ALEPH Melbourne has hit back at Caulfield Chabad Lamplighter editor Mendy Rimler after he recycled what Aleph convenor Michael Barnett called “homophobic drivel”.
Late last week Aleph Melbourne, a support and advocacy group for Jewish people who identify as same-sex attracted, trans, gender diverse, and intersex (LGBTIQ+), published an article on their website denouncing Rimler and Caulfield Chabad.
The article explained that both Rimler and Caulfield Chabad should “take a more responsible approach to the content they run in their Lamplighter and avoid stigmatising vulnerable minorities”.
“Doing so feeds into the alarming rates of self-harm and suicide for people who are forced to hide or feel bad about same-sex attraction.”
The criticism is due to the use of a 15-year-old piece written by Yossy Goldman that Rimler repurposed for the cover of the September 30, 2022, Yom Kippur edition of Lamplighter.
It is alarming how fast the rainbow family-building landscape has shifted in the past decade. Ten years ago, there was a large cohort of gay couples and singles who flocked to India to chase their dream of family; a similarly large group did the same in Thailand a few years later. Smaller numbers built families in Cambodia and Nepal. One by one those countries closed as governments wised up to the challenges that a lack of supportive laws posed.
Amidst all this, surrogacy here in Australia have steadily grown in popularity -with a caveat. The lack of structured support, screening and compensation for Australian surrogates means many fall over before they even get to the embryo transfer stage.
The lucky amongst us have a sister or friend who might step forward to offer her eggs, or even to carry our child. But most look further afield – to the US or Canada – stalwarts of the surrogacy landscape – and more recently to programs in Colombia or Argentina to create family. There are pros and cons to all these options which are vital to understand.
Jewish couple Ofir, a high school maths teacher and Tom, a software engineer, met on Facebook. Both come from close families with three siblings each. Tom had dreamt of parenthood for a long time. Around four years into their relationship they attended a surrogacy conference to understand their options. A seed was planted for Ofir. He kept thinking about the possibilities, imagining becoming a parent.
They knew this pathway would be expensive. Moving in with Ofir’s parents to save money, the couple were drawn to altruistic surrogacy in Canada.Good friends had a child via surrogacy in Canada and helped the pair with their research. (Their story features in a new book Surrogacy Stories).
Cross-border surrogacy can be an arduous journey with a myriad grey areas. So start planning early. If you think you want to be a dad in three years time and do it without financial hardship – now is the time to start gathering information, saving funds and getting yourself on agency wait-lists.
Between 5 – 8 November, at seminars in Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth – singles and couples will share their journeys to parenthood here in Australia, in Canada, the US and Colombia, including how they planned, budgeted and survived the hurdles. The seminars bring together surrogates, intended parents and experts from around the globe. They are a great opportunity to get educated on the options available, the risks and ensure you can look back on your family building journey with pride. Go to www.growingfamilies.org/all-events
Disappointingly, the editor of Melbourne’s Caulfield Chabad “Lamplighter” Mendy Rimler has chosen to plaster the cover of his September 30 2022 Yom Kippur edition with a 15-year-old piece of homophobic claptrap by Rabbi Yossy Goldman.
The most challenging arena of human conduct, the one that really tests the mettle of our morality, is not how we behave in the synagogue but how we behave in our bedrooms. […] In a world of ever-changing, relative morality where gay marriages and Euthanasia have become acceptable, the Torah does indeed seem rather antiquated. […] So we read that adultery was forbidden in Moses’ day and it still is in ours. So is incest. But it wouldn’t shock me at all if the same forces motivating for new sexual freedoms soon began campaigning for incestuous relationships to become legal. And why not? If it’s all about consenting adults, why deny siblings? Given the slippery slope of our moral mountains, nothing is unthinkable any more.
Rabbi Yossy Goldman
Hardly fresh “news”, this opinion piece about sexual immorality runs the tired slippery-slope trope of “if gays can get married people will want to marry their siblings next”. This conveniently overlooks the slippery slope starting with heterosexual marriage, not gay marriage. One could easily argue that if heterosexual people want the right to get married, those in other consenting relationships might want the same legal protections as well. As for marrying one’s sibling, perhaps a wild fantasy of Goldman’s, but I don’t see anyone lobbying for such a reform.
Rimler and Caulfield Chabad should take a more responsible approach to the content they run in their Lamplighter and avoid stigmatising vulnerable minorities. Doing so feeds into the alarming rates of self-harm and suicide for people who are forced to hide or feel bad about same-sex attraction.
Unless Rimler and Caulfield Chabad want to publish material shaming the private sex lives of their heterosexual congregants, dwelling on their various peccadillos and fetishes, it would serve them well to stay clear of material that obsesses on the private sex lives of same-sex attracted people.
Gay and bisexual people are easy targets for the likes of Rimler, Goldman and their Chabad masters. My best advice for them, if they can’t find it within themselves to say anything positive about LGBTIQ+ people, is to say nothing at all. We are human, we have feelings, and we hurt when people abuse us.
Rimler, Goldman and Chabad don’t need a lesson on how it feels to be targets of hate. They ought think twice before publishing intolerant content in the name of their religious values.
“As a cultural Jew and Holocaust survivor, she wrote to a Jewish community newspaper some decades ago calling for the inclusion of an LGBT Jewish group within formal Jewish community networks; one of her last attempts at activism came early this year when she offered to participate (as a longtime supporter and ally of LGBT rights) within a Rainbow Humanist group marching in Melbourne’s Pride March – an offer which sadly was ultimately unable to be taken up due to understandable caution over public transmission concerns regarding COVID in crowded spaces.”
Australian Jewish News June 11 1999 page 16
I WRITE to express my dismay at the JCCV’s decision to reject the Aleph gay group as an affiliate member.
As a consequence of prejudice and intolerance, Jews, gypsies and homosexuals were persecuted and, during the Holocaust, slaughtered wholesale.
Deemed ‘undesirable elements’ and separated only by barbed wire in extermination camps, these groups of people were brutally eliminated because in some ways they were not quite like the majority.
As a former undesirable Jewish ‘element’ but a survivor, I hoped that more than any other attitude, tolerance would be imprinted on the collective Jewish psyche.
This episode is deeply moving and hopeful, as Rabbi Mike Moskowitz walks Tanna and Paris through the ins and outs of being a member of the LGBTQ+ community, whilst also being ultra orthodox.
Initially, they briefly discuss Rabbi Moskowitz’ personal journey to becoming the Scholar in Residence at the Beit Simchat Torah Congregation, before diving into the attitudes held by so many in conservative, orthodox communities.
From discussing specific verses often used to justify transphobia, to an analysis of conversion therapy, to predictions about same sex marriage, Rabbi Moskowitz covers a wide range of questions that many onlookers have wondered about over the years.
Rabbi Moskowitz also touches on the recent negative media attention that his community has been receiving, and demonstrates that despite several significant imperfections, the ultra orthodox community is full of beauty, charity, and love.
17. Cultural and language diversity, gender, LGBTQIA+, disability, accessibility and inclusion of students is acknowledged within policies and procedures and training across Mount Scopus and includes references on how to make reasonable adjustments to improve the safety and wellbeing of students.
18. MSMC staff, leaders and Board members should receive diversity training (to include culturally and linguistically diversity, LGBTQIA+, disability and additional educational needs).
Ben thinks of himself as a liberal and enlightened gay man, living in the perfect apartment with his boyfriend Raz. All that’s missing to complete the picture is a baby, which the couple are trying to make a reality. Meanwhile Ben decides to improve his up-and-coming neighbourhood in gritty south Tel-Aviv by planting a new tree on his street. But his good deed soon triggers a sequence of events that leads to the brutal police arrest of an Eritrean immigrant.
Eli is an Israeli swimming coach living in the US. When he receives news of his father’s death, Eli reluctantly travels to Tel Aviv for the first time in 10 years to deal with the estate. On his short trip he decides to visit his childhood friend, Yotam. Yotam is running a small and beautiful flower shop in Jaffa, together with his fiancée Iris, a talented florist. When Eli comes to visit the two, he will set in motion a series of events that will affect everyone’s lives. Winner of Best Actress Prize at the 2022 Jerusalem Film Festival, the film offers a psychologically complex and thought-provoking story about relationships with a strong sensual through-line that keeps viewers guessing.
A bold documentary which reveals conversion therapy from within for the first time. Director Zvi Landsman is given unprecedented access to conversion therapy sessions, following the journeys of Lev; a 54-year-old divorced Orthodox Jew who hopes to be remarried to a woman, and Ben; a 23-year-old social work student who is seven years into therapy and starts to doubt the practice.
From left: Rabbi Mike Moskowitz and Michael Barnett. Photo: Gregory Storer.
The Victorian Pride Centre on Fitzroy Street, St Kilda, provided the perfect location to hear New York’s ultra-Orthodox Rabbi Mike Moskowitz discuss how Judaism can provide a welcoming and inclusive place for people of all genders and sexual orientations, free from judgement and discrimination.
On his tour of Australia and New Zealand last month, the US based rabbi made time in his schedule to address an intimate gathering, as guest of Aleph Melbourne and the Australian GLBTIQ Multicultural Council.
Talking about how having a transgender family member challenged and changed his worldview, Rabbi Moskowitz spoke about how he devotes much of his time to making Judaism a safer and more welcoming place for LGBTIQ+ Jews, free from judgement and hostility.
Rabbi Moskowitz told those gathered that he maintains his religious practices while simultaneously attending Pride Parades and protest rallies for queer rights and inclusion.
He also stressed that the fundamental understanding that a person cannot change their sexual orientation or gender identity is of particular importance to him, and shared that he actively combats damaging practices that seek to change or convert LGBTIQ+ people to being heterosexual and/or cisgender.
Aleph Melbourne co-convenor Michael Barnett said, “It was a total joy meeting Rabbi Moskowitz. His passion for LGBTIQ+ people and issues rivals that of any ally I have ever met and sets a very high bar when it comes to advocacy and inclusion.”
He also told The AJN that “Many of those in attendance spoke of how they found it unexpectedly refreshing to meet an ultra-Orthodox rabbi who was proud to be a strong ally to LGBTIQ+ people and advocate for our full inclusion in the Jewish community.”
Barnett added, “What I took from meeting Rabbi Mike Moskowitz is that being decent to LGBTIQ+ people and other vulnerable minorities takes minimal effort, and goes a long way to mend the harms that ill-informed rabbis and others perpetrate in the name of their faith.”
