Soon-to-be-Likud MK Ohana hopes to make LGBT rights a bipartisan issue

By LAHAV HARKOV for JPost.com

Amir Ohana is the head and founder of the Likud Pride Group, an LGBT interest group within the leading party.

Amir Ohana did not wait to become an MK to start spending time in the Knesset.

Ohana, 39, with a life partner and twins, is expected to be sworn in as a lawmaker next week, instead of Interior Minister Silvan Shalom, who resigned in light of sexual misconduct allegations. But Ohana was already frequenting the halls of the Knesset and Likud faction meetings in recent months, preparing for when it would be his turn.

The head and founder of the Likud Pride Group, an LGBT interest group within the leading party, who will soon be the first openly gay Likud MK, spoke to The Jerusalem Post on Monday about his plans and expectations.

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How a gay Iranian poet fleeing persecution ‘fell in love’ with Israel

Payam Feili, 30, proudly defies his theocratic regime back home, hopes to move permanently to gay-friendly Tel Aviv

By Isaac Scharf for The Times of Israel

Payam Feili fled his native Iran last year because of the persecution he faced over his sexuality. Now, the gay poet has made a years-long dream come true — he is visiting Israel, Iran’s archenemy and a country known for its tolerance toward gays.

But the 30-year-old Feili stands out not only because of his arrival in a country so at odds with his own, but because of his professed adoration for the state some Iranian leaders have dubbed a cancer and have called to be wiped off the map.

“I still can’t believe I am here,” the soft-spoken Feili said in Farsi, speaking through his translator and the friend who brought him to Israel, Adi Liberman.

“All the stupid and ridiculous threats the regime issues against Israel have never influenced me and will never influence me,” he said.

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How I faced the challenges of coming out as an LGBT father

by Lawrence Cohen for JewishNewsOnline

The signs were there early on. One Chanukah, around 1982, when the child was three or four, I bought her the best dolls house in the toy shop. After some initial curiosity, it was discarded and sat gathering dust until we eventually gave it away. Later came the insistence on wearing football shorts as her foundation garment of choice, even under the pretty velvety dress she wore to her brother’s barmitzvah. And she was the best at climbing ropes in her primary school.

As for me, I was happy to have a tomboy for a daughter. Going in for a tackle in an 11-a-side football game [the other 21 were boys] indicated a spiritedness rather than a misplaced sense of identity. So what? The child continued to exhibit a love of furry stuffed animals and enjoyed going on play dates and sleepovers with girls.

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How Jeff Became Yaacov Became Jessica Became Yiscah

In this episode of Israel Story, Yiscah Smith tells the story of her decades-long struggle to live authentically

By Israel Story for Tablet Magazine

Yiscah Smith is 64 years old. She lives in Nahlaot, in Jerusalem. But her journey to this Orthodox-meets-hipster neighborhood took her through what seems like four lifetimes. She was born in Long Island, as Jeff Smith, to a Conservative Jewish family. Jeff married a woman, they became more religious, made aliyah, and had six children. Jeff became Yaacov. A few years later, Yaacov’s identity began to unravel, presenting a terrible dilemma: What do you do when you realize that in order to be true to yourself, you have to shatter everything around you, including the lives of those you love most?

This is Yiscah’s story, as told to reporter Molly Livingstone. Yiscah is the author of Forty Years in the Wilderness: My Journey to Authentic Living and was a popular speaker at TEDxJerusalem in May 2015.

Listen:

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Finding LGBT pride in Chanukah

By Ryan Torok for JewishJournal

 Fifteen years ago, Stephen Sass and his husband, Steven Hochstadt, consecrated their commitment to each other during a religious marriage ceremony that took place during Chanukah. The timing was intentional.

“Chanukah has always resonated deeply for me as a Jew and as a gay man, since it commemorates one of the earliest fights for freedom of conscience, and celebrates the right to be different and to express one’s individual and communal identity as a member of a minority group within larger society,” Sass said.

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For more great holiday ideas, visit our Hanukkah Holiday Spotlight Kit

First gay Jewish organization opens in Brussels

By JTA in Jpost.com

Group called “LGBT Jews in and around Brussels” now has 60 members.

Reform Jews in Brussels opened the city’s first gay Jewish organization.

The group’s inaugural meeting took place on October 18 and it now has 60 members, according to David Weis, one of the founders of the community, called “LGBT Jews in and around Brussels.”

LGBT is an acronym for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender.

Two Progressive communities — a term which in Europe is applied to Reform and Conservative denominations — have pledged their support for the new group, which nonetheless operates as a separate entity both to the Beth Hillel congregation and to the International Jewish Center community.

“Our aim is also to build close links with Luxembourg Liberal Jewish community which has been very supportive as well,” Weiss said.

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Making Our Priorities Clear: The Rights of Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming People

By Tracy Wolf, URJ Blog from Nov. 5, 2015

Earlier today at the URJ Biennial, the Union for Reform Judaism passed a resolution on the rights of transgender and gender non-conforming people that affirms our commitment to the full equality, inclusion, and acceptance of people of all gender identities and gender expressions. It encourages our Reform institutions to use gender-neutral language, suggests training on issues of gender for religious school staff, and calls for advocacy on behalf of the transgender community. At this Biennial, we are also proud to launch our new congregational resource on transgender inclusion.

More than anything, the resolution affirms our Movement’s longtime commitment to LGBT equality and inclusion in our congregations and in our broader society.

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5 Reasons Being an Orthodox Rabbi Compelled Me to Support Gay Marriage

Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz For The Blog/Huffington Post

I am coming out of the closet. I am an Orthodox rabbi and an advocate for gay marriage.

The history of the theological issue is complicated, but the moral issue is increasingly clear. Faith leaders must stand as public allies; private support is no longer enough. Fifteen states and counting have formally approved marriage equality. It's time that traditional faith leaders stand for gay rights, including the right to marriage.

As an Orthodox Jew, I believe the Bible was given by G-d, that Jewish law is binding, and that change in our religious practice cannot happen impetuously. It also means that I take the pervasive biblical call for justice very seriously. I am pro-gay-rights because I am an Orthodox rabbi, not in spite of it.

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Coming Out & Combining Names

By Ailsa Wu  for MyJewishLearning.com
After 11 years of marriage, my wife Kate and I are finally going to change our last names.

I’m a little embarrassed it’s taken us so long. Like many couples, we discussed it during our wedding preparations. The obvious choice was hyphenating our surnames, but we also tried to brainstorm new ones. “Somerville,” where we live, sounded too British; “Chocolate,” a shared passion, too silly. And as much as we love bad puns, “HerWuMann” (combining her name, Hermann, with my name, Wu) was never going to work.

Our main concern was more serious: we hoped to adopt a child. We knew that our being a same-sex couple would make an expensive, time-consuming, and heartbreaking process even more difficult, especially if we looked overseas. But we’d heard of an approach similar to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, in which one half of a couple poses as single and straight; once back home, his/her partner then files for full joint adoption.

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Jewish woman is White House’s first transgender staff member

from JewishNews

The White House has hired its first openly transgender member of staff – a woman who served on the Jewish student union in her home town of Minneapolis, writes James Graham.

Raffi Freedman-Gurspan will join the personnel department. Her mother Marion said: “I sent a son abroad for his junior year of college – by the time I visited Norway in May, I was visiting a daughter.”

Mara Keisling, formerly of the National Centre for Transgender Equality, has said: “A transgender person was inevitably going to work in the White House. It is seen as a great step towards greater transgender equality… That the first transgender appointee is a transgender woman of colour is itself significant.”

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First Ex-Chasidic Gay Memoir Defies Niche

Publishers didn't know what shelf to put it on: Jewish or gay?

Hannah Dreyfus, Staff Writer for The Jewish Week   

The latest ex-chasidic memoir adds a rainbow twist to an emerging literary genre.

Leah Lax’s “Uncovered: How I Left Hasidic Life and Finally Came Home” (She Writes Press) hit the shelves in late August, and it joins the ranks of popular out-of-the-fold authors including Shulem Deen and Judy Brown. Taken together, the memoirs provide readers with a seldom-glimpsed look at chasidic life from the inside, and trace the often-painful story arcs of those who leave the straight-and-narrow religious path.

But, unlike its literary predecessors, “Uncovered” is also a gay memoir. Lax, 59, who today lives with her wife of 10 years in Houston, said that she initially had difficulty publishing the book because of its double niche.

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Classes for LGBT People Who Explore Converting to Judaism Open in Los Angeles

Yanik Dekel, The Gay Wire on  JPost.com

Coming from the world  of entertainment Journalism, I recently heard that popular American singer Arianna Grande declared that she’s “no longer a Christian” and now thinks of converting to Judaism after her homosexual brother was shunned by the Catholic Church. Several years ago, when I interviewed Elizabeth Banks, she told me that she converted to Judaism because she loved the way Reform Judaism treats women, and that the real meaning of Rabbi is a teacher.

But it’s not only celebrities who raise interest in Judaism. Many people, including LGBT people, are going through conversion to Judaism every year or consider conversion, and all of the studies to date show that converts to Judaism make steadfast and loyal members of the community.

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Chief Rabbi Claims Jerusalem 'Disgusted' by Gays

In The Jewish Daily Forward

Only months after an Israeli teen was murdered by an ultra-Orthodox man during the Jerusalem Gay Pride parade, the city’s chief rabbi Shlomo Amar has lashed out at the LGBT community, saying “I believe that this phenomenon will wane and disappear, because most of the public is disgusted by it and detest it.”

Amar, who was chief rabbi of Israel until two years ago and remains a member of the High Rabbinical Council, was speaking in an interview with the ultra-Orthodox website Behadrey Haredim.

“The level of shame has been breached and trampled these days,” he said. “There’s almost nothing left. And since then, we’ve seen impudence and brazenness which previously no one would have even thought of. People do them publicly and we need to find ways of dealing with it.”

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Gay Jews celebrate ‘High Homodays’ with Manischewitz shots and matchmaking

By Lucy Cohen Blatter for JTA

It was nearly midnight Saturday, and Jayson Littman was milling about an upscale Manhattan nightclub greeting friends with a wide smile and often a big hug. Standing alongside a “shot boy” — clad only in underwear, a kippah and Star of David necklace — he offered partygoers shots of Manischewitz in plastic cups.

Littman was hosting some 400 gay Jewish men who filled the top floor of the Hudson Terrace for “High Homodays,” his annual gay Jewish party held between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Israeli EDM music sounded from the DJ booth along with the occasional Britney Spears and Taylor Swift song — plus some shofar blasts in the mix for good measure. Some people were dancing, others just mingling.

“I want people to go to the occasional Jewish event outside Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services,” Littman told JTA. “And a lot of people are focused on their relationship to Judaism this time of year.”

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Coming Out on Yom Kippur

by Rebecca Mark for Tikkun

I often believe that Yom Kippur falls at exactly the right moment in one’s life each year. Five years ago Yom Kippur fell a week before my fiftieth birthday. At that moment, exiled in Washington, D.C., after Hurricane Katrina, I had to help my family survive our evacuation. Last year, a few weeks before Yom Kippur, our rabbi, Alexis Berk of Touro Synagogue in New Orleans, had a meeting at Jeff and Mark’s (my co-parents) house, to discuss what the synagogue could do in order to become more gay-friendly. Rabbi Berk mentioned that she wanted to speak in support of gay marriage during the high holidays, but she had not decided whether or not she would. We can be liberal in our warm, family-oriented synagogue in New Orleans, but we are not San Francisco or New York or even Chicago.

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Found Tribe: Jewish Coming Out Stories

by Lawrence Schimel (Editor)

Found Tribe is a collection of intimate essays by and about gay Jewish men on the experience of coming out as gay within a Jewish context or as Jewish within a gay context. No longer necessarily lost or excluded, today’s gay Jews tell their courageous, powerful stories of finding and embracing their religious and sexual identities that enrich both the Jewish and gay experience. Written with honesty, humor, and insight, Found Tribe explores the joys and oys of coming out to family, lovers, rabbis, and others--and an Orthodox gay rabbi writes about Gayness and God. Found Tribe gives voice to the inextinguishable longing for community and acceptance in a religious identity that is defined by family and lineage, and serves as a beacon to isolated gay Jews that dignity and welcome await at the end of this rainbow. Found Tribe is intended as a gift and a resource for Jewish families with a gay son or sibling, and for gay Jews and all who love them. Found Tribe is the companion volume to the award winning volume, Kosher Meat.

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They Made It Out of Gay

The father of Jewish ‘gay reparative therapy’ had some even worse ideas for making a buck

By Hella Winston for Tablet Magazine

Before 1998, religious proponents of so-called “reparative” therapy for gay men and lesbians were affiliated mostly with evangelical strains of Protestantism and the Mormon Church. But that year, Arthur Goldberg, a self-described “born salesman” and “New York Jewish liberal,” discovered he had a son who was “struggling with homosexuality.” Soon after, Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality (later changed to “for Healing”), or JONAH, was born. “There was nothing in the Jewish world,” Goldberg said in recent court testimony, by way of explaining his decision to co-found JONAH with Elaine Berk, another Jewish parent of a gay son.

    There were a lot of Christian based organizations. There were some secular based organizations, but there was nothing in the Jewish world. I kind of prayed about it one day and said maybe this is the message God has given me. The reason God has this is he knows I have been a social activist all my life and maybe this is what he wants to lead me to.

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INTERVIEW WITH FRUM GAY GIRL

Yanir Dekel for A Wider Bridge

“Frum Gay Girl” is one of the most interesting blogs on the web, bringing personal true stories from the Jewish orthodox religious world, anonymously. We caught up with the girl herself, to find out a little bit more about her own personal background, and her motives for writing this blog.

The stories on the blog Frum Gay Girl, which we often promote here on A Wider Bridge, are so interesting and dramatic that it sometimes seem like they are fictional: the woman who was married for 25 years before admitting to herself that she’s a lesbian; or, the girl who found out her mom is bisexual. But for Frum Gay Girl, who is already known in the Chassidic-lesbian community, these stories just keep on coming, and they get hundreds of views every day- even months after posting.  “Many of the amazing people I interview are friends, or friends of friends, or people I’ve been talking with for years who aren’t out in their communities,” she tells in an exclusive interview with A Wider Bridge. “More recently, I’ve been getting some stunning referrals, so thanks for those!”

What motivated you to start this blog?

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LGBT-friendly siddur affirms Reform’s open-tent policy

New High Holidays prayer book released at annual convention includes new prayers, multiple viewpoints

By David A.M. Wilensky for The Times of Israel   

PHILADELPHIA (JTA) — The Reform movement’s rabbinic association unveiled its new High Holidays prayer book — one that continues the movement’s trend toward inclusive liturgy — at the group’s 126th annual convention.

Mishkan HaNefesh, the Reform’s first High Holidays prayer book, or mahzor, since 1978, was a major focus of the Central Conference of American Rabbis conference that concluded here Wednesday.

The prayer book features the voices of female writers and language more reflective of the LGBT experience. But the volume also signals a return to gendered language for God in Reform liturgy, including a version of the iconic High Holidays prayer Avinu Malkeinu that refers to God as both “Loving Father” and “Compassionate Mother.”

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Haredi activists visit parents of teen slain at Jerusalem Gay Pride Parade

By Jeremy Sharon for Jpost

They insisted that Yishai Schlissel, who murdered Banki, was not representative of the haredi community.

A group of haredi activists have paid a visit to the parents of Shira Banki, the young woman who was killed by an ultra-Orthodox man during the Jerusalem Gay Pride parade two weeks ago.

The activists, from the Gesher organization that promotes mutual understanding between societies in Israel, visited the Banki family on Friday saying that although they were opposed to homosexual lifestyles, they totally rejected violence.

They insisted that Yishai Schlissel, who murdered Banki, was not representative of the haredi community.

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Watch Orthodox Rabbi Benny Lau’s Powerful Denunciation of Homophobia Justified in the Name of God

‘We must free the Torah of Israel from the handcuffs that she has been bound in by people of darkness’

By Yair Rosenberg for Tablet Magazine

On Saturday night, thousands of Israelis gathered in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv to rally for tolerance. The twin demonstrations followed a weekend of violence that left a 16-year-old Israeli woman and a Palestinian toddler dead—the former stabbed at Jerusalem’s gay pride parade by an ultra-Orthodox man, and the latter burned to death in his home by suspected Jewish terrorists. The gatherings were addressed by many politicians and cultural leaders, including Israeli President Reuven Rivlin and his predecessor Shimon Peres, who each spoke powerfully about the need to fight extremism. But perhaps one of the most moving speeches of the evening came from an unlikely source: an Orthodox rabbi named Benny Lau.

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The Work for LGBTQ Equality Continues

By Jordyn Rozensky, Keshet Blog for MyJewishLearning.com

This week the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission declared that workplace discrimination against LGBTQ employees is barred, citing Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

This decision applies to employment only, and does not explicitly provide protections for housing or education. That being said, the ruling is a victory for the LGBTQ community.

On the heels of the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of marriage equality, equality seems to be spreading. But even as we celebrate, I am reminded of the often quoted words found in Pirkei Avot: “You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.” As inclusion and equality spreads for the LGBTQ community, now is not the time to desist from the work.

There is still much to be done, and each step in a positive direction is a call for celebration — and a call for yet another step forward. With so much progress being made, who knows how far our work will take us?

Read more about the EEOC ruling

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By Paula Sinclair for Keshet

In what feels like eons before “Moppa” (the nickname given to Jeffrey Tambor’s transgender character on the Golden-Globe winning show Transparent), before Janet Mock and Laverne Cox helped to bring #GirlsLikeUs and transgender issues into the mainstream media, and before 17 million people huddled around their televisions as Bruce Jenner came out as transgender on a national platform, Barack Obama appointed Amanda Simpson, a transgender Jewish woman, to hold an executive branch position.

In 2010, Simpson became the first openly transgender woman appointed by any administration.

She held the position of Senior Technical Adviser in the Bureau of Industry and Security at the U.S. Department of Commerce until she moved to the Pentagon in 2013.

Simpson now works as the Executive Director of the U.S. Army Office of Energy Initiatives (OEI) where her work centers on renewable energy projects. Simpson is helping to pave new inroads to the army for transgender individuals.

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Hello and Happy Pride Month!

By Leana Jelen for  MyJewishLearning.com

[A digital rendering of this originally hand-written epistolary blog post can be found here.]

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A gay Chabadnik, lesbians wearing skullcaps and hipsters who never pray: Welcome to LGBTQ Birthright

An eclectic crowd took part in a recent trip to Israel. Discussions about the complexities of religious and sexual identity, and Tel Aviv's pride parade were all on the itinerary.

By Ofer Matan for Haaretz

Hanging out in the lobby of the Caesar Premier Jerusalem hotel on a recent Friday evening, Yochanan Hizkiyahu, 26, encountered an ultra-Orthodox man in typical black attire. The two looked at each other and struck up a conversation. Hizkiyahu, who identifies with the ultra-Orthodox Chabad sect and sports a beard, said he was in Israel on a Birthright junket – the 10-day all-expenses paid tour of Israel offered to young Diaspora Jews – and that afterward he intended to stay on in Jerusalem and attend a Chabad yeshiva.

“Would you like to pray with us in the morning? There are a few more Chabad people here,” the Haredi man said. Hizkiyahu said he would be glad for the opportunity, but that the following morning he was going to have a bar-mitzvah ceremony in the hotel. “Really?” the Haredi man asked, amazed. “Shall I come and honor you?”    

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Israel is the gayest country on earth

Yoni Leviatan, Blogger, The Times of Israel
When it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the public discourse is very similar to American politics: roughly 80% of the people have made up their minds firmly in one direction or another, and all the chattering and social media blabbering is really just preaching to the congregation, while the remaining 20% mostly doesn’t care, or doesn’t have enough information to form an honest opinion.

This article is for that last 20% – the “undecideds” – who come with no predisposition toward either side, but are also not interested in learning a hundred years of history just to find out that both sides are right and wrong.

Therefore, I won’t talk about wars and terrorism or settlements and peace talks, because it’s all been hashed out before, and there’s no point in rehashing it in order to get to the truth, because it doesn’t exist. There is the Israeli truth and the Palestinian truth, and both believe theirs is the real and only truth.

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