Gay Orthodox Jews to gather and discuss challenges they face

By Tim Townsend ttownsend@post-dispatch.com

When Hyim Shafner first started working as the campus rabbi for St. Louis Hillel at Washington University in the mid-1990s, he was approached by a male student with an unusual request.

“I’m having trouble meeting guys, rabbi,” Shafner remembers the student saying. “Can you fix me up with a nice Jewish boy?”

Suddenly Shafner’s days at the Orthodox Yeshiva University in New York “felt very far away,” he said.

But moments like that at the university got Shafner, now the rabbi at Bais Abraham Congregation in University City, to begin thinking more seriously about the special problems faced by homosexual Orthodox Jews.

“Jews are not a very big people,” he said. “I think of Judaism as a family, and it’s a shame someone has to leave Orthodoxy — their faith that they value — because they don’t feel like they can find a place in the family.”

As a way to introduce St. Louis’ Orthodox Jewish community to the lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender — or LGBT — community, Bais Abraham and the Jewish Community Center of St. Louis will host a weekend of events April 12 to 14 designed to support Orthodox LGBT Jews.

The event was organized by Eshel, an organization that tries to create understanding for LGBT Jews in traditional Jewish communities. Eshel is bringing in three speakers to discuss what it’s like to be LGBT and Orthodox. The organization has held similar events in New York, Los Angeles and Washington, but next weekend’s event will be the first time it has brought a program like this to the Midwest.

“A lot of people are very curious about this topic,” said Aviva Buck-Yael, a member of Bais Abraham and an Eshel board member. “In most places, we have surprising turn outs. ... They want to know why people wish to stay in the Orthodox community when they’re LGBT. They want to find out how they make that work.”

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Joan Rivers backs surrogacy for Israeli gay couple

Iconic comedienne and Jewish US television personality Joan Rivers recently took a break from dishing out scathing fashion advice to lend her support to an Israeli gay couple struggling to have a child via surrogacy.

The gay icon joined a whole host of Israeli celebrities who responded to a YouTube video that went viral in Israel, depicting the emotional story of Yuval and Liran, an Israeli couple who were trying receive donations and raise awareness about surrogacy for the LGBT community in Israel.

During the video clip, Yuval and Liran hold up signs explaining how laws in Israel discriminate against gay couples by only allowing infertile heterosexual couples to hire surrogates and stipulating that surrogates must be single. As such, gay couples are forced to take their surrogate searches abroad and undertake proceedings that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Rivers, along with her Fashion Police co-stars Kelly Osbourne and George Kotsiopoulos, followed in the footsteps of the Israeli celebrities and released photographs of themselves holding up signs in both Hebrew and English translation, which read “We want them to have a baby too.” Some of the Israeli celebrities who provided their support for the cause included singers Eyal Golan, Harel Skaat, Dudu Aharon and Ninet Tayeb, journalist and TV personality Gal Uchovsky as well as entrepreneur Pnina Rozenblum.

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Israel health minister urges rethink of ban on blood donations by gays

In her first move as Israel's new health minister, Yael German (Yesh Atid), instructed the ministry staff to reconsider the ban on accepting blood donations from gay men.

The form filled out by every blood donor in Israel states that gay men who have had sex with other men are prohibited from donating blood.

People who have tested positive for HIV, used drugs or been exposed to mad-cow disease, among other constraints, are also prohibited from donating blood.

After the Passover holiday, a Health Ministry advisory committee on intravenous medicine headed by Professor Noga Mani, formerly the head of the Hadassah blood bank, will convene to discuss the issue revisited by German, formerly the mayor of Herzliya.

"The committee will call on relevant professionals as well as the leaders of the gay-lesbian community, hear their opinions and examine the possibility of changing the clause," the ministry stated yesterday.

Magen David Adom, the emergency-services organization responsible for Israel's blood banks, began to monitor and limit gay donors in the 1980s following the discovery and spread of AIDS. In the questionnaire given to donors, any man who has had sex with another man since 1977, the year HIV was first discovered in humans, is disqualified.

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Being Gay is OK Website

Being gay is okay (BGIOK) is a website with information and advice for gay, lesbian, bisexual and unsure under twenty-fives.  Although based in the U.K., its advice and information are universal.

BGIOK is all about common sense, no nonsense advice and information, cutting through the stereotypes and bigotry, and helping young people feel better about their sexuality and about the person they are beyond that.

BGIOK has been runing for 12 years and offers quality, informative articles without ads and junk - all completely free to access. All the content here is unique to the site; you won't find it anywhere else.

The website has been running since 2000 with the material changing over the years to reflect the issues and topics that are most important to visitors. That's why there's a dedicated section about religion, mental health, and the gay scene, to mention a few. And if you can't find the answers you're looking for elsewhere, you can write to the problem page.

I hope that BGIOK helps to answer some of the questions you have about your sexuality and also enable you to better manage the different ways other people can react to those who aren't heterosexual.

Being gay doesn't mean that you are a freak or a bad person or that you've done something wrong. Being gay doesn't mean that you are alone.

Wearing My Rainbow Yarmulka With Pride

Wearing a yarmulka had been a great challenge for me, mostly since I stopped identifying as an Orthodox Jew. While living in Crown Heights, I have walked the streets without a yarmulka, which many people saw as the ultimate sign of rebellion from me -- the last straw and lamentable proof that Chaim Levin is not religious anymore. Many people could not understand why I refused to just wear it and show "respect" for the people in Crown Heights. My parents insist that I must wear a yarmulka while at their house, and I am happy to respect their wishes.

Wearing a yarmulka in public, on the other hand, has been something I have wrestled with for some time. I have always wrestled with the wind to keep my yarmulka from flying off. That inconvenience was not the struggle that drove me to stop wearing my yarmulka.

I could not understand why it was so important that I wore this thing to define my status as a Jew and, on the streets of Crown Heights, to be perceived as an respectful Jew. I often felt, if wearing a yarmulka were so important to the Jewish community, my parents and my grandparents who survived the camps and the evil reigns of the likes of Stalin and Lenin, I should wear a yellow star on my arm. While that might have been rebelliously, perhaps angrily bold and even offensive, it would have been something I understood.

The only rationale that I was never able to dismiss was that a yarmulka is a sign of identity; identity was something I was taught to proclaim and be proud of no matter what. Dressed as an Orthodox Jew, I walked around Paris while in yeshiva, despite the many issues I encountered from some anti-Semitic people. 

However, I was kicked out of yeshiva after being identified as gay, and I encountered very many difficulties and alienation within the Orthodox community because of my identity. As a result, I wrestled with my identity as an Orthodox Jew, and eventually stopped wearing my yarmulka. Still, I was constantly reminded of it whenever I would feel the wind on my face and instinctively put my hand to my head in vain to protect a visceral part of me I no longer had.

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WINNIPEG WELCOMES THE WORLD AT THE 21ST WORLD CONFERENCE OF GLBT JEWS

WINNIPEG: As the first Canadian city to host this international meeting, Winnipeg welcomes the world at the 21st World Conference of GLBT Jews, July 5 - 7, 2013, at the Winnipeg Convention Centre.

Conference Partners - The World Congress of GLBT Jews: Keshet Ga’avah, Anakhnu Jewish GLBT Group, Rady Jewish Community Centre, Congregation Shaarey Zedek and Temple Shalom are thrilled to present this weekend featuring local, national and international speakers, entertainers and special guests.

“We are excited to show off Winnipeg’s famous hospitality and demonstrate our world-renowned reputation as a first-class host for international conferences and events”, notes Conference Co-Chair Arthur Blankstein.

The World Congress of GLBT Jews" Keshet Ga’avah" (“Rainbow of Pride”), is made up of member organizations in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Mexico, The Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The vision of the organization is to nurture an environment where Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender (GLBT) Jews worldwide can enjoy free and fulfilling lives.

Conference Co-Chair, Paula Parks, attended the 2010 Conference in Los Angeles with Blankstein. “We thought that someday, it would be great to bring this international gathering to Winnipeg”, recalls Parks. “Well, that ‘someday’ is here!” The local organizing committee recognized that with the development of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, the meeting of this organization here in Manitoba is ‘bashert’ (Yiddish for ‘meant to be’) and as such, promoted Winnipeg as the place to celebrate diversity.

The Winnipeg Conference kicks off with a Professional Development Day on Friday, July 5th for the GLBT community-at-large, educators, employers, clergy and spiritual leaders, social service professionals and friends and family of the GLBT community.

The Conference officially opens Friday evening, July 5th with approximately 200 attendees who will be educated, enlightened and entertained with internationally-renowned keynote speakers: Joy Ladin (Through the Door of Life), Jay Michaelson (God vs Gay? The Religious Case for Equality), and Leslea Newman (Heather Has Two Mommies, A Letter to Harvey Milk).

Other Conference highights include seminar sessions, a Friday evening Sabbath dinner and celebration, Saturday morning multisector Sabbath services, a grand finale banquet and a post-Conference tour of the City.

Visit www.keshetldorvdor.com for the Conference schedule, speakers and entertainers. Register online before April 1st and save $75 on Conference registration.

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.


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