Members of the tribe.
Imagine that you are a member of aminority that has been persecuted for
centuries, sometimes to death--often by
people citing the Bible as their excuse.
Imagine further that
because your status is not usually
outwardly obvious, you can, if you wish,
pass as a member of the majority. And
finally, imagine that while the
persecution has abated significantly in
the second half of this century, it can still
crop up anywhere, anytime.
Now you know how it feels to be...Jewish.
"When my lover, David, and I would
go out for a drink during my first few
months on this job, it was very hard for
me to say where I was working," says
Barry Kessler, a gay man who is a
curator at the Jewish Historical Society
of Maryland in Baltimore. "I realized that
was my own internalized discomfort
with my Jewishness. It's not a
religious thing; it's an ethnic thing."
This parallel may be one reason that
much of mainstream Judaism is further
along than the major Christian
denominations in welcoming gays and
lesbians into the fold. How far along? Far
enough that the World Congress of Gay
and Lesbian Jewish Organizations can
afford to focus the agenda for its biennial
conference, which was scheduled for July
4-6 in Dallas, not on conflicts with
Jewish institutions but on issues such as
HIV and helping families deal with a gay
relative's orientation. Far enough, as well,
that the main issues for many gay
and lesbian Jews--issues.
such as intermarriage, sex
roles, and keeping children
in the faith--now echo
those of their nongay
counterparts.
Gay and lesbian
synagogues, for instance,
have led the way on a topic
that many mainstream congregations are
still grappling with: making worship
gender-neutral. "How could a
gay-lesbian-bisexual temple say, `OK,
only women can light candles'?" asks
Josh Wayser, president of Beth Chayim
Chadashim in Los Angeles. "It's not
going to happen, and we don't want it to
happen."
In another area, lesbian and gay
synagogues are following the lead of their
mainstream counterparts. As more gay
men and especially lesbians become
parents, their synagogues are deciding
whether to start religious schools; one
gay synagogue, Sha'ar Zahav in San
Francisco, has had a school for five years
and has performed at least 20 bar and
teas mitzvahs, the coming-of-age
ceremony for 13-year-olds. "We looked
around and realized that all these kids
were there," says Mike Rankin, a former
president of the synagogue. "We didn't
want to send them to another
congregation for religious school."
Reform Judaism, one of the religion's
four major branches, began admitting gay
and lesbian synagogues in the 1970s and
ordains openly gay rabbis. Its rabbis
publicly endorsed civil marriage for
same-sex couples last year and are
moving toward encouraging their
colleagues to perform religious wedding
ceremonies.
"We have won virtually everything we
can hope for," says Rankin, who is on
the executive committee and the board of
trustees of the Union of American
Hebrew Congregations, the lay governing
body of Reform Judaism. "The problem
is translating that from leadership to the
congregations: issues like urging
congregations to hire openly gay rabbis."
Peter Kessler, an openly gay assistant
rabbi at Baltimore Hebrew Congregation,
a mainstream Reform congregation, says
he has experienced that problem
firsthand. "When I was
looking for a pulpit, many congregations
said, `You're a fabulous rabbi, but we're
not ready for you.'" But he says that
once hired, he and his partner were
welcomed as any other rabbi and his wife
or any other rabbi and her husband have
been. "The gay issues that I was
frightened would appear--the hatred and
fear--have not."
Even so, Kessler's congregation
contains few openly gay members, a fact
he attributes to local cultural conditions:
"People in Baltimore grew up here.
Especially in the Jewish community,
everybody knows everybody."
Conservative Judaism, unlike Reform
and the smaller Reconstructionist
movement, neither ordains openly gay
rabbis nor officially sanctions same-sex
marriages. But its governing body, the
Rabbinical Assembly, has long welcomed
gays and lesbians as synagogue
members--formalizing the policy in a
1990 statement--and Mark Loeb, a
Conservative Baltimore rabbi, says
performing a same-sex wedding would be
much less frowned upon than performing
an interfaith marriage: "In the Rabbinical
Assembly, if you do that, that is an
expellable offense."
Indeed, interfaith marriage is a
controversial topic even at gay and
lesbian synagogues and for many of the
same reasons. "Continuity has been a
watchword in the Jewish community,"
says Glenn Mones, vice president of
Congregation Beth Simchat Torah in New
York City. "The Jewish community is
shrinking both because of a relatively low
birthrate among Jews and because of
intermarriage. So the community is
panicking."
But the question of interfaith
relationships plays out a bit differently
among gay Orthodox Jews as a result of
the deep and increasingly bitter division
between the Orthodox and non-Orthodox
throughout Judaism. Some Orthodox
Jews find it easier to form relationships
with Christians than
with non-Orthodox
Jews, says Sandi
DuBowski, who is
making a documentary
about Orthodox gays
and lesbians titled
Trembling Before G-d.
Jay Gurewitsch,
cofounder of the Gay
and Lesbian Yeshiva
Day School Alumni Association, a
social and discussion group for Orthodox
gays and lesbians in New York City,
says that in relationships between
observant and nonobservant Jews, "the
one who no longer does observe will feel
put upon: `Why are you still doing this?'
And the religious one will say, `How can
you reject this stuff?'"
Orthodox Jews at present have no
hope of having their relationships blessed
in synagogues so traditional on sexual
matters that men and women are not even
allowed to sit together. But many are
reluctant to change to a less restrictive
brand of Judaism. "It's a major
psychological leap to leave," Mones
says. "It's a very tight-knit community.
To leave the people you grew up with,
your family and friends, is difficult for
people."
Gurewitsch cites the case of one
young man who has alternated between
being a Hasidic Jew and a go-go dancer as
emblematic of the tensions felt by many.
"Their gyroscope gets all screwed up,
and they go swinging back and forth
wildly," he says. As for himself,
Gurewitsch says, "I've tried being Jewish
and not gay, and for a few years I was
gay and not Jewish, and I wasn't happy
either way. For me, it's about striking a balance."
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| |
| Title Annotation: | Judaism and homosexuality |
|---|---|
| Author: | Flippen, Alan |
| Publication: | The Advocate (The national gay & lesbian newsmagazine) |
| Date: | Jul 22, 1997 |
| Words: | 1058 |
| Previous Article: | Mass movement. |
| Next Article: | Kiss Me, Guido. |
| Topics: | |