For LGBT Orthodox Jews, Growth of Social Media Creates a Safe Space Online

Websites, blogs, Facebook groups, and online support groups offer the chance to connect without the risk of ‘going public’

By Michael Orbach for Tablet Magazine

Growing up in an ultra-Orthodox family in Brooklyn in the 1970s, Moshe struggled with his homosexuality. “I went to yeshiva and there were no gay characters on television,” said Moshe, who asked that we not use his real name. There was no discussion of gay issues at the yeshiva, either, he remembers: Everyone was implicitly taught that the only way to channel their sexuality was to get married—to women, of course. At 22, Moshe did just that, hoping he could “marry the gay away.” “We dated for 12 days,” he recalled. That was in 1994, before the popular advent of the Internet. At the time, Moshe didn’t realize there were other Orthodox men grappling with their sexuality, too.

The online universe changed all that. A few years ago, he began reading blogs about other Orthodox gay men who were coming out. While he was still unable to confront his sexuality publicly, he felt he needed to connect with other people in similar situations—something the Internet allowed him to do without “going public.” “I was able to see people expressing themselves—Orthodox friends of mine expressing themselves with their homosexuality, and I wanted that,” he told me. “I needed that.”

His therapist at the time, a prominent rabbi in Moshe’s community, suggested he start his own blog to discuss his homosexuality anonymously. In June 2011, as a married father of four, he did. “I am a frum, gay & married male who feels compelled to share,” he wrote in his first blog entry. “I could be a mispallel in your shul listening to the Rov talk about the perverts and mishkav zochornicks [homosexuals] supporting gay marriage. … I reiterate, I am lonely and in pain. … I am convinced there are other people like me out there. I want them to know that they are not alone. I want to have the opportunity to hear from them and share my experience with them.”

Moshe wasn’t the only one. Since the Internet boom and the more recent growing popularity of social media—from blogs to Facebook groups, dating sites to Twitter feeds, as well as official organizational websites—there has been a veritable explosion of sites and support groups for LGBT Orthodox Jews, a population that until now, hid in the shadows. The Internet has created a safe space for a population caught between the demands of faith and the demands of self—a population that didn’t have a safe space before.

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Orthodox Parents of LGBT Children Navigate Their Own Coming Out Process

A weekend retreat inspires advocacy for gay Orthodox Jews and creates a support network for families in religious communities

By Tova Ross for Tablet Magazine

It was telling that Eshel—the national organization offering community and programming for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Jews and their families in Orthodox communities—held its second annual retreat for Orthodox parents of LGBT children exactly a week before Purim. Like the themes of disguise that abound throughout Megillat Esther—the invisible hand of God, whose name is not mentioned even once, and Esther herself, whose name is rooted in the Hebrew word for “hidden” and who must keep her Jewish identity under wraps—secrecy and seclusion were once familiar to many of the parents who attended Eshel’s retreat last weekend at the Capital Retreat Center in Waynesboro, Pa.

When Baltimore resident Mindy Dickler’s son Elie came out to her while home from college for Rosh Hashanah in 2011, her first reaction was shock. Though she soon came to a place of acceptance (“I realized that Elie was created b’tzelem elokim, in the image of God, like everybody else”), when she looked for resources for parents like her, she came up empty. “I saw major metro areas like New York and San Francisco with some resources and a more discernible population of Orthodox or otherwise Jewish parents of gay children,” she said, “but I couldn’t find any of that in Baltimore and felt really alone.” That is, until she found Eshel—a group founded in 2010 whose name refers to the biblical shrub with bright red flowers planted by Abraham to signal to parched travelers that a welcoming tent was nearby.

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The new Jews of L.A.: Jewish LGBT group says there’s no need to be L.A. confidential

Despite the image of Los Angeles as an open-minded, anything-goes environment, JQ International is on hand to help young Jews come out of the closet.

By Allison Kaplan Sommer for Haaretz

When Asher Gellis realized he was gay, he was pretty sure it would be the beginning of the end of his involvement in the organized Los Angeles Jewish community.

“I felt that one day I was going to have to make a choice between being gay and being Jewish. I just didn’t see those worlds ever coming together in any kind of healthy fashion,” says Gellis, who notes that he was raised with a “wonderful” education, was very active in his synagogue and youth group, attended Jewish summer camp and visited Israel many times.

Acceptance at home wasn’t an issue. Gellis’ brother is also gay, and the two siblings chose to come out at the same time “because we didn’t want to give our parents two separate heart attacks,” Gellis says.

Though their parents hugged them and accepted their orientation almost immediately, their mother cried. She figured her sons would never get married or have children.

“I told her that I was dating someone,” Gellis recalls. “Her tears evaporated and she looked me dead in the eye and asked, ‘Is he Jewish?’”

But, as Gellis expected, finding his place as an openly gay young man in the organized Jewish community, even one as large, diverse and liberal as the L.A. incarnation, proved a challenge. He tried some of the gay synagogues and organizations, but couldn’t find a setting where he really fit in.

So, in 2005, he decided to create one for himself. “I got together with my friends and we just started doing gay Jewish programming for people in their 20s,” he says. “We didn’t really know what we were doing; it was just an experiment. But by the end of the year we had hundreds of people coming.”

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Gay Love and Jewish Tradition

Sam Schulman is wrong; same-sex marriage is simple, sacred, and very Jewish indeed

By David Wolpe in Mosaic Magazine

The first same-sex marriage I conducted was between two women who had been together for nineteen years. They stood under the huppah with tears streaming down their faces.

We’ve come a long way. At one time, the rhetoric dominating the discourse on homosexuality among the gatekeepers of traditional Judaism was condemnatory at best, cruel at worst. In one of his milder statements, the great halakhic authority Rabbi Moshe Feinstein wrote in the 1970s: “To speak of a desire for homosexual intimacy is a contradiction in terms.” Few would make such a statement today. Let us be grateful for small mercies.

But now Sam Schulman has offered a streamlined denunciation not of homosexuality itself but of same-sex marriage. Despite some slightly snarky asides—about the Conservative movement’s approval of rabbinic officiation at such unions, Schulman writes: “looking upon their work, the rabbis found it very good”—his tone is measured and his argument cogent. Pointing out that kiddushin in the Jewish tradition mandates a procreative effort to build a Jewish family, he argues that, in this respect, marriage in Judaism is not viewed as a romantic alliance between two partners. Therefore, he concludes, same-sex marriage, whatever may be its mitigations and merits, is not Jewish marriage.

There are three distinct problems with this analysis: it ignores the Torah’s insights into human nature; it elides the rabbinic tradition and the realities of halakhic (legal) change; and it treats society as static.

Genesis begins by stating that we are all created in God’s image. Then the Torah tells us that it is not good to be alone; in fact, loneliness is the first thing the Bible calls “not good.” The coupling of these statements should give us pause; it suggests that the joining of two human beings cannot be an endeavor devoted solely to shoring up society. Humans were created singly (nivra adam y’hidi), the Mishnah emphasizes, because each of us contains an entire world.

Therefore, a utilitarian reading of creation—we are here in order to make more of us, or we are to get married solely in order to reproduce—is too simplistic for the depth of the Torah, or of human life. Rather, we are here to be joined to one another, solitudes in search of love. Procreation may be the first commandment, but it is emphatically not the first imperative.

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Jewish groups stand up for LGBT rights in Africa

In the Sochi spotlight, Russia’s anti-gay blitz has drawn international scrutiny. But some Jewish groups have their eye on troubling developments in Uganda.

By Brian Schaefer for Haaretz

NEW YORK– In the months leading up to the Winter Olympics, all eyes have been on Russia. But this scrutiny has focused as much on the startling wave of anti-gay rhetoric, legislation and violence as on the Games themselves.

On Monday, Jewish activists here and in four other cities across the United States staged a Global Day of Action to bring attention to the plight of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender citizens. But their target wasn’t Russia. It was Uganda.

Early in the day, approximately 30 activists met in a coffee shop a few blocks from the United Nations' headquarters. Shortly, they would walk to the Ugandan mission down the street and attempt to deliver a petition, signed by over 500 rabbis, protesting the country’s recent anti-gay legislation. The event was coordinated by the American Jewish World Service, an organization focused on human rights and international development that has worked in Uganda for years.

The Anti-Homosexuality Bill, as the legislation is known, was introduced in 2009 and passed in the legislature in December. One of its most worrisome aspects is its extraordinary scope, targeting not just those who identify as LGBT but also those who support them. This potentially includes health services, which could impact HIV/AIDS care. The bill now sits on Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s desk, awaiting his signature.

“Our focus is to do everything we can to put pressure on the U.S. government to stop the Ugandan president from signing the bill,” AJWS president Ruth Messinger told Haaretz before she spoke to those gathered at the coffee shop.

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