Journeying in the Desert - Claiming Our Identities and Our Torah
Jews are always coming out.
Days before my rabbinical school interview at the Jewish Theological Seminary, I stood before 250 participants at a national conference where I had been invited to lead the Passover seder.
I read the words from the haggadah, “In every generation each person must see him or herself as having come out from Egypt.” For the past two years, I have found myself returning to that sentence as a framework to shape and share my experience.
In 2007, both the American Jewish University and JTS accepted me to their rabbinical schools, which marked the first time an openly gay or lesbian Jew was invited to bring his or her skills to bear in a Conservative rabbinical school. Some had made their sexual orientation invisible during rabbinical school by hiding in the closet. Others had invested their talents in other seminaries and movements, where they could be open, and still others had left Judaism altogether. Ancestors from recent history and from the generation that came out from Egypt helped forge the path for me.
Once we came out of Egypt, our visibility and identity solidified as we wandered in the desert and experienced liberation in its early stages. How does the journey unfold at JTS? Admitting a previously marginalized group into community is not the same as inviting each person’s identity and experience to become a visible strand in that community’s story.
Although a person’s identity often is visible, that is not always true for gays and lesbians. Invisibility can breed ignorance and worse, and it led me to feel marginalized within some of the Conservative communities I called home. Changing policy to admit gays and lesbians at JTS is an historic first step; cultural change to invite our stories is an ever-evolving process. Our presence at JTS as well as the particular experience we share will begin the gradual process of culture change. We must engage in this process to undo years of erasure, invisibility, and marginalization. Every time my classmate Ian Chesir-Teran opens his locker, the pictures of his family give visibility to same-sex parented households in the mosaic of contemporary Jewish life. The wedding ceremonies of same-sex couples will help us think more expansively about egalitarian models of partnering.
My rabbinate will be expanded by the many lenses through which I view the world. We live in exciting times of change but also with the reality that discrimination based on sexual orientation is among the last bastions of sanctioned bigotry in our society. We all have a stake in creating culture change, learning from each other in the process. Our conversations require the engagement of everybody in our community, gay and straight, who strives to embody Torah’s ethical, ritual, intellectual, and spiritual peaks.
The Conservative movement has relied too long on defining itself by who does not belong. While parameters are important, we must frame our questions more inclusively. Instead of debating whether gays (or women) can be ordained as rabbis, let’s ask each other what values we want our rabbis to model in their religious leadership. Value-driven questions may be harder to answer, but they urge us into relationship with each other. How has our coming out from Egypt empowered us to view the coming out of oppressed people today? We must be prepared to look into the eyes of the human beings who stand before us at the same time as we look into the texts we cherish. These are real people, not theoretical concepts. Many of them are teenagers who are kicked out of families or sent to therapy to become straight. They get bludgeoned to death in hate crimes, or steeped in self-loathing and rejection, they kill themselves. Their lives rest in our rabbinic hands.
JTS can model the reconciliation our world so desperately needs, for how can we advocate for peace on the world stage if we do not model openness to the diversity in our midst?
Making my identity visible to people who question its worth can be difficult. It is a violation of human dignity to cite reparative therapy as a “cure” for homosexuality, as if I am in need of fixing, or to label gays and lesbians as deviants. While such dehumanizing rhetoric is rare at JTS, its presence in certain parts of the larger community vitiates normative discourse and basic respect for God’s creation.
Those at JTS who disagree with the ordination of gays and lesbians from a halachic view challenge me to hold passion for my beliefs along with compassion for each of these classmates, friends, and professors with whom I create community. When I have lunch with them, my invisibility begins to fade. I share my experience and encounter theirs. While it is easy to write off those with whom we disagree, transformative change happens when we enter into such conversations and relationships. We become real to each other. Face to face, we call ourselves to witness God’s image reflected in the diversity of creation.
When I relive the experience of coming out from Egypt, I can almost hear Moshe appealing to God at the sea. “Adonai will battle for you,” he reassures the Israelites. But God responds to Moshe, “Why do you cry out to me? Tell the Israelites to go forward. Lift up your rod and hold out your arm over the sea and split it.” As the people cross, Miriam and the women dance. The act of coming out from Egypt requires the lived experience of the community, in all of its diversity, seeking God in their midst. The sea will part through God’s might, but God asks human beings to be active partners in liberation.
The unfolding of the Exodus and journeying in the desert toward Sinai remind me of the centrality of aggadah and halakhah (narrative and law) in living Jewish tradition. I believe that Rabbi Gordon Tucker’s responsum, “Halakhic and Metahalakhic Arguments Concerning Judaism and Homosexuality,” can serve as a blueprint for gay and lesbian inclusion and help us think about integrating human experience with the observance of mitzvot. The ongoing development of aggadah and halakhah must be vital and relevant for Conservative Jews.
How does my journey continue in the desert? Practically speaking, how will policy change translate to culture change? It is essential for JTS’s interview committees to reflect the seminary’s commitment to diversity, and the questions its members ask must create a dignified space where openly gay and lesbian candidates are assessed fairly. I wonder what students will face in seeking pulpits. Will congregations apply the same standards for gay and straight applicants? Is it positive role modeling for the rabbi to hug her female partner after services, as her straight colleagues do, or will she be scolded for flaunting her sexuality? Diversity trainings are proactive initiatives and I am proud that JTS has offered one such training to rabbinic mentors. Many Conservative clergy and lay leaders have been on the front lines of this struggle, and others are beginning this important work. Policy and culture change will happen through long-term efforts to learn, struggle, raise awareness, and open respectful dialogue.
In the process of creating change together, allies at JTS are essential. Organizing with students and administration has been pivotal in forming a framework of compassionate sharing and listening. Alliances of students, faculty, and administration have led to major community-wide programs, such as the day of celebration that marked the first anniversary of the school’s policy change. We will be stronger for honoring the full identities of those Jews who wish to bring their commitment to observance, depth of character, and gifts of spirit and intellect to the rabbinate.
I am grateful to my JTS academic advisor and my mentors inside and outside the seminary who remain anchors on my journey, as I learn Torah and transform my narrative of lived experiences into pastoral empathy. My chaplaincy internship at New York’s Bellevue Hospital helped me develop and apply that language. There I found my rabbinic feet on the trauma, intensive care, and psychiatric units. By claiming my narratives and making them visible to myself, I put wheels on my theology and journeyed with patients in their pain. This awareness helped me be rooted, authentic, and responsive to the lived experience of my patients.
The process of coming out from Egypt and entering the desert is filled with uncertainty, and that is where the work is done to claim our identity and our Torah. It is my hope that our struggles will make it easier for those who come out, cross the sea, and wander in the desert tomorrow. We are walking on sacred ground; may the journey unfold in every generation.
Aaron Weininger is a second-year rabbinical student at the Jewish Theological Seminary.
