Tag: GLBTIQ
Testimony of Mordechai Levovitz to the NJ Senate
Testimony of Mordechai Levovitz, Co Executive Director, JQY
3/18/2013
New Jersey State Senate, Trenton NJ
My name is Mordechai Levovitz. I come from a very religious Jewish community and grew up in an Orthodox family. I have both personal experience with being sent to therapists as a minor to try to change my orientation and gender expression, and experience dealing with this issue as the co executive director of JQY, a non profit org that helps support LGBT Jews and their families in the Orthodox Community. I have seen and felt the harmful consequences of Sexual Orientation Change Efforts, and the risks that this process poses to minors.
When I was about six years old my parents brought me to a therapist because they were concerned that I was acting too feminine. I played with Barbie’s, wanted cabbage patch kids, pretended I was a princess, and told people that I was really a girl. My parents, devout Orthodox Jews were horrified, confused and embarrassed. They wanted desperately for someone to tell them that I could be changed into a quote unquote “normal boy”. In their search for answers, they were told by religious leaders and even some doctors that I was a “Pre-Homosexual” and that “detecting” this early, is actually a good thing, because this was the time (when I was six) that “therapy” could be effective. Therapy to them, meant preventing me from ever turning gay, and making me into a normal masculine boy. So from the age of six I was sent to Dr after Dr. in the hopes of curing me from my “femininity” and wrong gender identification.
Obviously these forced interventions did not end up working. I am now gay man, I am still feminine, and sometimes I still pretend that I’m a princess. But there was one message that was made clear to me when being sent to these therapists. This was that the ‘professional mental health’ opinion was that there was something very wrong with who I was. I was made to feel by doctors there was something wrong with me. I was made to think that for me to be healthy, I must play sports, speak in a low voice, and keep my wrist from going limp. I didn’t want to do any of this. I was happy with the way I was. But in the name of professional mental health and the licensure of the state, I was made to feel shame and engage in a fruitless labor that left me sad and broken.
As I became an adult I promised that I could not stand idly by while this happened to other youth. I met other LGBT people who came from Orthodox communities like mine, many who also had the experience of being pressured into so called “reparative therapy”. We decided that we had to be there for each other. We started a group called JQY. JQY is a safe space where Jewish youth can come and feel support and acceptance for who they are. JQY now has over 700 members. As JQY grew, more and more Orthodox Jewish youth came forth to tell their stories.
What I heard and saw were many kids being pressured by their parents, schools and other therapists into organizations like JONAH and Journey into Manhood, that promise to change gay people straight. Often these minors were given ultimatums to engage in sexual orientation change efforts, or else they would be stripped of social privileges, or worse, kicked out of their homes, schools and communities.
What was obvious is that there certainly was no real consent. These kids weren’t just targeted for therapy because of the rhetoric that early intervention is the supposed best time to treat homosexuals. They are targeted because they are easy targets. They have no choice, and they have no power. What is worse, is seemingly nobody to protect them.
I thought “Protection from harm” is the essence of professional health intervention. And make no mistake, Sexual Orientation Change Efforts, especially those forced on minors by therapists, can cause real harm. The truth is that there is no best practice or standards for what is mistakenly called “reparative” therapy. There are only therapists literally making things up in the name of this arbitrary process.
JQY members report being pressured to do terrible things by their therapists in these efforts. Some like Jon were asked to repeat biblical verses and punishments in therapy. Some were shown pictures of AIDS victims and made to read CDC statistics and symptom descriptions of things like Anal Cancer. Those who were sent to weekends like Journey Into Manhood report being pressured into strange behaviors like naked wrestling, name calling, forced red-rover, and the beating of effigies meant to symbolize ones parents.
More horrific were the reports from kids who were sent to an organization called JONAH, where they were sent to therapists who pressured their clients to undress and touch their genitals in front of their therapists. JONAH calls this practice “body work”, and defends it based on mental health principles. But their clients are left traumatized. They come to JQY depressed and sometimes suicidal. I worry most about the ones who don’t make it to JQY. I know of to many young people who have taken their lives after years of orientation change efforts that never worked, and caused irreparable harm.
I remember one of the worst feelings associated with being a minor in reparative therapy, was being blamed when the therapy does not work. For the message was that you can only change if you are truly committed to the process. It only works if you really work hard enough at it. So when it does not work, the implication is simply that you didn’t put the work in. Parents and schools get the impression that the youth is not really serious about change. In fact, he refuses to put in the effort in that is required. Because if not, he wouldn’t still be gay! This causes the worst harm because it tears families apart. It positions mothers and fathers against their children, and strips youth of the allies that they need most.
Honorable State Senators of the Great State of New Jersey, I currently work for the United Nations NGO Committee for Human Rights. Freedom and rights are important to me. I respect the rights of adults who want to explore their orientation in non-traditional ways to engage in Consensual Sexual Orientation Change efforts. I respect the rights of an adults to seek a mental health professional for support in reconciling faith and desire. However, sending a minor to a therapist to work on changing orientation or gender identity is not a right. It is not consensual. It is not even an intervention. It is simply using professional licensure to tell perfectly healthy youth that there is something wrong with them.
As Toikko Kleppe from the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner stated in an event at the UN last month on SOCE. “Professionalized Sexual Orientation change Efforts aimed at Minors is a violation of international Human rights.” It violates our medical ethics of “first do no harm”. It violates our values of informed consent, scientific integrity, professional responsibility, and any semblance of accountability. It continues to violate minors in my Orthodox community, and it violated me. Please vote today to stop this violation. May we build a world where no child is made to feel like there is something wrong with them because of who they are.
Thank you,
Mordechai
Minus18 – Religion and Queer Youth
Speech by Rabbi Paul Jacobson at Dayenu’s Mardi Gras Shabbat Dinner – March 1 2013
Speech by Rabbi Paul Jacobson at Dayenu’s Mardi Gras Shabbat Dinner, Friday 1st March 2013
Every night before going to sleep, my daughters, like other young children, delight in hearing lullabies. Their latest favourites include “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” “Ba Ba Black Sheep,” and “I Can Sing a Rainbow.” Admittedly, Lisa and I first thought that “I Can Sing a Rainbow” was an original tune from the popular children’s show Play School, but the lyrics are attributed to Arthur Hamilton, with the song having been written in 1955.
Red and yellow and pink and green, purple and orange and blue
I can sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow too
Listen with your eyes, listen with your ears, and sing everything you see
I can sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow, sing along with me.
While the colours in Hamilton’s song are not necessarily the colours of the rainbow per se, the purpose of the song, when taught to children is to help them name colours, and appreciate the colourful brilliance that fills their world on a daily basis.
Such a reminder has great meaning for each of us. Just this morning, I sat at my computer, looking out the window at a dreary, gray, rain‐filled day. Listen with your eyes. Though there wasn’t much colour to be had in the sky, I still marveled at the different shades of green in the leafy trees outside my window, the way the different coloured buildings glistened in the endless drizzle. I even paused to notice the number of cars passing by on the street – blue, grey, black, silver, dark red, white, fire engine red – a rainbow of colours right before my eyes.
Listen with your ears. From moment to moment, the sound of the rain on the roof of the synagogue shifted and changed, sometimes more intense, sometimes less so. Sometimes the sound of the wind was audible and gusty, other times, calm and still.
And sing everything you see. Tonight, on our Mardi Gras Shabbat, we consider the symbol of the rainbow for other reasons. Since the 1970s, in celebration of the colours of life, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex communities throughout the world have used a rainbow flag as their symbol. The rainbow is a reminder of the diversity of both the LGBTI community, and of the beauty that can be present when people from all walks of life are embraced by and integrated into community, are respected for their differences, rather than distanced and excluded. The current version of the rainbow flag, also known as the freedom flag, contains six colours symbolizing different values – red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, blue for harmony, and purple for spirit – all colours and values for which each of us strives to cherish, love and protect, day in and day out.
The image of a rainbow is also a powerful symbol in Jewish tradition. After creating the world and destroying it in a great deluge, God presents a rainbow as a sign of the eternal covenant with humanity. Nachmanides, in the 13th century, comments on the shape of the rainbow, saying that if it were an archer’s bow, the position of the bow would mean that the arrow would be pointing toward the heavens, rather than toward the earth. Nachmanides uses the symbol of the rainbow to teach us that God isn’t pointing any arrows toward us, and won’t destroy our world.
But somehow, we humans still have the power to do so much damage, to inflict so much hurt, to cause others unending pain. In lives that are filled with such colour, in lives where we are wowed and amazed by aesthetic magnificence, we still struggle to recognize the colourful brilliance that exists within our community and within each other. In lives that are filled with such colour, we find still that so many people are distanced and excluded from taking a rightful place in the Jewish community and politics still get in the way of love and marriage? In lives that begin with unconditional love, acceptance and being lullabied to sleep with images of beautiful colours, how is it that we learn to hate, to discriminate, and to hurt?
What if we were, instead, to see the rainbow of possibility that exists in each other, and through our words and our deeds, teach others to do similarly? Listen with your eyes and see the beauty, the loving heart, the thoughtful mind, the giving hands of each person in this room, all of us colourful in our own, special, unique ways. Listen with your ears and allow yourself the time to hear each other’s stories, to listen without prejudice, to listen without judgment, to stop and listen and accept, to recognize that there is more to be gained by including colours in the spectrum of our communities, rather than excluding them. And sing everything you see. The vision of Judaism, the vision of covenant, is that where everyone, no matter our differences, is recognized as being created in God’s image. The vision of Judaism, the vision of community is one where see there is abundant love in our congregation, our world, our tradition, love enough for everyone to feel welcomed, included, cherished, sanctified, and blessed.
Red and yellow and pink and green, purple and orange and blue… I can sing a rainbow,
sing a rainbow, sing along with me.
AJN Letters: Response to Bialik joining SSCV – March 15, 2013
15 March 2013
The Australian Jewish News Melbourne edition
Letters to the editor should be no more than 250 words and may be edited for length and content. Only letters sent to letters@jewishnews.net.au will be considered for publication. Please supply an address and daytime phone number for verification.
Note: the letters on this page refer to last week’s story Bialik to be a ‘safer’ school.
The importance of inclusion for all
MAZAL tov to Safe Schools Coalition Victoria Jewish schools The King David School, Sholem Aleichem College and now Bialik.
Safe Schools Coalition Victoria is a coalition of schools and individuals dedicated to creating safer educational environments where same sex attracted and gender questioning young people are supported, where every family can belong, where every teacher can teach and every student can learn. I am proud of these schools for taking this proactive step. As a lesbian parent, it means so much for my children to know that they are safe, secure and included at school.
SHAUNA SHERKER
Melbourne, Vic
All Jewish schools should be ‘safe’
WE welcome Bialik College as a new member of Safe Schools Coalition Victoria, in a week that also saw Geelong Grammar join us in showing their commitment to supporting diversity.
There are now 93 members of the coalition, from all sectors of the education system – government, independent, and religious. Our program works in partnership with the Department of Education and the Department of Health to actively support gender and sexual diversity in schools.
Research from Australia shows that it takes more than just general anti-bullying policies and practices to make schools truly inclusive. Increasing the visibility of gender and sexual diversity throughout the school, and inclusion across the curriculum, help to make young people feel not only safe, but able to be themselves.
We would love the opportunity to work with more Jewish schools to ensure that same sex attracted and gender diverse students, staff, and families that form part of all these school communities are not just free from bullying, but healthy and happy.
ROZ WARD
Coordinator,
Safe Schools Coalition Victoria
What Does the Future Hold for Gay Synagogues? | Tablet Magazine
Jason Klein Tapped To Lead Group of Reconstructionist Rabbis – Forward.com
JCPA Tables Gay Marriage Resolution | The Jewish Week
Mardi Gras through the eyes of a Jewish Princess
Mardi Gras through the eyes of a Jewish Princess
By Michael Barnett
[ First published in the Australian Jewish News 5 March 1999. The float organisers had intended the “Jewish Princesses” to be a mixed gender entry, however for a variety of reasons no women participated on the day. The 14 male participants were from Melbourne, Sydney and Israel. ]
I was a Mardi Gras virgin in 1998, previously only ever having witnessed this eye-opening spectacle from the safety of my family’s lounge-room television in the Melbourne suburb of Doncaster. In fact the very first time I watched the Mardi Gras parade on television I was terrified my family would label me gay by association.
Since then I have come a long way as an individual, having come to terms with my sexuality and identifying as a gay man – a Jewish gay man. Some people I know turn against their Jewish identity in the process of their ‘coming out’ – the discovery or awakening of their sexuality. Instead for me it was a bringing together of two cultures and two communities and a way of life I knew was right for me. No longer would I live a life I knew was a lie – to my family, to my friends and most importantly to myself.
I consider myself enriched for having travelled this path, denying myself neither my Jewish heritage nor my intrinsic sexual self. If I continued along the path of self-denial my being would have shrivelled up and died but instead I have travelled the path of the caterpillar and transformed myself into a beautiful butterfly.
And through this transformation I have vowed to myself that I would do as much as possible to provide an acceptable path for other people to follow who find themselves in a similar situation to myself.
It was during the Mardi Gras parade last year as I watched it pass by in all its spectacle of light, colour, sound, diversity of sexual expression and pride that I decided it was time for a Jewish entry in the parade. This was to be an entry of Jewish pride, for gay men and women, their friends, families and supporters.
Thus ‘Jewish Princesses’ was born. Just as the gay community has its twinks, muscle Marys, leather men, bears and so on, the Jewish community too has its ‘sub-cultures’. And what better one to identify with than the Jewish (Australian) Princesses. She is a Kugel, a Bagel, a maidel and now a faigel.
She is so wonderfully Jewish that it was the obvious choice.
Having spread the word far and wide I gathered together a group of people to march in the 21st Mardi Gras parade in Sydney, February 1999. Purely by coincidence the entry comprised of fourteen gay men and the straight brother of one of the gay men, marching in support. I would have liked to have seen our entry and the Jewish lesbian entry unified in solidarity – perhaps an ideal for Mardi Gras 2000.
Walking along the parade route was the culmination of several months’ hard work not only by myself but from a dedicated group of my peers – without whom this would not have been possible. I was holding my rainbow Magen David high with pride – for myself, my family, my friends and most importantly for the people I knew it would mean the most to – the Jewish men, women, boys, and girls, married and single who know in their hearts that they have a place in the Jewish community and equally in the gay community and can be proud of both without fear of prejudice.
With thanks to Dayenu for originally hosting this story.
Additional material
Australia’s LGBT community marks a bar mitzvah milestone | Haaretz
Australia’s LGBT community marks a bar mitzvah milestone | Haaretz.
Australia’s LGBT community marks a bar mitzvah milestone
Thirteen years after the Jewish float debuted at Sydney’s Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras, members of the community look back on their struggle and say there’s still work to be done.
By Dan Goldberg | Mar.04, 2013 | 11:19 AM
Mazel tov! The Jewish float at Sydney’s 2013 Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras. Photo by Tomer Hasson
It was a bar mitzvah like no other. A throng of Jewish men and women adorned with rainbow-colored prayer shawls and sporting pink kippot danced near the centerpiece of the simcha – a truck decorated with a gigantic Star of David emblazoned with the words “mazel tov.”
Some 10,000 others joined the parade while hundreds of thousands watched, as Australia’s Jewish float marked its coming of age Saturday night at the 2013 Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras.
Twenty-four hours earlier, 75 people attended a gay Shabbat dinner at Sydney’s Emanuel Synagogue, which incorporates Conservative, Reform and Renewal congregations, following a special service peppered with readings by gay members to mark the milestone.
Kim Gotlieb, the president of Dayenu, Sydney’s Jewish gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender group, acknowledged the support from Emanuel Synagogue in a letter last week. It is reassuring to know that “we belong to a gay-friendly synagogue which continues to walk beside us in addressing issues of inclusion and acceptance,” he wrote.
Emanuel’s rabbi, Jacqueline Ninio, also made mention of the LGBT community in the congregation’s weekly newsletter, writing: “During the years, we have used the process of interpretation and understanding to reimagine the laws of Judaism to be inclusive and welcoming of gays and lesbians. But there is still a long way to go – both legally and within our culture.”
‘Stars of David Come Out’
Despite Rabbi Ninio’s caveat, most of Sydney’s gay Jews acknowledge their predicament today is a far cry from the first Jewish float at the Mardi Gras in 2000, which featured a three-ton truck adorned with a giant three-dimensional Star of David. The float has been an annual feature since then, with the exception of 2006.
Back then about 150 gay Jews and their supporters, including Holocaust survivor Susie Wise, celebrated alongside the float, under the banner “Stars of David Come Out.”
“We were the Stars of David glowing in the dark of homophobia,” recalled Dawn Cohen, the coordinator of the first Jewish float, in a reflective article. “We’re saying ‘no’ … we’re going to invite you all to work through your internalized anti-Semitism and homophobia and to celebrate with us.”
Cohen and the other founders named themselves “Dayenu,” the Hebrew word for “enough” that is the common refrain of the Passover song of the same name.
However, “Dayenu” was also the response the group received from the Orthodox rabbinate, which was exacerbated by Vic Alhadeff, then editor of the Sydney edition of the Australian Jewish News. Alhadeff published a front-page photo of the first Jewish float on March 10, 2000.
“Of all the controversial positions I took as editor of the Australian Jewish News, the one of which I was proudest was going to the barricades on behalf of the right of Jewish gays to be gay,” Alhadeff told Haaretz this week. “Because I saw the impact it had – on human lives, on families, on individuals, on members of our own community.”
The controversy dominated the newspaper’s pages for weeks, including an ad signed by 28 prominent Australian Jews expressing support for gay Jewish rights and for the newspaper to reflect the community’s diversity.
2013 Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras
[Gallery]
Bar mitzvah boys celebrate at the 2013 Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras.Tomer Hasson
“Overwhelmingly, the community spoke out in support of the newspaper,” Cohen recalled. “They didn’t want Jewish homosexuals to be invisible. It was not a vote in favor of lesbian and gay marriage, but it was an unprecedented warning to the Orthodox rabbinate about the limits of its control.”
Inevitably, the backlash soon followed. The Sydney Beth Din demanded Alhadeff explain himself at a rabbinic hearing. They also summoned Hilton Immerman, the chief executive of the Shalom Institute – which advances Jewish learning and leadership – for hosting a gay Shabbat on the Friday night before the 2000 Mardi Gras.
Neither Alhadeff nor Immerman agreed. Immerman said he would only consider it “after being able to peruse the charges that a particular individual had brought against us.”
“As these were never forthcoming, we did not appear,” Immerman told Haaretz. “I was lobbied by two or three Orthodox rabbis at the time to cancel the event. I explained that any Jews had the right to celebrate Shabbat and that I would protect their right to do so.
“It’s absurd to think that sexual orientation was even regarded as relevant,” Immerman said.
Among those who attended that Shabbat dinner was Ariel Friedlander, an American-born lesbian rabbi, and Rabbi Jeffrey Kamins, the senior rabbi of Emanuel Synagogue in Sydney.
The furor created “huge tension” among Australian Jewry, recalled Kamins, who was also a board member of Shalom at the time.
But gay Jews have become “hugely” enfranchised since then, Kamins said, noting that Emanuel was at the “vanguard and forefront.”
‘Mutual respect regardless of sexual orientation’
Indeed, the former Californian officiated at Australia’s first same-sex Jewish commitment service at Emanuel in 2008 – between Scott Whitmont and Christopher Whitmont-Stein – following a May 2007 decision by the Council of Progressive Rabbis of Australia, New Zealand and Asia.
However, Rabbi Mordechai Gutnick, president of the Organization of Rabbis of Australasia, countered at the time: “While we may and should be tolerant towards individuals, we certainly cannot sanctify something that our Bible clearly prohibits.”
Haaretz recently has learned the names of several Orthodox rabbis in Sydney and Melbourne who welcome individual gay Jews, but their names cannot be made public.
“Do 612 mitzvot and we won’t worry about the 613th,” one Orthodox rabbi told a gay congregant, according to Dayenu’s Gotlieb.
Kamins and Immerman agreed the general Jewish community is more open. “Gay Jews are less marginalized today,” Immerman said. “Most of the Jewish establishment has become more welcoming but I guess some segments of the community are more so than others.”
In 2010, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry adopted a resolution in 2010 calling for “mutual respect” regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.
But the elected leadership acknowledged there is still “much work” to be done to “remove intolerance of and unlawful discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons in the Jewish community.”
Intolerance and discrimination were widespread in Melbourne in 1999 when Michael Barnett led the first attempt by Aleph Melbourne, a Jewish GLBT support group, to apply for membership of the roof body, the Jewish Community Council of Victoria.
The move sparked an acrimonious debate ending with an impassioned plea by now-deceased Rabbi Ronald Lubofsky, who claimed if the motion passed it “may well be a turning point in our community,” and would result in the collapse of the council because Orthodox associates would be forced to resign.
“This JCCV has no right to meddle with the fundamentals of Judaism,” he said.
But Barnett argued that rejecting the group would be “a win for fear, intolerance and prejudice.” The motion was narrowly denied, 46-39, and the Jewish LGBT group has remained outside the tent ever since.
Barnett told Haaretz this week that the improved lot of gays in the general community affected the Jews as well. “The conversations seem to be less unacceptable now, given that homosexuality is more visible in wider society,” he said.
“It’s not something that can just be dismissed as ‘not our problem.’ It’s still taboo in the frum circles, and I suspect it’s pretty much spoken about in disparaging terms,” he added.
But while Reform and Conservative Judaism in Australia has embraced the gay community, Gotlieb wants to “challenge” for more inclusiveness.
“I would like to see more inclusion at Emanuel, more awareness that most gay people are somewhat distanced from their families,” he said.
There are still many Australian Jews whose view on gays is “personal and heartfelt and accepting,” he said. “But then they apologize that they are not able to express that publicly.”