Slice of Bread for LGBT Jews and All the Excluded

A Statement on Your Seder Plate

By Rebecca Alpert

In 1997 I wrote a book with the title “Like Bread on the Seder Plate: Jewish Lesbians and the Transformation of Tradition.” The book was about how we Jewish lesbians had begun to claim our place in the Jewish community by reinterpreting traditions, as the half of the title after the colon suggests. But the provocative words before the colon had a different purpose. Saying that lesbians identified with what it would feel like to be “bread on the Seder plate” was meant to draw attention to how unwelcome they felt in the Jewish world at that time.

For the record, neither at my own Seder nor at any Seder conducted by any lesbian I know was bread ever placed on the Seder plate. The idea was so alien that my editor could not even find a Jewish person on staff to donate a Seder plate for the simulated image on the book’s cover. (I shipped them my own Seder plate after being assured that bread never touched it.) I will admit that the year the book came out, we did put it on the Seder plate, but that’s as far as it went.

So if the purpose was not to make a ritual of bread on the Seder plate, what’s this all about? Like many things Jewish, it started with a story.
In 1979 a rebbetzin from the local chapter of Chabad in Berkeley gave a talk at the local Hillel about women in Halacha. When someone asked about lesbians, she (correctly) described sex between women as a minor transgression in Jewish law and likened it to eating bread during the week of Passover. The Jewish lesbians who heard her took the analogy to heart, and discussed putting a crust of bread on their Seder plate that year to symbolize their anger at feeling like outsiders in the Jewish community.


Read more:  

Gay Synagogues’ Uncertain Future

New York’s Congregation Beit Simchat Torah made news recently when it announced the purchase of a three-level space in a landmark tower on the west side of Manhattan. When construction is complete, the building in the Garment District will house CBST’s first permanent home in its 40-year history.

“We’ve been in a rental space that’s hard to find and reflects what the community was in the ’70s,” said Sharon Kleinbaum, senior rabbi at CBST—the country’s largest LGBT-founded synagogue, with over 1,100 adult members, up from about 650 just five years ago. “Now it will be part of the fabric of the city, out on the street, not hidden away. Without an address, it’s hard to be a firm presence, and that’s what we want to become. We want to say that we are a vibrant part of the life of New York City and the world.”

Across the country in Los Angeles, Beth Chayim Chadashim, the country’s oldest LGBT synagogue, recently reached a similar milestone, having moved into its own new building last year and celebrating its 40th anniversary this past June.

LGBT congregations have finally come into their own, providing a home for the Jewish community’s LGBT members and their friends and families in cities both large and small. But the increasing acceptance around gay issues in mainstream synagogues, from Reconstructionist to Reform to Conservative, and even on the fringes of Modern Orthodoxy, means that these synagogues are no longer the only option for LGBT Jews. So, the lines that once seemed so clear have begun to blur: LGBT synagogues in places like Cleveland and Atlanta are merging or outgrowing their original designation and drawing a more diverse membership, even as mainstream congregations sign up new gay members and become more diverse.

According to Jay Michaelson, founder of Nehirim, an organization dedicated to LGBT spirituality, “There are some people for whom living their Jewish identity is linked to their queer identity, but for others, 2013 isn’t 1983. Most synagogues, outside of the Orthodox world, are welcoming, or at least won’t slam the door in their faces. The LGBT synagogues that used to be the default option for gay people no longer are.”

Continue reading.

Passover and LGBT Liberation: What Is Your Community’s Story?

by guest contributor Idit Klein, Executive Director of Keshet:

In a few days, Jews all over the world will gather with family and friends to tell the story of Passover. It's a story of the past but it’s also a story of the present. It’s a story of coming into identity, of community being formed, of a national narrative taking shape; it’s a story of liberation.

This year, I ask you to think about what kind of story you want to tell about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender inclusion and equality in your Jewish community.

We know that the idea of basic equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people is overwhelmingly embraced by the majority of American Jews. But what does this mean? A synagogue allows a lesbian couple to join as a family? Does your organization’s non-discrimination policy explicitly include sexual orientation and gender identity?

Or does this commitment go deeper?
Some questions to consider:

Do membership forms use “Member 1/Member 2” rather than “Mother/Father” or “Husband/Wife”? 

Do youth educators tailor lesson plans or activities on Jewish life cycle events and family to reflect the reality of LGBT families? 

Can LGBT employees obtain equal health care coverage, including for transgender people?

Keshet stands behind the Jewish Organization Equality Index, which is asking these important questions and helping to make the Jewish community inclusive of LGBT Jews.

For the past 11 years, Keshet has worked with hundreds of synagogues, federations, day schools, summer camps, JCCs, youth groups, and others – giving community leaders the tools and knowledge they need to cultivate inclusion. We offer in-depth trainings and consultations to Jewish educators and lay leaders and produce resources such as DVDs, curriculum, posters, and a book of queer readings of biblical texts to help create inclusive Jewish communities nationwide.

Continue reading.

Jewish organizations have made great strides in gay inclusion—but must do more

OPINION

BOSTON (JTA) -- At the 2009 General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America in Washington, 50 lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Jews and their allies gathered in a small room on the ninth floor of the conference hotel.

The event was not part of the official GA program, and the room was in the hinterlands of the hotel, hidden from the public eye. It reminded me of photos of 1950s gay bars, underground dives with no signs or windows. At the biggest annual gathering of Jews in the world, it felt like LGBT Jews were still stuck in the closet.

It used to be rare for LGBT equality to be on the agenda of a major Jewish conference. Now it is rare for it not to be. The Jewish community is changing and, three years after that first gathering, I could feel and see that change at the 2012 GA.

At this year’s reception for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer Jews, and their family, friends and allies, we celebrated the release of a new report, the Human Rights Campaign’s Jewish Organization Equality Index on the state of LGBT inclusion in North American Jewish organizations.

People flowed into the reception room until the line was out the door; we had to turn people away. Dana Beyer, executive director of Gender Rights Maryland, remarked, "Who would have thought that we would reach the day when people would be lining up waiting to get into a room at the GA to talk about LGBT equality?"

Over the years, at times I have felt like a broken record, gently correcting people's assumption that the work I do is "only for LGBT Jews.” Creating a more inclusive Jewish community benefits LGBT Jews, but ultimately this work is for the sake of the entire Jewish people. LGBT inclusion leads to a stronger, more deeply authentic Jewish community.

Jewish organizing in the 2012 campaigns for marriage equality reflects a shift toward LGBT inclusion as a core Jewish value. Jewish activists, rabbis and organizations in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington transformed their values into action in the lead-up to Election Day. Jewish Community Action in Minneapolis and Jews United for Justice in Maryland -- both members of the Jewish Social Justice Roundtable -- knocked on doors and sparked hundreds of conversations about marriage equality. The National Council of Jewish Women organized for equality in Washington state and in Minnesota.

Continue reading.