1995 in the AJN: Fighting prejudice against AIDS sufferers

[From Trove and the Australian Jewish News]

Australian Jewish News (Melbourne, Vic. : 1935 – 1999), Friday 20 October 1995, page 23

Fighting prejudice against AIDS sufferers

Jackie Brygel talks to Tammi Faraday about how she reconciles her religious beliefs with her work on the Victorian AIDS Council.

Tammi Faraday: helping to universalise the AIDS issue. Photo: Lex Mrocki

AS A YOUNG Orthodox Jew working in a voluntary capacity for the Victorian AIDS Council, Tammi Faraday has often been forced to defend her job.

For the 20-year-old Leibler-Yavneh graduate, however, there is no conflict between her religion and her work.

“I have been asked how, as a religious Jew, I can work for an organisation that is condoning homosexuality,” she said, in an interview with the Australian Jewish News. “First of all, my position on homosexuality is absolutely inconsequential to the cause; Regardless of what I feel, it is not for me to judge.

“We talk of God and we talk of mercy and compassion and all these other things that people very easily forget. Ritualism is very important, but I think the essence of religion often gets lost.”

Ms Faraday said that homosexuality was “problematic” within the Torah. But by the same token, she added, the saving of a life is a fundamental precept in the Jewish religion.

“We should perpetuate that by helping people and by educating people. And it is not just gays who are affected (by AIDS).

“I think there is a syndrome in the Jewish community of being very judgmental. People should be embraced. Thank God, the incidence of AIDS is not huge within the Jewish community, but I don’t think that anybody has the right to disenfranchise a person or to make a person feel remote or ostracised. It is an issue that has to be dealt with.”’

Ms Faraday, who is currently studying law/arts at Monash University, has also been asked why she has not channelled her energies into Jewish causes. It is a question to which she has taken umbrage.

“To me, AIDS is a human cause,” she said. “It is a Jewish cause as much as any other cause. I am a very proud Jew who wears Judaism on my sleeve. But we are human and we are not immune to this disease.”

Ms Faraday first developed an interest in AIDS at the age of 14 when she read a book on a haemophiliac who had contracted the HIV infection through a blood transfusion. After spending eight months studying at the Hebrew University in Israel, she approached the Victorian AIDS Council in April this year.

Ms Faraday is now public relations officer for the Council’s Red Ribbon Project. Red ribbons, the international symbol for AIDS awareness, will be sold by shops, businesses and street sellers for World AIDS Day on December 1. All proceeds from the red ribbons go towards the support of men, women and children living with HIV/AIDS.

“I was very nervous to come back to Australia after living in Israel,” Ms Faraday said. “I had been very fulfilled there and all my senses had been on overload every minute of the day.

“When I came back, I wanted to throw myself into an organisation where I felt I could provide some expertise and do something positive to help others.”

Ms Faraday also believed there were many misconceptions about AIDS with many Australians still referring to it as the ‘gay plague’.

“That is not the case,” she said. “It’s a universal disease and it doesn’t discriminate. I felt that as someone who was Jewish and a woman and a minority in this organisation, I would be able to help universalise the issue.

“Now the figures show that AIDS is decreasing slowly in the gay population, but increasing substantially in the heterosexual population… Twenty million people have been infected with the (HIV) virus thus far around the world. It is the highest killer of 22 to 44-year old Americans. It is an epidemic we are facing.”

Ms Faraday conceded she initially felt like the “odd one out” at the Council, but quickly found her niche.

“The environment here is so warm, friendly, loving and supportive. It’s a wonderful environment to work in.

“I wanted to ensure I confronted the disease head-on and be knowledgeable about it so I was not prejudiced in any way, shape or form. Knowledge is the key.”

ajn-19951020-p23-HIV

“Harry Elkus” and the Caulfield Synagogue anti-homosexuality protest

A document protesting a gay rabbi was being shared around the Melbourne Jewish community.
Intolerance of gay people is unacceptable.

Gay orthodox rabbi Steven Greenberg was billed as guest speaker at the Caulfield Hebrew Congregation on Friday June 16 2017:

Rabbi Steven Greenberg guest speaker at CHC

It came to our attention last week that a document “HERESY-CHC” was being distributed around the Melbourne Jewish community calling for concerned members of the Jewish community to protest this event:

Heresy pamphlet

The document contains the name “Harry Elkus” in the Author field of the document Properties:

Heresy document properties

It also came to our attention that some of the information in the flyer was apparently misleading:

 

FYI
(i just received this from a protest organiser)
==========================
Please send this out ASAP
To the Melbourne Jewish community,
Yesterday an email was disseminated to the community calling for a public protest outside Caulfield Shule during its upcoming event this Friday night.
Following consultation with leading communal Rabbonim we hereby inform the community that the planned protest has been cancelled. We discourage anyone from participating in any public protests as it will only serve to escalate the controversy surrounding the issue.
We also wish to clarify one aspect of the email distributed yesterday. Some in the community understood from the email that the (now cancelled) protest had the widespread support of the Rabbinate including, but not limited to, the Rabbinical Council of Victoria (RCV) and the Rabbinical Council of Australia and New Zealand (RCANZ). We wish to clarify that at no point were the RCV or the RCANZ consulted about the said protest. We apologise sincerely to both Rabbinic bodies for any implication otherwise.
We maintain our view that the event at Caulfield Shule should not be under the auspices of Orthodoxy but we recognize that public protests are counter-productive.
May Hashem help us in seeing Torah true Judaism upheld in our community.

 

It is deeply disappointing and disturbing that some members of the Jewish community wish to use their religion to demonise and further marginalise homosexual people.  There is no room for discrimination or intolerance in the Jewish community.

The Progressive Perspective on Same Sex Marriage | Galus Australis

The Progressive Perspective on Same Sex Marriage

July 24, 2013 – 8:00 pm

By Rabbi Jonathan Keren-Black:

Scott Whitmont wedding in Sydney

Within Progressive Judaism, we start with a strong emphasis on the human position. We also believe that every human being is ‘made in God’s image’, and that God is a God of love, kindness and justice. Whilst the majority of people are predominantly heterosexual, it is clear that a significant number are not, and we do not accept that God wishes them to be forced into relationships and structures that are not as loving, healthy and supportive as they could be.

Since we believe that Torah is a revered but ultimately human document, written by our ancestors, inspired by God and seeking to answer the question ‘What does God want of us?’, we recognise the duplicated prohibition in Leviticus that ‘a man should not lie with another man as with a woman’ as one of those simplistic and time-bound human rules, developed in the context of needing to produce as many children as possible to create a numerous nation (and army) – and one that has, sadly and tragically, led to enormous prejudice, bigotry, hatred and violence against a particular group within all monotheistic religions over the subsequent millennia.

Back in Genesis 2, the observation is made, in the name of God, that a person should not be alone. However much you love your animals, they are not the same as another person. The context of the creation story on Genesis 1 is on reproduction – the trees and vegetation with their seed in them, the very first command – even before humans have been created – to the creatures and birds and insects: ‘Go forth and multiply’. When God created humanity – male and female at the same moment – they too received the same instruction – the first command to humanity, but with the added responsibility to ‘khivshuha’ – to ‘master’ or ‘care-take’ the earth. After Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden of Eden (the naive innocence of childhood where everything is provided), they get down to propagation (chapter 4) – the explanation for the population of the world. Male and Female equals children!

So this relationship which produces children was seen as ‘God’s natural plan’ (though sometimes with more than one wife!) and was formalised in ‘marriage’ which was then seen as a ‘God given’ or ‘holy’ structure (the agreement to form such as unit is termed ‘kiddushin’, sanctification). Hence, as with homophobia, marriage as a divinely sanctioned heterosexual union has also drawn heavily on the Hebrew bible as it has become the norm in monotheism.

Today we acknowledge that we cannot be sure of God’s will, and that Torah scholarship does not spell it out definitively and fully. We view and review our generations of experience and scholarship with our wish for truth, right, justice and compassion and our understanding of psychology, history, coercion and oppression in the name of religion and God. We seek to do God’s will, as our ancestors did, but with the awareness that we may not be right, and can only do our best.

In March, 2000, the Central Conference of American Rabbis agreed that “the relationship of a Jewish, same gender couple is worthy of affirmation through appropriate Jewish ritual”. In Britain, too, homosexual Jewish couples were able to celebrate a Commitment Ceremony. In 2009, the Rabbis of the Union for Progressive Judaism (Australia, New Zealand and Asia) resolved to permit its rabbis to officiate at same gender commitment ceremonies between two Jews. At that stage we were not ready to use the specific term Kiddushin but could use the term ‘bestowing Kedusha’.  A document may be used and referred to as a Ketubah. A Khuppah may be used as it may be understood to represent the Jewish home being established.

We have agreed not to call the ceremony Marriage for the time being even where we may be legally entitled to do so, but we have written to the government to call for full Marriage Equality – so that marriage may now be recognized as a binding legal and social commitment between two adults. Marriage serves as a recognised and long-term legal and social structure in the modern world. Those who live in a permanent relationship without the benefit of the formal recognition may still suffer from some social stigma and may be disadvantaged, for example in pension rights, and any such inequity is unjust and unacceptable. For these reasons, the Rabbis and leaders of the UPJ now wish to see marriage redefined as the permanent and exclusive relationship between two people, whether a man and a woman, two women or two men, and support Marriage Equality. We were the only religious group to provide supportive testimony to the two Parliamentary enquiries into it, but hope that others will soon join us! We also support Keshet (keshet.org.au), who are committed to challenging the ongoing prejudice and discrimination within the Jewish community against homosexuality.

Jonathan Keren-Black is Rabbi at The Leo Baeck Centre.

The Inner Struggles of Gay Orthodox Jews, Rabbis on Homosexuality, and More | interfaithradio.org

The Inner Struggles of Gay Orthodox Jews, Rabbis on Homosexuality, and More | interfaithradio.org.

Accepting the Unacceptable | Galus Australis

Accepting the Unacceptable | Galus Australis.