Let’s Queer the Jewish Legal Tradition

by Amram Altzman for Newvoices.com

I had the honor of speaking at the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance’s Voices of Change conference last week, where I, only for a day, became a high school student once again and spoke on a panel about navigating relationships and sexuality in high school as a feminist. While speaking, the topic of Shemirut Negi’ah, or the rabbinic prohibition of members of one sex touching members of the other sex, came up. It was there and then that I realized how abandoned I felt by the guidelines that dictate the movement with which, at least on a theological level, I identify.

To be sure, I’ve felt some sort of separation between myself and the Orthodox world since I came out of the closet over two years ago (something that has been chronicled in New Voices), and I always felt somewhat abandoned by the Orthodox community. However, that separation between myself and Orthodoxy became even more pronounced as a result of speaking at the conference.

To be clear: I spent about fifteen whole minutes being shomer negi’ah when I was in sixth grade, and then promptly stopped — at the time, for no apparent reason. Since then, I’ve never really looked back, and do not regret my decision.

However, in starting to seriously think about issues like this, I’ve come to truly understand just how much of the Jewish legal tradition — the same tradition that I was taught was timeless, applied to me, and that, as a “Good Jew,” I was charged with protecting and transmitting to the next generation — no longer applied to me. Given the fact that the rabbis who wrote the Talmud, the basis for the whole genres of legal literature that came after it, could not fathom two members of the same gender entering a lasting, romantic relationship and raising children, and that homosexual acts (or, at the very least, male homosexual acts) are biblically prohibited, there was never any need to include such discussions in the Talmud.

Thus, according to the strictest interpretations of rabbinic literature, if I wanted to obey the letter of the law, I would be barred from physical contact with women, but not from men. And, given the fact that I am queer, this seems horribly backward.

While I’m not about to become shomer negi’ah right now, the fact of the matter is that the Modern Orthodox community has started looking past the biblical prohibition that, in the past, meant that LGBTQ people could not remain part of the Modern Orthodox community. Halakhah, or Jewish law, however, has stayed behind.

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Memorial To Gay Shoah Victims Inaugurated In Tel Aviv Park

Steve Lipman for The Jewish Week

A municipal-funded memorial to gay victims of the Holocaust, both Jews and non-Jews, was inaugurated on Tuesday in Tel Aviv’s Meir Park, according to Haaretz. It is the country’s first.

The memorial in front of a community center is the creation of attorney Eran Lev, an activist in the gay community who was a city councilman for Meretz. “It’s important to me that people understand that persecution of gay people was not the usual story of the Holocaust that we know from the final solution, and from the Wannsee Conference,” he told Haaretz. “This is a different story, more modest, but still an important one. It’s important that people in Israel know that the Nazis persecuted others as well, not because they were Jews, but because they were gay.”

The memorial consists of three triangles – the symbol of the gay community, Haaretz reported. On each a sentence is written in Hebrew, English and German: “In memory of those persecuted by the Nazi regime for their sexual orientation and gender identity.”

An inscription states that special steps were taken against gay people and that “according to Nazi ideology, homosexuality was considered harmful to ‘public health.’ The Gestapo had a special unit to fight 
homosexuals and the ‘Center for the Fighting of Homosexuality and Abortions’ kept a secret file on about 100,000 homosexuals.”

An estimated 15,000 gay people in the Third Reich were sent to concentration camps and more than half were murdered.

In historic move Habayit Hayehudi to support bill granting tax breaks to same-sex parents

Religiously-oriented party, which set forward two proposals to solve inconsistencies while staving off de facto recognition of same-sex couples, says wording of final law will be different.

By Jonathan Lis for Haaretz

Habayit Hayehudi yesterday decided to support a bill that would grant tax exemptions to same-sex parents, after vehemently trying to topple the bill with a compromise draft of its own. The bill, sponsored by Yesh Atid MK Adi Kol, will be brought for a preliminary vote in the Knesset on Wednesdau.

The proposal grants same-sex parents the same tax credits for children that are given to heterosexual parents. Habayit Hayehudi fears that Yesh Atid’s proposal may be viewed by courts as de facto recognition of same-sex couples by the Knesset. Therefore, the party had insisted that the discriminatory tax law be rectified by a special amendment in the tax code, rather than through legislation.

Habayit Hayehudi sources said late Tuesday that although the original draft would be the one brought before the Knesset on Wednesday, the wording would be changed in the future before the next vote, and would be based on an understanding of principles that would be reached in the future between the two sides.

At present, half the tax credit points for married couples for a child up to the age of 18 are granted to the wife only. That means that homosexual couples are not eligible for the credit, which in 2013 amounted to up to NIS 2,616 a year per child.

Habayit Hayehudi’s first proposal stipulated that the half point granted until now to mothers be divided equally between the two parents, regardless of their gender.

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Religious Leaders' Quotes On LGBT People, Gay Marriage, And Homosexuality

For the Huff Post

"Who am I to judge a gay person of goodwill who seeks the Lord?" said Pope Francis, a statement that many other religious leaders would do well to pay attention to.

Some already have.

Watch a slideshow of sometimes surprising roundup of religious leaders who have made positive statements about LGBT individuals here:

 

A 1980s Gay Boy and his Jewish Bubbes

In Alvin Orloff's novel Gutterboys—written in 2004, but set in the punk fever of the early 1980s—Jeremy Rabinowitz is a shy 19-year-old Jewish kid desperate to fit in with the gay Manhattan avant-garde....or to just find a boyfriend who'll love him forever. Unfortunately, the best he can manage is to sneak into dance clubs with his (regrettably female) best friend, Lizzie, the lead singer of a New Wave band.

Gutterboys has all the workings of a standard fish-out-of-water story, but for a single supernatural element. Watching over him, and constantly manifesting on his shoulders, are the ghosts of Jeremy's two Jewish grandmothers: Gramma Bea is a proper Englishwoman. Meanwhile, Nana Leah is a fiercely traditional Russian Communist babushka. Each has her own hangups: Leah has issues with Jeremy's budding homosexuality, and Bea lectures Jeremy on his punk lifestyle: "Your behavior last night was atrocious. Really, drinking straight out of the bottle!"

Jeremy's quests prove fruitless almost without exception, but there's an honest joy in watching him endure them, strengthening his shell and growing as a person. In the almost-entirely male world of gay Manhattan, Jeremy's strongest friendships, and his most enduring ones, are with the women in his life.

- Matthue Roth for Jewniverse

Edith Windsor

The Jewish Daily Forward

Who would have predicted that one of America’s most crucial battles for gay and lesbian rights would be won by an 84-year-old bottle blond Jew?

On June 26, Edith Windsor won her suit at the Supreme Court, a decision that struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

Windsor, who lives in New York City’s Greenwich Village, married her longtime partner, Thea Spyer, in 2007 in Toronto. When Spyer died in 2009, she left her estate to Windsor. Because of DOMA, Windsor was prohibited from the benefit of a tax exemption for surviving spouses, and she was compelled to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in real estate tax on Spyer’s estate.

In 2010, with the help of her lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, also a Jewish lesbian, she filed suit to recoup her money.

According to Ariel Levy’s profile of Windsor in The New Yorker, Kaplan saw her client as the ideal plaintiff to defeat DOMA. A feminine octogenarian whose lifelong partner was deceased was unlikely to be painted as a political radical in the press. Windsor was the “perfect wife,” taking care of Spyer for decades after she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1977.

Windsor and Spyer’s relationship was much more than that of caretaker and patient. Over their four decades together, the two women traveled internationally — to Suriname, St. Thomas, Venice and elsewhere. Though Kaplan advised Windsor not to speak publicly about her sex life because of how it might affect the case, sex was an essential part of Windsor and Spyer’s romance, even after Spyer grew increasingly immobile because of her MS.

Spyer and Windsor were both Jewish, but they came from strikingly different backgrounds. Spyer, a psychologist, was born in Amsterdam. Her family made a fortune in the pickle business and escaped Holland before the Nazi invasion. Windsor, on the other hand, grew up in a family of modest means in Philadelphia. A graduate of Temple University, she married her brother’s best friend but divorced him less than a year after the wedding. (She kept his last name; her maiden name was Schlain.) At 23, Windsor moved to New York City to pursue a master’s degree in mathematics at New York University. She later became one of the first female senior systems programmers at IBM.

In 1967, two years before the Stonewall riots galvanized the gay rights movement, Spyer proposed to Windsor. So as not to arouse suspicion among Windsor’s co-workers, who didn’t know about her sexual orientation, Spyer giving her a round diamond pin instead of an engagement ring. Four decades later, the two finally wed.

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Y-Love’s Hanukkah Gift: Speaking Up for LGBT Inclusion

By Melanie Weiss for MyJewishLearning

Check out the video Y-Love, the gay Orthodox hip-hop artist, recorded for us for Hanukkah.

Yes, that’s Yiddish you hear.

The rapper known off-stage as Yitz Jordan has been a major player on the Jewish music scene since the release of his first mixtape in 2005, followed by his first solo full length album in 2008. He made waves in a big way this spring when he officially came out. We’re proud to have Y-Love as our celebrity spokesperson and have teamed up to spread the message of LGBT inclusion.

If your Yiddish is iffy, be sure to turn on captions once the video is running (the red “cc button in lower right corner) for the translation. Better yet, call your bubbie and watch it together.






 Y-Love’s statement about the video:

“So since coming out this May, one of the major things that I have felt is an overwhelming sense of wanting to give back to the LGBT community in general and the Jewish LGBT community in particular. Spending most of my career in the closet, I never used my platform to speak against heterosexism and homophobia — the same homophobia I was suffering from — and never gave my efforts to the struggle for equality. 2012 changes all that, and I’m trying to put as much of my effort and influence into the LGBT struggle for equality as I can.

To this end, Keshet has been there for LGBT inclusion nationwide for years. At the Keshet teen shabbaton, I was inspired by stories of overcoming far worse than I had even feared would happen in my own life. I realized that I couldn’t sit on the sidelines. By putting my name – as a premier Jewish urban artist – with Keshet’s, I think we can raise LGBT visibility and inclusion to even higher levels, and work towards one of my bigger goals for klal Yisra’el and humanity — that we should be the last generation to know of the closet.”

Sex-reassignment ops in Israel put on hold as waiting list continues to grow

The surgeries were stopped when the only authorized surgeon went on sabbatical, but have remained at standstill even after his return; an American surgeon will fill the gap temporarily next month, but others candidates must keep on waiting - or have the surgery abroad.

By Ido Efrati for Haaretz

In September 2012, Dr. Haim Kaplan, a high-ranking surgeon at Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer, went on sabbatical. That was more than a year ago. Dr. Kaplan was the only surgeon in Israel who was authorized to perform sex-reassignment surgeries — and since he went on sabbatical, no such operations have been performed in Israel, even though he has since returned. The fact that Israel has one of the world’s highest doctor-to-patient ratios on earth does not change the untenable situation for Israel’s transgender community, and the waiting list for the surgery is only growing longer.

There is no official data on Israel’s transgender community. Nobody knows its size, how many sex-change operations have been performed in Israel over the years or their success rates. The waiting list for the operation comprises between 12 and 20 transgender men and women, who have completed the approval process and are eligible for the operation, according to the Health Ministry’s sex-reassignment committee. But for 14 months, no operations have been performed, mainly because the Health Ministry did not prepare in advance for the temporary departure of the only surgeon in Israel who is authorized to perform them.

Dr. Marci Bowers, a world-renowned expert in sex-change surgery, is due to land in Israel next month. Bowers, who underwent the procedure herself, is scheduled to perform five sex-change operations in Israel and then return to her surgical practice in Trinidad, Colorado, a town that has become known as “the sex-change capital of the world” because of her practice there.

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Reconstructionists Pick First Woman, Lesbian As Denominational Leader

Reconstructionist Judaism has a new leader. For the first time, she is a woman — and a lesbian.

In fact, Rabbi Deborah Waxman, who will take the reins of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, the newly merged seminary and congregational apparatus of the Reconstructionist movement, is the first woman to ever head a Jewish congregational organization. She is also the first gay rabbi to take on such a senior leadership position.

“It has been energizing to know that I will not be marginalized or disqualified from serving the Jewish people,” Waxman, 46, wrote in an email to the Forward. “I deeply appreciate—and have richly benefited from—the Reconstructionist movement’s vanguard work on inclusion, and hope to continue it as president.”

The future of the Reconstructionist movement, the smallest of the major strands of American Judaism with about 100 congregations, has been uncertain since Rabbi Dan Ehrenkrantz, Waxman’s predecessor, announced he was stepping down as head of RRC in February.

Gay candidate blazes new trail in Israel mayoral race

by Allyn Fisher-Ilan, Reuters

As a candidate to become the Middle East's first openly gay mayor, Nitzan Horowitz is hoping his bid to run Israel's famously liberal city of Tel Aviv will help homosexuals across a region where they are widely frowned upon.

The left-wing legislator is not predicted to defeat the incumbent, the well-established ex-fighter pilot Ron Huldai, in an October 22 municipal vote.

But the 48-year-old remains upbeat, pointing to an opinion poll his dovish Meretz party commissioned last month that gave Huldai only a five-point lead.

A survey in the Maariv newspaper last week predicted a Huldai victory, but found 46 percent of voters were still undecided.

"I'm going to be not only the first gay mayor here in Israel, but the first gay mayor of the entire Middle East. This is very exciting," Horowitz told Reuters.

Horowitz's prominence in Tel Aviv is not altogether surprising. In a region better known for its religious and social conservatism, it is dubbed the "city that never sleeps".

With a population of 410,000, it was also ranked in a poll by Gaycities.com last year as a top gay destination.

By contrast, more than 800,000 ultra-Orthodox Jews wearing black coats and hats poured on to the streets of Jerusalem last week for the funeral of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, a divisive figure whom critics called "Israel's ayatollah."

Huldai, Tel Aviv's mayor since 1998, already apportions city budgets for its annual beachfront gay pride parade, and there is a gay film festival and municipal center for the gay community offering cultural and athletic programs for teenagers and young adults.

"You can't take away the fact that gay life has blossomed in the city under Huldai," said Itai Pinkas Pinkas, 39, a onetime city councilor who worked with the mayor.

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Being Queer and Jewish in Ultra-Orthodox Brooklyn

by J.E. Reich for The Blog/HuffPost

I walk home from a friend's house party at 2 o'clock in the morning, tired from drinking. Nearing the corner of Kingston Ave., I hear an aching chant. It is a prayer, the v'ahavta, and it comes from an elderly woman in a ratty dress, shuckling on the mezzanine of the Chabad synagogue. I stop and blink once, twice. She sees me and motions for me to come over, to join her. I sit beside her and begin to recite it, this prayer I know with easy memory. A communal longing surges through me from the bottom of my ribcage, igniting my bone marrow. It is only after we end the prayer with a quiet, resounding "amen" that she asks for my name.

"No," she says with a Yiddish inflection after I answer. "Your real name." My Hebrew name.

"Esther Yaakova bat Shimon ve Chaya," I say, relishing the formalities, the guttural buzz at the back of my throat.

She claps her hands once. "Aha! My name is Esther too!"

Esther begins a line of questioning: Do I live in the neighborhood? Where do I go to shul? Do I have anywhere to go for next Shabbos? I reply with a soft shyness, afraid that this moment of Jewish connection will end too soon, in a place where I perpetually press my face against glass, only able to look in and never enter.

We come to the subject of Jewish learning. I admit that I've contemplated seeking out a Torah study group.

"Yes, yes," she says. "Join my group. I meet with girls just like you."

Just like me, I think, but not like me at all. "You should know," I tell Esther, feeling a sense of hope that things might be different this time, "I live with my girlfriend." She blinks once, twice. "I'm gay," I say. Again, no recognition. "I'm a homosexual."

She inches away, ever so slightly, and closes the siddur in her lap. Could I not be that way, she wonders out of the side of her mouth. I tell her that it's impossible to not be any other way for me.

"Oh," she says. "Then no."

At my apartment, my girlfriend asks why I'm home so late. After I finish the story, my head cradled in my hands, she says that sleep will make me feel better in the morning. But in truth, I know that these small words are empty consolations, despite her best intentions. Only I could know otherwise, and yet I don't.

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Let’s Talk About Here!

Opinion, The Conspiracy; by Jonathan Katz for newvoices

Publications aimed for a queer Jewish audience, like any niche-aimed work, tend to concentrate on certain themes. There are your coming out to your community publications, there are your famous-queer-Jews publications, there are your “my story” publications.

And then there is another trend: a deep, heavy, nearly-overwhelming concentration on Israel.

Israel is everywhere in the queer Jewish community – and we’re not talking objective or straightforward discussions here. (Mention “pink-washing” and things might not go so well for you.) “Look at the equality and glory of Israel” is a message almost ubiquitous in the queer Jewish community – of course, with a heavy dose of hasbara (Hi AIPAC!), nationalist feel-good rhetoric, and reproduction of racist stereotypes. Almost always, one finds highly distorted truths. To a certain point, I – the son of a mother raised in Israel – do not completely mind. But in fact, I mind quite a lot.

To a point, this focus is simply annoying – and exclusionary for those who are even mildly critical of Israel’s government or its policies, for it has developed a culture of “you’re with us or against us.” There’s also the point at which it is obsessive – it feels as if nothing else is discussed.

And what I’m concerned with is that this obsession comes at the expense of discussing queer Jewish experiences right here, right now in the United States.

Of course, it can already be argued that the American Jewish community is dangerously obsessed with Israel, to the point of damage to our own communal health. As one Israeli filmmaker aptly said, Israel is “too cherished.” Yet, in my own experience, I find that the wider American Jewish community is less concentrated on Israel than the queer Jewish community.

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Maintaining a Family Fiction About My Uncle—and His Partner of 33 Years

Last week’s Supreme Court decision on gay marriage came too late for Uncle Bill, who had to keep his relationship a secret

By Melanie Radley for Tablet from July 1, 2013

When my uncle Bill Murstein died on June 7, 1967, at age 70, he was eulogized as a civic leader, philanthropist, and noted owner of his eponymous department store, Wilmurs, which had been the major retail presence in Hamilton, Ohio, for 32 years. The extensive obituary in the Hamilton Daily Journal cited his many accomplishments, local and national, and the edifices he endowed, including the William Murstein Synagogue at Hebrew Union College, Jerusalem, and the Murstein Alumni Center at Miami University. But the article made no mention of Sanford Eaffy, his companion of at least 33 years, who had died just four months earlier. Bill had been an honorary pallbearer at Eaffy’s funeral that spring, as were my father and a cousin, testament to the place “Uncle Eaffy” had in our family. Eaffy’s obituary mentioned his connection to Uncle Bill, but only in coded terms. From the Hamilton Daily Journal, March 13, 1967: “His association with William Murstein, president and owner of Wilmurs, was a close one not alone in the operation of the department store but in sharing other interests as well.”
Now, as I approach Bill’s age when he died, I finally understand the depth of their relationship. All these years later, as the Supreme Court finally struck down a key part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act—although Ohio’s own constitutional ban on gay marriage stands—I finally understand how important their relationship was and the impact that denying that relationship’s importance had on our entire family.

Uncle Bill and his partner Eaffy moved in together in 1934, sharing accommodations in Hamilton’s luxury Anthony Wayne Hotel. Ohio already had some of the most stringent and often-enforced sodomy laws in the country; that hadn’t changed by the time they both died in 1967, two years before Stonewall, and seven years before the state legislature repealed those laws.

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New Generation of Transgender Rabbis Ties Jewish Practice and Gender Change

Number of Ordained Rabbis Will Soon Double From 3 to 6

By Naomi Zeveloff for The Jewish Daily Forward

In the next few years, the number of transgender rabbis in America is expected to double — from three to six.

The tiny cohort makes up a miniscule percentage of the rabbis graduating rabbinical school, but these individuals have already played a big role in their respective seminaries to provoke conversations about gender and Judaism. They’re also paving the way for more transgender rabbis to come.

According to LGBT Jewish advocates, transgender issues are the “new frontier” for the mainstream non-Orthodox community, which has focused on incorporating lesbians and gays in the past several decades. Both the Reform and Reconstructionist movements have initiated programs on transgender inclusion.

Since 2003, the Conservative movement has deemed sexual reassignment surgery a key component of gender transition. But it could relax its halachic stance if it accepts a new legal opinion written by Leonard Sharzer, a bioethicist at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Sharzer argues that the Conservative movement should accept transgender Jews as the gender they identify with, regardless of surgical status; he says he will soon submit his opinion to the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, the Conservative movement’s law-making body.

Yesterday, we introduced you to the first two rabbis to be ordained by the Reform movement — Reuben Zellman and Elliot Kukla. And to Emily Aviva Kapor who was ordained before her gender transition privately by a “Conservadox” rabbi.

Today, we turn to three rabbis-in-training. Jacob Lieberman and Leiah Moser are students at Reconstructionist Rabbinical College who are meeting with Reconstructionist synagogues to talk about their respective paths to the rabbinate. And Ari Lev Fornari, an activist for Palestinian rights, is a student at Hebrew College.

All six rabbis and rabbis-in-training are actively involved in creating Jewish ritual for gender transition, from a prayer for binding the chest to a prayer for taking hormones. It remains to be seen whether these individuals will gain long term employment as Jewish leaders. But they’ve already become sought-after voices on panels at synagogues and in community centers on the topic of gender transition and Judaism.

EXCLUSIVE: Interview With Cartoonist & Writer, Ariel Schrag

The author of “Potential” and “Awkward” discusses her upcoming debut novel, being a lesbian in America, issues with censorship, and much more.

 By: Ashley Ramnarain for ShalomLife

Ariel Schrag began her comic book career as a young freshman at Berkeley High with “Likewise”, her first graphic memoir. She has since completed a whole series about her high school experience including, “Potential”, “Awkward”, and “Definition”. She even went on to create “Stuck in the Middle”, a comic about her experience in middle school.

Graduating from Berkeley High, Schrag continued on at Columbia University completing a degree in English literature. She has written for HBO’s “How to Make it in America” as well as Showtime’s “The L Word” and continues to work in the television industry as a writing consultant.

Her more current works include writing the screenplay for the up and coming film adaptation of “Potential” and an online comic series with her best friend entitled, “Ariel and Kevin Invade Everything”. Ariel Schrag is awaiting the release of her debut novel “Adam”, which is expected to hit bookstore shelves April 2014.

We recently got the opportunity to speak with Schrag about her graphic memoirs, upcoming novel, being LGBT in America, and much more.

ASHLEY RAMNARAIN (AR): How did a young teenager get started with autobiographical comics in high school?

ARIEL SCHRAG (AS): I had been playing around for comics for a while, had drawn my own fictional stuff as a kid and in eighth grade kind of played around with the idea of a, doing a, strip sort of inspired by for better or for worse. Like a newspaper strip. And I came up with something like live it like me, based on my family, and did like a few of those and then when I entered ninth grade I kind of became more familiar with the alternative comic book scene which was kind of big in Berkeley where I grew up in the early mid nineties and I sort of started to realize that, you know, there were comics beyond newspaper comics and that’s when I had the idea to make an actual comic book based on my high school: first on my freshman year of high school and then after I did that to continue the project every year.

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Yosemite Rim Fire Causes Cancellation Of LGBTQ Family Camp

 JTA - The largest wildfire in California’s history has led to the evacuation of a Jewish summer camp and destroyed at least one of its buildings.

The Yosemite Rim Fire triggered the cancellation of Camp Tawonga’s annual Keshet LGBTQ Family Camp, San Francisco’s j. weekly reported.

On Friday, Tawonga Executive Director Ken Kramarz said in a post on Facebook that one cabin had burned, and that downed power lines, fallen trees and “active fire” had made the last 1.5 miles of road to the camp impassable.

Earlier last week, camp director Jamie Simon-Harris emailed the board of directors and board alumni to report that the fire line was holding and flame retardant had been dumped on all “essential structures,” according to a report in the j. weekly.

“As Shabbat arrives tonight, I urge every Tawongan to pray for the safety of the firefighters,” Kramarz wrote on Facebook.

In 1999, a forest fire destroyed several buildings on the perimeter of the camp, according to the j. weekly.

The fire is burning over 143,980 acres and is only 7 percent contained. On Monday, the fire destroyed the Berkeley Toulumne Family Camp, a city-owned camp for residents, the Bay City News reported.

In July, a falling tree at Camp Tawonga struck five counselors, killing one and severely injuring two others.

When Jewish Transgender Teens Come Out of Closet, Many Leave Camp Behind

Alternatives Spring Up as Camps Struggle To Be Inclusive

By Sarah Seltzer for The Jewish Daily Forward

At summer camp, sneaking into the boys side or the girls side is as classic an activity as roasting marshmallows. But what if the side you were assigned isn’t where you think you belong? Or what if you don’t fit into either side?

Jewish summer camp — with its gender-segregated bunks, bathrooms, activities and rituals, not to mention emphasis on heterosexual “hookups” — can be a minefield for transgender kids and their families, a newly-visible population that is gaining increasing recognition in the Jewish and political mainstream.

Now, just as public schools are complying with legal orders to allow trans children to use the bathrooms of the gender they identify with, camps, too, are becoming aware that trans kids have always been present among the legions of youngsters who hop off the bus for a summer of fun. Making Jewish camp trans friendly is a brand-new undertaking, and no one knows exactly what lies ahead.

“Alex,” a 15-year old transgender boy from Newton, Mass., attended Eisner Camp, a Reform Jewish sleepaway camp in the Berkshires, for three years before he came out as transgender. (Alex asked that the Forward identify him by a pseudonym to protect his privacy.) He slept in the girls bunk and was treated as a girl. Sports, which were coed, were a favorite activity, and the Jewish traditions and community at camp were “cool” and “interesting,” he said. But at age 11, as he began to consider living as a boy, Alex chose not to return to the camp. “I didn’t want to have to go through being in that awkward in-between phase of, ‘Which cabin did I go to?’” he said. His mother jokes that he blamed his choice to leave on the dining hall food. But Alex added, “The vibe I got was that the counselors or older people, the campers, wouldn’t be that great about [my transition].”

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Why the IOC’s Olympic-sized, Big Gay Russian Problem Isn’t Going Away—and Shouldn’t

Jews, too, have a stake in the Olympic committee’s cowardly attempt to stifle gay rights protests at Sochi this winter

By Rachel Shukert for Tablet

The London Olympics last year, I’m sure you’ll agree, were a smashing success, despite all the public grumbling about “unreadiness” and “terrible British weather” that preceded them. Michael Phelps and the U.S. women’s gymnastic team were dizzyingly triumphant, nobody died in any freak accidents and/or terrorist attacks, and thanks to Kenneth Branagh and his Abraham Lincoln costume, the world finally learned of the glorious achievements of Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

So, by the immutable physical laws of pessimism (a subject in which I have a hereditary doctorate), it stands to reason that the 2014 Winter Olympics will be a magnet for certain catastrophe, a fate the International Olympic Committee, ever eager to defend their place on the wrong side of history, seemed to presuppose by choosing Sochi, Russia—a subtropical resort destination with pictures of palm trees—palm trees!—on its Wikipedia page—for competitions in alpine skiing, lugeing, and other things that require the fairly constant presence of ice and snow.

But even so, I don’t think they realized just how bad things would get.

I can’t pretend to exactly understand the reasoning behind the Putin government’s relatively sudden and utterly horrific enshrined persecution of homosexuals and those who would rise to their defense—or even, given the malignant and wholly purposeful ambiguity of the law, might simply happen to know a couple. The best explanation anyone seems to have is that Putin is merely exercising the age-old prerogative of the demagogue: Transfer all responsibility of your country’s decay to some defenseless enemy within—I imagine posters in St. Petersburg are circulating even now featuring grotesque caricatures of Neil Patrick Harris with his tentacles wrapped around the globe.

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For Transgender Converts, Changing Gender and Finding Faith Come Together

Judaism Plays Key Role in Personal Journeys of Transition

By Naomi Zeveloff for The Jewish Daily Forwards

Growing up female and Methodist in the Midwest, Kadin Henningsen was inexplicably drawn to Judaism, empathizing with characters in Holocaust documentaries on TV.

Then in junior high, Henningsen had a revelation while reading Chaim Potok’s “The Chosen”: “I remember thinking I was supposed to grow up to be a Jewish man.”

Less than two decades later, the premonition came true. At 30, Henningsen transitioned genders and converted to Judaism, all within the span of a single summer. “It was a circular process,” he said. “The more entrenched I became in Jewish knowledge, the more comfortable I started to feel with my masculine identity.”

Henningsen’s conversion certificates were the first documents that referred to him with male pronouns. Today, at 35, he is an active member of Beth Chayim Chadashim, a Reform congregation in Los Angeles that bills itself as the world’s first lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender synagogue.

Henningsen is not alone in his trajectory. Transgender converts constitute a vocal — and some say growing — minority within the small community of LGBT Jews. For some trans converts, or, as many call themselves, “Jews by choice,” conversion was intrinsically linked to gender transition; the process of soul-searching unearthed one truth after another. For others, Judaism was a lifeline during a time of immense vulnerability and isolation. When friends and family members grew distant, transgender individuals found community at the Hillel House or at the local synagogue.

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Marking Gender Transition in the Mikveh

One Transgender Jew Writes a Ritual for Another 

By Max Strassfeld for The Jewish Daily Forward 

 A number of years ago a friend asked me to co-write a ritual to mark his gender-transition to manhood. I say “friend,” but it would be more accurate to call him “queer family.” I am also a transgender Jew, and he is as close to me as my brothers are. Even so, I was hesitant.

While there are several rabbis in my family, I am an academic and not particularly skilled at creating ritual; however, I grew up immersed in a strong, tight-knit Jewish community and am currently finishing up my doctorate in Jewish studies. Out of loyalty to him, I overcame my initial reluctance and promised to try and write something.

At the time, transition rituals for transgender Jews were scarce, although they are becoming more common.

Today there are rituals for many aspects of transition, from taking hormones to changing names. My friend requested a ritual specifically to precede his top surgery, a common procedure undertaken by some transgender men and genderqueers — people who don’t identify as solely male or female — to flatten the chest so that it appears more masculine. While there are traditional Jewish blessings for surviving an ordeal (for which surgery can certainly qualify), these did not seem to fit the moment.

Before my top surgery, for example, I was certainly scared, particularly since I had never undergone surgery. But as a transgender Jew, surgery felt like my bar mitzvah: It represented both a trial that I had to survive and a blessing marking a new stage in my life. I knew I wanted to write a ritual that could capture the complexities of what surgery represented.

My friend’s only guidelines were that he wanted the ritual to center on the mikveh and that he wanted my co-author and me to be the witnesses to his immersion. Since the mikveh is a space that is segregated by sex, we realized from the outset that we were going to have to tackle Judaism’s investment in dividing the world by gender. In general, the broader Jewish community does not always accept the variety of ways in which transgender Jews self-identify. That means that transgender Jews, particularly those of us who do not “pass” as male or female, enter into a sex-segregated space with some trepidation.

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Portrait of an Orthodox Israeli Drag Queen

Daniel Estrin profiles the man behind Rebbetzin Malka Falsche

By Batya Ungar-Sargon for TabletMagazine

Tablet contributor Daniel Estrin has a gripping photo essay in the Associated Press, chronicling a young Israeli cross-dresser, Shahar Hadar, through the stations of his life. In addition to being a cross-dresser, Hadar is also an Orthodox Jew who tried, unsuccessfully, to escape his sexual orientation through marriage. Estrin pairs his characteristically thrilling story-telling skills with some beautiful photos to bring us the tale of the young man who davens by day, dresses in drag by night.

Hadar’s drag persona, Estrin tells us, is “Rebbetzin Malka Falsche”—Rebbetzin False Queen. Rather than separate his drag routine from his religious identity, Hadar weaves the two together in Rebbetzin Malka Falsche, an embodiment of Hadar’s own struggles:

“She blesses, she loves everyone,” said Hadar of his alter-ego, Rebbetzin Malka Falsche. The stage name is a playful take on a Hebrew word meaning “queen” and Hebrew slang for “fake.” Her philosophy, and Hadar’s, draws from the teachings of the Breslov Hasidic stream of ultra-Orthodox Judaism: embrace life’s vicissitudes with joy.

“Usually drag queens are gruff. I decided that I wanted to be happy, entertain people, perform mitzvoth,” or religious deeds, he said.

An encounter with a popular Israeli rebbetzin is what launched Hadar’s inner journey at age 19.

Estrin’s work for Tablet includes a profile of Yityish Aynaw, the newest Miss Israel. He has also reported a series of Vox Tablet podcasts, among them the award-winning report on Jerusalem’s light rail, and the story of a doomed relationship between two men, one Palestinian and the other Jewish.

Wolpe vs Naim: on gay marriage and barking dogs

Posted by Mark Paredes on JewishJournal.com

After responding to private inquiries sent to me over the last few weeks asking for my view on the Wolpe-Naim Affair, I’ve decided to express my thoughts in this essay. In a nutshell, Conservative Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Temple in LA recently announced that his synagogue would begin performing gay marriages. In response, synagogue member Michael Naim circulated a letter harshly criticizing the rabbi’s decision. Mr. Naim also chose to leave the synagogue.

For the record, I happen to know and respect both men, and am sure that their parting was difficult. I recently dialogued with Rabbi Wolpe at Sinai Temple, and have had the honor of spending a Sabbath evening with Michael and his beautiful family. I agree with most of their views on Israel -- to the extent that they converge, I probably agree with all of them -- and on the issue of gay marriage and Judaism they both get points from me: Michael wins on substance, while the rabbi prevails on style.

I agree 100% with Michael that homosexual acts are condemned in Scripture, and that rabbis shouldn’t conduct same-sex marriage ceremonies. I’ve read every single Conservative responsum on this issue, and do not find the pro-gay marriage ones terribly convincing. Their basic argument is usually that a newfound respect for human dignity (one that apparently eluded biblical prophets and rabbis for centuries) allows for the sanctification of gay relationships and the setting aside of traditional Jewish teaching on sexual morality.

However, missing from the responsa and from Rabbi Wolpe’s public statements is a declaration that these progressive views represent God’s will. Media reports indicate that the rabbi has simply wanted to do this for a long time, and waited for the right moment to announce the policy change. Nowhere have I read that the good rabbi claimed to have received inspiration from God to make the change. While I appreciate his honesty, the truth is that if Rabbi Wolpe doesn’t claim to receive divine inspiration or sanction to perform gay marriages at his synagogue, then there’s no reason to back his decision.

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First Generation of Transgender Rabbis Claims Place at Bimah

Pushing Conversation on Gender in Jewish Community

By Naomi Zeveloff for forward.com

When it comes to the acceptance of transgender Jews, the American Jewish community is itself in a moment of transition.

In 2008, Joy Ladin became the public face of transgender Judaism when she transitioned from male to female after receiving tenure at Yeshiva University’s Stern College for Women. Five years later, there are at least six transgender rabbis and rabbis-in-training across the United States. Both the Reform and Reconstructionist movements have programs on transgender inclusion at synagogues and in seminaries.

Still, the tiny community of transgender Jews and their advocates say that the mainstream Jewish world has been slow to reach out to them. Even as non-Orthodox Judaism has embraced lesbians and gay men, transgender individuals pose a unique challenge to an ancient faith built on strict gender roles. “Parents who are perfectly liberal in most other respects don’t necessarily want a trans person to be their kid’s bar or bat mitzvah tutor or teach the teen youth group or to be hired as a rabbi,” said Rabbi Jacob Staub, a professor at Reconstructionist Rabbinical College who co-founded a student and faculty group on transgender issues. “Inclusion will take time.”

Questions of transgender inclusion become even more complex when Jewish law comes into play. In 2003, the Conservative movement deemed sexual reassignment surgery an essential component of gender transition. But many trans people never receive surgery, and so their transitions go unrecognized by the movement. Rabbi Leonard Sharzer, a bioethicist at the Jewish Theological Seminary, has written a Jewish legal opinion that counters the Conservative ruling, saying that Jewish law should consider trans Jews according to the gender they identify with regardless of surgical status. He plans to submit his opinion to the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, the Conservative movement’s law-making body.

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Jewish Teacher Strikes New Blow in Gay Marriage Fight — Eyes Supreme Court

Helena Miller Suit Could Prompt Same-Sex Nuptials Decision 

By Josh Nathan-Kazis for forward.com
A Jewish school teacher from Philadelphia is a face of a new landmark lawsuit that could prompt a Supreme Court ruling guaranteeing same-sex marriage rights nationwide.

Helena Miller, a lesbian whose wife is not recognized as a parent of their baby daughter, is one of more than 20 plaintiffs in a landmark federal lawsuit filed July 9 challenging a law that bans same-sex marriage in Pennsylvania.

The law also bars the state from recognizing such unions performed elsewhere, a provision that directly affects Miller and her family.
“We would really like for our child, when she’s old enough to understand what these things all mean, we want her to understand and see that our family is equal to any other family,” Miller told the Forward.

Dara Raspberry and Helena Miller hold their newborn baby, Zivah.
The new lawsuit, filed jointly by the American Civil Liberties Union and a Philadelphia law firm, is on the cutting edge of an aggressive new legal strategy aimed at pushing the U.S. Supreme Court to guarantee marriage equality across the country.

“I think you’re looking at a case with potentially very broad national implications,” said Mark Aronchick, the pro-bono Philadelphia lawyer bringing the case, an attorney with Hangley Aronchick Segal Pudlin & Schiller. “If there was ever a reason why I became a lawyer, its because of cases like this. It’s because of the ability to move everything along, move justice along, move freedoms along.”The new suit is the first federal case to challenge any state law barring same-sex marriage since the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 26 ruling making same-sex couples eligible for federal benefits.

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The 19th-Century Transgender Surrealist

 A Jewish, transgender, anti-fascist, Surrealist artist, born in France at the end of the 1800s? Keep reading.

Lucy Renee Mathilde Schwob was a prolific writer, photographer, and actor who didn't like to be called any of the above. But while she eschewed labels in her personal life, her art revolved around identity. In her theatrical and often androgynously sensual self-portraits she's costumed as everything from an effeminate weightlifter to Little Red Riding Hood, from a skinhead to a puppet folded into a cupboard. She tried on a series of pseudonyms, eventually sticking with the gender-neutral "Claude Cahun."

Cahun and her life partner, the prolific art nouveau illustrator Marcel Moore (née Suzanne Malherbe)—who was also her stepsister—lived in Paris until retiring to the Isle of Jersey, just before the Nazi invasion. Under occupation, the couple found the ultimate application of their Surrealist art: Dressing up as German soldiers, they distributed propaganda encouraging actual German soldiers to desert.

The pair was ultimately imprisoned and sentenced to death, but the war ended in time to release them. Still shaken by her jail time, Cahun died in 1954, closing a rich and complex life.

- Jenny Levison

I Reconciled My Gay Identity With My Orthodox Upbringing—Through a Tattoo

The mark on this yeshiva boy’s arm is a symbol of how I ultimately held on to my religious background after I came out

By Jayson Littman

It was a cold day in February 2008 when I hopped on the M train from my home in Manhattan and headed to Brooklyn Adorned, a tattoo shop on Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg. The shop was spacious, clean, and comfortable—not what I expected from a tattoo parlor. Artistic pictures of tattoos hung on the wall as if they were featured in a museum. As I wondered if my tattoo would proudly be displayed on the wall, a tattoo artist named Yoni looked at me, glanced up at my yarmulke, and asked, “So, where do you want your tattoo, yeshiva boy?”

I chose what I call my T-spot, the place on my left bicep where I place my tefillin box when I pray every morning. I knew that until my tattoo healed, I would be unable to wear tefillin, which I had done every day since just before my bar mitzvah. Even though I was drifting away from the Orthodox identity I’d grown up with, laying tefillin was one of the only commandments that still made me feel a physical connection with G-d. I had learned that tefillin is placed on one’s bicep because G-d represents strength; when the box is placed on the bicep in a manner that faces your heart, it shows that G-d is truly in your heart.

Now my tattoo, a permanent mark on my T-spot, would represent the paradoxical relationship I had to Orthodox Judaism.

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Coming out, a young gay man finds self-acceptance

By Isaac Lobel

NEW YORK (JTA) — For my bar mitzvah, my parents got me a laptop. For what I searched for on it, they got me a shrink.

CyberSitter informed my computer-savvy parents that their son was searching gay porn.

On the ride to my first therapy session, I stuck my head out the car window wanting to be anywhere else. We caracoled along northern New Jersey’s winding streets to a shoddy home office.

The rabbi turned doctor had me sit in his living room as he lectured on what was and was not natural. The dry scent of gefilte fish filled the ungapatchka house, his decor as convoluted as his arguments. Where there should have been DSMs – Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – a row of Babylonian Talmuds sat collecting dust.

Every Wednesday when I returned home, I had to wash myself of the sticky experience.

For a month, I saw the shrink weekly. I wondered what qualified this lanky rabbinical school graduate to be offering such sessions, until it hit me: He went through it, too.

One night, pitching his theory of gay as a phase for the umpteenth time, my shrink let slip that my condition was “not uncommon to boys in our community.” I sat on my excitement, but inside I was a loose spark plug. There were others? I hoped I wasn’t as alone as I’d thought.

In public, not a single feigeleh swished across the wooded streets of my Modern Orthodox Jewish corner of New Jersey. Thanks to shul, everybody knew everybody and her grandmother. A social circuit of Shabbat lunches kept us all abreast of each other’s goings-ons. There was no way of locating others like me, and I, like my parents, kept my secret hidden. Without a laptop or role models, and suffering from JIG – Jewish Intermittent Guilt – my adolescence darkened beneath storm clouds of loneliness.

During high school, my parents stopped asking how my days were. They feared me. My Modern Orthodox yeshiva high school was a blend of traditionalism and selective modernity with an ambiguity that left me stuck in the closet door, neither of one world or the next.

The 10-hour dual curriculum of Judaic and secular studies afforded me little time to socialize. Despite toilsome efforts to succeed, nothing I did overshadowed the lot life had given me. My gay “phase” grew longer. Like a forgotten houseplant, it was ugly. It was something I could not control.
When I was 15, my parents switched me to a second therapist, a tepid old man always in a three-piece suit who asked me to explain my sexuality as I saw it. As a minor, anything I said to him could be relayed to my parents. I learned to practice silence.

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‘Pinkwashing’ Conference Head Claims Dissenters are ‘Israeli Operatives’

Bizarre clash of ideals at CUNY, where Israel is accused of using its gay-rights record to conceal its oppression of Palestinians

By James Kirchick

In April, the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS) at the City University of New York hosted a conference on “Homonationalism and Pinkwashing.” If neither term is familiar, consider yourself one of the lucky few who has avoided exposure to the bizarre new inversion of language that seeks to turn Israel’s history of generally respecting gay rights into the leading edge of a sinister new campaign to justify the oppression of Palestinians.

“Homonationalism,” according to a description on the conference website, is the apparently noxious new phenomenon that “occurs when sub-sectors of specific gay communities achieve legal parity with heterosexuals and then embrace racial and religious supremacy ideologies”—including being proud of Israel’s record of respecting and upholding the rights of gay citizens and visitors. “Pinkwashing,” meanwhile, describes a “deliberate strategy to conceal the continuing violations of Palestinians’ human rights behind an image of modernity signified by Israeli gay life.” This latter term was first mentioned by Rutgers academic Jasbir Puar in a 2010 Guardian article but gained genuine notoriety thanks to a 2011 New York Times op-ed by CUNY professor and conference organizer Sarah Schulman.

In that op-ed, Schulman claimed that “Increasing gay rights have caused some people of good will to mistakenly judge how advanced a country is by how it responds to homosexuality.” A country’s record on gay rights, however, is nearly always a telling indicator of its “advancement” (a curious word choice for an otherwise reliable expositor of moral equivalence as Schulman). And not only is Schulman’s argument a non sequitur in that many of the most vocal gay-rights activists in Israel are also fervent opponents of the occupation, it is a critique that she peculiarly applies only to the Jewish state. For instance, there is no condemnation of France covering up its failure to integrate Arabs by promoting its wine industry, or China’s obscuring its appalling human-rights record by promoting the Great Wall.

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Pride and Prejudice

By Rabbi Jillian R. Cameron

During June, designated as LGBT Pride Month, we often read Parashah Balak. It is a curious tale, replete with a talking donkey and the roundabout air of prophecy; a story of attempted curses that ultimately lead to blessings.

The Israelites have been saved from cruel Pharaoh, and for the past two and a half books – Exodus, Leviticus, and now Numbers – they have been wandering the desert, perhaps a little aimlessly, toward the hope of a Promised Land. We meet Balak, the King of Moab, who is a bit nervous about the group of Israelites who have settled near his kingdom. He states in Numbers 22, verse 5, “There is a people that came out of Egypt; it hides the earth from view.” This sounds all too familiar, but Balak, takes a different path than old Pharaoh. He attempts to enlist Balaam, a Moabite diviner saying, “Come then, put a curse upon this people for me, since they are too numerous for me; perhaps I can thus defeat them and drive them out of the land. For I know that he whom you bless is blessed indeed, and he whom you curse is cursed."

Balaam agrees to the task, but each time he attempts to curse the Israelites, the Divine interferes – and all three times Balaam blesses, rather than curses, Israel. “My message was to bless: When [God] blesses, I cannot reverse it.”

As a member of the gay Jewish community, I ask: Are we blessed?

All too often, the message of religion is used to exclude rather than include; to curse rather than bless. For so long, the LGBT community has been at odds with religion, feeling this exclusion, perhaps feeling cursed. But we learn from Balaam, the unlikely mouthpiece of God, that nothing that God has blessed can be cursed. We have all been blessed by God.

So why do we – why do I – sometimes still feel the linger of the curse?

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San Francisco's Gay Jewish Hero

The late gay activist and San Francisco politician Harvey Milk seemed to have organizing in his blood. His grandfather, a Lithuanian Jewish immigrant, helped found the first synagogue in his Long Island town, and Milk himself would go on to make great strides for gay communities across the country.

Milk first became interested in politics during the rampant police raids of gay bars of the 1960s. He was already affectionately known as the "Mayor of the Castro," organizing Teamsters, firefighters, and construction unions. And though he lost his first races, when he finally won a position as City Supervisor in 1977, he immediately made history: Milk was the first openly gay person to be elected into political office in America. Tragically, his historic career ended on November 27, 1978, when Milk and Mayor George Moscone were murdered in City Hall by a fellow city supervisor.

Today, Milk's legacy has been memorialized in documentary and feature films alike. A huge rainbow flag flies in Harvey Milk Plaza in San Francisco, and New York City even has a high school named in his honor.

We're kvelling with pride.

Biden: Jewish leaders drove gay marriage changes

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Joe Biden is praising Jewish leaders for helping change American attitudes about gay marriage and other issues.

Biden says culture and arts change people's attitudes. He cites social media and the old NBC TV series "Will and Grace" as examples of what helped changed attitudes on gay marriage. 

Biden says, quote, "Think — behind of all that, I bet you 85 percent of those changes, whether it's in Hollywood or social media, are a consequence of Jewish leaders in the industry." 
Biden says the influence is immense and that those changes have been for the good. 

Biden was speaking Tuesday night at a Jewish American Heritage Month reception hosted by the Democratic National Committee. He says Jewish values are an essential part of who Americans are.

Meet The Great Gatsby Of Gay Jewish Nightlife

He attended yeshiva; leads Jewish LGBT tips to Israel and Berlin; fights accusations of Israeli 'pinkwashing' and is a certified spinning instructor. "Turn towards God in times of struggle," he says.

Jewish Week's “36 under 36” section, now in its sixth year, was born after Jewish Week staffers reflected that there ought to be a way to honor the best and the brightest young stars in the firmament of New York's Jewish community.
Sometimes it seemed as though at every Jewish organizational dinner another older Jewish person was accepting an award---all fine and good --- but what about the up and coming, the new generation? Chai means life, and life moves quickly; in numerology 36 is double chai, an apt symbol for the energetic, the capable, the newest among us who really are stunning the world. Let’s recognize them, it was decided.

Artists, doctors, businesspeople, journalists, policymakers, activists, educators, and clergy, the younger contingent of Jews in New York were battling injustice, speaking truth to power, creating works of devastating beauty, and finding new ways to carry the candelabra of Jewish life into the future.

In 2009, Brooke Goldstein was recognized as one of the 36. Her investigative documentary film, “The Making of a Martyr,” exposed the horrible truth about Palestinian terrorists in the West Bank who admitted on camera to recruiting children as young as 10. Brooke now heads the Lawfare Project, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting the rights of journalists and others against legal efforts to undermine the values of Western and liberal democracies. Her high level of achievement continues.

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A Chained Man

Thanks to the patchwork of laws about same-sex marriage, I got trapped in legal limbo when I wanted a divorce

Last week, the Supreme Court heard testimony in two cases that may decide the future of same-sex marriage in the United States. But personally, I’ve been more concerned lately with same-sex divorce.

I got divorced in February. Or, since I was never technically married as far as the federal government is concerned, maybe I should say I got a dissolution. Or a disunion. Whatever you call it, a relationship that began with lively gaiety under the chuppah but had long since become a moribund afterthought reached its legal end, releasing me definitively and finally from any remaining force of my vows.

Divorce isn’t unusual in itself. But in my case, because we were a same-sex couple, it had taken nearly 11 years from the time we ended the relationship until we could make it official. For more than a decade, I had been not-quite-married and not-quite-divorced, chained to a man I could not free myself from.

***

Just after I came out as gay to myself, my family, and my friends at the start of 2000, I met a nice Jewish boy at synagogue, of all places. He and I were in our late 20s and had grown up in the Philadelphia suburbs not far from each other. Our relationship was “mixed” insofar as he was from a Reform background and I was Conservative, but Judaism and Jewish community were important to both of us. Given this background and where we found each other, it was no surprise that our religious and cultural values and traditions played a significant part in how our time together unfolded.

About a year and a half after we started dating, the two of us entered into a civil union—also known derisively as marriage lite. Although our home state of Pennsylvania denied us all matrimonial rights, as it continues to do for all same-sex couples today, Vermont had no residency requirements for civil unions—which, at that point, were the closest thing to marriage available to gay couples in any state. Making effective use of a long weekend, we drove up one fall Friday, got our license that afternoon, stood under the chuppah before a rabbi on Sunday evening, and returned to Philadelphia on Monday.

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New York’s New Firebrand Rabbi

For Sharon Kleinbaum—friend of Christine Quinn, partner to Randi Weingarten—the personal is political

By Allison Hoffman for Tablet Magazine

Last winter, Sharon Kleinbaum, the firebrand rabbi of Congregation Beit Simchat Torah—the country’s largest and best-known gay synagogue—marked her 20th anniversary in the pulpit with a Hanukkah celebration headlined by the actress Cynthia Nixon, who has been active in gay-rights and a regular guest at the synagogue. The evening featured a panel with the political writer Frank Rich, a longtime congregant, and an appearance by Christine Quinn, New York’s City Council Speaker, who came to present Kleinbaum with an official city proclamation. “She is one of the favorite religious leaders in my household,” Quinn told the crowd. “I’ve never seen her at an event or at a function or on the street or wherever where she hasn’t gone out of her way to give me—you’d think she was a bear, that’s what you get from this little woman, I always get that hug.”

On cue, Kleinbaum dashed onstage and wrapped her arms around Quinn, New York’s first female and first openly gay political leader and currently the front-running candidate to succeed Michael Bloomberg as mayor. Then the rabbi turned and made her way back to her seat in the audience next to the other political powerhouse in the room: the labor leader Randi Weingarten, who is head of the American Federation of Teachers, a close friend of the Clintons, and Kleinbaum’s romantic partner. As she sat down, Kleinbaum gave Weingarten an exuberant kiss that was audible from the balcony of the crowded auditorium, at John Jay College near Lincoln Center.

Kleinbaum is hardly the only religious leader in New York who balances a public record of spirited demonstrations and arrests with serious insider pull; the Rev. Al Sharpton practically defines the form, and other Jewish leaders, including Rabbi Avi Weiss, have adopted the model as well. But this, in many ways, is Kleinbaum’s moment: a year in which many of the issues moving the city and the country—same-sex marriage, income inequality, civil liberties—are ones Kleinbaum has long made her own, and in which those closest to the rabbi are politically ascendant.

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