Community Tehillim for Two Slain and 8 Injured at Tel-Aviv gay Community Center

We mourn the loss of three people who were murdered in a shooting at a weekly support group for youth in a  gay community center in Tel-Aviv late Sat. , and pray for those who were wounded in what may have been the worst homophobic attack on the gay community in Israel.  The New York Times reports that as of this writing no arrests have been made, and the motives are unknown, but that government officials and leaders of glbt organizations in Israel believe it to be a hate-crime. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims of this attack, their families, friends and communities.

Sunday, Aug 2, at 7:00pm EST, we urge you to take a moment to think of those who have been killed and wounded in this attack and to recite Tehillim (psalms) on their behalf.  Specifically, we will be reciting psalms 70,20, and 130.  May God comfort the mourners among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem, and bring a speedy recovery, in body and in spirit,  to all those injured by this attack.

Next Tirtzah Event: Davening As A Frum Queer Woman – August 2, 2009 (New York City)

Tirtzah: A Community of Frum Queer Women invites you to join us for our next event:

DAVENING AS A FRUM QUEER WOMAN
Sunday, August 2nd, 2009
11:00 AM
New York, NY

We will be exploring questions such as: What is your relationship to individual and communal prayer? How is your relationship to Hashem affected by your being lesbian/bisexual/queer/questioning? Has your relationship to prayer and to Hashem changed as you have come out to yourself and/or your community?

We will begin with some text study, as always, and then delve into discussing our personal relationships with prayer and with G-d, and the feelings and experiences that come up for queer women during prayer.

Light kosher breakfast refreshments (bagels, fruit and juice) will be provided. We will ask for a donation of a few dollars to help defray the costs of photocopying & food, but we will not turn anyone away for lack of funds.

PLEASE COME ON TIME, AND PLEASE RSVP IF POSSIBLE!

IMPORTANT: In order to maintain safety and confidentiality, this event is only open to members of the Tirtzah Community. See below for directions on joining our e-mail discussion list. If you do not wish to join the list and still want to attend an event you will need to e-mail us for the location of the meeting. We require women who are not on our e-mail list to speak with one of the group leaders before attending an event.

WHAT IS TIRTZAH?

We are a community of frum queer women who gather to celebrate and study our yiddishkeit. We are committed to the value of shleimut (wholeness) and to supporting one another in observing a meaningful, integrated, honest and joyful Jewish life. We operate an e-mail list for women worldwide and we offer in-person events in the New York City area.

HOW DO I JOIN TIRTZAH?

If you are a lesbian, bisexual or queer identified woman who is religious, observant and/or Orthodox… or is on the path to becoming more halachically observant… we welcome you to join our e-mail discussion group. We aim for it to be a positive and non-judgmental space for women who are currently frum or are becoming frum*.

To join the group, go to http://groups.google.com/group/Tirtzah. You will need to create a Google account (free of charge) if you don’t already have one.

*We use the word “frum” to mean a person who is dedicated to observing the mitzvot, and is constantly working on doing a better job of that. We use this term to refer to someone who is engaged with halacha, who is aiming to grow in their Judaism, and who is serious about it. A frum person is someone who sustains and works towards a traditional Jewish spiritual life.

Pesach Sheini

The following is a guest post by Dina Berman and Tamar Gan-Zvi Bick of  Bat-Kol :

Second Passover: Dina Berman and Tamar Gan-Zvi Bick

In the Book of Numbers, Chapter 9, we read that the Israelites observed a certain
mitzvah while they stayed in the desert. God orders Moses, who passes on the order
to the people, and the people obey and perform the Passover rites at a particular
time, as it is ordained. So far, there is nothing unusual in this description, but later on
something strange takes place. The following verse tells of something unique. After a brief description of the sacrificing of the Passover lamb (and one can only imagine the festivities that took place while this mitzvah was performed by those who actually left Egypt with Moses), some Israelites turn to Moses with an unexpected plea:

 ”But there were some men who were unclean by reason of a corpse and could not offer the Passover sacrifice on that day. Appearing that same day
before Moses and Aaron, those men said to them: ‘Unclean though we are by
reason of a corpse, why must we be debarred from presenting the LORD’s
offering at its set time with the rest of the Israelites?”

The people who were ritually impure at the time of the observance of the Passover
rituals, and therefore could not take part in the mitzvahs of Passover, approach
Moses and Aaron and call out “why should we be excluded?” Let’s think for a
moment about their claim: On a superficial level they have no case. After all, these
people were prevented from carrying out the mitzvah because of their bad luck, or
perhaps their own bad planning or negligence. They were not targeted or injured
personally, it was simply bad timing that prevented them from fulfilling this specific
mitzvah. They should be satisfied that no punishment is due them because of it. But
these people feel that being prevented from performing the mitzvah harms them by
excluding them from the community, and they demand to be included and to sacrifice the Passover lamb.  

Moses, the greatest of sages, is lost for words, and his response is that he needs to
receive instruction from the LORD about what must be done. The answer he gets is revolutionary: 

“Speak to the Israelite people, saying: When any of you or your posterity who  are defiled by a corpse or are on a long journey would offer a Passover
sacrifice to the LORD, they shall offer it in the second month, on the
Fourteenth day of the month, at twilight. They shall eat it with unleavened
bread and bitter herbs; and they shall not leave any of it till morning. They
shall not break a bone of it. They shall offer it in strict accordance with the law
of the Passover sacrifice”.

The LORD’s answer is that there exists a “second chance” for the mitzvah of the Passover sacrifice. People who couldn’t sacrifice the Passover lamb in time (because of impurity related to death or physical inability to reach the site of sacrifice) should celebrate Passover on the Fourteenth of Iyar, and the LORD explicitly states that their Passover (Pesach Sheni) should be identical to the regular one, including matzoth and bitter herbs and all the special laws relating to Passover.  This is one of the strangest cases ever described in the Bible. On what is a completely ordinary day for almost all of the people of Israel, a certain group of people celebrate the Passover. On this day, as evening falls, they come to the temple dressed in their best, sacrifice the Passover lamb and eat it, matzoth and all. For these people this Passover is the real Passover, regardless of the fact that it is an ordinary day for the rest of the Jewish people.

Let us take note that the initiative does not come from the LORD, nor from Moses.
The possibility for a second Passover arises only because of the demand of the
ritually impure. That is the essence of this day: the LORD could have ordained it
from the beginning, but he waited for the insistence of those people who refused to
accept their fate, and fought for their place.

What can be learned from this extraordinary mitzvah? As we read the story of
Pesach Sheni we discover that consideration towards a minority is a Divine virtue,
one that humans must learn from, as part of “You shall follow His ways”. For what
we have here is a situation in which the majority of the Israelites sacrifice the
Passover lamb at its ordained time, while a minority is prevented from observing this
mitzvah. Our guess is, that if it were up to humans to solve this problem, they would
just shrug their shoulders and claim that it’s not their problem that ritually impure
people cannot sacrifice as prescribed: the writ of the LORD is perfectly clear and
there is nothing to be done. Only the LORD himself could come up with this solution,
of allowing the minority the place and the possibility to be part of the whole – for the
sacrifice of the Passover lamb together with the covenant of the circumcision,
signifies inclusion in the Jewish people – and all this without diminishing anything
from the original directive.

The second thing we can learn from Pesach Sheni is that some things must start at
the bottom. The initiative for the Pesach Sheni reform came from the ritually impure
and from distant travelers, and not from the LORD. In Hassidut, the month of Iyar is
viewed as the month in which redemption will come from the people while the month
of Nissan is that in which redemption came from the LORD. In our time, on the same
month of Iyar, we have been blessed to celebrate the beginning of the Jewish
people’s emancipation in their own country. It is very fitting that Yom HaAtzma’ut
(Independence Day) is celebrated in Iyar along with Pesach Sheni, as another
example of a groundswell demand that resulted in action.

The revolutionary aspect of the Divine solution to the problem of the celebration of
Passover by the ritually impure should not be taken lightly. It is a mitzvah whose
timing is crucial since it symbolizes a historical event, the exodus from Egypt which
took place on Nissan the Fourteenth, not Iyar the Fourteenth! As we can see, after
the LORD ordains Pesach Sheni he also warns: “But if a man who is clean and not
on a journey refrains from offering the Passover sacrifice, that soul shall be cut off
from his kin; for he did not present the LORD’s offering at its set time, that man shall
bear his guilt.” The creation of a solution for the minority does not open a way for
abrogating the original directive for the majority. If there is no justifiable reason for
not celebrating the Passover at its proper time, the punishment for not sacrificing the
Passover lamb is excommunication, a rare and severe punishment for the
contravention of a mitzvah that exits for only one other mitzvah – circumcision.

In the past few years some of us have been crying out “Why should we be
excluded?”. Religious gay men and women and aging single women would like to
build Jewish homes, and take part in the mitzvah of procreation and to be, in the
most basic sense, a part of the fabric of the nation; agunot would like to remarry
within the strictures of Jewish law, and find a halachic solution to their problem;
women would like to participate in mitzvot such as Torah study, and to be full
participants in their communities and synagogues. These cries, like the cries of the
ritually impure men, stem from a sincere and truthful desire to obey the laws of the
Torah, out of a deep understanding of the meaning of belonging to the Jewish
people, but without the ability to find their own place in the current tapestry of
mitzvoth.

The response of Rabbis and religious leaders to these problems was that there are
no existing halachic solutions: a Jewish home must be comprised of a male and a
female; the normative family is the basis of Jewish existence; there is no option to
change even some of the divorce laws for fear of a “wrongful divorce” and similar
problems; there is no place in the halachic framework for the full integration of
women in the public sphere of religious life. Pesach Sheni teaches us that creative
solutions must be found, special and unique solutions of the kind that challenges
even the most basic of assumptions. Pesach Sheni teaches us that there are parts of
the Torah that the LORD requires us to write ourselves, that arise from the demands
of the people, and that some halachot are written only in answer to a true and honest
plea for inclusion within the nation and in the framework of the law.

However, Pesach Sheni teaches us that not every change is the start of a slippery
slope. It teaches us that a solution can be found for a minority without changing
anything relating to the majority. The Fourteenth of Iyar is only for those who are
ritually impure or on the road, and is a regular day for everyone else – and the
mitzvah of Passover is not diminished because of the innovation of Pesach Sheni. In
the same way, halachic and intellectual solutions can – and should – be found for the
current cries of “Why should we be excluded?” that will allow minorities to coexist, at
the deepest level, with the rest of the Jewish people, without harming the halachic
norm that governs the majority.

The Fourteenth of Iyar, Pesach Sheni, is not celebrated today. Beyond the symbolic
gesture of not saying Tachanun, the penitential prayer recited daily, the day is not
marked. This is why we suggest turning the Fourteenth of Iyar into the day of
religious tolerance. A day that will remind us all of the necessity of halachic solutions
to real problems, to consider the difficulties of minorities, and to make a commitment
towards the “other”, whoever that may be. On this day we will remember that there
are still things to correct that will never be initiated from the top. On this day we can
remember that it is both possible and imperative to stretch boundaries, so as to
create a holiday on an otherwise ordinary day, one that enables all of the Jewish
people to participate in the world of the Torah. On the Fourteenth of Iyar we shall
recall the lesson that is taught, not by sage nor by messenger, but from the LORD
Himself. On a date that is but a few days after the day of celebration of our political
emancipation, let us celebrate the day of halachic responsibility – the day of religious
tolerance.

Writing From Where I Am

This is a guest post from Bas Avraham- a member of the Tirtzah community:

I don’t know how to tell people I am queer.
 
 Not that it’s so hard, mind you.  In fact, maybe it would be better to write that a different way:  I don’t know how to tell people  *how*  I’m queer.  It’s not simple, and it doesn’t have very much to do with identity politics, with my gender, or even with the biological sex of the people I want to have relationships with.  At least, not right now.
 
 I could try to explain everything, but in the end, I realized I can’t fit
 all of that into something suitable for internet consumption.  Instead, I am writing from where I am.

 Where I am is in the middle of trying to find a chasan, a
 groom, a partner in life.  As anyone can tell you, it’s hard work.  As a
 convert in my late twenties who doesn’t have a lot of experience dating, it’s also a bit scary for me.  I am new to dating, new to the frum world, and not exactly sure where I fit.  Right now, I am spending a lot of energy trying to figure out whether I want to be in a more “yeshivish” community or in a more modern orthodox community.  Truthfully, I don’t really understand why I have to make that choice, but it seems like it is important to most of the men out there, at least the ones I seem to be meeting.
 
 In order to find people to date, well.  At first, I didn’t have to find people.  I dated the same person for a year and a half – a man, who was my first love and also the first experience I ever had dating an orthodox person.  We met by accident, at a shul, and one of the first things I asked him was “how would you react, if you had a gay kid?”  His reaction was interesting; not extreme, not scared.  It made me more or less happy – the truth is, I was happy enough that he didn’t run away.  

At the time when I met him, what I wanted was to find someone who would join me in trying to find halakhically (that is, legally, according to Torah law) viable ways to advocate for the queer frum community at large.  At the bare minimum, I was looking for someone who would support my pursuit of that work.  The substance of that work has already changed, as I learn more about the Torah and the obligations and ideas it has on the subject, but my committment to the work itself, to partnering with other Jews to try to be a community where all of us can try to serve Hashem “b’chol levavcha, u’v'chol nafshecha” – with all our heart and blood – is non-negotiable.

 The truth is, he was dedicated to that work too.  To this day, I don’t know what really went wrong in that relationship.  But his horror at learning that I was interested in actually introducing queer frum Jews to one another, for the purposes of matchmaking, served, in an ironic twist, to hasten the end of my own match.  To me, my dedication to that type of advocacy ought to have been a conversation.  Instead, it was a shouting match, taking place over the course of two days.  The temptation to “give in” was very strong.

But ultimately, the result of the argument – which side won – wasn’t what disturbed me. What disturbed me was that he was willing to ignore parts of reality in order to try to uphold a “Torah law”. And to me, since I believe that the Torah deals in the ultimate reality, enacting it and its laws in the world really do have to take all of that world into account.  Whether there are good halakhic
 arguments for queer matchmaking or not is really not the point.  The point is that in considering the question, the people doing the considering need to include things like the following realities:
 
 1.  The existence of frum people who have feeling exclusively for people of
 ”non-halakhically optimal” genders – i.e., the continued existence of queer
 frum people, whether they are interested in identifying as queer in a political way or not.
 2.  A concern that as many Jews as possible do as many mitzvot as possible.
 3.  A concern that Jews remain affiliated with other Jews.
 4.  A concern that we as a Jewish community give one another permission to
 live our lives according to as many Jewish values as possible – this
 includes the value of tznius (modesty/humility) which problematizes many
 things that go along with secular dating.
 5.  A concern that people who are not permitted to get what they need openly
 often do so in ways that are risky or life-threatening, and are almost always dishonest to someone, somewhere along the way.
 6.  A concern for the high suicide rate among all queer youth.

 Since I believe that at least one act potentially involved in queer male relations is an issur d’oraisa (a Torah prohibition), and all bets are off as to the halakhic status of various things we women might do or relationships we might be in, the violation of a Torah prohibition is also one of these considerations – and obviously it is extremely weighty. Probably more weighty than most of the other considerations.  But the other considerations are still there.  They don’t simply disappear.  The Torah is not an arbitrary document.  It represents the will of G-d, and the last time I checked, G-d made the universe, with all the statistics and considerations and queer people in it.
 
 After man no. 1 and I broke up, I joined a dating website - the kind where you hire a shadchan (a matchmaker), and the shadchanim match you up.  I got matched after a good long while, and recently went on a first date with a new man.  He seemed pretty interesting, so we went out again.  Finally, on the third date, I asked him my killer question:  “what would you do if you had a child who told you he was gay?”

 Afterward, he told me his first thought was “what kind
 of orthodox Jewish conversation is this?”

 And I thought to myself, that’s just the trouble.  Why isn’t this an
 orthodox Jewish conversation?  Is being orthodox really about being in denial?
 
 I hope not.
 

Tirtzah Joins GLYDSA this Thursday

This thursday- Aug 28th at 8:30pm we will be joining the Gay and Lesbian Yeshiva Day School Alumni Association at the Glbt Community Center for a conversation about the Tirtzah community, and the experiences of Frum Queer Women.  GLYDSA is a supportive community for Yeshiva Day School Alumni (as well as other committed jews) which aims to provide a safe space for people to integrate their Gay and Jewish identities. 

Location: The LGBT Center   208 W.13 St. NYC, between 7th and 8th Avenues.
Subways: 1,2,3,A,C,E
Donation $3

Shavuot in NYC 2009

GLYDSA (Gay and Lesbian Yeshiva Day School Alumni) and JQyouth are hosting a picnic in Central Park on Shabbat afternoon from 2:30-7:00pm at the Northwest corner of the Sheep Meadow in Central Park, under the big tree. Look for the blue and white striped blanket. Paper goods, cups, and some soft drinks will be provided; bring kosher snacks or soft drinks to share. Dress comfortably. Bring a blanket if you want. (free, of course)

Posted by Tirtzah.

Call for Submissions: Anthology of Writings By and About Orthodykes

We saw this call for submissions and knew that our blog would be the perfect place to pass it on. This anthology will be the first of its kind so if you know of any queer religious Jewish women, let them know about this.

Call for Submissions:

KEEP YOUR WIVES AWAY FROM THEM:
AN ANTHOLOGY OF WRITINGS BY AND ABOUT ORTHODYKES

Deadline: July 31, 2008

Jewish women who are bisexual, transgender, lesbian or queer-identified live lives that can often be fraught with discord. But they have also mined the complexities and contradictions that come with these identities as sources for spiritual change, ritual innovation and community building. Keep Your Wives Away From Them is an anthology of professional scholarly essays and personal journalistic pieces that will document the stories of those who have lived in the meeting-ground of Judaism and queer desire. This anthology, in calling attention to an otherwise hidden or silent population of women, will unravel the puzzle of a seemingly impossible identity. It will also document the rich innovations in Jewish and queer life in the communities of Jewish LBTQ women and female born genderqueer individuals that have developed in around the world over the past 25 years.

Some topics KYW will address:

Life as a LBTQ person: What are the dilemmas and difficult elements of maintaining simultaneously and LBTQ identity? What are the joys and triumphs?

Family Ties: Personal stories may describe shifting filial or sibling relationships and severed or renewed family ties.

Community: Have traditional communities integrated LBTQ women into their midst? What rules must be followed to blend in?

Trans/intersex experiences: What are the challenges of being trans/intersex/genderqueer in the religious world and what resources are there for dealing with them? How do trans people adapt or relate to Jewish law, which so rigidly distinguishes between male and female obligations?

Ritual and Jewish Law: Often discussions of “homosexuality and Judaism” are focused exclusively on men. What are the sources of Jewish law, ritual, and halakah for interpreting classical Jewish teaching on lesbianism?

Think of the Children [A Guest Post by Rochel]

This is our first guest post, written by Rochel, a member of Tirtzah.

–

When I started coming out at shul, I didn’t know what to expect. I wasn’t naïve enough to hope that everyone would be supportive or understanding but at the same time I did try to be optimistic. After attending this shul for over four years, I had developed many close friendships and in fact considered many of the members more like family than friends. These were the people who had celebrated with me when I finished grad school, cried with me when my father was battling cancer, opened their homes to me week after week so that I could experience what it is like to have shabbos with family… this community taught me about the value of chesed (loving kindness) and I desperately hoped that they would respond to me with kindness when I opened up to them about my sexuality.

I chose different approaches to coming out to the people that I was closest with at shul. Some people I spoke with in person or on the phone, and cases where I was most nervous I wrote an email. While in the end, people have had different responses and offered varying degrees of support, initially there did seem to be one theme.

“Think of the children!”, everyone seemed to be saying…

Why this blog?

In the coming weeks you will see posts here from a number of different authors. What we all share in common is that each of us is a woman who identifies as lesbian, bisexual or queer… and that we are all religious Jews, who strive to live full and integrated lives.

Tirtzah is not just a blog. We are also a community of frum queer women. We hold events in the New York City area, and we have an e-mail discussion list as well. We are focused on gathering to celebrate and study our yiddishkeit. As our mission statement says, “we are committed to the value of shleimut (wholeness) and to supporting one another in observing a meaningful, integrated, honest and joyful Jewish life.”

If you are a woman who is lesbian, bisexual or queer, and you are currently a frum (religiously observant) Jew or are working towards becoming more halachically observant – We hope you will join our e-mail list. We are also eagerly seeking guest blog posts and hope you will consider sending us your writing on any topic relating to being frum and queer. Personal narratives, halachic explorations, and other types of posts are welcome. You may use a pseudonym, or just your first name, if you would like to maintain anonymity.

We hope you will keep reading and help us spread the word about this resource.

B’shalom,
The Editors

Posted by queerbasyisroel.

Coming soon!

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