tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-65238038767824359012013-05-13T21:11:49.041-04:00"Jewish Pink Elephant" by Rich DweckWelcome to the "Jewish Pink Elephant" (Ideas of an American Syrian Orthodox Gay Jew) by Rich Dweck.
My goal is to provide a blend of resources dealing with Judaism and Homosexuality, along with important modern Jewish issues.
If you would like to receive email updates weekly, please sign up below on the right.Rich Dweckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11953641382066344007noreply@blogger.comBlogger660125IdeasOfAGaySyrianJewhttp://feedburner.google.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6523803876782435901.post-22080822102392826052013-05-13T20:57:00.001-04:002013-05-13T21:01:42.834-04:002013-05-13T21:01:42.834-04:00Rich Dweck: "Speak up or stay silent at the coffee shop?" <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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5/13/2013-<span style="font-size: large;"> <span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">This afternoon I was in a coffee shop in Bethesda, Maryland. I was sitting and enjoying a wonderful cup of Joe and finishing one of my final papers for school when put in an awkward situation. A man started to yell at this homeless man through the window. He called him a <i>nigger. </i>When the homeless man walked in to the coffee shop to find out why the man was so belligerent, the man in the coffee shop started calling him a schizophrenic and so on. I was shocked at this mans comments to the homeless man. Do I say something? Do I wait until after the homeless man leaves? Do I just keep to myself as if nothing happened?</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"> As a part of two communities that have been and continue to be victims of persecution, I can only think about doing whats right. Being a Jew and a member of the LGBTQ community I know that I must stand up in the face of injustice. If I stand idly by while others are discriminated against or persecuted, am I saying that it's ok to discriminate. Should I sit and watch while someone calls someone a <i>nigger</i> and say nothing? Does not silence=acceptance?</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"> Furthermore, being someone who is studying psychology I know how insensitive it is to call someone a schizophrenic. This is a real mental illness that has a ton of stigma attached to it. Calling someone a schizophrenic only perpetuates this stigma and makes it harder for those with this illness to seek treatment because the shame attached.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"> I know I should speak up, but what if this puts me in danger? It is hard not to think of the word <i>kyke</i> or <i>fag</i> when someone says <i>nigger</i>. We are taught to try and put ourselves in the shoes of others, but do we? Should we look at the risk vs. reward? What if this man had a gun? What if he was mentally ill and I am putting myself in harms way? When is it an imperative to speak up and when is it important to stay silent? I had to answer these hard questions today. Now, I leave you with the questions to find your own answers.</span></span><br />
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</script><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IdeasOfAGaySyrianJew/~4/OEC3zN1MaXI" height="1" width="1"/>Rich Dweckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11953641382066344007noreply@blogger.com0http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/05/rich-dweck-speak-up-or-stay-silent-at.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6523803876782435901.post-7844810915918489442013-05-13T20:22:00.002-04:002013-05-13T21:05:04.048-04:002013-05-13T21:05:04.048-04:00My Response to: "Delegitimizing Pro-Palestinian Queer Voices" by Brandon Davis- The Daily Beast<br>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Rich Dweck response to this insanity!- 5/13/13 <span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">"The bottom line is if LGBTQ people look at the Middle East and try and ally themselves with Pro-Palestinian lobby in order to align themselves with underdogs need to look at the whole picture. Israel offers more gay rights to LGBTQ people than anywhere else in the middle east. If the Palestinians were given the entire state of Israel, then this would only secure an ANTI-LGBTQ state that will persecute LGBTQ people like the other Arab countries."</span></span><br>
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace; font-size: large;">"Think a little about the entire picture, before you think you are taking the sides of those you think are the underdogs! It is like being in America as an LGBTQ person and voting for the Republicans. Voting for those that persecute you is the antithesis of what we should be doing as an LGBTQ person. We have to stand up for our rights and support those that support us. You can call what Israel is doing as Apartheid and more, but get the full story. Understand both sides before you start calling Israel the persecutors!" </span><br>
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Article in the Daily Beast- 5/1/2013- In the last eight years, the Israeli government has sought to rebrand Israel as a “liberal haven” for gay rights in an otherwise-homophobic Middle East as a means of increasing tourism and international goodwill. Critics refer to the campaign as “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/23/opinion/pinkwashing-and-israels-use-of-gays-as-a-messaging-tool.html?_r=1&" style="cursor: pointer;">pinkwashing</a>,” an attempt to whitewash the Israeli occupation by focusing on gay and lesbian issues. Many of these critics are queer people themselves, and their movement against Israeli policies is <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/01/why-we-need-a-pinkwashing-conference.html" style="cursor: pointer;">building within the LGBT community</a>. But recent pro-Israel initiatives hope to change that; rather than simply promoting Israeli gay images in the international sphere, these Israel advocates are actually attempting to sanitize LGBTQ spaces of pro-Palestinian activism entirely.<br>
</div></div><a href="http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/05/my-response-to-delegitimizing-pro.html#more">Click to continue reading article »</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IdeasOfAGaySyrianJew/~4/jqo0JJu2ou8" height="1" width="1"/>Rich Dweckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11953641382066344007noreply@blogger.com0http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/05/my-response-to-delegitimizing-pro.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6523803876782435901.post-3310025104907312352013-05-13T20:21:00.003-04:002013-05-13T20:21:42.398-04:002013-05-13T20:21:42.398-04:00Video in Hebrew: "Openly Gay Israeli Politician Announces Run For Mayor Of Tel Aviv" by Matthew Tharrett- Queerty 5/8/2013 Horowitz’s announcement in Hebrew:<br>
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Could it be time for the gayest little outpost in the Middle East to get its very first openly gay mayor? In 2009, 48-year-old former journalist Nitzan Horowitz became the second openly gay Knesset member in Israel’s history, and became the first to conduct unofficial same-sex marriage ceremonies in protest of anti-gay comments made by Chief Rabbinate Eli Ben Dahan.<br>
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If elected in October’s elections, Horowitz will become the very first openly gay mayor not only of Tel Aviv, but of any city in Israel. In a press release announcing his candidacy, Horowitz told reports about his love for Tel Aviv, and his plans to tackle rising real estate prices, reform mass transit, and introduce new city planning for overcrowded neighborhoods.<br>
<a href="http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/05/video-in-hebrew-openly-gay-israeli.html#more">Click to continue reading article »</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IdeasOfAGaySyrianJew/~4/zqz8OE3pVLw" height="1" width="1"/>Rich Dweckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11953641382066344007noreply@blogger.com0http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/05/video-in-hebrew-openly-gay-israeli.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6523803876782435901.post-49609281625182534692013-05-13T20:21:00.000-04:002013-05-13T20:21:02.917-04:002013-05-13T20:21:02.917-04:00"The Mouse That Had Two Dads" By Maia Szalavitz Time Magazine<br>
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12/14/10 - Reproduction is getting so complicated. In the old days, you had only two biological parents — Mom and Dad. But now, up to <a href="http://articles.cnn.com/2001-05-14/health/ethics.matters_1_genetic-change-egg-donor-genetic-information?_s=PM:HEALTH" style="color: black; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">two</a> women (three if you count a surrogate carrier) can be the biological mothers of one baby. As far as biological fathers go, though, it’s always been one per child, except in very rare genetic conditions — until recently, that is.<span id="more-19433"></span></div>
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A mouse with two dads could change that — although the technique used to produce this mouse is a very long way from being practical or ethical in humans. The <a href="http://www.biolreprod.org/content/early/2010/12/07/biolreprod.110.088831.abstract?sid=2fd6353a-cba2-43a1-97fe-b006db62f5ac" style="color: black; text-decoration: none;">research</a>, which produced both male and female mice with genetic material from two fathers, was just published in the journal <em>Biology of Reproduction</em>. The procedure was incredibly complex, creating offspring with multiple possible parents. <a href="http://healthland.time.com/?N=0&Nty=1&s=gay+parent&x=0&y=0&p=0&cmd=tags&srchCat=Wellness#ixzz186CML0u9" style="color: black; text-decoration: none;"></a></div>
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“It was a weird project but we wanted to see if it could be done,” lead researcher Richard Behringer <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704447604576008031376020012.html" style="color: black; text-decoration: none;">told</a> the <em>Wall Street Journal</em>.<br>
</div><a href="http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/05/the-mouse-that-had-two-dads-by-maia.html#more">Click to continue reading article »</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IdeasOfAGaySyrianJew/~4/9x_6ph0R4iQ" height="1" width="1"/>Rich Dweckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11953641382066344007noreply@blogger.com0http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/05/the-mouse-that-had-two-dads-by-maia.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6523803876782435901.post-73587098055226893492013-05-13T20:19:00.000-04:002013-05-13T20:19:50.440-04:002013-05-13T20:19:50.440-04:00Rabbi Herzfeld D'var Torah: "The Sin of Indifference" Agunot <strong style="font-family: Helvetica; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-small;">The Sin of Indifference</span></strong><br>
<span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-small; text-align: left;">Shmuel Herzfeld of Ohev Shalom, The National Synagogue in Washington, D.C. </span><br>
<em style="font-family: Helvetica; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-small;">Shavuot 5773</span></em><br>
<a href="http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/05/rabbi-herzfeld-dvar-torah-sin-of.html#more">Click to continue reading article »</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IdeasOfAGaySyrianJew/~4/Kp5nSsXFeSI" height="1" width="1"/>Rich Dweckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11953641382066344007noreply@blogger.com0http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/05/rabbi-herzfeld-dvar-torah-sin-of.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6523803876782435901.post-88070665681440561292013-05-06T18:43:00.002-04:002013-05-06T19:20:29.950-04:002013-05-06T19:20:29.950-04:00"Gay Jews Need More Than Tolerance" by Benjamin Schneider<br>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">5/1/13 The Jewish Week- I write in response to Stuart Kurlander’s Opinion piece, <a href="http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/04/door-is-wide-open-for-gay-jews-to-be.html">“Door Is Wide Open For Gay Jews To Be Leaders”</a> (April 26).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I am a 21-year-old observant gay Jew actively involved in my campus Hillel. I fear that articles like this one proclaiming that LGBT Jews “have arrived” serve as a counterproductive distraction to the real issues that remains to be dealt with in making Jewish institutions more welcoming to the LGBT community.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Kurlander’s dilemma is a product of the at-best lukewarm acceptance that existed when his generation was coming of age in Jewish organizations. This situation has absolutely changed in the Reform movement, but the Conservative movement is only beginning to address it, and Orthodoxy has not even started to talk about what comes next after “tolerance.” Even if mainstream Jewish organizations are better at inclusion today, they are by and large still not good. </span></div>
<a href="http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/05/gay-jews-need-more-than-tolerance-by.html#more">Click to continue reading article »</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IdeasOfAGaySyrianJew/~4/SQqVXYf1YJI" height="1" width="1"/>Rich Dweckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11953641382066344007noreply@blogger.com0http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/05/gay-jews-need-more-than-tolerance-by.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6523803876782435901.post-2616361429817003142013-05-06T18:30:00.001-04:002013-05-06T18:31:55.547-04:002013-05-06T18:31:55.547-04:00"New York’s New Firebrand Rabbi" For Sharon Kleinbaum—friend of Christine Quinn, partner to Randi Weingarten—the personal is political<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">5/3/13 by Allison Hoffman, Tablet Magazine- Last winter, Sharon Kleinbaum, the firebrand rabbi of Congregation Beit Simchat Torah—the country’s largest and best-known gay synagogue—marked her 20th anniversary in the pulpit with a Hanukkah celebration headlined by the actress Cynthia Nixon, who has been active in gay-rights and a regular <a href="http://cbst.org/index.php/Calendar/Shabbat-and-Holiday/Pride-Shabbat-Guest-Speaker-Cynthia-Nixon" style="border: 0px; color: #e65a1e; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">guest</a> at the synagogue. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The evening featured a panel with the political writer Frank Rich, a longtime congregant<em>,</em> and an appearance by Christine Quinn, New York’s City Council Speaker, who came to present Kleinbaum with an official city proclamation. “She is one of the favorite religious leaders in my household,” Quinn told the crowd. “I’ve never seen her at an event or at a function or on the street or wherever where she hasn’t gone out of her way to give me—you’d think she was a bear, that’s what you get from this little woman, I always get that hug.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">On cue, Kleinbaum dashed onstage and wrapped her arms around Quinn, New York’s first female and first openly gay political leader and currently the front-running candidate to <a href="http://www.quinnipiac.edu/institutes--centers/polling-institute/new-york-city/release-detail?ReleaseID=1885" style="border: 0px; color: #e65a1e; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">succeed</a> Michael Bloomberg as mayor. Then the rabbi turned and made her way back to her seat in the audience next to the other political powerhouse in the room: the labor leader Randi Weingarten, who is head of the American Federation of Teachers, a close friend of the Clintons, and Kleinbaum’s romantic partner. As she sat down, Kleinbaum gave Weingarten an exuberant kiss that was audible from the balcony of the crowded auditorium, at John Jay College near Lincoln Center.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Kleinbaum is hardly the only religious leader in New York who balances a public record of spirited <a href="http://blog.timesunion.com/capitol/archives/71669/video-ruben-rabbis-a-rumble/" style="border: 0px; color: #e65a1e; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">demonstrations</a> and <a href="http://www.edgeboston.com/news/news/32480/gay_activists_arrested_during_times_square_protest" style="border: 0px; color: #e65a1e; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">arrests</a> with serious insider pull; the Rev. Al Sharpton practically defines the form, and other Jewish leaders, including <a href="http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/130760/the-new-morethodox-rabbi" style="border: 0px; color: #e65a1e; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Rabbi Avi Weiss</a>, have adopted the model as well. But this, in many ways, is Kleinbaum’s moment: a year in which many of the issues moving the city and the country—same-sex <a href="http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/127922/gay-marriages-legal-crusader" style="border: 0px; color: #e65a1e; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">marriage</a>, income <a href="http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/128635/brooklyns-unofficial-mayor" style="border: 0px; color: #e65a1e; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">inequality</a>, civil liberties—are ones Kleinbaum has long made her own, and in which those closest to the rabbi are politically ascendant.</span></div>
<a href="http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/05/new-yorks-new-firebrand-rabbi-for.html#more">Click to continue reading article »</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IdeasOfAGaySyrianJew/~4/YaMozDV4eZE" height="1" width="1"/>Rich Dweckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11953641382066344007noreply@blogger.com0http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/05/new-yorks-new-firebrand-rabbi-for.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6523803876782435901.post-80893712274772714982013-05-06T18:18:00.001-04:002013-05-06T18:19:07.843-04:002013-05-06T18:19:07.843-04:00"A Gay, Orthodox Jewish R&B Singer" by Amy Kellner of Vice.com <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
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<em nodeindex="159" style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 25px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">I’ve known Ari Gold since we were ten. We went to an Orthodox Jewish Yeshiva together. He was my first big crush because he sang jingles for TV commercials and we both loved Madonna, which, in the Orthodox community, automatically made us freaks. And which, as I of course didn’t realize at the time, made Ari gay. Flash forward 20 years and I’m working at a magazine called Vice while Ari is a successful, dance-chart-topping, out R&B singer who is inclined to perform topless, greased-up, and in a wrestler’s mask, while singing songs with Yiddish lyrics. Like our parents often say, “Oy! Why us? Everyone else grew up normal, why do you have to be so different?” Well, let’s find out.</em><br>
<a href="http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/05/a-gay-orthodox-jewish-r-singer-by-amy.html#more">Click to continue reading article »</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IdeasOfAGaySyrianJew/~4/mIZuOG9kZN8" height="1" width="1"/>Rich Dweckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11953641382066344007noreply@blogger.com0http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/05/a-gay-orthodox-jewish-r-singer-by-amy.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6523803876782435901.post-62328777490154463802013-05-06T18:03:00.000-04:002013-05-06T18:19:22.921-04:002013-05-06T18:19:22.921-04:00"Orthosexuality" By Elli Fischer <br>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lgFQyyi0MIk/UYglmMAgk4I/AAAAAAAACMk/nL1_rZEZEDw/s1600/w680.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lgFQyyi0MIk/UYglmMAgk4I/AAAAAAAACMk/nL1_rZEZEDw/s200/w680.jpg" width="136"></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">12/19/11 Jewish Ideas Daily- The Talmud tells a story about one Rabbi Kahana who hid under the bed of his master, Rabbi Abba (better known as Rav), as the latter was having sex with his wife. Kahana, shocked at the type of frivolous language used by his mentor, commented that Rav was behaving ravenously. Rav exclaimed, "Kahana, you're here? Get out! It's not proper!" Kahana replied, "It is Torah—and study it I must."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It is not easy to discern who gets the last word in this jarring little <i nodeindex="145" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/content/module/2011/7/7/main-feature/1/what-is-aggadah-and-how-to-read-it/" nodeindex="146" style="cursor: pointer; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">aggadah</a></i> (indeed, it appears in several places in the Babylonian Talmud—sometimes with and sometimes without Kahana's ultimate proclamation). There is a clear tension between propriety and modesty on one hand, and the <i nodeindex="147" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">religious</i> requirement to understand sexuality on the other.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The balance between these two values has varied from community to community and era to era, and there have certainly been Jewish communities far more prudish than the Talmud's. Yet in contemporary society, characterized by unprecedented sexual casualness, shifts within the Jewish community toward greater openness go unnoticed. Public perception has tended to relate to several controversies that recently erupted within the American Modern Orthodox community—one relating to an Orthodox college student's article about a one-night stand and another pertaining to an Orthodox-style homosexual commitment ceremony in Washington, D.C.—as evidence of cloistering and repression within this community. In truth, however, there has been a subtle but dramatic shift toward greater openness about sexuality in the Modern Orthodox world over the past decade or so.</span></div>
<a href="http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/05/orthosexuality-by-elli-fischer.html#more">Click to continue reading article »</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IdeasOfAGaySyrianJew/~4/1IQn64rACoo" height="1" width="1"/>Rich Dweckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11953641382066344007noreply@blogger.com0http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/05/orthosexuality-by-elli-fischer.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6523803876782435901.post-68199821681018595642013-05-06T18:02:00.002-04:002013-05-06T18:02:43.460-04:002013-05-06T18:02:43.460-04:00"Sephardi Stories, on the Record"- The Sephardi Voices history project collects testimony from Jews who fled Arab lands after Israel was founded<br>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HZzGV3Qsk34/UYgoKQMWWKI/AAAAAAAACM8/BOoLVn0nUFk/s1600/sephardicvoices_042613_620px.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HZzGV3Qsk34/UYgoKQMWWKI/AAAAAAAACM8/BOoLVn0nUFk/s200/sephardicvoices_042613_620px.jpg" width="200"></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">5/1/13 by Adi Schwartz, Tablet Magazine- “Sometimes I still have nightmares,” says Juliette Glaser to her interviewer, as she sits in front of a video camera in her Miami living room, recalling in a confident voice her childhood memories from Cairo—where she was born in 1941 and which she fled 15 years later. “They were putting the city on fire during the revolution of 1952. They were getting rid of King Farouk. The city was black, and there was fire everywhere. I remember Egyptians walking in the streets, holding big knives, saying, ‘We’re going to kill the Jews, where are the Jews? Any Jews around here?’ And we would hide in the basement, turn all the lights off, just shivering, shaking of fear.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The anti-Jewish policies continued to get worse in Egypt, and in the wake of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Crisis" style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Sinai Campaign</a> in 1956, her father, like many other Jews, was given 48 hours to leave the country. With only one suitcase for each family member, Glaser, her parents, and her three siblings left for France and later the United States.</span></div>
<a href="http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/05/sephardi-stories-on-record-sephardi.html#more">Click to continue reading article »</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IdeasOfAGaySyrianJew/~4/c5hypHACUtQ" height="1" width="1"/>Rich Dweckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11953641382066344007noreply@blogger.com0http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/05/sephardi-stories-on-record-sephardi.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6523803876782435901.post-28934247417502496082013-05-06T18:02:00.001-04:002013-05-06T18:02:52.015-04:002013-05-06T18:02:52.015-04:00"Teaching Orthodox Couples About Sexual Dysfunction" by Chavie Lieber<br>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gCybnbcF_TA/UYgmxRJekSI/AAAAAAAACMw/iXZE25MUdvY/s1600/w680.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="color: black;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gCybnbcF_TA/UYgmxRJekSI/AAAAAAAACMw/iXZE25MUdvY/s200/w680.jpg" width="142"></span></a></div>
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5/1/13 The Forward- Sexual dysfunctions within relationships are more common than ever today, with an estimated 30% of women suffering from conditions related to painful intercourse like vaginismus, dyspareunia, and vulvodynia. Rabbi Daniel Schonbuch, a marital and family therapist from Brooklyn who specializes in Orthodox couples, has just released a new book, <a href="http://danielschonbuch.intuitwebsites.com/Getting-Closer-.html" nodeindex="192" style="cursor: pointer; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">“Getting Closer,”</a>which offers a glimpse of sexual dysfunction issues — from painful intercourse to erectile dysfunction to desire disorders — within the Orthodox community.</div>
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Schonbuch discusses marital intimacy using an approach called Emotionally Focused Therapy to help Orthodox couples through difficulties in intimacy, which can be the underlying issue of much of marital stress. The Sisterhood spoke with him about his new book and some of the unique issues the Orthodox community faces. </div>
<a href="http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/05/teaching-orthodox-couples-about-sexual.html#more">Click to continue reading article »</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IdeasOfAGaySyrianJew/~4/DptezkCRHHk" height="1" width="1"/>Rich Dweckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11953641382066344007noreply@blogger.com0http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/05/teaching-orthodox-couples-about-sexual.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6523803876782435901.post-10464523636519657052013-05-03T15:04:00.002-04:002013-05-03T18:51:09.294-04:002013-05-03T18:51:09.294-04:00"Homosexuality: Another Orthodox Perspective" by Dr. Alan Jotkowitz (Torah Musings) <br>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hNBaS6y8VQg/UYQJx6e6rVI/AAAAAAAACME/iSp34Mjof1I/s1600/gay_jew-166x200.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hNBaS6y8VQg/UYQJx6e6rVI/AAAAAAAACME/iSp34Mjof1I/s200/gay_jew-166x200.jpg" width="166"></a></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Introduction</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">5/1/13- In the course of a relatively brief time, homosexual relationships have gained recognition and acceptance in Western liberal society as completely normal expressions of human love and sexuality. This is manifested by the growing recognition of gay marriage in many American states and European countries and the appearance of openly gay politicians, athletes and celebrities. The reasons for this change in attitude are beyond the scope of this essay but the impact of the devastating AIDS epidemic may have played a significant role in shifting public opinion. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This is not the case in many Arab and African countries, where many openly gay citizens live under constant threat and homosexuality is illegal, sometimes even carrying the death penalty. There has likewise been a change in the attitude of many religions towards homosexuality and homosexuals. In many Christian denominations, openly gay individuals can serve as clergy and homosexuals can marry with the Church’s blessing. There has likewise been a change in Jewish attitudes toward homosexuality. Reform and Conservative rabbinical schools now accept gay students and many rabbis perform gay marriages. There has also been a sea change in attitudes towards homosexuality in many Orthodox communities.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, expressing a not uncommon opinion, wrote in the 1970s:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">To speak of a desire for homosexual intimacy is a contradiction in terms. In essence, the wicked also have no desire for this, rather the desire is only to do something which is forbidden. The evil inclination entices the person to rebel against the will of the Holy One Blessed Be He.[1]</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And now witness, for example, the recent public discussion at Yeshiva University on the difficulties of being gay in the Orthodox world and the Statement of Principles with its message of tolerance and respect toward homosexuals, which has been signed by over one hundred Orthodox rabbis.[2] Notwithstanding these changes, many homosexuals would like to be accepted with their families as part of the Orthodox community.</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Historical Perspective</span></b></div>
<a href="http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/05/homosexuality-another-orthodox.html#more">Click to continue reading article »</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IdeasOfAGaySyrianJew/~4/6cvUi2Lg4oU" height="1" width="1"/>Rich Dweckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11953641382066344007noreply@blogger.com0http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/05/homosexuality-another-orthodox.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6523803876782435901.post-51540325139460774992013-05-01T14:34:00.000-04:002013-05-01T14:34:16.617-04:002013-05-01T14:34:16.617-04:00"Gay Marchers Spark Celebrate Israel Parade Boycott Threat Yeshivas Agree To Allow Gays To Participate in Annual Event" <span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', Lucida, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; text-align: left;">4/30/13 By </span><a href="http://forward.com/authors/josh-nathan-kazis/" style="color: black; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', Lucida, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">Josh Nathan-Kazis</a> The Forward-<br>
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An Orthodox activist has launched an effort to boycott New York’s Celebrate Israel parade for allowing gay and lesbian groups to participate, despite a reported agreement among Orthodox yeshivas not to object to the gay groups.</div>
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Avi Goldstein, a Orthodox Jew from Long Island, called for the boycott of the June 2 parade in a lengthy letter circulated in the Modern Orthodox community. In his letter, Goldstein writes that gay groups’ participation “compromised the moral integrity of the parade.”</div>
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Yet Goldstein’s effort appears doomed from the start. Goldstein reports in his own letter that a group of Jewish day schools principals agreed that they would not object to the gay organizations marching in the parade at a recent meeting attended by a representative of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York , which organizes the annual Celebrate Israel event.</div>
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A spokesperson for the JCRC would only confirm that the meeting took place. Rabbi Ellis Bloch, a staff member at the Jewish Education Project, which coordinated the meeting, would not comment on the meetings’ content.</div>
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This Celebrate Israel parade draws tens of thousands to Manhattan’s 5th Avenue each Spring. This year’s parade marks the second year in which gay Jewish organizations have marched openly. Before 2012, efforts by the gay and lesbian synagogue Congregation Beit Simchat Torah were met with a demand that the group not march with a banner that used the word “gay” or “lesbian.”</div>
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Mordechai Levovitz, co-director and founder of Jewish Queer Youth, which marched last year, said that he expects the 150 people to march with the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender contingent this year. Gay and lesbian groups participating in the 2013 parade include Levovitz’s group, CBST, A Wider Bridge, and Eshel.</div>
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Though the parade is organized by the nondenominational JCRC, participation is heavily Modern Orthodox. Three quarters of the Jewish day schools that marched in 2011 were Modern Orthodox, according to a 2012 <a href="http://forward.com/articles/156841/anatomy-of-a-parade/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; color: #2e87ac; text-decoration: none;">Forward report.</a><br>
</div><a href="http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/05/gay-marchers-spark-celebrate-israel.html#more">Click to continue reading article »</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IdeasOfAGaySyrianJew/~4/GVs9d8FYguo" height="1" width="1"/>Rich Dweckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11953641382066344007noreply@blogger.com0http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/05/gay-marchers-spark-celebrate-israel.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6523803876782435901.post-80069011983638595792013-05-01T14:32:00.000-04:002013-05-01T14:32:05.263-04:002013-05-01T14:32:05.263-04:00Video: "Orthodox Rabbi Barry Dolinger testifies in support of RI State Marriage Equality"<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/mhhVsaifBxg?rel=0" width="420"></iframe> <script type="text/javascript">
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Rabbi Barry Dolinger testifying in support civil gay marriage in front of the senate committee of Rhode Island...<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IdeasOfAGaySyrianJew/~4/SWvjHmaRTNs" height="1" width="1"/>Rich Dweckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11953641382066344007noreply@blogger.com0http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/05/video-orthodox-rabbi-barry-dolinger.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6523803876782435901.post-87696509450039727122013-05-01T14:30:00.000-04:002013-05-01T14:30:23.104-04:002013-05-01T14:30:23.104-04:00"US Jews among the most supportive of gay marriage"- Times of Israel <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #346f99; line-height: 16px;">4/27/13 by Haviv Rettig Gur</span><span style="color: #333333; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="line-height: 10px;">- </span></span></span><span style="color: #787878; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif;"><span style="line-height: 26px;">Pew figures show 76% of Jews support legalizing gay marriage, higher than all but the youngest and most liberal of Democrats</span></span><br>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XQNowdBrkb4/UYFQcb_F68I/AAAAAAAACL0/U5bFDdIaE6U/s1600/gay+jewish+flag+.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="111" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XQNowdBrkb4/UYFQcb_F68I/AAAAAAAACL0/U5bFDdIaE6U/s200/gay+jewish+flag+.jpg" width="200"></a>American Jews show among the highest levels of support for gay marriage, from all American subgroups measured in recent polls, according to figures published this week by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.</div>
<div nodeindex="61" style="background-color: white; color: #515151; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 1.8em; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">
According to five polls of Americans in 2012 and 2013, with the most recent conducted in March 2013, 76 percent of US Jews support legalizing same-sex marriage, while 18% oppose and 8% did not express an opinion.</div>
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The figure is remarkably high, particularly when compared to the number of Protestants (34%) and Catholics (53%) who support same-sex marriage.</div>
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Jewish support is higher than the support among Democrats (61%), self-described “liberals” (72%), and even among Americans without religious affiliation (75%).<br>
</div><a href="http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/05/us-jews-among-most-supportive-of-gay.html#more">Click to continue reading article »</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IdeasOfAGaySyrianJew/~4/lCe_Gxv0F-s" height="1" width="1"/>Rich Dweckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11953641382066344007noreply@blogger.com0http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/05/us-jews-among-most-supportive-of-gay.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6523803876782435901.post-82348604805847748402013-05-01T14:27:00.003-04:002013-05-01T14:28:29.436-04:002013-05-01T14:28:29.436-04:00"The New ‘Morethodox’ Rabbi Asher Lopatin succeeds Avi Weiss at an influential seminary, offering a pluralistic version of Orthodoxy" <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-d6teOVFEt9A/UYFNzUruQFI/AAAAAAAACLk/W28KvAgfzNg/s1600/lopatin_042613_300px_vertical.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-d6teOVFEt9A/UYFNzUruQFI/AAAAAAAACLk/W28KvAgfzNg/s200/lopatin_042613_300px_vertical.jpg" width="133"></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="line-height: 15px; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;">Rabbi Lopatin speaks at the <br>Yehsivat Chovevei Torah gala dinner.</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Avi Weiss has always been known as an unapologetic revolutionary. As a young Orthodox rabbi in the 1960s and ’70s, he was instrumental in helping build the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, a movement predicated on the idea that established Jewish institutions were doing too little to help their brethren behind the Iron Curtain. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In 1985, he led a group of Jews in a <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1985-05-06/news/mn-4452_1_bergen-belsen-camp" style="border: 0px; color: #e65a1e; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">guerrilla Shabbat service</a> at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, a historic and intentionally symbolic episode organized in protest of President Reagan’s visit to a war cemetery at Bitburg, where members of the SS were buried, during a state visit to Germany. Four years later, months before the collapse of communism across Eastern Europe, Weiss and six others were physically attacked after they scaled the walls of a Carmelite convent that had been built at Auschwitz and conducted an impromptu Torah study session in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1989/09/12/opinion/l-we-did-not-go-to-auschwitz-to-be-beaten-867089.html" style="border: 0px; color: #e65a1e; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">objection</a> to the Catholic presence at the site of so much Jewish death. Weiss’ arrest record is legendary and stretches from <a href="http://jtf.org/forum/index.php?topic=57492.0" style="border: 0px; color: #e65a1e; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">New York</a> to Oslo, Norway, where he was <a href="http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/130760/-http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19941209&slug=1946335" style="border: 0px; color: #e65a1e; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">detained</a> in 1994 while demonstrating against Yasser Arafat’s receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In 1999, Weiss broke with Yeshiva University, his intellectual home and the headquarters of Modern Orthodoxy, to start his own rabbinic seminary in the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx, Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, under the banner of what Weiss termed Open Orthodoxy: the view that stringent observance of Jewish religious law in the modern world should co-exist with ideological flexibility on a range of questions, particularly concerning the role of women and Jewish denominational <a href="http://www.yctorah.org/component/option,com_docman/task,doc_view/gid,143/" style="border: 0px; color: #e65a1e; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">pluralism</a>. Four years ago, Weiss took his rebellion one step further and founded <a href="http://yeshivatmaharat.org/faculty-and-staff/" style="border: 0px; color: #e65a1e; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Yeshivat Maharat</a>, a women’s seminary, headed by his protégé Sara Hurwitz, the first American Orthodox woman to be ordained.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In January 2010, Weiss caused the biggest uproar of his career by changing Hurwitz’s title from <em>maharat</em>—an acronym for the Hebrew phrase denoting a teacher of Jewish law and spirituality—to the far more straightforward <a href="http://nymag.com/news/features/67145/" style="border: 0px; color: #e65a1e; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><em>rabba</em></a>, the feminized version of rabbi. The move drew an immediate outcry, including a <a href="http://www.hakirah.org/Vol%2011%20RCA%20Agudah.pdf" style="border: 0px; color: #e65a1e; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">statement</a> from the Agudath Israel, a leading central authority of American Ultra-Orthodoxy, declaring that Weiss could no longer be considered part of the Orthodox fold: “These developments represent a radical and dangerous departure from Jewish tradition and the <em>mesoras haTorah</em> and must be condemned in the strongest terms.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The episode, which Weiss now refers to as “the rabba incident,” exhausted him. Now, at 68, he is preparing for what might once have seemed like another radical move: handing over the reins of his school to Asher Lopatin, a man 20 years his junior, who is universally known not as an incendiary but as a relentless bridge-builder. He comes from Chicago, where he was best known as <a href="http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Judaism/2009/01/Interview-with-Rahm-Emanuels-Rabbi.aspx" style="border: 0px; color: #e65a1e; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Rahm Emanuel’s rabbi</a>, and holds dual ordination from Yeshiva University and from the Yeshivas Brisk, the Chicago-based seminary established by Aaron Soloveichik, the brother of Joseph Soloveitchik, Yeshiva University’s intellectual leader. He is also a Rhodes scholar who speaks Arabic, an experienced fundraiser, and a leading <a href="http://morethodoxy.org/" style="border: 0px; color: #e65a1e; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">proponent</a> of a pluralistic, egalitarian, Weissish view of Orthodoxy he refers to as “Morethodoxy.” “This transition is about two words,” Weiss told me when we met recently. “Institution building.”</span></div>
<a href="http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/05/the-new-morethodox-rabbi-asher-lopatin.html#more">Click to continue reading article »</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IdeasOfAGaySyrianJew/~4/o1Kx67nOWAQ" height="1" width="1"/>Rich Dweckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11953641382066344007noreply@blogger.com0http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/05/the-new-morethodox-rabbi-asher-lopatin.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6523803876782435901.post-26831295622470776272013-05-01T14:26:00.001-04:002013-05-01T14:28:29.430-04:002013-05-01T14:28:29.430-04:00"The Gay 'Marriage' Crisis" by Daniel Perez, Jewish Voice Editor<br />
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<span style="font-size: 13px;">6/29/11 Arutz Sheva- Marriage is a religious institution, and the US government, where religion and state are separate by law, ought to have no place in regulating it.</span></div>
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Let me tell you the problem I have with Gay Pride parades. It's not the "gay" part; it's the "pride" part. I can understand taking pride in one's culture, one's religion, or one's career field. I'm not even saying that one's sexual orientation should be cause for shame - simply that it doesn't warrant pride of any sort.</div>
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As a straight male, I take no pride in being attracted to the opposite sex. I'm also left-handed. Where's the Leftie Pride Parade? My point is that one's sexual orientation just is, and if you hold the politically-correct position that one's orientation is an innate human characteristic with which one is born (like left or right-handedness), there is no volitional element at all.</div>
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So what are we celebrating, then? Gay history? Gay culture? Am I the only one who thinks that "celebrations" of sexuality should be, at the very least, kept <span class="IL_AD" id="IL_AD1" style="background-attachment: scroll !important; background-color: transparent !important; background-image: none !important; background-position: 0% 50%; background-repeat: repeat repeat !important; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 0, 204) !important; border-bottom-style: dotted !important; border-bottom-width: 1px !important; color: rgb(0, 0, 204) !important; cursor: pointer !important; display: inline !important; float: none !important; padding: 0px 0px 1px !important; position: static;">behind closed doors</span>? If New York held a "Straight Pride Parade," wherein the behavior of participants was every bit as licentious as that of the Gay Pride March, it would be every bit as offensive. Aren't there folks in the LGBT community who are disturbed by this?</div>
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To paraphrase a stand-up comedian I once heard (and incidentally, this was at a club in the Village), "No, it's not a choice to be gay. But it is a choice to be flaming." By the time you're dancing, body painted, half-naked, down the streets of <span class="IL_AD" id="IL_AD3" style="background-attachment: scroll !important; background-color: transparent !important; background-image: none !important; background-position: 0% 50%; background-repeat: repeat repeat !important; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 0, 204) !important; border-bottom-style: dotted !important; border-bottom-width: 1px !important; color: rgb(0, 0, 204) !important; cursor: pointer !important; display: inline !important; float: none !important; padding: 0px 0px 1px !important; position: static;">Manhattan</span>, a few choices have definitely been made. Choices made, we would argue, in very poor taste.</div>
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Personally, it strikes me as degrading for a group to base their whole identity on which type of anatomy they're attracted to. If people wish to debase themselves thus, that's their right - but please, don't make me witness it.</div>
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Of course, the real issue <em>du jour </em>is the same-sex marriage legislation that, just a few days ago, <a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/145191" style="color: #3d6f93; cursor: pointer; font-weight: bold;">cleared both houses of the New York State Legislature</a>. Those directly affected by the new law are literally dancing (fabulously, no doubt) in the streets. But what does it all mean for the rest of us?</div>
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Look, if certain religious groups wish to condone and perform <a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/128288" style="color: #3d6f93; cursor: pointer; font-weight: bold;">same-sex marriages</a>, that's their business. We as Jews or as conservatives may not agree with it, but this is America, where a person is free to express himself so long as his or her choice of expression does not infringe upon the rights of others.</div>
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But, if religious groups that only recognize the traditional (read: authentic) definition of marriage (i.e. that it exists between man and woman) are in any way compelled to perform or recognize homosexual marriage, that is a clear violation of the Constitution. The government has no right to make any law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free <span class="IL_AD" id="IL_AD4" style="background-attachment: scroll !important; background-color: transparent !important; background-image: none !important; background-position: 0% 50%; background-repeat: repeat repeat !important; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 0, 204) !important; border-bottom-style: dotted !important; border-bottom-width: 1px !important; color: rgb(0, 0, 204) !important; cursor: pointer !important; display: inline !important; float: none !important; padding: 0px 0px 1px !important; position: static;">exercise</span> thereof.</div>
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<br />Where do I get that from? How about the part where it says "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" (for those of you Americans who slept through your high <span class="IL_AD" id="IL_AD2" style="background-attachment: scroll !important; background-color: transparent !important; background-image: none !important; background-position: 0% 50%; background-repeat: repeat repeat !important; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 0, 204) !important; border-bottom-style: dotted !important; border-bottom-width: 1px !important; color: rgb(0, 0, 204) !important; cursor: pointer !important; display: inline !important; float: none !important; padding: 0px 0px 1px !important; position: static;">school</span> Civics class, that's the First Amendment to the US Constitution).<br /><br />Ergo, traditional Jews, Christians, and Muslims have every right to abstain from performing such ceremonies and absolutely should not be punished for doing so, be it through a denial of federal funding for which they would otherwise have been eligible, or be it through lawsuits by individuals attempting to force their views upon a religious community. </div>
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We can't help but suspect that in the very near future there will be a gay couple attempting to force the issue with their local church/mosque/synagogue/<a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/117016" style="color: #3d6f93; cursor: pointer; font-weight: bold;">te</a><wbr></wbr><a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/117016" style="color: #3d6f93; cursor: pointer; font-weight: bold;">mple</a>, and it wouldn't surprise us if such a case made it all the way to the Supreme Court.</div>
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Because for some, it isn't enough to have a recognized "civil union" with the same material benefits as marriage. Some feel, that as a matter of human rights their relationship merits the label of "marriage." Why wouldn't the same line of thinking convince someone that this "marriage" then needs to be sanctioned by their religion of choice, whether or not said religion expressly forbids it? Then you have government dictating to religion what its teachings are - and that's when you have a problem.</div>
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Note that none of this is a comment on homosexuality itself. Marriage is a religious institution, and the government ought to have no place in regulating it.</div>
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Our solution to the "gay marriage problem"? I propose a new constitutional amendment (really just a specific application of the first) that henceforth the government shall have no role in regulating any kind of marriage, gay, straight, or other. From here on out, couples would register their "civil union" with the local government, and to get married, you'd go to your local rabbi, priest, minister, imam, or what have you.</div>
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Then people of all sexual orientations could get their civil unions and be on equal footing with everyone else vis-à-vis the government. And if they want to get married, they simply have to belong to a faith that espouses their interpretation of marriage. Most importantly of all, it would be fair.</div>
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Why has nobody thought to do this? Under this new law, no one's civil rights (real or imagined) would be trampled, gay and straight people would be treated equally under the law, and the government would no longer be meddling in matters of religion, which according to the First Amendment are none of their business to begin with! Problem solved!<br /><br />You're welcome, America.</div>
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<a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/10358#.UYAjZ6VgJNY">http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/10358#.UYAjZ6VgJNY</a></div>
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</script><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IdeasOfAGaySyrianJew/~4/PM5FoR1m6pE" height="1" width="1"/>Rich Dweckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11953641382066344007noreply@blogger.com0http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/05/the-gay-marriage-crisis-by-daniel-perez.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6523803876782435901.post-645179624136995542013-05-01T14:26:00.000-04:002013-05-01T14:28:29.433-04:002013-05-01T14:28:29.433-04:00"Judaism: After the Death of Gay Marriage" by Dr. Aryeh Hirsch <br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">4/18/13 Arutz Sheva- In June, 1989, the <span class="IL_AD" id="IL_AD4" style="background-attachment: scroll !important; background-color: transparent !important; background-image: none !important; background-position: 0% 50%; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 0, 204) !important; border-bottom-style: dotted !important; border-bottom-width: 1px !important; color: rgb(0, 0, 204) !important; cursor: pointer !important; display: inline !important; float: none !important; padding: 0px 0px 1px !important; position: static;">American Medical Association</span> (AMA) held its annual meeting in Chicago. The Hirsch family was two months shy of making Aliyah, and on the last Sunday of June, we were driving north to Camp Moshava, Wild Rose, Wisconsin.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After ten years as camp doctor (for one glorious week a year, always the first week, so that the campers weren’t too homesick yet, thereby cutting down on my workload and giving us a family <span class="IL_AD" id="IL_AD1" style="background-attachment: scroll !important; background-color: transparent !important; background-image: none !important; background-position: 0% 50%; background-repeat: repeat repeat !important; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 0, 204) !important; border-bottom-style: dotted !important; border-bottom-width: 1px !important; color: rgb(0, 0, 204) !important; cursor: pointer !important; display: inline !important; float: none !important; padding: 0px 0px 1px !important; position: static;">vacation</span>), this was anticipated to be my last stint in Wisconsin after ten summers. As we drove northward, <em>WBBM</em> radio played the following news bulletin:</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“The AMA building has been taken over by gay-rights protestors, disrupting the annual meeting. We are live at the site, with an interview with one of the protest leaders. Mr. X, why are you gay-rights activists taking over this building?’"</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">‘We are demanding rights equal to those of other minority groups. In the light of the AIDS epidemic, we are using this medical venue to demand acceptance of the legitimate civil rights of gays. The fact is that there is simply too much traditional morality in America, and we want to use the AMA and other organizations to teach America otherwise.’ “</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We got quite a laugh over that last line about “too much morality”, but as I’ll show, things have certainly progressed in the last 25 years. With dozens of American states now considering gay marriage bills, and the Supreme Court about to deal with the issue, this week’s Parsha, Acharei Mot (After the Death) has a message:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent;">“You are prohibited from doing the sex act with a male, in the manner of sex with a female; it is a </span><em>to’eiva</em><span style="background-color: transparent;"> “ (Leviticus 18:22). King James translates </span><em>to’eiva</em><span style="background-color: transparent;"> as “abomination”, but this may not be accurate. Bar Kappara (Talmud Nedarim, 51a) views the word as a “noterikon”, a contraction of the three words “</span><em>toeh atah bah”, </em><span style="background-color: transparent;">you are making a mistake”. Torah Temimah explains the syllable “bah” of the three-part contraction as “in this way (derech) “, meaning that you are straying from the fundamental ways of Creation by doing this.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Tosafot in Nedarim translates “bah” differently, as the word can also mean "towards her" saying it refers to one’s wife (or divinely intended wife); that is, one who is involved in homosexual activity is straying from “her”, his wife ( the Torah does not explicitly include lesbian activity in the same biblical commandment, although Rambam notes that it is Rabbinically prohibited ; Issurei Biah, 21:8).</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The translation of “error” leads to an entirely different view of homosexuality.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I first heard this view from Rabbi Barry Freundel, who spoke at several summer conventions of the Association of Orthodox Jewish scientists in the 1980’s. I recently serendipitously found his article on the subject when someone discarded it in our synagogue during his pre-Pesach <span class="IL_AD" id="IL_AD3" style="background-attachment: scroll !important; background-color: transparent !important; background-image: none !important; background-position: 0% 50%; background-repeat: repeat repeat !important; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 0, 204) !important; border-bottom-style: dotted !important; border-bottom-width: 1px !important; color: rgb(0, 0, 204) !important; cursor: pointer !important; display: inline !important; float: none !important; padding: 0px 0px 1px !important; position: static;">cleaning</span>. The article appears in the Spring, 1986 volume of the <em>Journal of Halacha and Contemporary Society </em>(pages 70-87):</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">There is no such thing as a Jewish homosexual. Nowhere in halakha is a <span class="IL_AD" id="IL_AD2" style="background-attachment: scroll !important; background-color: transparent !important; background-image: none !important; background-position: 0% 50%; background-repeat: repeat repeat !important; border-bottom-color: rgb(0, 0, 204) !important; border-bottom-style: dotted !important; border-bottom-width: 1px !important; color: rgb(0, 0, 204) !important; cursor: pointer !important; display: inline !important; float: none !important; padding: 0px 0px 1px !important; position: static;">person</span>defined by his sexual orientation. Jewish society consists of halakhically defined priest, levite, king, prophet, Sanhedrin, minor, man(ish), woman, deaf-mute,etc. There are biologically and halakhic definitions of hermaphrodite, menstruant, menopausal female, etc. However, the homosexual does not appear on the list of those with a separate status in the Jewish community.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This is because homosexuality is, as noted above, viewed as an activity, an error - but not as a definition of a person’s being. “Homosexual” is therefore not a noun, identifying and categorizing the individual, but an adjective describing his sin/error.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Viewed thus, a person who indulges in homosexual activity is to be viewed as no different than one who sins by eating nonkosher food (Deuteronomy 14:3), idolatry(ibid,7:25-26) and committing unethical business practices(ibid, 25:16). All these sins are also described as “to’eiva”. Yet we do not ascribe some special status to those committing these errors.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Furthermore, although the unethical businessman may have deep psychological drives to steal, halakha makes no dispensation for these drives. The thief, murderer, adulterer,etc. is expected to control his urges, and to desist from sin; classically, our rabbis have said that a Jew should say that that he’d love to have a tasty ham sandwich, but that the Torah forbids it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Even if a genetic or supra-genetic basis for homosexualism were to be found (despite much effort by gay scientists to prove such biological determinism, none has been discovered), the Torah would view it in the same light as the Talmud’s description of King David’s personality: he was a redhead like Esau, with the same murderous tendencies. Yet David controlled his DNA, rising above his biology, “killing only per the sanction of the Sanhedrin”.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Our basic covenant as Jews, the brit of circumcision, enjoins us with the defining command that a Jew rises above the compunctions (viewed as impurity,”tumah”) of the physical, including biology, with its DNA, sex hormones, forces of evolution, etc., and uses conscience, morals, wisdom, belief, and all other human faculties to rise above the level of barbarians (a fact that Hitler, may he rot in Hell, used as his excuse for war against the Jews).</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Furthermore, should a Jew commit any sin, he is enjoined to repent, to change his ways - and the sin of homosexual activity is no different. No one can change his DNA, hormones, kleptomania, etc., but a Jew can change his actions.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">With this differing view of homosexual activity, Jewish society changes the errant Jew’s perception of himself. He is no longer a reviled outsider, pushed outside of Jewish society and synagogue. Rather, he should be welcomed with the welcome afforded those who eat nonkosher, drive on Shabbos, etc. Lubavich especially has long championed the view that we are all Jews, and as such artificial divisions between us (Reform, Orthodox, gay,etc.) are invalid, and such labels must not be used.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This essentially pulls the rug out of those who advocate gay rights, synagogues, marriage, etc. Gays should be welcomed in our synagogues, as there is no place for granting them separate institutions (any more then setting up a shul called “Rodfei Gezel “, those who pursue theft).</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Rabbi Freundel: “ We should couple our tolerance of the individual with disapproval of the activity”.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As a physician, I add that as a young physician in 1981, I saw the issue of the <em>Annals of Internal Medicine</em>, which contained three articles on a mysterious illness killing gays in the bathhouses of San Francisco. Later, the overlap of the gay population with the IV drug addicts, whose income was boosted by selling their blood for transfusions, led to AIDS in the general public, as did heterosexual activity by gays. I personally cared for a thirty year old teacher who was killed by the blood transfusion she had received two years earlier during heart valve surgery; and I cared for a 70-year-old who died of an AIDS-tainted transfusion for his bleeding ulcer.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent;">These were innocent victims of an epidemic for whom gays bear guilt. Yet, like other postmoderns, who redefine dangerous behavior that threatens society as benign (as in liberals who redefined the PLO as legitimate freedom fighters and politicians, ignoring Israel’s 1,500 dead and September 11</span><span style="background-color: transparent;">th</span><span style="background-color: transparent;">’s 2,700 dead ), the gays never expressed remorse. AIDS may be treatable, but at tremendous cost, and gays historically played a causal role in the epidemic.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One final point: we find ourselves on a 25 year slippery slope, and “gay marriage” is not the end of it. Recently, well-known gerontologist Aubrey de Grey wrote an article called “The Overdue Demise of Monogamy” (in John Brockman’s anthology "That Expains Everything", pages 15-18). De Grey says that now that gay marriage is a “battle won”, society should now take the next logical step and rid itself of the “inconvenience of monogamy…with all its pain and suffering. For is not sex simply another form of recreational activity?”.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He sees that only problems arise from the “inconvenient responsibilities of deeper emotional attachments”, and sees the benefits of casual sex in a society characterized by “shifts of affection and evolving social interactions”.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">De Grey glosses over, as unimportant, the great sexual issues of long-term investment, integrity, love, care, relationship, and what Judaism calls “specialness” (kedusha, also translated as holiness; gentiles too speak of the bond of holy matrimony). Try raising a kid in an emotional quicksand that always “shifts and evolves”. See with what kind of character that child, and his reptilian parents, eventually end up.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">That is the future envisioned for us “After the Death (Acharei Mot)” of gay - and all other - marriage.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; line-height: 20px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">*Original publication was the beginning of 2012*</span></div>
<span style="color: red;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b>**Names of people or institutions mentioned below are not endorsements of this website, rather simply information I have chosen to share with my readership**</b></span></span><br>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b> </b></span><span style="font-size: large; font-weight: bold;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;"> </span><br>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Welcome! In Dec. of 2011, I was inspired to start this
blog when I saw a declaration against same-sex marriage by Orthodox Jewish
Rabbis. This type of rhetoric only causes more opportunities for bullying and
homophobia. I dealt with horrific "Internalized Homophobia" and
"Religious Abuse", which no one should have to experience!<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"> I was born in Brooklyn,
NY. I grew up in the NY/NJ Orthodox Syrian Jewish Community. I went through 2
years of X-Gay Therapy. After realizing that is was a scam, I had no choice but
to come out and live my life. Why? Because the secret was literally killing me.
I chose to live and not to die. Sounds dramatic, unfortunately it was. It was
very difficult for my community, my family and me. I decided to provide
resources for other people like myself and parents going through it. I only
wish more resources were available 13 years ago. Back then; we used AOL and a
56k modem to sign on to the Internet.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><span lang="EN-US"> I was brought up in the
customs of Sephardic Orthodox Judaism. My community followed many customs from
Syria, where most of them had originated. The community I came from had many
beautiful facets. Strong <span style="color: #0e0e0e;">camaraderie, </span>philanthropy
and preservation of their way of life are much of what they live by.</span></span></div>
</div><a href="http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/04/about-me-by-rich-dweck.html#more">Click to continue reading article »</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IdeasOfAGaySyrianJew/~4/pwrKTPSx7Mk" height="1" width="1"/>Rich Dweckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11953641382066344007noreply@blogger.com0http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/04/about-me-by-rich-dweck.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6523803876782435901.post-81829342965775573422013-04-26T12:48:00.001-04:002013-04-26T13:41:21.087-04:002013-04-26T13:41:21.087-04:00"Gay students bridge worlds at Rutgers Hillel At national conference, talk of Israel, marriage, and the need for ‘safety’"- NJ Jewish News <br>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">4/24/13 by Debra Rubin- Free to discuss the challenges and joys of being both Jewish and gay or lesbian, college students from across the country gathered at Rutgers University in New Brunswick to share Shabbat and connections.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The 17th annual national leadership conference of NUJLS, the National Union of Jewish Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, and Intersex Students, included religious services, social activities, and frank discussions about activism, spirituality, and coming out to peers and family.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Held April 19-21 under the auspices of Rutgers Hillel, it was the first NUJLS conference to be held at Rutgers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Among the events was a session on Israel advocacy, conducted by Vinny Foster, a national field organizer for AIPAC, and another on the future of same-sex Jewish marriage conducted by former Rutgers Hillel president Avi Smolen.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">While the conference drew only about 20 participants, its intimacy made for unusually strong bonding experiences, said conference chair Max Zandstein, president of Jewish Allies and Queers at Rutgers Hillel.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“I wanted it to be here because this is such a great community at Rutgers,” said Zandstein, a sophomore nursing student from Highland Park. “These events bring together people who wouldn’t normally meet at any other forum.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A closing session on suicide prevention particularly resonated in the Rutgers community, where a gay first-year student committed suicide more than two years ago after a roommate used a webcam to spy on him and a partner.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">That session was led by Samantha Zbik, who identified herself as a University of Delaware senior from central New Jersey. Before speaking to <em>NJJN</em> on April 21, she called her father, who works in Lakewood and has business dealings with its fervently Orthodox community, out of concern it would harm him professionally if it became known there she was a lesbian.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“I go to a school where there is not a lot of queer life, so it was nice to bridge the two worlds here” at the conference, she said. “I went to such a liberal high school I had to take a couple of steps back in college.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Rich Dweck, a student from Deal attending George Washington University, said he was struck by the tolerance at Rutgers Hillel for the LGBT community, noting that all three of its rabbis, including Orthodox Rabbi Akiva Weiss, had made it a point to stop by various conference activities.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“This is such an accepting environment,” said Dweck, who writes a blog, jewishpinkelephant.com. “It’s a model.”</span></div>
<a href="http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/04/gay-students-bridge-worlds-at-rutgers.html#more">Click to continue reading article »</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IdeasOfAGaySyrianJew/~4/2U3U0sJ9F_Y" height="1" width="1"/>Rich Dweckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11953641382066344007noreply@blogger.com0http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/04/gay-students-bridge-worlds-at-rutgers.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6523803876782435901.post-18459146038462875042013-04-26T12:41:00.001-04:002013-04-26T12:48:27.159-04:002013-04-26T12:48:27.159-04:00"ACHARAI leadership summit offers ‘TED Talks’ platform, sparks community dialogue" - NJ Jewish News <br>
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4/25/13- ACHARAI, the Shoshana S. Cardin Leadership Development Institute, put on the Baltimore Jewish Leaders Assembly last Thursday, April 18. Conferences like these are often wrought with pessimism, Jewish communal professionals bemoaning the challenges of engaging their audience and raising funds.</div>
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However, BJLA 2013 was nothing short of exciting.</div>
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The theme: Think Globally. Act Locally.</div>
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The chairs: Liz Minkin Friedman and Rafi Rone.</div>
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The format: BJLA Talks (“TED Talks” for the Jewish communal professional) followed by a day of Open Space Technology dialogue. Open Space is one way to enable all kinds of people, in any kind of organization, to create inspired meetings and events. In Open Space Technology meetings, participants create and manage their own agenda of parallel working sessions around a central theme of strategic importance.</div>
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The BJLA Talks were what set the day in motion. Powerful. Productive.</div>
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Up first, Neely Snyder, director of teen engagement for the Macks Center for Jewish Education, talked about building community one Jew at a time. She said local Jewish thought-leaders are mistaken if they think Jews aren’t interested in Judaism; in the 2010 Greater Baltimore Jewish Community Study, 91 percent of respondents said Judaism was important to them. In contrast, 46 percent said our local Jewish organizations are remote and not relevant.</div>
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“A focus on membership,” said Snyder, “is an obstacle to engagement.”</div>
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She called on audience members to create new outlets and to shift their thinking to being engagement professionals that “create community connections and empower others to create meaningful Jewish lives.”</div>
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She said there should be less focus on programming and more on relationships.</div>
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“Respect the journey. Be inclusive. Collaborate.”</div>
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Will Schneider, the executive director of Slingshot, an organization that strengthens innovation in Jewish life by developing next-generation funders and developing resources to leverage their impact in the Jewish community, posed a further challenge. In his five-minute talk, he called on Jewish Baltimore to lead the national field in putting “relevancy on the map.”</div>
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He said in Jewish Baltimore, led by organizations such as The Associated: Jewish Community of Baltimore, Baltimore is community-focused. He said Jewish Baltimore is more worried about the success of the community as a whole over any one Jewish organization. And that, he said, is what keeps the community strong.</div>
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But Schneider noted that innovation need to be driven — not drive you. And, innovation does not mean use of technology, though sometimes that is a factor. Innovation is grappling with concerns in Jewish life such as identity, community, social justice and coming up with new and inspiring strategies and projects.</div>
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Perhaps the most poignant piece of the BJLA Talks half-hour was a speech by “Mindy,” the Modern Orthodox mother of a son who came out of the closet. Mindy is a founder of JQ Baltimore, a group for Jewish parents and other family members of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and questioning people.</div>
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Mindy started her talk with one word, bold and brazen across the projector screen: Suicide. She said many Jewish LGBTQ people consider suicide because being gay is a shanda in the Jewish community. This, she said, has to stop.</div>
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She admitted that she was shocked when her 19-year-old son delivered the news of his preference for men. All of her dreams for him were instantly crushed. She was forced to re-focus. It changed her life, she said.</div>
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But what she was most struck by was that there were no resources for parents like her in the Jewish community. That is why she started one.</div>
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And that was really the message: “I took action. I felt a surge of empowerment.”</div>
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Quoting the Sage Hillel, “In a place where there are no men, strive to be a man,” Mindy encouraged the crowd that if they see a need for action, “you should act.”</div>
<a href="http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/04/acharai-leadership-summit-offers-ted.html#more">Click to continue reading article »</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IdeasOfAGaySyrianJew/~4/uaqhGdgdLtU" height="1" width="1"/>Rich Dweckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11953641382066344007noreply@blogger.com0http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/04/acharai-leadership-summit-offers-ted.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6523803876782435901.post-54520734906910657362013-04-25T09:12:00.002-04:002013-04-25T09:12:56.244-04:002013-04-25T09:12:56.244-04:00"Time For Modern Orthodox Leaders To Speak Out On Kotel Proposal" by Rabbi Yitz Greenberg <br>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">4/24/13 The Jewish Week- Now that Natan Sharansky is going public with his proposal to resolve the Kotel conflict, it is time for the leadership of Modern Orthodoxy to speak out.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The message should not be only support for Sharansky’s Solomonic proposal but to dissociate from the policies and tactics practiced by the haredi Western Wall Foundation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Modern Orthodox’s leadership was held back by fear that if they criticized the authorities at the Wall, the Women of the Wall would get their way and Modern Orthodoxy would be accused internally of having enabled a victory of liberal Judaism over Orthodox religious practice. Now that Sharansky has proposed a way in which justice is done but there are no losers, the Modern Orthodox establishment should strongly support the plan — and separate itself from the current Kotel leadership.</span></div>
<a href="http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/04/time-for-modern-orthodox-leaders-to.html#more">Click to continue reading article »</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IdeasOfAGaySyrianJew/~4/bfkpwn6OJUY" height="1" width="1"/>Rich Dweckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11953641382066344007noreply@blogger.com0http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/04/time-for-modern-orthodox-leaders-to.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6523803876782435901.post-64245860502437662672013-04-25T09:05:00.001-04:002013-04-25T09:05:40.689-04:002013-04-25T09:05:40.689-04:00"Door Is Wide Open For Gay Jews To Be Leaders" - by Stuart Kurlander <br>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stuart Kurlander</td></tr>
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4/23/13, The Jewish Week- For years I have been an active volunteer for many local and national Jewish organizations. Locally, I have worked hard to climb the ladder of involvement and become our federation’s president. It is only now I can truly find the words to describe a frustrating problem that, from years of experience, I now have the clarity and vision to express.</div>
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I am the first gay president our federation has ever had in a volunteer capacity. Arguably, I am one of the first gay men across the country to be president of a major Jewish organization. I say this with humility but also because I have learned many lessons from this vantage point about advocacy.</div>
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There are too few gay and lesbian lay leaders and professionals in senior positions of Jewish institutional leadership. Many believe that this is because the world isn’t ready or willing to accept us in such roles. My experience has shown me that this is simply not the situation today. It is often a perpetuated myth, one of several, that I want to question today because it is one of many assumptions that we cannot afford to nurture if the voice of serious gay and lesbian potential leaders is to be heard. We can be our own biggest stumbling block, and my diagnosis of the problem lies with three central myths.</div>
</div></div><a href="http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/04/door-is-wide-open-for-gay-jews-to-be.html#more">Click to continue reading article »</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IdeasOfAGaySyrianJew/~4/DmXKve4hC2M" height="1" width="1"/>Rich Dweckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11953641382066344007noreply@blogger.com0http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/04/door-is-wide-open-for-gay-jews-to-be.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6523803876782435901.post-78200743325577735772013-04-23T21:10:00.001-04:002013-04-23T21:29:56.594-04:002013-04-23T21:29:56.594-04:00"The Stranger Within Your Gates: Answering Questions about Bais Abraham’s Recent Eshel Shabbat" by Rabbi Hyim Shafner<br>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">On a recent Shabbat, Bais Abraham <b>hosted speakers from Eshel (<a href="http://www.eshelonline.org/" style="color: #b85b5a; text-decoration: none;">www.eshelonline.org</a>), a national organization building communities of support, learning, and inclusion for Orthodox lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Jews. </b> The three speakers were LGBT Orthodox individuals, two of whom came to observance later in life and one of whom grew up Chassidic. They each shared their personal journey of what it is like for them to be LGBT in the Orthodox community today. A recent Orthodox rabbinic effort to show compassion and support for LGBT Orthodox members of the Jewish family is reflected in the <b>Statement of Principals </b>signed by over 200 Orthodox rabbis<b>.</b> It can be found at<a href="http://statementofprinciplesnya.blogspot.com/" style="color: #b85b5a; text-decoration: none;">http://statementofprinciplesnya.blogspot.com/</a> .</span></div>
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<strong><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Over the past two weeks, I received many questions about our Shabbat program from people from different parts of the Orthodox and general Jewish communities. Here are some of the questions and my responses:</span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Q. Why don’t you just keep quiet about this? If someone is gay, let them sit in shul like anyone else. Why should we bring this out into the open and discuss it? </span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">To remain silent is to reject people. We tend to demonize and stigmatize what we do not know. Individuals who fall prey to social stigmas are forced to feel like outsiders because no one will talk about their issues. Such individuals keep their conditions hidden but the cost will be that they do not feel part of the community. They will hear loud and clear what people implicitly feel, that they are flawed. In addition, there will be no forum or opportunity in which to educate others in the community about the suffering of the stigmatized individuals, thus there is no possibility for sensitivity to their experiences. This can result in a feeling of rejection, and psychological, if not actual, aloneness. When we ignore the challenges of people in our community and ignore our own conscious or unconscious rejection of them, we cannot expect them to feel included, and we cannot love them as ourselves. This is the case for LGBT Orthodox Jews.</span></div>
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<strong><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Q. How can you feature something that is a violation of Jewish law?</span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Halacha (Jewish law) is, of course, of central importance to us as Orthodox Jews. Our Shabbat program, however, was not designed to focus on halacha. That is something that that every Orthodox LGBT person discusses privately with his or her rabbi. Our program was about moving toward a culture in which LGBT Jews do not have to feel excluded from the Orthodox community. It was to find a place of compassion and inclusion, so LGBT Orthodox Jews do not feel like outsiders, which historically has led to losing them entirely to Yiddishkeit, or worse. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Before we judge anyone who is LGBT or condemn them in the abstract, we owe it to ourselves to humanize this topic and hear real people tell their very real stories, or else we may violate the saying in Pirkey Avot, <i>Al tidan es chavero ad shetagia li’mikomo</i>. Do not judge another person until you have been in their place. Many would like to pretend that there are no LGBT people in our midst, but the weekend not only showed us that they are members of our community, but also underscored that they are our neighbors, our children, our brothers, our sisters, and our friends. They are in the stories presented to us, devout individuals who truly value Torah and mitzvot.</span></div>
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<strong><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Q. Rabbi, does having this panel serve any religious purpose for those of us who are not LGBT? What can the rest of us learn from this about our own avodat Hashem (service to God)?</span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I found it inspiring that when faced with something that would make it so difficult to be observant and to remain within the Orthodox community–a community with little sensitivity to the feelings of those who are gay–they choose, despite feeling alienated, to remain in the community. Their love for Torah, for mitzvot, for Hashem and for the Jewish People is so strong that though it would be much easier to leave Orthodoxy, they do not. Among other things, we can learn from LGBT Orthodox Jews about commitment to Torah even in very difficult circumstances. </span></div>
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<strong><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Q. If someone LGBT wants to be in our community, do you expect us to accept them? To give them aliyot?</span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In many shuls, even people who violate weighty mitzvot of various types between humans and G-d and between humans and other humans, are welcomed. Why should we treat the LGBT Jews any differently? Indeed it could be argued that not keeping kosher or other important mitzvot is a choice, and LGBT, as we now know, is not a choice. If it were, the vast majority of Orthodox LGBT people would choose not to be LGBT. With regard to people who are transgender, the halachic question arises with regard to whether to give them aliyot and where they should sit in shul. There are various opinions among poskim as to the status of the gender of transgender people, depending upon where in the process of transition they are.</span></div>
<a href="http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/04/the-stranger-within-your-gates.html#more">Click to continue reading article »</a><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/IdeasOfAGaySyrianJew/~4/tl6DeJTCV2Y" height="1" width="1"/>Rich Dweckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11953641382066344007noreply@blogger.com0http://www.jewishpinkelephant.com/2013/04/the-stranger-within-your-gates.html