Twelve Topics: Start An Orthodox Conversation About LGBT Jews

By Anonymous for The Jewish Week

We are a group of many dozens of observant, Orthodox families from across the United States, including Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

We are just like most of you – with one exception: Our children are LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender). Each of our children told us on a fateful day some months or years ago that they are not heterosexual. It is who they are and who they will always be.

It is with this thought in mind that we would like to have a virtual conversation with you. Imagine yourselves sitting around the Shabbat table. You have just finished Kiddush and are about to eat. Think about the statements below and how you would respond or comment. Just pick a few, and begin. That’s what most of us did with our families – slowly, carefully, needing time to absorb and appreciate the circumstances and the people around us.

1. As Orthodox Jews we believe that all human beings are created in the image of God. Have you considered how this core Jewish principle of human dignity might shape your view of LGBT people?

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Rabbi Gil Steinlauf of Adas Israel Comes Out as Gay

Married Rabbi Tells Washington D.C. Congregation in Letter

By Gabrielle Birkner for The Jewish Daily Forward


(JTA) — Rabbi Gil Steinlauf struggled for decades with an identity that he only acknowledged publicly this week.

On the Monday after Yom Kippur, Steinlauf, the married senior rabbi at Adas Israel — a large and historic Conservative synagogue in Washington, D.C. — announced that he is gay. In a letter sent to congregants, Steinlauf wrote:

With much pain and tears, together with my beloved wife, I have come to understand that I could walk my path with the greatest strength, with the greatest peace in my heart, with the greatest healing and wholeness, when I finally acknowledged that I am a gay man. Sadly, for us this means that Batya and I can no longer remain married, despite our fidelity throughout our marriage and our abiding friendship and love. As our divorce is not born of rancor, we pray that together with our children we will remain bound by a brit mishpachah, a covenant of family.

Even as a child, Steinlauf recognized a “difference” in himself, he wrote, but never let that difference define him or his choice of a spouse. Steinlauf has been married for 20 years to Rabbi Batya Steinlauf, Director of Social Justice and Interfaith Initiatives at the Jewish Community Relations Council. The Steinlaufs, seen in the video below at a July “Stand Strong With Israel” rally, have three children.

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When Will Orthodoxy be Ready for Me?

by Amram Altzman for newvoices.com

I’ve written about the successes and shortcomings of my fourteen years of Modern Orthodox day school education before, from religious, secular, and Zionist perspectives. I’ve also written about the thought processes behind my decisions to leave the Modern Orthodox world and join — at least for now — egalitarian communities that fall more in line with my (ever-evolving) vision of what my Jewish community should be.

The way I saw (and still see) it, my decision to leave the (Modern) Orthodox world was not one of choice, but of necessity. And, perhaps, it was also a reaction to the ultra-Orthodox community of my youth, a community which ultimately cut off all ties to my family after I was outed as queer, a community which had, previously, told my mother, a pediatrician, not to answer pages from non-Jewish patients on Shabbat, and where I was ridiculed for attending a co-educational high school and not wearing a black hat. Yet I still find myself inexplicably drawn to the Modern Orthodox world.

My decision to leave came not out of choice, but out of the realization that, right now, I do not and cannot exist in the context of Orthodox Judaism. As a queer person, most Modern Orthodox rabbis would not allow me to marry another man. Orthodox Judaism is nowhere near close to finding ways to include (or even recognize, despite the fact that the Talmud readily does so) the existence of those who identify outside of the gender binary. It allows for less, if any, literary criticism of the Bible and historical contextualization of rabbinic codes of law, and is frightened to think critically about God.

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“A Wider Bridge” Connects American Jewish LGBTs with Israel’s LGBT Community

by Rabbi John Rosove for JewishJournal.com

“At Temple Israel of Hollywood, a true Reform congregation, I am blessed to say that a gay, pregnant, female rabbi is no more out of place on the bima than any of my colleagues!”

So declared my colleague, Rabbi Jocee Hudson, on the second day of Rosh Hashanah in a sermon in which she described both the changes that Reform Judaism has undergone that have opened the door to a wider diversity of Jews, and the challenges facing Jewish life anew in the 21st century. Rabbi Hudson noted that going forward the American Jewish community will need to open its doors even wider and be even more inclusive than we have ever been before to welcome Jews and their families, and to continue to rethink how we pray, how we learn and think about Torah, about the meaning of “community”, how we engage with the people and state of Israel, and about how we recommit ourselves to social justice work here and abroad.

Rabbi Hudson was quick to say that despite the need for ongoing change, such “revolutionary challenges” are, truth to tell, nothing really new in Jewish history and tradition.

That being said, our community has, indeed, changed dramatically in the last fifty years of American Jewish history. One of the most significant changes is the leadership role women have taken as rabbis, cantors, scholars, thinkers, and communal leaders. A second significant change involves the ever-emerging presence of LGBT Jews and Jewish leaders in our congregations thus helping us redefine the meaning of "family" in contemporary Jewish life.

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