lgbt religious jews articles part 2

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 An Easter Treat: Our Religious Allies
BY Trudy Ring.
April 06 2012 1:12 PM ET

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F JAY DEACON BOOK 390x (COURTESY) ADVOCATE.COM Mormon Stories
In addition to the books listed on previous pages, there are
 many other sources of good news for LGBT people of various faiths. Mormon
 Stories, a support community for LGBT Mormons, will hold a conference,
“Circling the Wagons,” in Washington, D.C., April 20-22. Keynote speakers will
 be Carol Lynn Pearson, whose book No More Goodbyes: Circling the Wagons
 Around Our Gay Loved Ones calls for Mormons
 to become more welcoming to LGBT people, and Mitch Mayne, a gay man who serves
 as executive secretary to his Mormon bishop.


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 An Easter Treat: Our Religious Allies
BY Trudy Ring.
April 06 2012 1:12 PM ET

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MORMONS CIRCLING THE WAGONS 390x (COURTESY) ADVOCATE.COMMuslims for Progressive Values; Catholics for Equality
Muslims for Progressive Values is spreading an egalitarian,
 inclusive vision of Islam with women and gays in leadership positions. It will
 hold its sixth annual retreat, with the
 theme “A Theology of Mercy,” in New York City in July. Spreading the progressive gospel in another faith, Catholics for Equality,
 founded in 2010, is mobilizing Catholics to lobby for LGBT rights, which it
 calls part of “the rich tradition of Catholic social justice teachings.”


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MUSLIMS FOR PROGRESSIVE VALUES 390x (COURTESY) ADVOCATE.COMSoulforce and More
Participants in Soulforce’s Equality Ride are taking a message of acceptance to religious colleges and other institutions
 around the nation this month and next. Add to that the work of Believe Out
 Loud, Faith in America, Faithful America, and many other interfaith and
 faith-specific groups advocating LGBT equality, and there’s much to celebrate
 in this season of rebirth.


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Faith, love and sexuality

Written by Veronica Everett | April 9, 2012


Are religions, regardless of how they are practiced, actively hostile toward homosexuality? Or do the Old and New Testaments contain messages that transcend this common perception?
Jay Michaelson seeks a more nuanced approach to discussing religion in the context of gay rights advocacy.
Jay Michaelson seeks a more nuanced approach to discussing religion in the context of gay rights advocacy.
This evening, Portland State’s Queer Resource Center and Judaic Studies program will host a lecture by Jay Michaelson, author of God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality (Beacon). Michaelson will discuss his personal journey as a gay Jew and why advocates for gay rights should include religious arguments.
But rather than rely on the conventional tit-for-tat strategy of using one Biblical verse to refute another, Michaelson appeals to the values of love and equality present in certain faith traditions. He believes that the dialogue in favor of gay rights should no longer seek to stereotype religions as anti-gay institutions.
Michaelson is the author of four books and 200 articles on the intersections of religion, spirituality, sexuality and law. God vs. Gay?, his latest book, has been nominated for a 2012 Lambda Literary Award. He is a contributing editor to the Forward newspaper, associate editor of Religion Dispatches magazine and the founding editor of Zeek magazine.
Book of love Michaelson’s latest tome turns a new page in the spiritual dialogue about marriage equality.
Book of love Michaelson’s latest tome turns a new page in the spiritual dialogue about marriage equality.
In addition, his work has appeared in Salon, Newsweek, Tikkun, The Huffington Post and other publications. His other books include Everything is God: The Radical Path of Nondual Judaism and Another Word for Sky: Poems.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Vanguard: What will your lecture at PSU focus on?

Jay Michaelson: It’s a part of my tour to support my book, which is called God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality. It’s been on tour now for a few months, and I have been talking to a lot of college campuses as well as churches, synagogues and other places like that. I am trying to question the false dichotomy that many people perceive between sexuality and religion. I will be telling a bit about my story and trying to tell all of us, regardless of whether we are religious or whether we are gay or straight, to play a role in trying to have a better conversation than the one we often have about homosexuality and religion.

VG: Do you discuss specific Biblical passages or verses in your book, or is it about the overall message of such scriptures as the Bible?

JM: That is the message of the book. We can argue back and forth about two or three verses out of 31,000 in the Bible, and we don’t really get anywhere because the real question isn’t how to make sense of Leviticus but how do we interpret our religious scriptures in a way that is true to our values. I do talk about scriptural passages in the book…but I think it’s the least interesting part. It’s not hard to read it one way or the other: You can have a really conservative reading or a really liberal reading, and you don’t get anywhere.
The answer is that we don’t have to get stuck there. We have other clues about how to interpret those passages, and how—to put it more broadly—to be in a community together. Those are values, like: It’s not good to be alone; love is holy; we should pursue justice and equality; before judging another person, we should try to be in their shoes; love your neighbor as yourself, like you would want to be loved and not in a condescending way. That’s really what the book is about.

VG: What kind of reaction have you gotten from the more secular side of the LGBT community?

JM: Some of the questions I often get are, “Why should we care about religion?” and so on. Let’s just get away from them completely. Let the Titanic sink, and get these people off our back. I am very receptive to that view, but I think it’s actually a privileged view to take. Activists often ask: “Who are we? Who is the community that we are a part of?” To me the “we” includes people and kids who aren’t so privileged and can’t just say, “I’m over religion.” They might be in very conservative homes, or living in places where public values are dictated by religion. All I really have to say is two words: Rick Santorum. It’s just to demonstrate that religion, unfortunately for some, is playing a central role in how our secular culture conceives this issue. If we ignore that part of our culture, we are really betraying the most vulnerable members of our community.

VG: The liberal-secular group has been known as some of the biggest supporters of gay and lesbian rights. But it’s not the Constitution vs. the Bible; it’s more about bringing religion into the conversation instead of trying to exclude it, right?

JM: I went to law school, was trained as a lawyer and I worked in public policy for a little bit, so I do get the constitutional argument, but there is something deeper here. Those who are on the pro-equality team should try to understand that folks on the other side are not all heathens, homophobes and stupid people. Some are like that, but a lot of people are sincerely troubled by what they perceive to be a conflict in their internal religious values or philosophical values. On the one hand, they want to feel compassionate towards their family members or community members. But on the other hand, they have a sincere religious belief, and it is possible to engage with that. We don’t have to just leave it on the table or tell people you have to choose one or the other.

I was active here in New York in the marriage equality battle that we won in June last year, and it was God vs. gay every night in the media. You would see an opponent of marriage equality wearing a clerical collar or in some way indicating that they were religious. And for the marriage equality side it would be someone not religious who would not be talking about the values and would only be talking about liberty and equality. That is an important conversation, but it’s only one of the many that need to have.

VG: It seems that being anti-religion is hypocritical in an equality debate as religion is also a civil right. What are your views on this argument?

JM: The right wing is onto this. What we see is a new wave of anti-gay activism, and it’s couching itself in the language of religious freedom: “I’m entitled to have the freedom to discriminate.” That argument is really cynical, but it stems from the failure to have the values conversation that we need to have. It’s really striking what’s happening now. The bullies have their lobby in state legislatures to try to hurt and restrict anti-bulling laws. They are calling out religious exemptions. You can beat up a kid on the playground if you say God made you do it. 
Who would Jesus bully? That doesn’t seem to be the message of the gospel.
It points to the fact that this is not just a public legal debate; it is a values debate. We are missing the heart of the matter if we refuse to engage. There are a lot of religious queer people that are happy in their religious community. They aren’t the majority in the LGBT community, but there are a lot of us. 

VG: How old were you when you came out?

JM: I was old! I came out to myself in my 20s and out to everyone else when I was close to 30. I lived “God vs. gay.” I really thought that coming out would be the end of my religious life, but after I did I found it was the most religious thing I’d ever done. I wish when I was in college I was “out and loud and proud.” But on the other hand, that experience reminds me about what the stakes really are. I was never physically in danger, so I had it relatively easy. But I did experience what it’s like “in the closet.” I have a firsthand experience about how antithetical it is to anything I would call spirituality.

VG: It seems that people tend to pick and choose words and passages and use them for any particular agenda they want. What are your thoughts on how religion is used as a weapon?

JM: That’s in the traditions itself. There’s the adage that the Devil can quote the Bible for his own purpose. If we’re not guided by real values, being a community and really understanding other people, it’s just a game. You can twist the Bible and any other book for that matter to do whatever you want. There is directionality to how consciousness evolves with these kinds of questions. It’s really hard to maintain that when you open your eyes and your ears to the people in your community. That’s why I feel optimistic about this struggle. It can get kind of nasty sometimes, but I know I’m going to win. When you see, even in traditional religious communities, the sense of crisis they have around this issue you know you’re going to win.
PSU’s Queer Resource Center and Judaic Studies Program present
A lecture with Jay Michaelson
 Tonight
 4–5:30 p.m.
 Native American Student and Community Center
 Free and open to the public
Print Friendly


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Gotta Give 'Em Hope
I know that you cannot live on hope alone, but without it, life is not worth living.... And you, and you, and you gotta give 'em hope.  —Harvey Milk.
Inspired by Milk, I offer this website to anyone who feels alone, confused, unwanted and unaccepted.







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Tuesday, April 10, 2012

  
Passover, Freedom and Triumph

Between celebrating the new babies in my family, attending a delightful Nehirim retreat and preparing myself for Passover and lending a hand to my parents for Pesach, I haven’t had much time to sit at my computer. In meantime, Gotta Give ‘em Hope received over 30,000 views the Friday before last — in just under two months! I continue to be amazed and humbled by the response, and I am thankful to all the readers and supporters.
The weekend before last, I had the great pleasure of attending a retreat hosted by Nehirim. Nehirim is an organization that fosters environments that allow for LGBT Jewish people to enjoy and explore spiritual and social community. The retreat was in the very comfortable setting of the mountains of Connecticut at the Isabella Freedman Retreat Center. I spent a lot of time talking to the many interesting and beautiful souls who are part of the wonder LGBT Jewish community, and I also  spent time on my own just relaxing and reflecting over my life.
When I was still deeply in the closet and undergoing “reparative therapy” to become straight, I attended a few weekend retreats that also involved meeting other gay people, but in a very different context. We weren’t celebrating our identities; we wanted to change who we are. Those weekends were 48 hours of non-stop, planned programing. While I won’t delve into those details of those weekends, which ripe for movies on their own, I will say here that they definitely left a traumatic impression on me of “weekends” and “retreats”. On any weekend retreat now, part of me is always a little nervous of being reminded me of those 48 hour periods of absolute hell and false hopes that I had desperately wanted to be true.
After the Nehirim retreat however, I am happy to remember those two blissful days full of hope and acceptance. I was left with a strong sense of peace, joy and contentment for having been able to meet such incredible people celebrating who we are as gay Jews and our beautiful and thriving community, which is growing stronger and more vibrant and radiant through the work of Nehirim. I feel absolutely blessed and proud to be a part of it.
The Nehirim retreat served as a great reminder to me of the importance of community and great preparation for Passover, the holiday that celebrates Jewish freedom and justice. For me, it’s also an opportunity to celebrate personal freedom. This Passover has been going really well. I had spent large parts of last week and the previous helping my parents with various tasks in hard work of preparing for this holiday. I think I had a lot more preparing to do while growing up as Orthodox in my parents’ home. Now the preparation is over, and I am able to celebrate freedom with my friends and family.
I have enjoyed the wonderful company of my growing family, as well as two wonderful seders with my dear friends, the Balkany Family. I’ve been spending a lot of time reflecting on the meaningful things I’ve done in the past few months, the cathartic experience they’ve taken me on and the wonderful, touching feedback, emails, facebook messages and acknowledgments I have received from many people. I could have never dreamed that I would get this far in such a short time.
While I feel grateful for many things, this Passover particularly I also feel free. I have enjoyed the freedom to tell the truth to those who will listen and to offer hope to those who may feel there is none and to live freely and contentedly with who I am — a feeling that many of us are lucky have and celebrate in our lives. Diversity is what makes this world vibrant and beautiful.
I hope that everyone reading this can embrace the freedom that is our right. It might be just one click away — a phone call, or a community or family event that can change your lives; wherever your freedom is, it is most certainly there waiting for you. And, when you find it, you will feel the sweetness of nothing but acceptance, appreciation and love. 

 Posted by  Chaim Levin     at  10:13 AM       
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2 comments:
 



Frum, Gay and MarriedApril 10, 2012 at 11:45 AM
This post is beautiful. I almost feel like it was written specifically for me. I am sure others will feel the same. It truly resonates. Even though my recent blog post on "Freedom" has a markedly different perspective, you hav accomplished what your goal in "Gotta Give em Hope" is. You have given me hope this morning.
Thank you.
Reply



RockyApril 10, 2012 at 11:54 AM
My cousin sent me this video in honor of the Passover season:
http://americancomedynetwork.com/animation.html?bit_id=24646
"Matzo Man" is a parody of the disco tune "Macho Man" and first appeared on Saturday Night Live a few years ago. The original song was sung by the Village People in the late 1970's, along with their other popular tune "YMCA".
Lorne Michaels (born Lipowitz), the creator and producer of SNL, grew up in the heavily Jewish Forest Hill neighborhood of Toronto.
Sometimes laughing helps.
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‘Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey between Genders’ by Joy Ladin
Posted on 16. May, 2012 by Jay Michaelson in Nonfiction, Reviews
“It Gets Better” is an oversimplification.  We queers know this; we know that sometimes it gets worse before it gets better, and that sometimes, it gets worse again, and that other times, some days you just have to get through one at a time.  And yet, like our other metaphors – Coming Out, Transitioning – It Gets Better suggests a linearity that is at odds with LGBTQ experience, even as it also, helpfully, offers hope.
Joy Ladin’s lyrical and thoughtful new memoir, Through the Door of Life, adds another before-and-after metaphor to the mix, and yet its searing narrative undercuts any such simplifications. For Ladin, life didn’t get better when she began her gender transition in 2007. In many ways, it got worse: her wife and children rejected her, her suicidal ideation intensified, and for a time she lost everything.
And yet, even without the redemptive last chapter which gives the book its title, one can still say that even if life got harder when she transitioned, it also, at least, began. Ladin vividly describes forty years of gender dysphoria, of feeling disembodied, detached, dehumanized. She was, in a way that brings the cliché new meaning, a shell of a man. Yes, after her transition, “all of the things that constituted progress – family, love, career success, financial security – had receded beyond any foreseeable horizon.” Often (perhaps even too often) she mourns these losses. But nowhere does she regret taking them on.
By coincidence, I read Through the Door of Life at the same time as Kate Bornstein’s new memoir, A Queer and Pleasant Danger. Not to state the obvious, it was remarkable how two Jewish male-to-female transgender stories could be so different. Bornstein is radical; Ladin relatively conservative (in terms of lifestyle, not politics). Ladin’s lowest ebb – wanting to cut herself – was, for Bornstein, a passion for blood sports. And as their titles indicate, Bornstein is acerbic and witty, Ladin often melancholy and poetic. (Apart from this memoir, Ladin is best known as a poet; I reviewed a recent book of Ladin’s poetry for this publication.)
Most importantly, the two differ on the meaning of gender identity itself.  In Ladin’s words, “Some people glory in gender mutability, gleefully remaking themselves according to mood and occasion. I, however, am old-fashioned – a garden-variety transsexual, rather than a post-modernist shape-shifter.”  Bornstein, of course, is precisely a “post-modernist shape-shifter” whose gender workbook has provided inspiration to thousands of others.
Yet Ladin is not exactly a “garden-variety transsexual,” precisely because of the self-awareness she brings to her journey. She is aware that people like Bornstein exist, and is aware that she is not one of them. She knows that many feminists criticize transwomen like her for transitioning to an essentialized and even sexist version of femininity – and she responds to the critique brilliantly, while acknowledging both its validity and its hurtfulness. In painstakingly and painfully constructing her new self, Ladin is fully aware of the societal conventions and privileges of which she makes use. I don’t know of anyone else who has so articulately defended what some queers (mis-)take to be a conventional notion of gender, and Through the Door of Life, is, if nothing else, an important voice on the gender spectrum.
And then there’s “the God thing,” as Ladin puts it. Through the Door of Life is subtitled “A Jewish Journey Between Genders,” and Ladin’s sincere religiosity may be, for many readers, the most radical element of the book. Ladin’s Jewishness doesn’t pervade the book; it figures prominently in only a handful of the vignettes that make it up. But I know from my own experience – I’ve written a book about religion and sexual diversity, and I founded an LGBT Jewish organization at which Ladin and I briefly worked together – that even a dollop of religion can send some readers running for the secular hills. What’s probably most shocking about Ladin’s religious life is that she works – once again, after a year’s leave – at Stern College, the women’s school of Yeshiva University, an Orthodox Jewish institution. This is what made her famous, or infamous –a New York Post article outed her, and Yeshiva University, on page three. And admittedly, it can make one’s head spin.
But Ladin’s private religiosity, rather than her public persona, is what is so stirring here.  Particularly in the last section of the book, she describes a deeply personal relationship with a silent God, not the deity familiar from conventional religion but an echo of her fears and, even in its silence, a kind of comfort as well. To me, the honesty and vulnerability which Ladin shows in these portions of the book is inspiring.  They are never preachy, never seeking to convince. Still, I wonder if readers with little patience for religion may find them frustrating. It would be their loss if so, for they illuminate the complexity of Ladin’s spirit, and the courage of her writing.
Some of the most painful passages in Through the Door of Life concern Ladin’s family. Her wife and children seem cruel, even as Ladin understands the damage she has done to them and paints them sympathetically.  Her kids are angry, sad, defiant. Her wife is uncompromising in her view of Ladin’s selfishness. And there is no real redemption here, only Ladin’s choice of life over death, reminiscent of one of Beckett’s characters, who says “You must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on.”
Perhaps the most underwritten, if not outright baffling, part of the memoir concerns Ladin’s father who, for reasons we are never really told, simply stops speaking to her in 1983.  This aspect of Ladin’s life seems to have less bearing on her gender identity, and perhaps discussing it too much would have taken her far astray from her central themes. It glares, though, especially as Ladin is able to become closer, post-transition, with her mother. I wanted more here, but perhaps the relationship is inexplicable even to Ladin herself.
Kate Bornstein is more of a gender outlaw than is Joy Ladin. Yet perhaps because her desires are so unexceptional – love, a career, a sense of wholeness – Ladin’s journey seems the more difficult one.  Of course, it’s unfair to compare, and both of them have suffered plenty. But there seems to be a poignancy, of which Ladin is exquisitely aware, that precisely because what Ladin wants is so normal, her efforts to obtain it are so fraught with pain.

Through the Door of Life
 By Joy Ladin
 University of Wisconsin Press
Hardcover, 9780299287306,  270 pp.
March 2012

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About Jay Michaelson
Jay Michaelson is a columnist for The Forward, Huffington Post, Zeek, Tikkun, Hadassah, and Reality Sandwich. His books include God in Your Body, Another Word for Sky: Poems, and Everything is God: The Radical Path of Nondual Judaism. He is also the executive director of Nehirim, a leading national advocacy group for LGBT Jews.

Tags: Bio/Memoir, Jay Michaelson, Joy Ladin, Reviews, Through the Door of Life, Trans, Transgender, transwoman



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Jay Michaelson to Speak on The Religious Case for Same-Sex Marriage
by Chris Bargeron  October 18, 2012

The conversation about same-sex marriage is continuing as Minnesotans go to the polls in three weeks to vote on an amendment to the state constitution that, if passed, would define marriage solely between two people of the opposite sex. Despite the fact that marriage between same-sex couples is already against the law in Minnesota, this has become a lightning-rod social issue across the state, with amendment proponents and opponents flooding the media with advertisements.
Organizations working to defeat the marriage amendment, including Minnesotans United for All Families, Project 515, OutFront Minnesota, and Jewish Community Action have centered their efforts on a primary strategy: civil, thoughtful conversations. The idea is very simple: people who oppose marriage between two people of the same sex often change their minds on the issue when they have a real conversation with someone who favors the option of marriage for same-sex couples.
Jewish writer, scholar and LGBT activist Jay Michaelson is coming to the Twin Cities on Saturday, October 20th to teach about how Jewish and Christian religious texts and values actually support the creation of loving, committed marriages between Jay Michaelson2 198x300 Jay Michaelson to Speak on The Religious Case for Same Sex Marriagetwo people of the same sex, and how amendment opponents can bring a religious perspective to conversations. Michaelson is the author of God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality, in which he makes the case that religious people should support equality for gay people because of their religion, not despite it. My review of this book can be found here.
I had the opportunity to interview Jay Michaelson about his upcoming visit to the Twin Cities. Here’s an excerpt:
Chris Bargeron: What have you learned about authentic dialogue and how can this be applied to the debate about freedom to marry for same-sex couples?
Jay Michaelson: Especially in our day and age, we’re used to talking in our own echo chambers, and not reaching across the figurative aisle (or dinner table) to those with whom we disagree. As a result, in the case of same-sex marriage, we often end up having the same tired arguments in which everyone talks past one another: religion on one side, civil rights on the other; traditional marriage versus gay rights. This is really unhelpful.
For example, when Dan Savage tells people to “ignore the bulls–t in the Bible,” that hurts the movement for equality. It sounds good to liberals and atheists, but it confirms the worst fears of a traditional religious person who does not believe the Bible is, or contains, bulls–t. It’s also not helpful to just shout “separation of church and state!” because that, too, isn’t necessarily a shared value. Many people think the church should inform how the state acts.  If we don’t get out of our personal ideological boxes, we won’t make much progress.
Instead, we need to recognize the real, non-homophobic, non-bigoted concerns of traditional religious people: that values are changing quickly and that is potentially dangerous. We need to find common cause with them, even if we don’t share certain views about the world. We can do that, because it’s true. None of us wants a world with rampant sleaze, porn everywhere, tweens having sex—those of us who support equality just believe that LGBT people getting married have nothing to do with that.
And we need to highlight that this is actually an intra-religious crisis. For example, you can’t believe in a loving God who loves human beings, and then tell 5-10% of those human beings to be lonely their whole lives. That’s against Genesis 2:18 (“It is not good for the human being to be alone”) and our basic sense of fairness. If we can get folks to the place where they see that internal crisis, then they will do the rest of the work on their own. I’ve seen this happen, time and time again.
CB: What are your impressions of how this issue is playing out in Minnesota?
JM: I actually am cautiously optimistic. As you know, Minnesota is the closest battle of the four states with marriage on the ballot. I think the pro same-sex marriage coalitions on the ground have done a fantastic job of presenting this issue truthfully, in a way that resonates with folks’ deep-seated values of “live and let live” and basic fairness. From the outside, Minnesota often appears very polarized: Al Franken on one side, Michele Bachmann on the other. In between those poles, though, are a whole lot of sensible moderates. I feel like cool heads will ultimately prevail.
I’m really grateful for the opportunity to share some of the experience that I and others have gained nationally. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel. We’ve done it before. We know what works. And we know that at this point, it comes down to individual people talking to their friends, neighbors, co-workers, and family members. This is a “retail” issue, not a wholesale one. If there’s anything I can do to help the people who have been working on the ground here for months and years now, that makes all the work I do worthwhile.
Jay Michaelson will speak at a private home in Woodbury on Saturday, October 20th from 7pm to 9pm. This event is a fundraiser for Minnesotans United for All Families and Jewish Community Action, and is open to the public. To RSVP and receive event details, including the location, e-mail Amy Lange at amy@mnunited.org.

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About Chris Bargeron



Chris Bargeron endeavors to do his part to repair the world, one conversation or relationship at a time -- but tries not to think about it that way because that would be totally overwhelming. He is a non-profit leader, a clinical social worker, and writes about things that are on his mind. These days, Chris spends a lot of time thinking about living Jewishly and living well. He loves to read blog-post comments and hopes that you tell him what you're thinking about. Chris is a member of Shir Tikvah, and has a private psychotherapy practice in the Twin Cities. More information is available at www.bargeron.net.




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HaBaitah For The Holidays
Jay Michaelson to Speak on The Religious Case for Same-Sex Marriage
God Bless the Whole World – No Exceptions
‘Question One’ Listens Deeply to Both Sides of Marriage Divide
TC Blogger Finds “Pretty Good Reasons” to Oppose Marriage Amendment
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Thursday, October 18, 2012 | return to: news & features, local

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Gathering of the transgender tribe set for Berkeley
by rebecca rosen lum, j. correspondent

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In film, books, blogs and newspaper articles, transgender Jews have focused mainly on identity and inclusion — or barriers to it.
But at the upcoming Jewish Transgender Gathering in Berkeley, the goal will be to shine a light onto spirituality. Not only will the emphasis of the three-day gathering be on Torah, but “Torah that has never been talked about in this way,” Reconstructionist Rabbi David Bauer pointed out.
Noach Dzmura
Noach Dzmura
 Bauer is the West Coast director of Nehirim, which developed the Nov. 2-4 conference with several partner organizations. It will be held at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, and it will coincide with the area’s first Muslim transgender gathering and the larger Transgender Religious Leadership Summit, now in its sixth year.
Nehirim is a national nonprofit that works on building community for LGBT Jews, partners and allies. It was founded in 2004 by writer Jay Michaelson, author of “God vs. Gay” and three other books.
The Jewish transgender conference will begin on Friday evening with a Shabbat service led by Rabbi Reuben Zellman and poet Joy Ladin, followed by a Shabbat dinner and what is billed as a “Heart Circle.” The circle and other events are closed sessions, for the transgender Jewish community only, but other sessions are open.
As far as organizers can tell, the Jewish transgender gathering is the first conference of its kind, said Noach Dzmura, executive assistant and director of educational technology at Starr King School of the Ministry.
“We’ve come a long way,” said Zellman, assistant rabbi and music director at Congregation Beth El in Berkeley. “Before I went to rabbinical school over 10 years ago, nobody talked about these things.”
Joy Ladin
Joy Ladin
 Dzmura, who is known for editing the book “Balancing on the Mechitza: Transgender in Jewish Community,” will team up with Ladin to lead a session titled “Face Time with God: A New Look at the Psalms.” Ladin will also lead Torah study on Saturday morning.
Ladin is a widely published poet and a Yeshiva University professor — “probably the only openly transgender person at any Orthodox institution in the world,” she said.
Other sessions include “Being a Jewish Gender Outlaw” (led by Ariel Vegosen, a fair trade and media social justice activist who identifies as genderqueer); “Being Transgender Is Kosher: Beyond the Binary in Ancient Jewish Texts” (led by Rabbi Dev Noily of Kehilla Community Synagogue in Piedmont and one-time transgender law specialist Ben Lunine from Congregation Sha’ar Zahav in San Francisco); and “Does Judaism Love Your Body?” (led by Rabbi David Dunn, founder and coordinator of “The Jewish Queer Sexual Ethics Project” at the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry at Pacific School of Religion).
 “There is no question that Jewish vision provides ample paradigms for what it means to be open to transformation and change,” Zellman said. “Judaism itself is always changing and always will be. We are instructed every day to remember the Exodus. That the way we are now is not the way it always has to be.”
Rabbi Reuben Zellman
Rabbi Reuben Zellman
 Added Bauer: “Torah is revealed over time through interpretation. For centuries, the only voices called to interpret were men’s — and within that group, hetero-identified men. Only in the second part of the 20th century did we begin to listen to women’s interpretation. And only in the past decade have we listened to [LGBT voices]. Each new individual interpretation reveals new magic.”
Other items on the schedule include “Torah Yoga,” a Havdallah service and a networking session. Highlights from the 2011 Los Angeles Transgender Film Festival will be shown as well.
The gathering is co-sponsored by Keshet, Starr King School for the Ministry, the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry at the Pacific School of Religion and Light In the Closet ministries.
Nehirim has issued an open invitation to people “who are questioning or exploring their gender, their queerness or their relationship to Judaism and Jewish community,” noting that they will be able to explore questions and answers “in a safe and confidential space.”
“Transgender” is an umbrella term that describes all gender-nonconforming people, including transsexuals (those who opt for surgery and/or hormone therapy). The gathering will welcome transgender, transsexual, queer, intersex and all gender-nonconforming Jews — and their families and friends.
“Judaism flourishes when Jews bring our authentic selves to the table,” Zellman said.

The Jewish Transgender Gathering will take place Nov. 2-4 at the Pacific School of Religion, 1798 Scenic Ave., Berkeley. $40-$120. http://www.nehirim.org/transgathering, david@nehirim.org or (212) 908-2515

 
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News

Transgender Jews Seek Place at Table
Conference Aims To Break Communal Silence on Issue
Speaking Up: Transgender Jews celebrate shabbat at a California synagogue.
Speaking Up: Transgender Jews celebrate shabbat at a California synagogue.

By Chanan Tigay
Published November 14, 2012, issue of November 16, 2012.
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Berkeley, Calif. — Shortly before Emily Aviva Kapor began the transition from male to female, she sat down to discuss the process with her mother.
“I told her I was going on hormones, and she said the most Jewish thing to me,” 27-year-old Kapor recalled. “She said, ‘Well, at least you’re not getting a tattoo.’”
It’s a funny line that anyone with a Jewish mother can appreciate. But as it turns out, the most Jewish thing to say on the subject of gender identity probably would have been nothing at all.
Related ◾A Transsexual at Yeshiva University
◾Transgender Jews May Be Nothing New
◾Transgender Jews Now Out of Closet, Seeking Communal Recognition
For many years, those knowledgeable on the subject say, Jews and Jewish organizations largely met their transgender co-religionists with silence. Slowly, that is beginning to change. From November 2 to November 4, Kapor and nearly 30 other transgender, transsexual, queer, intersex and gender-nonconforming Jews from across North America sought to expand this opening-up process at a gathering here, billed as the first-ever retreat for such Jews.
“With transgender and gender-queer identity, there wasn’t a Jewish frame of reference in which to speak it,” said Rabbi David Dunn Bauer, director of West Coast programming for Nehirim, the LGBT group that sponsored the event. The result, he said, was “silence.”
On the other side of the equation, he added, “Jewish transgender people did not want to speak their names or their identities out loud — or if they did, they had to leave their communities and restart somewhere else, kind of like the witness protection program. So, there was silence from transgender people.”
The Nehirim Jewish Transgender Gathering, as the shabbaton was called, was “a space where people could be present in their full identities.”
Among those attending was Enzi Tanner, a 28-year-old African American who is in the process of converting to Judaism. Tanner grew up Pentecostal, was born again as a Baptist and later worked toward ordination as a United Church of Christ minister before deciding to convert to Judaism.
“For me, gender transformation and Judaism go hand in hand,” Tanner said, sitting outside the conference in his purple yarmulke, bowtie and suspenders. “Some things in my mind were always fixed: Gender cannot be changed; the only way to be Jewish is to be born Jewish. Once I realized that gender isn’t such a fixed thing, years later I met Jewish people and realized you didn’t have to be born Jewish to be Jewish.”

Tanner, a spoken-word artist, saw other links between his conversion to Judaism and his gender transition. Before sex reassignment surgery, transgender people must live in the gender to which they are transitioning. Similarly, Tanner, though still studying to become a Jew, is already living as a Jew.
Retreat participants took part in Sabbath services, as well as in seminars with names like “Being a Jewish Gender Outlaw,” “Being Transgender Is Kosher: Beyond the Binary in Ancient Jewish Texts” and “Does Judaism Love Your Body?” They also joined “heart circles” in which they spoke in highly personal terms about their own experiences. That such a gathering was taking place — and in public no less — was seen as a mark of progress, however sluggish. “It’s slowly changing from the perspective of many trans Jews,” said Joy Ladin, an English professor at Yeshiva University who was picked for this year’s Forward 50. She is the first openly transgender employee of an Orthodox Jewish institution. “But if you think about Jewish history being about 3,000 years long, there’s been rapid change.”
The changes have gathered pace over the past 10 to 15 years. Both Orthodox and Conservative rabbis, for example, have issued teshuvas, or religious opinions, on sex reassignment surgery. The Reform movement has ordained transgender rabbis, and the Reconstructionists are currently doing so — and both movements have made efforts to integrate issues of transgender into their curricula. In 2000, the Reform movement launched the Institute for Judaism, Sexual Orientation & Gender Identity.
Moreover, a network of organizations has emerged to work on behalf of transgender Jews. Jewish Transitions, a consultancy, provides guidance to transgender people on conversion and burial; Keshet, a co-sponsor of the shabbaton, works for the inclusion of the LGBT community in Jewish life; TransTorah.org makes trans and gender-queer Jewish resources available online, and Eshel supports LGBT people in traditional Jewish communities. A growing number of Jews and Jewish institutions are now asking questions that would have been unimaginable a short time ago about how Judaism does, and should, approach gender-nonconforming Jews.
Questions like: On which side of the mechitza, the partition dividing men and women, should a transgender person sit? Does a person who has transitioned from female to male need to undergo some kind of circumcision? If a male transitions to female, is a get, a Jewish divorce, required for that person to obtain a divorce? And when a trans-woman’s daughter is called to the Torah as a bat mitzvah and identified as “daughter of” Parent A and Parent B, should the trans-parent’s former — male — name be used or her new name?

Ladin recently found herself in that uncomfortable situation. Her ex-wife felt that, to reflect their history together, it was important to use Ladin’s former name in heralding their daughter’s entry to adulthood. Ladin understood her desire, but disagreed.
She told her ex-spouse, “I think that my present is more important than her past.” But then Ladin’s daughter weighed in, declaring Ladin said, that she didn’t “want to change her identity just because I changed mine,” The family arrived at a “livable compromise,” she related: Ladin would be acknowledged by both names.
When the moment of truth arrived, Ladin said, “the rabbi did something really great…. He just read it really fast. Even I couldn’t sort out the words. He made my female name and my male name unintelligible, minimizing the discomfort of my ex and myself simultaneously.”
“I think we did the best that we could in a difficult situation,” Ladin said.
Kapor, whose mother was pleased she wasn’t getting a tattoo, hopes to create a “gender-queer Halacha” and thereby nudge Jewish law toward a rendezvous with modernity on such issues. A former student at Jewish day schools, Kapor has begun studying independently for the rabbinate in service of this goal.
Still, while the Talmud addresses those with physical differences, the question of how a person experiences his or her own gender — the focus of much transgender thought today — has little precedent in early Jewish thought. As the sun descended on a Friday evening, participants gathered for Kabbalat Shabbat and sang many familiar tunes, sometimes altering the traditional words. Reuven Zellman, assistant rabbi and music director at Berkeley’s Reform-affiliated Congregation Beth El, led the traditional chant, “Hinei ma tov u” with a subtle twist: “Hineh ma tov u ma naim, shevet tranim gam yachad” :“Behold how good and how pleasing, transgender people sitting together.”
Zellman clearly knew his audience. Indeed, several participants said it was essential in their situation to maintain a good sense of humor. But for Bauer, the gathering was very serious business.
“Bringing respect and safety to transgender folk is a matter of life and death,” Bauer said. “There are so many people in history who have killed themselves; there are so many people who live lives as dead people, if you will, without ever getting a chance to be reborn into their new identities. Not holding this gathering would be like looking at a population in peril and saying, ‘We don’t care if you live or die.’”
Contact Chanan Tigay at feedback@forward.com


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Gnarlodious   · 48 weeks ago

I wonder how many transJews are not commenting for fear of being identified...

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Lisa Liel  · 48 weeks ago

Probably a lot. And can you blame them?

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@HadaSadah  · 41 weeks ago

As a Transsexual Jew myself, I really enjoyed finding this in Forward!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thank you, it made my day the day this article came in the mail. Now I just wish I could have been there.

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Noshie63   · 48 weeks ago

Why are their backs to the camera?Isn't this the "new normal"?I guess not.

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FriarYid   · 47 weeks ago

Aren't people entitled to decide how much media exposure they want at a time?

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Noshie63   · 47 weeks ago

I think they should be but very often journalists don't care and do what they want.Here the people were respected.

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Duncan McCullough  · 42 weeks ago

Our backs were to the camera because we were in the middle of services and he didn't wish to interrupt. Also there were a few folks in attendance who didn't wish to be outed.

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Orthodox Rabbis Say Gay ‘Cure’ Therapy Doesn’t Work
Dec 1, 2012 4:45 AM EST

Following a lawsuit against ‘reparative therapy’ for gays, Orthodox rabbis come out against the therapy, even as mainstream media outlets continue to give the unlicensed therapists a platform. Jay Michaelson reports.
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You know it’s a weird week when a group of Orthodox rabbis comes off understanding homosexuality better than mainstream TV personalities.
 Gay pride
Participants at the Gay Pride Parade in Jerusalem on August 2, 2012. (Gali Tibbon, AFP / Getty Images)

But that’s what happened: at the same time as the Rabbinical Council of America, the largest professional association of Orthodox rabbis in the world, was disavowing any connection with a leading provider of “reparative therapy” for gays in the wake of a new lawsuit, not one but two television doctors gave the therapy’s practitioners a sympathetic national spotlight.



In case you didn’t already know, “reparative therapy” is neither reparative nor therapy, but a collection of weird, disproven techniques designed to turn gay people straight.  Most “clients” come from conservative religious backgrounds, and are desperately trying to live as they believe God wants them to live. To most twenty-first century folks, the whole thing may seem ridiculous, a throwback to the days of quack cures for masturbation or “hysteria.” But as someone who works with LGBT religious people professionally, I’ve seen that it’s much worse than that; for many, it is deeply harmful.

On Tuesday, four former clients of a Jewish reparative-therapy outfit called JONAH (“Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing”)—sued the organization for fraud, claiming that it sold them quack therapies that were ineffective and counterproductive.

On Thursday, the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA), the professional association of more than 1,000 Orthodox rabbis around the world, sent an open email to its members that it no longer supported reparative therapy generally, or JONAH specifically.

These developments are big news in the world of religious gay people—and not just Jewish ones.  Together with the State of California’s recent decision to ban reparative therapy outright, they indicate the fast erosion of the constituency which once supported it most.

Yet just as the RCA was crafting its historic statement, two well-known TV personalities—ABC’s Mehmet Oz and HLN’s Drew Pinsky—gave airtime to the unlicensed quacks at NARTH, the National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality. On his show, Dr. Oz even designated one of them as an “expert” and allowed her to spout already-disproven pseudoscience completely unchallenged.

Nor was this the first time that mainstream media gave equal time to science and pseudoscience, the 99 percent of people who have failed at reparative therapy and the 1 percent who have somehow made it work.  Just last month, the New York Times devoted 1200 words to the stories of three men who praised ex-gay therapy, without a single quotation from a man who found it ineffective, counterproductive, or worse. And in 2010, ABC’s Nightline gave about 90 percent of a program to supposedly happy ex-gays and only about 10 percent to critics. (ABC later pulled the program offline without explanation.)

What do the Orthodox rabbis get that many in the mainstream media do not?

Dr. Oz doesn’t debate the relative merits of modern psychiatry versus the practice of drilling holes in peoples’ skulls to release demons, even though he could probably find “experts” on both sides to discuss it.

A brief background: Reparative therapy exists to explain why, if God hates gay people so much, they exist in the first place? Religious progressives have already solved this problem by saying that God doesn’t hate the gays after all. The six Biblical verses sometimes used against LGBT people are dwarfed by the other 31,000 verses in the Bible, many of which talk about love, compassion, justice, and other pro-inclusion values. It’s not hard to interpret the “bad” verses narrowly, or ignore them entirely, which is what progressives have done for forty years now.

Traditionalists, however, have attacked the other side of the theological equation. God hates gay sex, they say, but fortunately, gay people don’t exist at all. If you find yourself lusting for that same-sex co-worker, friend or teammate, that doesn’t make you gay—it just means you have Same-Sex Attraction (SSA) … a curable malady, sort of like the flu. It’s a psychological problem that comes from having too close a relationship with one’s mother, and too distant a relationship with one’s father. (Incidentally, you may have noticed that there are gay women too. Reparative therapy has not. Its rhetoric is entirely about men.)

Let’s set aside for the moment the inconvenient fact that millions of straight men have had smothering mothers and distant fathers—indeed, in the Jewish community, it’s our national custom. If being a mama’s boy eventually makes you gay, then “therapists” can work with this psychological problem like any other.



















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Liberals in our Midst: How the Religious Left Is Changing America’s Future
While the religious right claims the spotlight, faith-based progressives are working to bring about tolerance and acceptance.
December 10, 2012
Andri Antoniades 




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Progressive religion is at the forefront of social changes like marriage equality and LGBT acceptance. Some people may be surprised to learn that faith-based progressives are at the forefront of social changes such as marriage equality and LGBT acceptance.(Photo: Rob Melnychuk/Getty Images) 


After a hotly contested election year with—once again—a particular focus on the “religious right,” many Americans  are left with a generalized view of organized spirituality as being dogmatic and intolerant of differences. Though such generalities might be based on some specifics, they exclude an entire movement of clergy and religiously-affiliated laypeople who actively campaign for progressive issues such as marriage equality, gender equality and racial tolerance.
In fact, this “religious left” is effectively changing the way the public views some of the most significant social justice issues facing America today.
Self-identifying Christian and Jewish activists played a large role in legalizing same-sex marriage in four states this year. Jay Michaelson is an openly gay religious scholar, longtime LGBT activist, and author of God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality. Michaelson was part of that movement for marriage equality, working at a grass-roots level to help faith-based communities reconcile their spiritual beliefs with the rights of the LGBT community. As a result, states like Maryland made history by voting to legalize same-sex marriage.
MORE: Father Bob Pierson: Person of Interest


Michaelson tells TakePart that those wins came from faith-based principles that allowed activists to meet people with compassion and understanding. “We won because we were able to have conversations one on one with people of faith who are not bigoted or close-minded, but are sincerely struggling with these issues. Really, it’s a statistical fact that most people are somewhere in the middle. A lot of people of faith were supportive in general, but had deep reservations. We were able to engage with millions of people across the country during this election season, and that’s the role we [religiously affiliated groups] should be playing.”
Though LGBT rights and deep religious belief might superficially appear to be in conflict, it’s precisely because of their faith that the so-called religious left can embrace and champion the rights of people who are often maligned or looked upon as being “on the fringe.”
Pastor Joseph W. Tolton, the leader of Harlem’s groundbreaking Temple Christ Conscious Church, sees his faith as an instrument of inclusion. The pastor credits President Obama with introducing that concept to the country as a whole.
““Whatever spirituality means, it has something to do with being honest and truthful to yourself and others and being available to love− and you can’t do all those things if you’re lying about who you are to yourself and everybody else.””
Tolton tells TakePart, “When President Obama made his declaration to support marriage equality, for me the most important thing that he said was that his faith informed his decision. The cultural market is presenting a wonderful opportunity for faith to take a new role in driving the principles and the values of inclusion and driving a social justice agenda at the intersection of women’s rights, racial justice and LGBT inclusion, which actually play off of each other and work in support of each other. These issues are no longer siloed. I think that’s something the left brings to faith-based organizing.”
Michaelson says that his earliest beliefs about his Jewish faith made him feel a sense of shame and fear about identifying as gay. Later, he came to understand that his beliefs and his sexuality were actually perfectly aligned. “Whatever spirituality means, it has something to do with being honest and truthful to yourself and others and being available to love—and you can’t do all those things if you’re lying about who you are to yourself and everybody else.”
The Christian Left: Do They Exist?

But make no mistake: Championing the rights of the LGBT community extends activism beyond that community. Faith-based organizers at the forefront of the faith-based progressive movement know that tackling marriage equality will have far-reaching economic and racial implications.
According to Pastor Tolton: “Reimagining the value of marriage means linking it to economic equality and linking it to the connection to people’s ability to save and therefore invest and create a more viable economic future for themselves and their children. That conversations about marriage equality in the black context forces us to have conversations about how marriage has broken down from a heterosexual perspective in the African-American community, particularly in the black church and people of lower income levels, which can only be of benefit to the community at large.”
The pastor believes that addressing the idea of marriage as a whole in the black community will spill over to addressing its lack of available marriage-ready black men, which will in turn raise much-needed conversations about related issues like the war on drugs, black men’s “ridiculous rates of incarceration,” economic inequalities and the need for job training in the African-American community.
In other words, all issues of inequality are connected. When one group benefits, that win can have a ripple effect on other groups still battling for equal rights.
Most importantly, says Tolton, the stance on equality is supported by religious principles: “Being radically inclusive is the heartbeat of the Christ because it’s elevating the dignity of every human creature that God has created. And if we as progressive Christians can really sing that song and preach that and live that, I think we can really reframe what it means to be a follower of Jesus.”
8 LGBT Movie Characters That Furthered Gay Rights

Whatever one’s relgious leanings, Michaelson says these issues exist outside the scope of our differences; more than the labels of LGBT or black or female, when it comes down to it, equality is a human right. He says, “When I crack open the Bible, and I read about Isaiah telling me to feed the hungry and help the poor and clothe the naked, that has obvious resonance today. There’s no question to me but that religious faith represents a value that we reinforce one another.”
Do you believe that religion can be a force for equality? Let us know what you think of social justice and religion in the Comments.
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Book Reviews, Reviews — December 2012 
God vs. Gay? and Through the Door of Life
Daniel Lichman 
God vs GayJay Ladin - Through the Door coverThe tranquil New England lake, surrounded by forest, glistened invitingly. We assembled on the edge of the wooden dock to this natural mikvah. Each participant chose a group with which they were to share this experience—male-bodied, female-bodied, gender queer — according to their self-definition. After a few words of introduction, we shared an intention for the Shabbat and ritually cleansed ourselves. The approach of the Nehirim retreats was clear: Jewish ritual can be reclaimed and Judaism embraced as a way not only to affirm queer sexuality and gender identity but to encourage the individual to embrace their identity and overcome internalised societal homophobia and transphobia.
In God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality Jay Michaelson, the founder of Nehirim, the Jewish LGBT spirituality organisation, uses this perspective to explore both how religious values affirm lesbian and gay lives and how sexual diversity affirms religion. He uses a distinctly Judeo-Christian values-based theological vocabulary to argue a considered, articulate political case for gay rights in the USA.
Michaelson is well placed to do this. He is well known for his writing on religious, legal and LGBT issues through Zeek magazine in the 2000s and now through regular newspaper columns. While the content of this work is different, there is a stylistic similarity to his previous book, Everything is God, in that both interweave the personal and the theoretical in a logically-argued polemical treatise. Turning his oeuvre to the often unpleasant and peculiarly American religious debate about marriage equality is clearly of limited effectiveness if reserved for a Jewish critique. Luckily Michaelson’s postgraduate studies were on the Christian bible.
Michaelson intends this book to make a difference to the political reality. His assumption is that religious anti-gay rhetoric can be undermined by exposing its deep flaws and lack of scriptural grounding. Citing Martin Luther King’s harnessing of the force of religious rhetoric in the campaign for civil rights, Michaelson argues that religion has a similar potential in the campaign for sexual equality.
Before addressing the difficult texts he clearly states the principles that compel Jews and Christians to embrace gay rights. The usual suspects, including “Love your neighbour [sic] as yourself” and “justice, justice shall you pursue” are miraculously rescued from cliche through targeted real examples and clear argumentation. The most effective anecdotes are those that call attention to the pain of closeted anti-gay and so-called ex-gay leaders.
Exploring the commandment “Not to bear false witness”, Michaelson movingly discusses his own years in the closet. “I lied… Somehow, I believed that all this lying was in the service of God. From where I sit now, the proposition is preposterous.” Through reading this commandment and an assortment of other associated Tanach and New Testament texts, he draws from this experience that “religious people should support equality for LGBT people because more openness leads to more honesty, more holiness and more authentic spirituality.” The ground is thus prepared for Michaelson to challenge the homophobic readings of other parts of scripture.
Any discussion on the Bible and homosexuality must begin with the verse that dare not speak its name, Leviticus 18:22. Michaelson utilises not only the religious values he has established but the fundamental truism that our modern categories of sexual identity — the words “homosexual”, “gay” and “lesbian” — are just that: modern. To read them into ancient texts is therefore anachronistic. The following passage gives a flavour of his approach:
I think this literal reading of Leviticus 18:22 makes more sense than any other one. I think it “wins.” However, even if it only “ties” with the anti-gay readings, that is enough. The point here is that it is plausible, and that such a reading is necessary based on our fundamental values… But I don’t even have to do that. All I have to do… is read the verse closely, literally and attentively. Leviticus is a prohibition on male anal sex in the context of idolatry. Nothing more.
Michaelson repeats this methodology with other much quoted supposedly anti-gay texts. The Corinthians extract is “obviously…not about homosexuality, and certainly not same-sex relationships” whilst in the Timothy text “the issue is less the physical act itself than the context: sex outside of marriage.” Michaelson then turns his attention to possible examples of same-sex love in the Bible, particularly focusing on David and Jonathan. By ending on this note his logic is complete: positive religious values call on us to include gay and lesbian people; the readings of the text are misguided; examples of same-sex love can even be found in the Bible and Christian and Jewish traditions.
In the third and final section a different voice emerges, usefully broadening the potential scope of gay rights discourse. Instead of basing his argument on the liberal, individualist and rights-based philosophical basis that LGBT activism usually starts from, Michaelson turns on the family values that are usually the discursive domain of the right. He argues that equality for gays and lesbians will result in more shared ground, a greater value placed upon family and a more stable society.
The effectiveness of this book as a polemic and a toolbox for activists comes at the cost of limiting the discussion of key issues for religious gay and lesbian people. By co-opting a family values discourse from conservatives Michaelson appears to suggest (despite his assurances to the contrary) that the ideal religious expressions of gay and lesbian sexuality are monogamous, conventional relationships. A serious discussion of how religious ethics can dovetail and speak to the lived experience of lesbian and gay people in religiously unprecedented sexual and relationship arrangements is an outstanding project and Michaelson’s understanding of the gay and lesbian community and religious values suggests that he would be well placed to address that. It is a shame that he cannot enter that discussion in this piece.
Joy Ladin’s Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey Between the Genders contrasts with Michaelson’s book in its approach to the question that both self consciously address: how can the written word shift perspective and create empathy? For Ladin, a published poet, it is through her mastery of descriptive and evocative personal testimony.
Professor of English literature at Yeshiva University, the flagship institution of modern orthodoxy in the US, Ladin accidentally experienced a short bout of international fame in 2008 when her story was sensationally plastered over page three of the New York Post under the headline “YE-SHE-VA”.
Judaism, and more particularly Ladin’s deep relationship with God — “when I look in the mirror, I see the mystery of God’s creation” — is an anchoring theme of this moving work. Ladin describes her years of gender dysphoria before she embarked on her transition. Jay Ladin felt uncomfortable in his male body from a young age. He married, had three children and still periods of gender dysphoria would utterly destabilise him. His marriage broke down as his wife felt that his desire to become a woman was selfish and destructive. Aside from the detail of gender transition, this is a powerful, universal human story. As Ladin says, “Transsexuals’ lives may seem strange, even bizarre, but the questions we face… are the questions life poses to us all: How can we become ourselves?”
Many people are not easily able to speak frankly with a trans person about their experience. Testimony such as Ladin’s is valuable and may help to encourage the cis (non-trans)-gendered reader to confront and challenge their own confusion, questions and prejudice.
In her review for the Forward Naomi Alderman perceptively and forcefully critiques Ladin for returning to “banal cliches about what it is like to be either a man or a woman.” Alderman notes with some sadness that “she’s no feminist”. The theoretical and political implications of gender transition are simply not Ladin’s concern here. Indeed, taking the form of poetic episodic reflections it is clear that the act of writing and publishing this work was deeply therapeutic.
Personal testimony and rigorous argumentation are vital tools for activists committed to changing our society. Readers will be challenged and have their perspectives broadened by Ladin’s testimony; Michaelson’s logical, clear argumentation and detailed notes and bibliography provide an essential toolbox for activist debates with social conservatives. Ultimately, both works use the experience of gender and sexual minorities to call our attention to the importance of living authentic lives. If Jewish tradition is speaking so resonantly to the formerly marginalised, then it can be transformed at the centre affirming each and every one of us.
Daniel Lichman is a Jewish educator. He is currently in his first year of the rabbinic course at Leo Baeck College. He was involved in creating Keshet UK, a LGBT advocacy group for the Jewish community.


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