OPINION: LGBTQIQ Jews Under the Rainbow

By Rabbi Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah of Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue

Pride. Nowadays, all you have to do is say the word, and people immediately recognise it as shorthand for ‘LGBT Pride’.

So, what is LGBT?

On lesbian and gay pride demonstrations in the 1970s and early 1980s, the most common badge on display was the ‘pink triangle’ – in memory of the persecution of gay men by the Nazis. And then, by the late 1980s the ‘rainbow flag’, first designed in 1978 by Gilbert Baker of San Francisco (which you can read about HERE) , had become the dominant emblem, proclaiming, an alliance of solidarity, encompassing ‘lesbian’, ‘gay’, ‘bisexual’ and ‘transgender’ people – hence: LGBT.

While ‘bisexual’ challenges binary assumptions concerning sexual orientation, the inclusion of ‘transgender’ acknowledges the more fundamental issue of gender.

For years, lesbians and gay men had been asserting that being lesbian and gay was not just about who you ‘slept with’, and had been presenting ourselves in ways that challenged binary ‘female’/’male’ gender stereotypes. Now, those whose main concern was gender rather than sexuality were coming to the fore.

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How To Hire a Trans Rabbi

By Jordyn Rozensky for MyJewishLearning.com

Creating inclusive Jewish spaces is a great goal—but how do you do it? While the answer is likely different for every synagogue, school, and youth group, it’s helpful and encouraging to hear about others’ successes, triumphs, and their lessons learned. Take a look at this story of Tachlis of Inclusion, which we hope you find inspiring as we prepare for Transgender Day of Remembrance. Be sure to check out other stories of gender in our Jewish community including: “Transgender 101,” our look at the importance of voting, and the personal reflections of two parents looking at gender roles at daycare.
For the Pasadena Jewish Temple & Center (PJTC), hiring Rabbi Becky Silverstein as their Education Director just made sense. A recent graduate of Hebrew College, Rabbi Silverstein brought the knowledge, the passion, and the training that the position required. He won over the board, the staff, and the community.

What made things just a little bit complicated was the fact that Rabbi Silverstein is transgender—and one of the very few openly transgender rabbis in America.

Keshet has talked with Rabbi Silverstein before to get his perspective on the learning curve associated with being, as a rabbi, a public transgender figure. For Rabbi Silverstein, “As a person who identifies as trans and genderqueer and whose pronoun (intentionally) creates dissonance with my name, I try and remember that those whom I am encountering may be going through their own process. This requires approaching everyone with compassion and an ear to understanding where they are so that I can respond appropriately.” 

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Celebrating a Same Sex Wedding with Ancient Traditions - A Jewish Wedding Story

When Margee and her partner decided to get married, it was important to them to have a traditional Jewish wedding, despite the obvious nontraditional part of their wedding - they were two women planning a gay marriage. It took a lot of conversations to decide why and how to use traditional, Hebrew, religious language as a way to affirm their unique place in the Jewish community.







This is part of the Jewish Lifecycles series by G-dcast. Watch more than 20 other pieces about rituals - old and new

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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.”

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