Gay Hanukkah Gifts

Looking for the perfect Hanukkah gift for the gays in your life, look no further than zazzle.com. 

  

With cards, T-shirts, keychains, ties and posters, you too can have a gay old Hanukkah!

Yosef's Dreams also carries cards, clothing, art and gifts.  And the Jewish art and design is not just limited to Hanukkah.

Hitler's Homosexuals

Have you ever wondered what made San Francisco a mecca for gay men and women? Would you have ever guessed it was Adolf Hitler?

During World War II, the U.S. military instituted a draft, sending hundreds of thousands of young men into boot camp and, subsequently, battle, without performing extensive background checks.

That war would mark the first—but certainly not last—time that being gay was cited as a reason for soldiers' discharge. (This policy remained in effect until the 2011 repeal of "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.") Decommissioned servicemen, especially from the Navy—which was at that time waging a fierce sea battle with Japan—were shipped back to the United States. Many of these soldiers and sailors were decommissioned on the West Coast, and of those, many were released in San Francisco Bay.

Instead of moving back home, many stayed local, expanding the small gay community that already existed. As more gay ex-servicemen heard about this mecca of ex-military gays, it blossomed into the district we know today as The Castro--and gave San Francisco one of its most distinctive and vibrant local communities. Not quite the legacy that Hitler had in mind

Camels and Consummation: Parashat Chayei Sarah

Keshet is a national grassroots organization with offices in Boston, Denver, and the Bay Area that works for the full inclusion and equality of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Jews in all facets of Jewish life-- synagogues, Hebrew schools, day schools, youth groups, summer camps, social service organizations, and other communal agencies. Led and supported by LGBT Jews and straight allies, Keshet offers resources, trainings, and technical assistance to create inclusive Jewish communities nationwide.

Jews read sections of the Torah each week, and these sections, known as parshiyot, inspire endless examination year after year. Each week we will bring you essays examining these portions from a queer perspective, drawn from the book Torah Queeries: Weekly Commentaries on the Hebrew Bible and the Torah Queeries online collection. This week, Joy Ladin*, Gottesman Professor of English at Stern College and Keshet board member, explains how Rebecca, at the well, models the Torah’s unique brand of radical independence. Joy’s recent memoir is titled Through the Doors of Life: A Jewish Journey Between Genders.

After burying his wife Sarah, the aged Abraham summons his servant Eliezer and makes him swear to leave Canaan and return to Abraham’s homeland to find a wife for his son Isaac. Eliezer prays that God identify the right woman by having her offer water to him and to his camels.

Eliezer presumably chose camel-watering as a sign of Divine approval because it went so far beyond the code of hospitality that it could be motivated only by hesed, loving-kindness to a stranger and to animals. Given how much camels drink after a long journey through the desert, watering a caravan-worth is like filling a swimming pool with a bucket. That not only takes kindness; it takes the strength, determination, and independence necessary to turn kindness into action. Rebecca is there to draw water for her household; Rebecca’s kindness to Eliezer means that her own family has to wait for the water they, too, need. She risks her family’s anger to fulfill her own ideas about the proper treatment of strangers and animals.

Continue reading.

*Joy Ladin was profiled in Jvillage's August-September 2012 LGBT Channel

Lost in Tel Aviv

Eric Orner is a comic book artist who is disconnected from his Jewish identity…except that he recently moved to Israel.

In the autobiographical comic story “Weekends Abroad”– which was reprinted in The Best American Comics 2011 –Orner takes us inside his new life. He came to Israel for a job, but he doesn’t speak Hebrew, and he’s not sympathetic to either side in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Intimidated by being a gay man in a foreign country, and knowing very few people, he winds up taking long walks alone. He’s enchanted and mystified by a recurring trail of graffiti, written in English, that he finds all over Tel Aviv.

One night, Orner flees a busy dance club and gets lost downtown. He finds fresh graffiti and chases it around town, finally discovering its creator. Though he doesn’t find the relationship he’s been seeking, he discovers a new, unexpected friend…and an equally unexpected side of Israel.