THE YOUNG STUDENT: PAINFUL LOSSES

This article originally appeared in Tri-Quarterly: Tri-Quarterly

I am twenty-three. I’m only out of college for a couple of years. I used to be frum (observant) but now I am off-the-derech (irreligious; literally, “off the road”). 

 In college, I was an observant Jew. I wanted to be part of Chabad, so right at the beginning of my college experience, I moved to a frum neighborhood and became integrated into the Chabad community. I boarded in a Chassidic rabbi’s home, and I worked for a frum family and for a Jewish educational organization. Basically, my life was the Chabad community. But then, over the past year, I became unhappy with how fake I had to be, to be a part of Chabad. It wasn’t just the queer thing—I’m gay, and that had to stay under wraps—but  also I was questioning how I wanted to relate to Judaism.

Accepting the fact of being gay has always been a challenge for me, but it’s even more so for me as a religious person. In college, I realized I probably wasn’t going to be straight, although I really hoped I could be bisexual and get married and go about having a normal Jewish life. But that didn’t happen.

In the last few months when I was staying in the basement of the rabbi’s house, I came to the decision that I didn’t want to be shomer shabbos [observant of the strict Sabbatical laws] anymore, but my roommate found out and called her rov [rabbi]. Her rov told her to tell my rebbetzin [rabbi’s wife], who called me. She was like, “Call me!” That’s never a good thing to hear from your rebbetzin!

She said she knew I wasn’t keeping shabbos, and she wanted to let me know what that would entail. She explained that it meant I couldn’t cook in anyone’s kitchen, and that consequence was the natural outcome of my decision to be less observant. She said people would not be able to trust me to keep their standard of kashrus [kosher]. I decided it would be simpler to keep things as they were. Even after I left the rabbi’s basement and moved to my next home, I kept everything [shomer shabbos] for the sake of the children I took care of. I didn’t want to have my relationship with them compromised in any way. I am their caregiver, and I feel I need to stay frum for them, because they have gone through a lot of trauma already.

Unfortunately, last week I had to go to another state to take care of my sister, but those kids all call me and I read them bedtime stories over the phone—kosher stories from kosher publishers. Hopefully, I will be back soon and be able to work with them again. I definitely want to keep a connection with them, because their mother passed away almost five years ago, and their father is very sick, too. Two of the kids have special needs, and there are a lot of challenges in their home. Mostly, though, there is the trauma of losing their mother.

I was originally hired because they needed a female presence in the house. It was funny to me that I, of all people, was that person. It was a natural thing for those five little kids to see me in the role of Mommy. It was really important work. I was terribly important in their lives, and so, after a while, I couldn’t come out to them, not as gay and not as not-so-frum anymore, either. It would change our interactions. It would be another huge loss for them, and I just can’t do it to them. It would be cruel.

They still don’t know I am queer. No one knows. I hope not, anyway. It would have a very negative impact on the way I am perceived and the way people decide to interact with me. Orthodox Jews view being gay as a challenge you are meant to overcome. That view is so pervasive. I haven’t seen any gay frum people interacting with regular frum people, but I do know it happens. Just not in front of me.

I’m horribly afraid of rejection. Those people in the community mean a lot to me. I would be devastated if I lost the love of my rebbetzin’s family, and I don’t care if they are homophobic. I know if they knew I was gay, they wouldn’t receive me the same way, but they are like parents to me! I don’t want to lose them. And I really love the children who lost their mother. I want to be a part of their lives, and I would really hate for that to be taken away from me or for me to be taken away from them. We have formed a really significant bond, and it would be horrible for all of us if that were severed.

Even if the families were accepting, and they didn’t give me the whole “Overcome this challenge” speech, they wouldn’t want me around their kids because, in their minds, being gay is contagious, and it sets a bad example for the kids. People have hidden beliefs when they are Chassidic. There’s a ton of esoteric concepts, and it wouldn’t just be as obvious as “Your actions are influencing my kids.” It would be “Your neshomah [soul] is influencing my family, your soul is flawed. You are full of klipah [spiritual impurity], and it would drag down my home.” I don’t want people to be disgusted by me like that. I don’t want to be different. I don’t want to be judged.

In the frum community there is always a lot of pressure to get married and have a large family. To me, it felt very bad. I was seeing someone, a woman, but I couldn’t bring my partner to a shabbos table and have the same happy and enthusiastic reception. If I had brought a gay girlfriend to my rebbetzin, if I had been out about it, she would probably have taken me aside and given me a big talk about halacha [Jewish law] and challenges, and my needing to make sane decisions about my future, and since she has daughters, she would have been freaked out that I’d stayed in the same bedroom as her girls. She would have been horrified.

It was weird having a girlfriend while I lived in the frum community. I was very closeted, but half an hour away, in [the local gay area], I was super out. I certainly wasn’t very smart about it. I had my girlfriend come over for visits as my “friend,” and then, one shabbos, when my roommate was out of town, it was different. I had her sleep over. After the meal, we were just out walking, but my girlfriend had a tiny pride button on her coat. I made her hide it. And then, after shabbos, we were hanging out late at night, when everyone was sleeping. We were just sitting in my car, and she leaned over and kissed me, and I had a fit! It was 3:00 a.m., but I was so afraid we would get caught. She laughed at me. Who would see? I was so paranoid, I started coming up with a list. “A jogger!” I said. “Someone who works in a bakery!” Who knows? That’s how it is when you could lose everything. I was very clear about it. I knew I could lose my job, my finances, my housing, my friends, my community, my adopted family. And I couldn’t afford to lose all that.

Anyway, when I had already been part of the Chabad community for a while, my rebbetzin sent me away to a religious seminary. The seminary rabbi gave an explanation for why people are gay. That was so uncomfortable! It was the worst explanation ever! He said, “If either the husband or the wife in a marriage is repulsed by their spouse, it can cause the child born from them to be gay.”” If the husband isn’t into his wife, then the son is going to be attracted to men. Wow! I kept on hearing these dumb explanations: “It’s a choice!”” “H-shem [G-d] doesn’t give you challenges you can’t handle.” I davened [prayed] so long and so hard to have this problem go away, but nothing changed. I couldn’t handle it, but I still had the challenge!

Also, in the seminary, trans people and sexuality in general were always made fun of and looked down on. They were discussed as disgusting things to be shunned. One person asked, “Which side of the mechitza does a trans woman sit on?” and Rabbi B [an internationally known rabbi] said, “That’s like a person who wants to be an elephant.” He turned it into a joke. It was so upsetting. Anyone who happened to be part of the queer spectrum would have been pushed far away from Yiddishkeit by Rabbi B’s response.

Even then, I knew Jewish trans people. All queer people have so many struggles, and trying to fit into the frum community is difficult for them, but it’s infinitely more challenging for trans people. As a result of the seminary rabbi, I became alienated and distanced. I felt like I wasn’t going to fit into the Chabad community, no matter how I behaved, or that there was something fundamentally wrong with me. Eventually, I felt suicidal and ended up in hospital for a while, trying to work through my feelings about queerness and Judaism. The rabbi in whose house I lived at that time wasn’t too excited about my being sick, and his family barely spoke to me after that. It was part of the reason I had to move out of that house. And afterward, I was different, not as involved in Chabad life, but still connected.

So many people in [the local gay area] have had bad experiences with religion and want nothing to do with it. So, in that area, I can’t be out about being Orthodox! I don’t fit in anywhere. All I want is to fit in and be normal . . . frum and gay. And not stigmatized. I still don’t know how to reconcile these two parts of myself. Before I had to leave to take care of my sister, I hung out with people who used to be frum. We got together on Friday night. We made kiddush, we made a seuda [meal] on shabbos day, but we went out on dates right afterward.

Even now that I don’t eat kosher, I’m completely unwilling to eat treif [nonkosher] meat. I don’t keep shabbos, but I wouldn’t ever light after licht bentshen [the time to light candles on Friday evening]. I still daven shacharis and mincha [pray the morning and afternoon services, about an hour’s worth of prayer] every day. My partner is upset at how religious I am, and at me being shomer shabbos. It feels like I can never satisfy both parts of myself.

My partner and some of my non-frum friends ask me why I don’t just do all the mitzvos, or do none and trick the people I work for. I couldn’t do that. My rebbetzin is very honest herself. Most frum Jews are very careful about that, but she is special. She asks me to be honest about my level of observance, to understand what I could lose by not being frum. She innocently trusts me to say the truth about whether or not I am shomer shabbos. I can’t betray that trust. Now that I am living with my sister, my rebbetzin calls me up and asks me to keep shabbos and go to shul [synagogue].

I wish I could come out to her, but once, my roommate was at a shabbos meal with me, at my rebbetzin’s house. One of her little girls was playing with my roommate’s ring. The girl took it off my roommate’s finger and then put it back on again and said, “Harei at mekudeshes li [“Behold! You are consecrated to me,” the traditional words at a Jewish wedding ceremony]. We are married now!” My rebbetzin laughed and then frowned and said, “How would that even work with two girls? It’s impossible!” My rebbetzin made being a lesbian into a joke! It’s crazy, because she knows women who are lesbians, even women who are lesbians in the frum community. She had a very close friend who turned out to be a frum lesbian.

I know two lesbians in the local Chassidic community. One of them is the head of an organization for gay frum Jews. When I didn’t know anyone frum and gay, I somehow found the book Keep Your Wives Away from Them. I looked at all the contributors’ info, and then I searched the names until I found a phone number for one of them. I called her up, and she was really understanding. I was in seminary at the time, so we met clandestinely. I met her wife, too, and we had a whole conversation about being queer and frum. She gave me the contact information for a frum lesbian in my community. It was all word of mouth.

When I went to the frum lesbian’s house for a shabbos meal, it was the most authentic meal I’d ever been to. It was beautiful! Then, when I returned to my rebbetzin’s house, I realized how closed down I had to be in her house, and how much I didn’t want to be like that. My rebbetzin’s home is open and inviting, as long as you fit their picture.

In my experience, there has only been one rabbi who was compassionate to my whole situation. Because of his accepting attitude, I came out to him. I wanted to ask him what I should do. I told him I struggled with attractions that are inappropriate, and he said, “To women?” He said it’s not the most important thing to get married and have a family. He said there are other things you can do as a Jewish woman. He also referenced a gay man who got married and had a kid. He didn’t freak out at me, but he still had this idea that if I really wanted to, I could change. He was a baal teshuva [returnee to Judaism], and he was supposedly a hippie before he became frum, so that might have affected his worldview.

Maybe hippies really have it right. I’m a big fan of Ve’ahavta lerei’echa kamoicha [Love your neighbor as yourself]. There aren’t any strings attached to that. There’s no “so long as your fellow Jew is . . . ” It’s not, Love these Jews but not those Jews. That’s the whole point. My rebbetzin really stressed the idea of the community waiting for everybody to be back from the Bais Hamikdash [Temple] before davening for rain. We wait for everyone, and everyone is important, no matter who they are or what their level of observance is, no matter what their challenges are. That was inclusive instead of exclusive. I want the community to be like that. You can’t be afraid of other people, and exclude them, and have this negative view, and really be holy. 

NB. These photos are only used for illustrative (or humourous) purposes and do not represent the people described in this article.

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.

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.

 

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.