Another article on frum gays and lesbians

I found this one at http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/12/19/opinion/main1136200.shtml. It's reprinted from The American Prospect (although, strangely enough, the CBS version is dated earlier than the original -- go figure). I'm copying it here, again, without permission. If the owners want it taken down, I'll do so.

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Slightly Un-Orthodox

Silent no longer: Religious gay men and lesbians start speaking out.
By Sarah Wildman
Issue Date: 01.05.06

Tova Rosenberg (not her real name) lives in Rosh Pina, a little hippie town in the Galilee region of Israel that overlooks the Hula Valley. She is pretty in an unadorned way -- her long red hair is cut in a blunt straight style, her glasses are wire and speak to function over form, and her face is bare of makeup. She wears a zip-up sweatshirt and cargo pants, and she looks more like an American teen than a 26-year-old woman who has endured years of anxiety and bitterness.

Rosenberg is a lesbian from an Orthodox Jewish family in Jerusalem. Her parents were hozrei b'tshuvah -- secular people who "returned" to faith in their late teens. It took her years to come out; she felt she was "evil" and went out with at least "20 guys" on pre-arranged matches hoping something would spark. When she finally did come out to her family, her mother tried to send her to "change therapy," the Jewish equivalent of programs run by Christian fundamentalists in the United States. "[My mother] calls it the end of her life," says Rosenberg, who fled Jerusalem for Rosh Pina only a few weeks ago. It is about as far away as one can get from one's parents in this tiny country. She is here because she is in love, and her girlfriend, Noga, hovers near her throughout an interview. Rosenberg's parents have told her that they will cut off all contact with her if she moves in with another woman, so she has not told them about Noga.

You might think, given the rejection of her parents and her Orthodox religious community, that Rosenberg would have rejected her upbringing. But she is still Sabbath observant, still kosher, still Orthodox. Indeed, she is part of a growing movement in Israel of gay and lesbian Jews who refuse to reject Orthodoxy and are trying instead to force Orthodoxy -- and the secular gay world -- to accept them as they are. "It's not a question to be religious," Tova says, noting the same of being a lesbian. "It's just what I am."

* * *

Some 25 percent of Israeli society is considered dati, or Orthodox. But that designation is hardly monolithic. There are "modern" Orthodox Jews who observe Shabbat and Kashrut but also dress and interact in a way that, for the most part, "blends" into mainstream society. Then there are ultra-Orthodox Jews who, to varying degrees, refuse to compromise with the secular world. But even these distinctions are simplistic; modern Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jews are themselves divided into innumerable sects.

The one thing that the branches of Orthodoxy share is a devotion to the word of the Torah, the five books of Moses. For those who know their Leviticus, this makes the question of same-sex love very, very complicated. "God also created lesbians," says Tova, simply, articulating a sentiment repeated over and over again, from Rosh Pina to Tel Aviv.

"There is certain amount of [religious] compromise that every single Orthodox lesbian that I know has made," says "Miriam-Esther," an ultra-orthodox lesbian mother of 10. Miriam-Esther was featured (though never shown) in the 2004 film Keep Not Silent, which shadows three Orthodox women struggling with what it means to be lesbian. The question for gay men and lesbians who want to remain religious, she says, is, "How does one make peace with religious doctrine which denies legitimacy ... and at same time be nourished by religious doctrine?"

This dilemma often leads to a period of extreme self-denial to the point of severe mental trauma, says Russian-born Zeev Shveidel, now a lecturer on gay issues in Orthodoxy. As for himself, he explains, "I prayed and prayed it would go away. Then I searched the Internet for a cure and went to change therapy."

In the last few years there has been a surge of newfound openness and political awareness among Orthodox gay men and lesbians in Israel -- even the willingness to use the terms "gay" and "lesbian" is revolutionary. "I grew up in the States," explains Miriam-Esther. "I'm already in a whole different place from the Israeli ultra-Orthodox." Israeli Orthodox Jews have traditionally been more closed than their American counterparts. But -- prompted in part by films on gay Orthodox Jews and the widespread use of the Internet (even though ultra-Orthodox rabbis have uniformly condemned the use of the latter) -- this world has started to change.

"Until I was 20 I never heard the word 'lesbian,'" says 32-year-old Avigail Sperber, the daughter of a prominent rabbi and the founder of Bat Kol, a new political and social group for Orthodox lesbians that has made her a media darling in Israel. Even after she met her first girlfriend, Avigail assumed they were alone in the world. The secular gay community provided no comfort. It was not something they could relate to, so they had to form their own gay liberation in a context that did. Sperber has made a point of welcoming publicity in an effort to give women and teens the chance to know that support exists.

What's particularly amazing about the sense of isolation these activists and others have felt is the prominence and political successes of Israel's secular gay community. In the early 1990s, a series of court battles granted legal rights that dwarf those enjoyed by gay men and lesbians in the United States. In 1994, El Al Airlines flight attendant Jonathan Danilowitz won a decision in Israel's supreme court granting him the right to extend spousal benefits to his longtime partner. Three years later, the court ordered the Israeli Defense Forces -- which already allowed gay men and lesbians to serve openly -- to give Adir Steiner the pension benefits after the death of his partner, Lieutenant Colonel Doron Maisel. Today, a handful of Israeli couples are awaiting word from the court about whether their Canadian marriage certificates will be honored in Israel. (There is no civil marriage in Israel because all matters of family are decided in a religious context.)

But even if you happened to miss these major legal milestones, it would be hard not to notice the parades every June. Tel Aviv Pride regularly draws tens of thousands of people into the street. But Tel Aviv is a secular -- to the point of hedonistic -- city with gay bars, gay gyms, and gay coffee shops. Jerusalem Pride is as much a political demonstration as it is a parade, and it has survived attempts to ban its existence as well as violence; last summer a marcher was stabbed by an ultra-Orthodox protester. (Next summer Jerusalem will host World Pride, an international gathering that already has garnered an ecumenical condemnation from Muslim, Jewish, and Christian leaders.)

But the progression of gay rights in the secular world has occurred, like most everything else, in stark contrast to what happens for religious Jews. In Israel even the school system is divided into dati and hiloni, or secular. Children brought up in an Orthodox context -- modern or otherwise -- go to religious schools where they study the Talmud and the Torah as well as algebra and English. Recognizing that, Sandi Dubowski, the American director of the groundbreaking film Trembling before G-d, which was among the first to expose the dualities experienced by gay Orthodox Jews, took his film into the Israeli religious school system two years ago. He launched a program called Petach Lev (Open Heart). The film wasn't aired for students but for school counselors, administrators, teachers, and rabbis. Tanya Zion, the Israeli administrator of the program, calls the effort an attempt to change the culture from the inside. "We heard stories of teachers saving [suicidal] students after seeing the film," says Zion.

"Those that will make the revolution that can happen in the Orthodox world are not secular Jews like me," says Hagai El-Ad, the director of the Jerusalem Open House, a gay-rights organization. But El-Ad has observed the advancement. "Compared to Israel five years ago, you see the beginning of a different kind of language being used by significant Orthodox rabbis in this country. There is no doubt with regard to where this process is going. It's a process that needs to be nurtured, and we need to be patient about it, and also be aware of the anti-religious attitudes that sometimes exist within the gay community. There is some mutual responsibility here."

It's a sentiment echoed by those in the Orthodox gay world. "Judaism has been around 3,000 years; it's not going to change overnight," says Miriam-Esther. "And yet, things are changing. Orthodoxy is changing. Even the most closed and insulated communities. They are starting with empathy."

Empathy is also what Tova Rosenberg is hoping to encourage: "I just feel if three parents read this ... this is what I can do to make this better."

Sarah Wildman is a Prospect senior correspondent.

© 2006 by The American Prospect, Inc.

Changes in Israel

When I was living in Israel, I knew Avigail Sperber, and I knew some of the things in this article. But I had no idea how much progress had been made since I left almost 5 years ago.

I'm reprinting this article without permission from the English version of Haaretz. If they ask me to take it down and just link, I'll do that.

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'Frightening, but liberating'
By Yair Sheleg
Last Update: 11/11/2006 11:37

Twelve years ago, when Avigail Sperber attended Jerusalem's Ma'ale School of Television, Film and the Arts, a religious institution, she fell in love - with a female classmate.

"Looking back," she recalled, "I felt 'all sorts of things' even in adolescence. However, since I wasn't yet familiar with the term 'lesbian,' I didn't know what was going on. At Ma'ale one of my classmates was a girl named Efrat and gradually we realized we were falling in love. For three years we broke up, got back together and again broke up, and it was agonizing. One day, somebody remarked to my mother that it was rather strange that we spent all our time together and that perhaps we were ... Well, one Friday night, my mother came into my room when Efrat was with me and said, 'I know you're lesbians. As far as I'm concerned, you can do whatever you like, but not in this house!'

"It was very frightening, but also very liberating because what I had feared most had happened. Fortunately, my ties with my parents were never severed, although I was forced to leave the house and to move with Efrat into a rented apartment. My parents couldn't direct their anger at me so they channeled it toward Efrat, as if she'd betrayed their trust."

Avigail's mother, Hannah, a marriage counselor, explained that her anger stemmed from "mixed feelings. On the one hand, I was angry that she had hidden the fact from us, as if she couldn't trust her relationship with us. On the other hand, I felt guilty for not having discovered the truth earlier and I sensed that, had I discovered the warning signs in time, I might have had some influence on her identity before it crystallized."

Avigail Sperber, 33, is a film director and cinematographer. She has made several documentaries and a short movie, and is currently working on her first full-length film. Her father is Rabbi Prof. Daniel Sperber, who teaches Talmud at Bar-Ilan University and received the Israel Prize for his achievements in his field. For many years, he chaired the public council for state religious Jewish education. Sperber found it especially difficult to accept the disclosure of his daughter's sexual identity. However, his public position, Avigail stresses, was never a factor in her family's acceptance of her lesbianism.

"At first," she said, "Mom asked me not to reveal that I was a lesbian - principally so as not to burden my younger siblings [Avigail is the third of 10 children, including one adopted Ethiopian daughter - Y.S.], but my father's public standing was never a consideration. To this day, Dad doesn't like talking about the subject and will do so only if someone raises it in a conversation with him."

It was Hannah who spearheaded the family's acceptance of Avigail's identity: "I grew up in a Reform Jewish home in America," she explained. "It was a more open setting, so it was easier for me to accept Avigail's sexual orientation. Initially, my husband didn't even want to hear about it. He told me, 'I know you can persuade me to accept many things, but I'm not willing to be persuaded on this topic.' For me, the process was lengthy, but the decisive moment was when Avigail announced: 'If you knew how hard it was for me to accept myself with this identity, you would understand that I cannot be in a place where I'm not accepted.'"

That is what spurred Hannah to begin to invite Avigail and her partners over for family dinners. The process moved forward significantly when Avigail was asked to give her first interview, a few years ago, about her lesbianism.

Avigail: "I phoned my mother and asked her what she thought. A few days later, she phoned back and said, 'I think it's very important that you give the interview, so that people will know there are also religious families that accept their gay or lesbian children, and that this is legitimate.'"

Reading and meeting

For Avigail, the high point in her family's acceptance of her was reached a year ago, when her younger sister Shuli, who had become ultra-Orthodox, was to be married to a young man who had also become ultra-Orthodox. It was considered only natural to invite both Avigail and her present partner, film director Netali Baron (whose film, "Metamorphosis," about four rape victims, was screened this week on Israel Television's Channel 1). Hannah felt this was not enough and began inviting other lesbian friends of Avigail's whose families had severed contact with them. ("Some girls are no longer welcome in their own homes, even on holidays, even without their partner.")

Two years ago, Hannah started a support group for the religious parents of homosexual/lesbian children (fathers were invited, but only the mothers actually attended). Monthly meetings were held at the Sperber home in the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem's Old City. Over the past few months they have not met, but Hannah said this week that the controversy generated by the gay pride parade is a good reason to reactivate the group.

Hannah: "Initially, I attended a parental support group at the Open House [a center for the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender, or GLBT, community in Jerusalem]. However, some parents didn't like going there. That's why I launched the group in my home. There are various levels of attitude with respect to the children in this group. One mother, who's very extreme, said she wouldn't invite her daughter to the weddings or other occasions of her siblings. Another mother, a widow, moved me when she declared that she loved her homosexual son very much. Her greatest fear was that he would stop being religious.

"The first step in dealing with the issue is to read the professional literature and to realize that anyone who claims that tackling this problem is like tackling any other prohibition in the Torah doesn't understand the issue. Although a certain percentage could become straight with psychological help and immense willpower, for the majority this isn't an option. At first, it's very hard to talk about it directly with your child. So the best thing is to read the letters or books our children give us about the subject - these are helpful. Meetings with other parents are also important because, through them, you learn you're not the only one facing this problem.

"The crucial step is recognizing that the situation will never change. In this respect, there is a similarity with bereaved parents: Once you realize the situation will never change and that your child will never return, you can begin the journey back to life. On the other hand, the goal here is to make the parents recognize that they need not mourn, because their child isn't dead. And the main thing: They must remember that the most important rule in the Torah is 'Love thy neighbor as thyself.' That might sound simplistic, but it's the best advice you can give."

'Caustic reactions'

Avigail Sperber also started her own group, Bat Kol, for religious lesbians, which today numbers 60 women members. "Most of them have been living with their partners for years and remind me of my straight girlfriends: bourgeois religious girls, in the good and bad senses of the term."

Bat Kol's goals are to change religious society's attitude toward gays and lesbians, and also to provide a support group for lesbians in distress via a telephone information service and an Internet forum. "We're particularly active before the holidays," Avigail explained, "when we provide hospitality for girls with no family to return to for the holidays."

There was a time when she debated with herself about whether to remain in the religious community: "I knew I would always observe kashrut [Jewish dietary laws], but I wasn't sure whether I wanted to remain in a community that wouldn't accept me. Ultimately, I realized that one of the beauties of religious life is that it ties you to a community. And that's what I want."

Avigail said she did not join a Reform or Conservative synagogue because she was seeking a community like the one she had grown up in: Orthodox and open-minded. When she spends the Sabbath with her parents in Jerusalem, she likes to attend prayer services at Shira Hadasha, an egalitarian Orthodox congregation. When she spends the Sabbath in her Tel Aviv apartment, she walks a considerable distance to attend Ichud Shivat Zion, a congregation founded by young religious people of a kindred spirit, in one of the city's oldest synagogues: "One Sabbath I wanted to attend Beit Tefillah Yisraeli [a secular congregation that holds Friday evening prayer services - Y.S.], which isn't far from my home. However, I had a problem because the services include desecration of the Sabbath."

Avigail's world has again been shaken - this time by Jerusalem's gay pride parade. Someone told her about crude attacks on the community on the Web site of the Ezra youth movement where she had been a member and later a counselor. (Ezra is more ultra-Orthodox than the Bnei Akiva movement and was originally identified with the Poalei Agudat Israel party.) Avigail looked at the site and was shocked. ("The less virulent messages said that Ezra members "should break [the homosexuals'] arms and legs.") She decided to respond with her own message, in which she declared: "I grew up in this movement, which means that today some Ezra members might be gays or lesbians."

Avigail and Hannah Sperber are divided over the parade. Avigail attaches immense importance to it: "Despite the caustic reactions, the religious community is finally talking about the subject and is beginning to realize it has homosexual and lesbian members. It's more important to hold a gay pride parade in Jerusalem than in Tel Aviv because being gay in Tel Aviv is not much of a problem."

Hannah opposes it: "It is only generating hatred. It isn't promoting social acceptance of the GLBT community and, in this respect, it doesn't matter where it is held ... Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. What we need is encounters and events that will encourage understanding and a closer familiarity with the subject. We don't need an event that will only breed more hatred."