit or ready to be a father.

That night, when she started talking, first she brought up an article about Joy Ladin, an Orthodox transgender woman, that we’d read a year or so earlier. I don’t remember exactly what my mom said when she began to tell me about my birth father, though I know she never said anything negative to me. That was difficult, too! My mom hates keeping secrets. We are extremely open and talk about everything so I am sure it was even harder. Afterwards, my parents told me that if I had any questions I could ask, but I didn’t have any. My mom wanted to know how I felt. How should I feel? She just told me that my birth father is now a transgender woman and a lesbian!

 When they told my younger brother [who is the son of my birth father], the only thing he wanted to know was “What happened to the tallis and tefillin?” I love him.

Hearing this story resolved some mysteries for me. When I was about twelve years old, I guess, I found an old cassette tape that my mom had recorded ten years earlier, to send to a friend. On it, she mentioned that she had seen my birth father walking around London with lipstick and she thought she might have to get a divorce. When I heard that, I thought my birth father must be a gay man, so I never talked about finding the tape or hearing what it said with anyone. And then, when my mother told me about Gittel, my birth-father, it clicked in my mind.

 That night when I learned about Gittel, I needed to get out of the house, to talk and share with my friends. My mom told me not to tell my younger siblings. She told me I could talk about it with a friend, so I went out in my friend’s car, running errands. It was already night, and I told her, “My birth father, he’s a woman.” She said, “You don’t tell me that when I’m driving, M! What’s wrong with you?!” 

In general, things don’t bother me. Things flow over me. It took me a long time to tell most of my friends. I had thoughts about what it meant about me, about the way they would view me, but part of my reluctance was sheltering them, for sure. One of my closest friends still doesn’t know because I know she wouldn’t be able to deal with it.

Apparently, there had been a court order that Gittel couldn’t contact me until I was eighteen. My mom didn’t think the court order was a good choice. But for me, I do feel like it was the right choice. Where I grew up, the schools I went to, the friends I had…my life would have been very different if I had known about my birth father being a transgender woman. If I knew when I was younger, I would have dealt with it, but I feel it was very healthy finding out when I was older and had an open mind. As a younger person, I went to a very religious school and I am sure a transgender parent wouldn’t have been accepted.

When I turned eighteen, Gittel [not her actual name] messaged me on Facebook. When she messaged me first, she had opened up a fake Facebook account in her previous name that was obviously not real because it had no pictures or messages or friends or anything. I think after that first contact, she just friended me with her real Facebook, but there was no conversation. No chat. Still, that was the beginning. Just after that, Gittel and Zahava (her partner) invited me to their son’s bar mitzvah on Facebook, though the event was a year away. I didn’t think I would go, but I was trying to figure out if I wanted to go or not. If it’s something I would be interested in being at. So I didn’t respond right away. I just left it.

 Then, a few months before the bar mitzvah, they contacted me again, asking if I wanted to come to the simcha (happy event), so all of a sudden it was real. They offered to fly me in to Belgium! I thought a lot about it, for such a long time, discussing it with my mom and my friends, and then I decided that it’s important for me to go and get to know them and decide if I want a relationship with them or not.  And I decided to come to Europe, but it was clear to me that if I was coming to the Europe, I would have to go see my grandfather, because he wasn’t doing so well at that point. And also, I didn’t want to spend too much time with my birth-father’s family. I wanted it to be short. I wanted it to be manageable. I had a lot of people telling me, you can come stay with me, take all these telephone numbers, find somewhere else. People were surprised that I would stay at their house. Zahava (Gittel’s partner) actually offered for me to stay elsewhere but it seemed silly to me.

When I was planning the trip, everyone asked me, “What does your mom think?” But she didn’t speak. At some point, I confronted my mother and she told me, “I have two worries. 1. You might become not religious. 2. That you might stay there and not come home.” That was never in my plans. I know myself. I knew I wouldn’t stay in Europe. I don't even speak French! My mom still has very positive feelings towards Gittel’s family. She had a relationship with them. My mom tried never to say anything negative to me about Gittel or about them. My mom is awesome. She’s really cool.

I can’t put my finger on what ended up turning me off to religion. I never really connected with it.  Then, about a year and a half ago, I came to terms with not being religious. It is still very difficult for my mom though, since she doesn’t like the influence I have on my siblings. We fought. But at one point, she asked me if I no longer keep shabbos and kosher, and I said I don’t. Then the fights calmed down, after it was all out there. It’s good to get everything out in the open and not keep secrets.

Anyway, since I had been friends with Gittel on Facebook for almost a year, I knew what to expect when I finally met her. It was a good ease into it. I had no expectations for anything so I wasn’t surprised. I think I try to avoid expectations, I don’t know if it comes from a healthy place or not. I know Gittel was very surprised to see me in pants, not because she told me. She’s frum and the pants bothered her.

She says a lot. She says she feels like I was raised well. And that I lucked out not to grow up with her. I know that she tried to follow us as much as possible online to find out about us. But there aren’t any pictures of me or my brother around the house. I was always told that it’s painful for her not to be part of my life and that she would like to have a relationship with me and my brother. I was in touch with Gittel’s cousins, and her family used to tell me that “my father” loves me, or that “there’s someone out there that’s in pain and would like to have more of a relationship with you.” But the fact is, there aren’t any pictures of us in Gittel’s house. We aren’t Zahavah’s kids. I wish (there is a long pause while M cries) she kept one picture of us from when we were little kids on her desk, something.

Gittel doesn’t exactly feel like a parent to me. But if people ask me about “my mother”, I don’t correct them. I’m nineteen, though, and I don’t feel like I need a new parent. I already have two parents. Gittel is a relative of mine who I know cares about me. I do care about her too, but I don’t have words to describe what kind of relation she is to me.

I think that the frum community, where they live, people mostly accept them. I don’t see how they could live in New York or Israel or in some of the other really frum places. I wish it were different. Here, where they live, there is more acceptance than in other places. The hardest thing for me is actually that Gittel and Zahava and their children are frum, more so than any other thing. I don’t know why.

I’ve said this and I believe it: Gittel made a choice that affected her relationship with us [her children], but I’m happy about the choice she made. It’s better than growing up with a miserable father. It enabled me to have a normal childhood. I did luck out.

I wouldn’t change my life. I am happy with who I am and what I am, even though there is this corner of my life that doesn’t fit into my world. If I could erase this part of my life, I would. Not Gittel but the challenge of her. But really, I am at peace with everything I have gone through in my life.

Now, I relate to Gittel as Gittel. I have a mother and a father and a Gittel. To someone who doesn’t know, I refer to her as my biological father or my birth father. But I, myself, I don’t know how to refer to her. She’s just Gittel to me.

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)

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

PROFIT AND LOSS SHEET

Before I came out, I used to spend a lot of time anxiously worrying about what would happen to me and my family, if I took the very drastic step of letting people know just what kind of a person I was, really. I imagined some kind of atomic blast going off in my community as a result of this action, and if you can picture lashon hara and general gossip looking a bit like the A bomb, I suppose it did.

There were times when the gossip moved faster than I did.

I'm not going to deny it. There were losses when I came out in the frum community. I lost friends that I thought I'd never lose. I lost opportunities to have guests, or go to shiurim, or work on school projects, or have events in my home. I lost work. For a while, I thought I lost even my children's grandparents and cousins.

Sometimes I felt very lonely, stared at, talked about.

But there were gains too. I gained a big gay family, dear friends who bring me (kosher) soup and anti-viral medicine when I have the flu, friends who sit on my front porch on Friday nights and shmooze before we go in for kiddush, friends who know everything there is to know about me and love me, the whole me.

The first person I came out to in my community was a friend of mine, a rebbetzin but someone I'd always thought of as unflappable. She is really well-educated, and a lovely, kind-hearted person, and I thought it would go well, but it really really didn't. A look like a rabid squirrel ran over her face after I said I was gay.

She made a sound something like a small scream, and then she swallowed several times and asked me on what halachic basis could I "decide to be gay" and how would I live, now? She kept on shifting in her chair, looking everywhere except at me, and I began to think that coming out was going to be about as much fun as getting a colonoscopy.

And then, she didn't talk to me for about four years.

                                Cold, cold, colder, man, that's the Antarctic of chilliness

After that excellent beginning, I decided I had nothing to lose, and I made a beeline for my local ultra ultra ultra orthodox rebbetzin. She had lived in the insular chassidic community all her life and never gone to college.

                                How long has this been going on????

I suspected the discussion would be horrible and I wanted to get it over as fast as possible, like ripping off a bandaid. I made an appointment to meet her at her house (something I never did) and showed up wearing a weird winter hat that became progressively more and more itchy as time passed.

I spoke to her about being queer, about my queer feelings, and she nodded her head and smiled, and told me she understood. It was only after about half an hour, when I began asking her about bringing a queer partner to shul, that a fleeting worried look crossed her brow. "QUEER partner?" she asked. "What are you saying? QUEER partner? This whole time I thought you were talking about your CAREER."

I cried and laughed at the same time. Half an hour of thinking I'd made it, and that my rebbetzin was going to be supportive, and instead, I needed to go back to the beginning and start with the basics. "Gay," I said. "I'm GAY. Not as in happy. As in, likes girls rather than guys."

"You're not happy?" she asked, missing the point and wondering what she could do to fix me. "Fruit?" she asked, pushing a plate of cut up apple in my direction.
"That's considered a slur these days," I said, in the fervour of my early conversion to all things politically correct. "Gay is a better word," I said. "As in homosexual."

"I've known you for over twenty years," she said, taking me by surprise. "You're the same person you always were. I love you and I'll be as supportive of you as I can be." And then, much to my embarassment, I really began to cry hard. Maybe I'd never get the acceptance and support of EVERYONE in the frum community, but maybe there would be some people, unusual people, who reached out, and those few people would be the nucleus of my new world.

So, after some thought, and probably just to make myself feel better after the Rabid Squirrel Rebbetzin, I decided to write myself a profit and loss sheet:

Loss
several "friends" who didn't want to talk with me after they found out I am gay.
easy connection within the community, "part of things"
after school play dates for some of my children
anonymity
the community's belief that I am a pillar of moral behaviour
ability to attend just any shul or send my kids to just any school

                                No more kishka for you, maideleh
Profit
many friends who are either LGBTQ themselves or who love me anyway and are wonderful allies
a new community of people who accept me
the awareness that whatever school and shul DOES take us on is not doing it for the money
the satisfaction of seeking justice and creating safe spaces
the private satisfaction of knowing I lead a very moral life
greater trust in and connection with G-d

                                Matthue Roth, I love you. http://www.matthue.com/

My mother A"H used to tell me that it's better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you are not, and truer words were never spoken. I feel, nowadays, that I am not afraid of what other people think of me, and as a result, each thing that I do is done for more pure motives. That's a very pleasing outcome of coming out.

L'Chaim, Yiden! Who knew that my balance sheet could be this okay?