Hinenu - Responding To The Teshuvot
When the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards made its decision on the status of gay men and lesbians in December 2006, all of a sudden congregations and their rabbis realized that they too might have some decisions to make.
Before rabbis could decide how to handle requests for same-sex commitment ceremonies, though, and before the congregants could consider hiring a gay or lesbian rabbi, and before synagogue religious schools and Conservative day schools could form policies about hiring openly gay faculty members, many realized that they would have to do some serious self-examination. They’d have to consider what it was that they really believed, and how it was that those beliefs were being communicated. Some sensitivity training was in order.
Moreover, it became clear that the question of how to treat people who are different or who come from families that are not standard issue goes beyond gays and lesbians.
That’s where Keshet, a Boston-based organization that works with the Jewish community on GBLT issues, came in.
“We’ve always worked with Conservative shuls and day schools,” Idit Klein, Keshet’s director, said. “Last year we did our first training with USY, and we did one with the Jewish Youth Directors’ Organization,” which is affiliated with the movement. “After the teshuvot came out, we realized that it was a turning point for the Conservative movement.”
Keshet does a great deal of work with schools. “Our primary methodology had been facilitating dialogue and training for Jewish educators and community leaders, through modules we call Safe Schools,” she said. The program, which started in Boston and has spread across the United States, taught Jewish educators the practical skills to “create safe and inclusive spaces.” Keshet also produced the documentary film Hineni, the powerful and true story of a young woman who came out at her Jewish day school.
When the teshuvot were accepted, Ms. Klein realized that a text-based approach would help the Conservative community understand the choices available to them.
“You’d be hard pressed to find many people in the Jewish community who would say that it’s okay for educators to stand by while some kid who is thought to be gay is brutally harassed,” Ms. Klein said. “Almost everyone can sign on to an agenda for safe schools. But there’s still a persistent belief that if you talk about gay people it makes kids want to be gay.
“And it’s not enough for kids to be in a school or a community that espouses a tolerant approach to gay/lesbian matters. Tolerance isn’t enough. Within the context of a Jewish classroom, it’s about asking what makes a Jewish family. Are we communicating to kids that yes, your family doesn’t look like the family in the book but it’s also a Jewish family, and it’s as authentic and vibrant as any other one?”
“Every shul is different,” Ms. Klein continued. “When we go into Conservative shuls often we start with an intensive consultation with the rabbi. Then we may do a training for the Hebrew school teachers. Steve may speak at an oneg Shabbat or teach a shiur on Shabbat afternoon. We may screen Hineni at our parent-teen programs. We try to work with everyone.”
Steve is Rabbi Steve Greenberg, who is Orthodox and openly gay. He works for the Jewish organization Clal, was featured in the groundbreaking movie Trembling Before G-d, and wrote Wrestling With God And Men.
“When you go to a synagogue or the parents in a day school, it’s very helpful to have the Jewish erudition that Steve has,” Ms. Klein said. “He’s able to guide people through the texts, to show that what you thought of as an ending point doesn’t really have to be.”
“Whatever policy ends up being chosen, it will inevitably be not only a pragmatic choice but a choice of how we manage halachah,” Rabbi Greenberg said. “Rabbis have to be able to put their good intentions together with their religious persona and their communal identities. My aim has been to disentangle homophobia from the halachic norms, to demonstrate that the notion of homosexuality we know today wasn’t current during the time either of the Torah or the rabbis. I want to show that there are a number of responses to the question that can open up discourse in a fresh way, and that along with rabbis Roth and Dorff and Tucker and others inside and outside the Conservative movement we can explore the various options of meaning and method that can make halachah an incredible resource for Conservative Jewish communities.”
Rabbi Carl Perkins of Temple Aliyah in Needham, Massachuetts, invited Keshet to do a program. “We’re always trying to help our staff be more sensitive to our children, and this seemed like a natural opportunity for us,” he said. “There are kids in our school who have gay parents—not everyone comes from an Ozzie and Harriet nuclear family. It helps the teachers, too, in handling what could be awkward situations more supportively and comfortably. And looking back, we’ve had teenagers who I knew were gay.
“This can very well be a matter of life and death,” Rabbi Perkins continued. “In the larger community, we’ve had a serious outbreak of teenage suicides in the last few years, and statistics show that kids who are struggling with their sexuality and gender orientation are at much higher risk of suicide than other kids. We want to make it clear that kids shouldn’t be ashamed of themselves if they are gay.
“Conservative congregations are a microcosm of the communities in which we live,” he concluded. “That means that there are people who are gay or lesbian or bisexual or transgendered. There’s always been a history of gay persecution. The only way we can assure young people that it’s safe for them to be gay is to make it clear that it is not a source of stigma or shame. We must make clear that our communities can be home for people of a variety of sexual orientations.”
