Why Are Some Queer Jews Spending More Time In Shul Than At Gay Karaoke?

Why Are Some Queer Jews Spending More Time in Shul than at Gay Karaoke?
“It´s a choice,’ said University of Georgia first-year, Chuck Cohen. “If I hadn´t made it, my life would certainly be easier. My parents would certainly have an easier time dealing with me. But that said, I want to be part of a community that will accept me for who I am.’

It may sound like Cohen is talking about his life as a gay man. But he´s not. He´s talking about being an observant Jew.

“To me, being gay doesn´t define me any more than saying, ‘I´m five-foot-eight.´’ Cohen, raised in a “nonreligious family,’ chose to become a practicing Conservative Jew, over his parents´ secular lifestyles. That act of choosing always hangs over his questions of identity. “I feel more defensive about my Judaism,’ he said. “From that standpoint, I would identify more as Jewish than as gay.’

Cohen, like countless other lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) Jewish college students, lives and learns in an environment with unprecedented levels acceptance of alternative genders and sexualities.

While the Orthodox establishment maintains the relevance of the Mosaic Code, and Conservative officialdom remains undecided about just how welcoming they wish to be , Reform and Reconstructionism are the only mainstream denomination that are explicitly LGBTQ-friendly. Recent books and films like _Hineini_, about a Jewish day school community struggling to create an environment for Jews of differing denominations and sexual orientations, push Jews to create communities that are welcoming for all.

But progress is slow, and though not explicitly forced to, LGBTQ Jewish students feel pressure to choose between identities. Even Cohen said he´s “never had to make the choice’ between the queer and Jewish communities on campus, but can´t help but feel a stronger affinity for Hillel than the college´s queer advocacy group.

And he´s not the only one. Observant LGBTQ Jewish students have more options than ever to explore their sexualities in social and political groups and their religious questions within Jewish communities. But when time is scarce, religiously inclined LGBTQ Jewish students have to make some choices.

From California and Michigan to Connecticut and the boroughs of New York, many are siding with the Jews. Their motivations vary, but each person´s story sheds light on the uncertain future of observant Judaism in a world of blurring lines between genders and sexual expression.

Leaning Toward Hillel

An old joke at Ohio´s Oberlin College says that the student body is one-third Jewish and one-third queer. And it´s the same third.

Senior Lee Butler is a poster child for such demographic overlapping. Born into a Christian family, Butler identifies as a female-bodied male, who is attracted to both men and women. “I´m a fag-dyke,’ he said.

Over the past few years, Butler has undergone two major identity shifts—his gender and his religion. He converted to Judaism three years ago and is currently one of the more observant Jews on campus. But he says the openness of Oberlin to LGBTQ people can, ironically, have a splintering effect on any kind of organized queer community.

“I´m in a place where I´m comfortable. There´s a lot of queers on campus,’ he explained. But numbers alone don´t lead to solidarity. “We´re hardly being oppressed here. There´s not a whole lot that the queer community has to rally around. There isn´t a cohesive queer community.’ On the other hand, he continued, “There actually is an organized Jewish community. That´s probably why you see religious queers being involved in organized Jewish communities.’

The goals of the Jewish religious community on campus, he said, are more specific and conducive to institutional participation: “You don´t need to know the other nine people to daven [pray] in a minyan [ten-person prayer quorum].’ As Butler understands it, the queer community, though it contains active groups, does not rely on overarching institutions for survival. Instead, “[It] is about needing people that you´re friends with.’

Himself part of the pattern he describes, Butler occasionally attends meetings of the campus´s Trans Advocacy Group, but goes to Hillel and the Kosher/Halal Dining Co-op “a lot more,’ though he steers away from “queer-themed’ events that Hillel hosts with a small group called Q-Jews. “I don´t want ‘themed´ religious events,’ he explained. “I want halacha [Jewish law]. I want people I can daven with. What I want to be able to do is to be out within my Jewish community.’

This sort of community, readily available at Oberlin, seems unthinkable on other campuses.

"I Feel Like God's Playing a Trick on Me"

“I´ve thought about various rationalizations, but ultimately I believe Torah was given to us black and white,’ said Adam, a gay Yeshiva University (YU) student. “Two people of the same sex can´t be in a monogamous relationship and be legitimate in the eyes of Torah.’

For the time being, Adam sees no possibility for reconciling his identities, and feels forced to make a very distinct choice between Judaism and queerness. Raised Orthodox, he lapsed from observance soon after realizing he was gay.

“I´ve been to certain parts of the world where I could´ve been having lots of fun, and sort of living the gay lifestyle,’ he said. “But I didn´t really feel it. I have to be true to myself.’ In the past year, he experienced an Orthodox reawakening, which effectively led him to foreclose the possibility of fully living his Judaism and his sexuality at the same time. “I feel like God´s playing a trick on me. But I can´t reject my religious beliefs.’

Adam sees no hope in trying to live a heterosexual lifestyle, a fact which he says puts him in even more of a bind. “I´m not going to try to overcome anything or change myself, but what I´ve been doing more or less is trying to keep celibate. I want to have a son…I want to take him to shul,’ he said. “But it doesn´t match with the two-husband male family.’

Adam´s quandary is not the first time that YU, the major higher educational institution of American Modern Orthodoxy, has been the site of a debate about LGBTQ issues for Jewish college students. In 1995, there was a furor over the existence of official “gay clubs’ in the university; in 2001, a similar controversy arose when an openly gay student ran for student body president; and in 2000, the American Civil Liberties Union joined with gay YU students in filing suit against the school´s policy of prohibiting same-sex couple from living in married student housing. Currently gay clubs are not banned, but none exist—at least not officially.

According to YU first-year student Hirsch*, bureaucratic permissibility is just a loophole. The culture of fear at YU, he described, runs deeper than debates on policy, and causes gay and questioning students to go underground. “There´s a lot of homophobia here,’ he remarked. Hirsch, who does not identify as gay, but says he´s “experimented’ with men, said he´s “spoken to people about my sexual exploits before, and I get all sorts of looks and comments.’

Although he sees no outright gay-bashing, Hirsch says one´s “reputation’ can lead to pariah status. Compounding matters, he sees little to no support among the campus religious authorities on questions of sexuality. “Most people can understand if you don´t want to keep Shabbat—even the rabbis,’ he said, “but sexuality is a different story.’

Split Down the Middle

In between the Orthodoxy of YU and the LGBTQ presence at Oberlin, are universities where religious Jews navigate layers of identity by carving out their own niches in explicitly LGBTQ Jewish groups. But even in such groups, members often find themselves leaning towards the Hillels.

“I don't fit in the queer world that well, besides what porn I watch, who I want in my bed, and how I fall politically,’ said Rivka, a student at the University of Michigan.

Rivka is a Modern Orthodox, and a leader of Ahava (“love’ in Hebrew), a campus group dedicated to LGBTQ Jewish events and study. In her ideal vision, Ahava exists as a place for those who feel alienated by both the queer and Jewish communities. “In the LGBT community it's more normative to be unreligious. And the Jewish community can be hostile at times,’ she said.

According to Rivka, that hostility manifests itself in “pockets of the Orthodox community,’ that are resistant to the group, even going so far as to protest a recent Ahava event in which openly gay, Orthodox Rabbi Steve Greenberg spoke at the school.

She is also disappointed that Ahava remains primarily secular in its membership. “Anyone who might be queer in the Orthodox or Conservative minyans either wants to keep it undercover, or is not interested in being part of it,’ she said.

Despite the mild antipathy of the religious community, Rivka spends the bulk of her extracurricular time at the Hillel, and far less time at LGBTQ group meetings. Her reasoning differs slightly from Butler´s: she supports the queer community, but finds it alien and intimidating.

Ever since her first week on campus, Rivka said she has, “Felt like I was intruding on something that's not mine…while the queer community would always be there…the Jewish community is my home.’

The split between the two communities is felt at other schools as well. Harvard senior Kara Levy, the chair of BAGELS, an LGBTQ organization, says that in an increasingly accepting Jewish world, the group struggles for relevance.

“The fraction of the Jewish community for whom queer identity is still an issue is shrinking because the Reform and Reconstructionist movements are open, not just in theory, but in practice,’ said Levy, who identifies as a liberally-leaning Orthodox lesbian. And though she describes Harvard Hillel as a “welcoming’ place for LGBTQ students, she dislikes what she describes as the familiar feeling of being “the only gay person there’ during services. BAGELS, once filled with an active membership, now exists primarily as an email list-serve with periodic social gatherings.

Meanwhile, the campus Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, and Straight Alliance (BGLTSA) has a “huge amount of Jews,’ Levy observed, most of whom are secular. And according to BGLTSA co-chair Mischa Feldstein, the group´s lack of outreach to the religious Jewish community is no accident.

“There are other communities on campus where making a space for queer people is more urgent than the Jewish community,’ he argued. Despite the membership, he says the BGLTSA is not going to have a discussion “about reconciling your Judaism with your queerness, because it doesn´t necessarily make sense for us to be privileging certain religions over others. That kind of discussion makes more sense…in a religious setting,’ explained Feldstein.

Such a religious setting is, indeed, where BAGELS operates. Levy is a self-described “Hillel regular,’ and the group is Hillel-sponsored. Like Rivka or Lee, she sticks by the Jewish community because of her desire to worship, but has her sights set elsewhere as well.

Levy wants a partner who is religious. “For me, one of the big problems in life is that there´s nobody to date...When we have a more open and accepting Jewish community, organizations like BAGELS will become meat-markets—and that´s a good thing!’

Inching Toward the Mainstream

Though the sentiment has been widely voiced, not all religious and queer students agree that there is a trend towards Jewish institutional involvement.

“People who identify seriously as both Jews and queers would be hard pressed to choose one over the other,’ said Jessica Rosenberg, co-chair of Stanford´s “JQ,’ or Jewish Queers, group. Unlike Ahava or BAGELS, it is equally co-sponsored by the Hillel and the campus Queer Studies organization.

Indeed, Rosenberg thinks most JQ members, if they do have institutional inclinations, “lean more towards being queer, at this point.’

Her co-chair, Dan Zeehandelar, agrees. “It´s a tough distinction to draw—very few people are involved in JQ and not involved in other queer organizations.’ He does add that “a majority’ of JQ members are “non-observant.’

One unifying frustration for many LGBTQ and observant Jews on college campuses is a feeling that, as Rosenberg put it, “there is no national context for queer Jewish students.’

One group is trying to step up to fill the gap.

Dan Heller, a gay Conservative Jew and a senior at Wesleyan, is leading the planning of this year´s National Union of Jewish LGBTQQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, Queer, and Questioning) Students (NUJLS) annual conference this April, and thinks the fledgling organization can change the Jewish student world.

“If you think of NUJLS like a start-up high-tech firm, then we´re working with the goal of being acquired.’ If it gets “folded into Hillel,’ he explained, “there will be queer Jewish options,’ within the institutional framework. He envisions Hillel-led conferences, discussions, and paid staff persons to work on Jewish queer issues .Until then NUJLS plans to use its limited resources and advertising capabilities to create a place for networking, activism such as a letter-writing campaign to the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) about their anti-gay “Don´t Ask, Don´t Tell’ policy, discussions with prominent queer Jews, and even unscheduled “debaucherous activity’ reminiscent of youth group trips that, “as queer youths, many Jews never got to have .’

“I can´t navigate the American political system well enough to institute same-sex marriage into mainstream society,’ he said, explaining his priorities, “but I speak the Jewish language.’ With that vocabulary and familiarity, he wants to ensure that all Jews have a home in the structured Jewish world. And Heller sees that future with Hillel, not a national LGBTQ organization.

Making Change from Within

Though all these students have had vastly different experiences with their LGBTQ and Jewish communities, all seem to agree that sexuality alone is not a sufficient basis for forming a meaningful community.

After all, how much do two Jewish students from the Northeast have in common with Christian, cowboy lovers from Wyoming, like the protagonists of Brokeback Mountain? The fact that both are same-sex couples won´t necessarily entice them to band together. However, the desires for a familiar cultural setting, a community of like-minded people, and a place for religious worship strongly influence how religious LGBTQ Jews form campus networks.

The onus is now on Jewish institutions to create safe, welcoming communities so LGBTQ and other members won´t have to subdivide their identities.

"I've never had to make the choice between the two groups," Cohen reflected. "And I would hope I never have to."