ESHEL RETREAT

 I am aware that this shul is my favourite shul in the whole world, much as I am aware that I am the most comfortable in my skin in this place, year after year.

The huge windows next to me look out over a frozen lake and up towards a mountain of fir trees. Snow falls in huge fat spiraling flakes, mesmerizing, exquisite. The singing swells, luscious, many harmonies rippling through the room. Snow light pours in through the windows above the aron kodesh.

Yes. I am at another Eshel at the Isabella Freedman Center, the fourth one I have attended. The people who fill this room are my friends and my extended family. Some wear zaidener bekishes and black hats. Some wear pressed jeans and designer shirts. Some have wigs and some have scarves and some do not cover their hair at all. But we are all family, whether we look the same or practice the same or speak the same or believe the same things or are the same age or come from the same parts of the world because, for once, we are in a room that is filled, exclusively, with Jews who are connected with Orthodoxy and identify as Lesbian or Gay or Bisexual or Transgender or Queer.

There’s nothing like it.

The sense of unity alone is something to live on for months.

The sense of delight and pleasure and exhilaration and discovery…

The sense of belonging…

There is a session on LGBT blogging and I sit next to the writers of Frum Gay Married and the Jewish Pink Elephant. We talk about why we write our blogs and what have been some of the outcomes. We cry. We laugh. We talk and talk and talk some more and at the end, there are questions and comments. Many of the people say thank you. Thank you for letting our voices be heard. Thank you for being there when I needed to know I wasn't the only person frum gay person in the world. Thank you for validating my experience. For reducing the loneliness.

This year, there are a larger number of Chassidic women, and for that, I am grateful. I am feeling like this blog is worth the effort and time it takes. I am feeling like slowly, slowly, people within Chassidic and yeshivish communities are finding Eshel and beginning to connect. Cousins discover each other. Neither knew the other was part of this community. 

Old friends from yeshiva see each other across the room, and their eyes widen. You too? 

A young couple sit in a hidden corner, holding hands, smiling shyly at one another. families carry their children through the admiring crowds of adopted aunties and uncles.

Eshel. Community for those who have none. Family for those who might have lost theirs. 

FRUM GAY MAN: Struggling to integrate two worlds

I’m 21 yrs old. I live in New York. I grew up in an Orthodox community in the midwest and consider myself Orthodox, though I struggle religiously. I work as a makeup artist and I am openly gay.

 Growing up, gay wasn’t a thing, but I went through a lot of bullying in middle school. There was one kid who targeted me and later on, when I made a blog, I wrote about him but didn’t mention his name. He was a bad seed. None of the teachers liked him. He would torture me. He got into my head, psychologically, and he also hurt me physically, and he’d get other kids to hurt me too, or he’d hurt them. The school didn’t do much about it. And then, in 7^th grade, his father became my principal.  That kid used to call me a girl, gay, faggot. He said those things, and I would go home crying every single night. I was worried that he had somehow embedded the idea of being gay in my mind, just through the constant name-calling. That was my first experience with “gay”. I thought being gay wasn’t a real thing. Just a product of the bullying.

 That cruelty made it harder growing up in orthodox community. And I was always told you marry a woman and have kids, and that’s the way it is. When we went through the posukim having to do with gay people in school, it was very casual. They didn’t stop to discuss it. It was black and white, a condemnation. And if it was in the Torah as wrong, surely there couldn’t be real people who were gay. I thought something was psychologically wrong with me. I didn’t know any other gay people either, just Jack and Will from Will and Grace. My first experience seeing two men kissing was weird for me. I’d never seen anything like that in my life and it was strange. I saw a whole different side in Tel Aviv. I got over that weirdness.

In high school, the bullying got worse. I went out of town for yeshiva in 9^th and 10^th grade, but the principal and mashpia guessed I was gay and they decided to make me their project. They caused a lot of emotional damage that still affects me. High school was terrible. It made me feel worse about myself, depressed, self-conscious. For 11^th and 12^th grade, I wanted to go back home, and I ended up in a local yeshiva. I never discussed being gay, but it was something I struggled with. I began to do research online, and found JONAH, and I thought that would be my way out, a fixing, a magic way out. I got in touch with them and I started therapy with them. It was a horrible experience, and the only good thing that came out of it, was that I was able to come out as gay. The only reason I even told my mother I was gay was because I thought they would be able to cure me. I told her, thinking it was all over and I would be straight. They made me believe I could change.

I came out to mother through email. I was so afraid of telling her that I couldn’t even talk to her. She texted me she loves me unconditionally, no matter what. That night, she said she knew it as a fact since I was in kindergarten, that I am gay. I was always different from the time I was little. I came out when I was seventeen and by then, my parents had had time to prepare themselves. They were shocked but still supportive. My mother supported me in going to JONAH. They never forced me to do it, though. And when I realized it was unhealthy and I stopped, they were okay also. They just wanted me to be happy.

I left the yeshiva before my final year, and I was homeschooled. I was able to sort out my life and move on. The yeshiva didn’t kick me out. I just didn’t want to put anyone in an uncomfortable position.

I have two older sisters and one younger brother. My sisters knew I was gay, but maybe my brother didn’t. It wasn’t a surprise to them. I was just confirming it to them. It was a shock but they all handled it really well. When people asked my sister about it, she said, “It would be selfish for me to say that it’s hard for me, since it’s S who is going through this thing.” I have a better relationship with my family than I ever did.

My mother and my siblings thought I was gay because I have stereotypical qualities. I was different. My mother had a good intuition because I was very flamboyant. It made it easier for me later on. If I wasn’t so flamboyant, it would have been harder to come out, harder to get accepted.

I’m not uncomfortable with who I am. It’s who I am. It’s not me shoving it in their face…I am just being me, the way I have always been. I don’t carry a sign, but this is just how I am. It’s nice that I have so much support these days and from my family. I feel lucky to be born in this generation.

My dad and I had an interesting relationship. We are very different. We didn’t connect so much, but ever since I came out, he’s tried really hard to be there for me as a parent. He struggled with not understanding it, but he never had a problem with me actually being gay.

I was always a good kid. So that made it easy. I was good at home and good in school. One good thing is that my parents don’t care about other people’s opinions. All Jews are Jews. They don’t like those labels. They accept all Jews. In my father’s mind, me being gay was our family’s thing, and everyone else’s opinions are irrelevant. He is a big baal tzedoka and he gives to many places, but he stopped giving money to the organizations and rabbis who signed the [homophobic] Torah Declaration. Family first! He has my back, and that improved our relationship.

It’s surprising, but I didn’t have any issues from the community, because everyone kind of guessed already. I left to Israel after 12^th grade, and that also gave everyone in the community time to absorb it. It was shocking because I was so young and my family was so prominent. Everyone offered opinions, but we were already at a very strong point by the time that was happening.

In Israel, I went to Bar Ilan’s American program. The dean knew I was gay, and he seemed cool with it, but he told me to keep it on the down-low. I thought he was just being cool, but actually, he didn’t want anyone to know. Then, when everyone did know, the dean started to have an issue with it. I hadn’t realized that not being out [being on the down-low] was my condition for being in the program. One of the teachers told me that the program was considering kicking me out. I went to the dean and said, “My family and I will be pressing charges of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation if you continue with your plan to kick me out.  We’ve already spoken to a lawyer.“ I managed to finish out that year there.

There were a few boys in the program who wrote mean things on my door, I spoke with someone in the administration every single day for six months until it was finally taken down. The program wasn’t good about me being gay. At the end of the program I spoke with the dean in front of my father. I said the only reason I am talking about this now is because there will be other boys who come after me who are gay, and may be not as strong as me, and you could cause them to have a serious issue [suicide]. You could have a major problem on your hands if you treat them the way you treated me.

When I returned to my hometown, people weren’t so surprised about me being gay anymore. It was what it was. No one talked about it. Some people were overly friendly towards me who had never spoken to me before. “Oh my gosh! How are you?” They talked to me like I was some kind of cancer patient. I preferred the people who were talking about me behind my back!

One person who helped a lot was Rabbi Litwack, my rabbi in 7^th and 8^th grade. He’s the one who said it’s not so black and white. He doesn’t believe it’s something I can change, and he told me that though I can’t do every single mitzvah, I can still be a good Jew. He told me, if you are in an accident, how can you put on tefillin? A kid who is autistic can’t do a lot of the mitzvos. He told me a lot of supportive things. I go out to dinner with him or out for shalosh seudos. He’s a really big influence and role model for me. He is part of the reason I am still connected.

Certain situations make you realize who your real friends are. The people who really care about me, have stayed my friends. The only person I had a really negative reaction from is also someone I think might be in the closet.

It’s difficult to be out and Jewish. I’m not going to say it’s not. When you are finally out, you make a lot of friends who have been through similar experiences. My mother and father can’t completely relate to my situation. But finding people who can relate is amazing. But still, I am tied to a community that rejects me. That is the experience of many of my friends, too. Your belief system is in a different community, the Jewish community, and that poses a big challenge as a person. I am confident and comfortable as a gay man who is Jewish, but as an orthodox Jew, every day is a struggle. I always told my parents, I want to keep Shabbat because I feel a connection rather than out of habit. Now, it’s on and off for me, because I struggle to reconcile these two worlds. That’s the hardest thing for me. It’s a purgatory. You don’t know where to go because you are in-between two communities and you’d like them to be intertwined, but for me, I just can’t make it happen.

I have friends who claim they are successfully both gay and Jewish, but to me it doesn’t feel fully possible. It’s a big struggle and it’s difficult. There are no official answers, just vague opinions from Rabbis. I don’t believe it’s fully possible to be completely comfortable with both, completely content. I think you can, but the connection is challenging, like water and oil.

It’s interesting, because I took AP psychology, and they say that when you go through something traumatic, it’s hard to remember. It goes in your subconscious. The majority of my life, I was in the closet, and I barely remember a thing about it. Now, I am just out and about. Now, my earlier life feels like I am telling an old story. It feels so far away and sad. It feels like I am a different person now. I used to be miserable and alone and sad and depressed, and I had to pretend I was happy. It makes me sad.

Now, though I struggle with being religious, I am completely happy and feel so good and so deserving to live my life without having to adjust myself to please others. I lived like that for a long time. Im ein ani li, mi li?…”If I am not for myself, who will be for me?”.

I have goals but I don’t plan. Man plans and G-d laughs. I’m so young. I want a relationship because I feel like I am at that point now. Because of my circumstances, I had to grow up real fast. Most people my age are still in the closet.  But I am past that. I want to find someone to be in a relationship with. I want to continue growing my business too. In the beginning it was hard, but now I am busy.

 I don’t know about having kids. I always thought that I wanted kids, and now I am an uncle and I love that. Eventually, I’d like to start a family with someone. I’d like to find someone Jewish, someone who I could relate to and be able to open up to. I’m a very guarded person. I build up walls because of everything I’ve been through. In a relationship, I’d like to be myself and be comfortable and to feel like I don’t have to be defensive.

I want to go to the Eshel shabbaton this year, and I want my friends to go with me. All my friends aren’t sure what they are going to do, but I really love going.

Everybody has their struggles and obstacles in life, even though we can’t see everyone else’s struggles. Something I think is crucial is respect. Just because you might not agree with the way I am, it’s not your business. You don’t need to have an opinion on it. Have respect for me even if you don’t agree with me. I am tznius, and you don’t even know what, if anything I am doing behind closed doors. I am not going to damage your children. I am not recruiting. Please accept me for who I am, not reject me, based on a small part of who I am.

The first few years after she was married, my sister had a hard time having children. Imagine if everyone in shul looked at you, and gave you dirty looks and talked about you because you couldn’t have children. Imagine if that happened to you. That’s what it’s like for me, walking into shul, an immediate bad feeling, based on something I have no control over. Please just find it inside yourselves to be respectful.

HUMBLE BELIEF: THE ORTHODOX TRANSWOMAN

 Good evening D. Can you introduce yourself a little?

D: I grew up modern orthodox in NYC area and I got involved pretty early on in modern orthodox youth groups. At the time I was living on the boy’s side of the mechitza, and I got a better Jewish education than a lot of girls in the more black hat yeshivish circles.

I knew something was different about me. Even in the modern Orthodox Jewish world, conformity is a very very good idea. When it comes to religious doctrine, it’s a lot easier when those in authority don’t have to think too hard about how you fit in. They want everyone to fit in and stay Orthodox.

I was different and one of the pieces of rhetoric that came at me was that certain things don’t happen to good Jews. For example, did you know there are no Jewish homosexuals?

                                Who me?

What was your favourite piece of clothing when you were younger?

D: When I was 8, my best female friend showed me a white dress that she was going to wear for the Jewish holidays and I thought it was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen. I wanted to be treated by my parents the way she was, as feminine. I wanted to be able to express myself the way I wanted to. It was something about being girly. I didn’t know exactly what it was. I was so jealous of my friend. It triggered something. I held back on expressing that, an instinct not to say what I wanted to, because of fear that bad things might happen.

What I owned, though, as a kid right before my bar mitzvah, was a suit with a solid coloured jacket and it had a reversible vest that matched 2 pairs of slacks and that was my first understanding of what separates are, mix and match. I thought, variation is nice! I was not sensitive to colours, but I did notice that girls' clothes had more colours than boys clothes and I liked that.

Who was your favourite frum yid, growing up?

D: My father is in the running, but I’m not sure he was my favourite…

Oh my god, this is a hard question! Hmmm. It’s strange but I can’t think of one. My father is definitely in the top three, though.

He was Ralph Kramden with a yarmulke, a guy who always wanted to be Mr Party, lampshade on the head, almost anything for a laugh, scheming for how to make a buck, and always losing, every single time, because he was not a business man.

What he was really great at was doing everything associated with the shul…he was a wonderful cantor and wonderful baal tefillah, and he could take any group of Jews and liven them up, just in a way of making things fun. People loved him for that, but also, a big part of him wanted to take complaisant Jews and make them a little happier. I admired that in him.

How did your father react to you?

D: My father died before I came out to him. Had he been alive, it would have killed him.

Did your father think there was anything unusual about you?

D: I was a whacky kid. I got bad reports home from school. My father didn’t say anything about it. He was not a macho guy himself. Guys drink beer and watch sports but he was a good Jewish man who worked hard to support his family. I don’t think he noticed much about me, but he definitely wanted me to fit in. He wanted me to lead the prayer services. He grilled me for months before my bar mitzvah, and he wanted me to be perfect. He taught me how to lein and I became good at it and I liked it. I was an extension of him in Yiddishkeit. I was so and so’s kid, a good Jewish kid.

What about the rest of your family?

D: I have one older brother. I haven’t talked to him in 22 years. He was not happy about me. He called me faggot and sissy and he accused me of being in love with my best friend, and I don’t have much of a poker face for that kind of thing. My brother said I should have the telephone surgically attached to my navel because I was on the phone with my friend so much. I don’t think he got the extent to which I loved feminine things.

When I was thirteen, I read a book, Chaim Potok’s My Name is Asher Lev and it blew me away and it continues to blow me away. I understood something about the forbidden things in life. I could never bring anything home. I ruled a lot of things out. I was afraid I would get yelled at by my older brother, especially after my father died. My brother took it upon himself to be my surrogate father, except he was nothing like my father. 

So I collected sports cards. I didn’t know much about the players, but this was an easy thing I could do to fit in. 

I was fourteen when my father died. It was for the best. Because  (sighs), he probably would have seen how I was developing and would have tried to counteract my effeminate behaviour and I don’t know what those measures would have been. 

In 6^th through 8^th grade, I was in a Jewish day school that was very strict, a black hat school, but I played the guitar. All the high school girls wanted to get to know me! I was a faggy kid who was making it with high school girls. The other boys had no idea how I did it. 

In my high school year book, I was remembered for my little black book, the symbol for someone who had a lot of girls' phone numbers. Meanwhile, in truth, I was the faggy kid who liked girl things. I was nowhere near as cute as the modern gay boys are, but still…

What has been your greatest challenge as a frum transperson?

D: Oh my g-d! In 1980, I met someone who was out, frum and gay. I was shocked. He worked in a very gay place. I was astounded. I was frightened AND thrilled. I’d never met anyone like that.

In 1985, I met another frum gay man. I told him that I had a yarmulke in my pocket, and this was old hat to him. He said “You are not alone” and I couldn’t believe it. I started out as a gay boy, and I went to these gay Jewish boys and met the first victims of pray away the gay. They’d been told they should pray and marry and have children and all this nonsense would go away, but all that ended up happening was that they ruined their own lives, the lives of their ex-wives and the lives of the kids. It wasn’t easy and it left scars on the gay men.

In 1987, I walked away from the frum world. I stopped being observant for 22 years. I was afraid that if I came out as a gay boy and was told to pray away the gay, I would end up like those people, I would end up like those men, angry, hating Judaism. And I didn’t hate Judaism.

In 1997, this whirlwind of a person decided to create things for Orthodox trans people because there were none. And she created the Dina List (link) which still exists in what we now call a list serve for Orthodox and Orthodox-friendly trans people. She and I were best friends. There is no stopping her. She’s brilliant. She has a great mind for studying Torah and for analysis and for getting to the heart of Jewish history and law. She found a little known decision from a major rabbi that said that with post operative transsexuals what you see is what you get. The target gender is their gender. Dina List starways.net/beth/tzitz.html

Why did you start being observant again?

In 1997, I kept on saying it can’t be done and I walked away, but there were people who managed to live an Orthodox life. That's inspiring.

My rebbe lived an orthodox life, and there were others too…there was one person who came from a black hat yeshiva and all her friends knew, and it was a scandal, because she transitioned in place where she lived. She had guts! She was a role model and she was smart and articulate and lovely and all these things that I wanted to be, and I started to feel classic Jewish guilt, that these people were managing to be Orthodox and I wasn’t. At the time, I lived in walking distance from two really great shuls. Why didn’t I just go? I made a deal with G-d. It was a one sided deal because G-d never agreed. I said I would start going to shul and that if anyone made a fuss at any shul, I was out and I was not coming back.

If a fuss was made, it was too quiet for me to hear about it. No one told me I couldn’t come or that I should be on the other side of the mechitza. I am still shocked that no one has ever made a fuss. In several cases, I recognized people I knew from before, when I was in yeshiva, and I couldn’t say hello, because that could be a triggering incident. I had decided that I would be modest and not out myself in shul.

What’s your level of observance now?

D: I’m back to where I was as a kid. That’s my comfort level. Only I’m a little bit more enlightened. I see the depth. As an adult, the religion means something deeper to me.

Do you have a partner?
D: I really want someone Jewish, someone orthodox. And that’s a possibility now. There’s a community.

Why do you want to be with an Orthodox queer partner?

D: In a relationship there are things that create life, like shabbos. Without that, the relationship stagnates. I want a relationship in which Judaism can prosper. In which I am not lonely. Feeling lonely in your own home is not a good feeling.

Why don’t you go with a guy and be “straight”?

D: The Jewish community will talk. Most frum guys would be scared of being with a trans woman, and Jewish geography would out us in a minute, even if we moved. Any frum guy who would take me into his community, it would raise eyebrows. I think the Jews would hurt me, they would hurt him.

With a trans woman and a lesbian in the orthodox world, they can just pretend that we are “roommates”. “Roommates” is a way to fly under the radar. You can find some acceptance even if people know. Do volunteer work at your synagogue, they won’t kick you out. Be a good Jew, become part of the community, it becomes much harder to throw you away. A guy, a straight marriage, would be far more problematic. There are plenty of examples of lesbian couples who have managed to stay in their frum communities and stay frum.

Do you think the trans experience is harder than the general gay experience within orthodoxy?

D: The Orthodox community hasn’t gotten past the gay thing yet, but at least we are in queue, they’ve seen glimpses of it with Joy Ladin. The Rabbis still operate on the belief that heterosexuality is the paradigm, therefore if you like men, you must be a woman, or some variant thereof. A trans woman liking another woman is challenging. They can’t get their heads around it.

At the Chabad house in Carlsbad, California, there is a non-gendered space in the shul. The population demanded it. So that's great!

What makes you sad?

D: Not being able to find love.

What are you afraid of?

D: Too many things to come up with an honest response. But here’s one thing: Complete rejection by the Orthodox community. Because then I will go back to having no spiritual life. There is no stepping down. I want my Orthodox spiritual life.

What do you love the most in Orthodoxy?

D: The idea that we have a direct connection to G-d and that He listens even if he doesn’t grant every wish. We still know He hears us and the requests go through.

What gives you the greatest joy?

D: The prospect of being loved, and the ability to make people laugh. Hearing sincere thanks from someone I have helped.

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

D: I saw it on a bumper sticker many years ago. It said "G-d protect me from Your followers." It’s the greatest prayer I’ve ever heard. Please stop listening to rabbis who say hateful things. They are dangerous. Call them on their bull sh*t. Don’t let them substitute political concerns for human concerns.