By all outward appearances, the JFS applicant, identified only as “M” in court papers, is Jewish. But not in the eyes of the school, which defines Judaism under the Orthodox definition set out by Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth. Because M’s mother converted in a progressive, not an Orthodox, synagogue, the school said, she was not a Jew — and neither was her son. It turned down his application.

As we say in my home town, oh no you DIDN’T!

However irritating the school’s selection criteria are to me and some other liberal, progressive, Reform, unaffiliated, Conservative, take-your-pick-of-non-Orthodox Jews, this is hardly the first time that non-Orthodox Jews, especially non-Orthodox converts, have been classified as “insufficiently Jewish.” So the situation is hardly surprising.

What is surprising, at least to me, is a) that the court ruled that the policy was against British law and b) their rationale for that decision. While religious groups in the U.K. are allowed to practice discrimination based on religion, the ruling classified this school’s policy as race- and/or ethnicity-based discrimination, which is illegal.

To wit:

The court ruled that it was an ethnic test because it concerned the status of M’s mother rather than whether M considered himself Jewish and practiced Judaism.
“The requirement that if a pupil is to qualify for admission his mother must be Jewish, whether by descent or conversion, is a test of ethnicity which contravenes the Race Relations Act,” the court said. It added that while it was fair that Jewish schools should give preference to Jewish children, the admissions criteria must depend not on family ties, but “on faith, however defined.”
The same reasoning would apply to a Christian school that “refused to admit a child on the ground that, albeit practicing Christians, the child’s family were of Jewish origin,” the court said.

Fascinating.

I love being Jewish. I always have. From the moment I knew I was Jewish, I found a home in the prayers, larger-than-me concepts, values and sense of community that were infused in everything we did. I was aware, however, that I was different from my peers. For most of my time in Jewish day school, I was the only one I knew with lesbian moms. My identity as a child of Lesbian parents, some of us call ourselves queerspawn, remained separate from my daily life as a Jew.

My family joined Sha’ar Zahav, and I immediately knew this was a place where my worlds could merge. My Jewish community became the one consistent place where there were mirrors for my family structure. I felt at home. I was able to explore my Jewish identity because I could put aside the pressure of defending my family. I knew that I belonged here amongst Jews, even if others would not see my family that way.

People who know me often comment on how Jewish I am because of my consistent involvement in Jewish community. People who don’t know me often comment on how Jewish I look, because of my fair skin, brown wavy hair, and sizable nose. In other words, here in this community, I pass as a Jew.

Because of the diverse ways we create our families, many of my fellow Jewish queerspawn do not share my Ashkenazi features. They may have sperm donors of color, they may be raised in multi-racial or interfaith families, they may be adopted. Our families are complicated – queerly created in all meanings of the word. And it is not a new phenomenon that Jews of color do not pass as I do in American Jewish communities. My whiteness is a privilege I cannot deny.

Today’s Parshah, Netzivim, describes our people in all its diversity and in detail not previously used in the Torah. We read about the end of our wanderings in the desert, standing at the banks of the Jordan River, about to cross as a people without our leader. Here, we read about Moses giving us the last covenant before we set out on our own, reminding us how we should act as a people. Our covenant is given on the condition that we work for the interest of the community, which is, in turn, our own self-interest. We are all standing at the banks of the river, commanded to think beyond ourselves. All of us – the leaders, elders, children, people of all genders, the stranger, those who labor for our needs, and those who are not here physically or spiritually –

We stand here today, just like we stood before on the banks of the Jordan River. A large group, embarking on a journey into a new year, waiting to see if we will cross over the river into the joyous land of a renewed year in the Book of Life. Just as we were then we are now, standing as a community, unsure of the future but still making personal covenants to do our best to take care of each other and ourselves.

Who may be standing here, but feels like a stranger? My Jewish community is a safe place for me, but that does not mean it is a safe place for every queerspawn. Our community is built with so much care and intention for our families, but it still may not be comfortable for all of us. Particularly, Jewish multi-racial families like mine and Jewish families created through trans-racial adoption may struggle with this conundrum. When is it important to believe that love makes a family, and that love is colorblind? And when is it also essential to remember that love is not always enough to shield our families from racism? What can we do, as family and community, to alleviate the pain brought by our own ignorance? I know we have the capacity in our hearts and in our mouths to make change in our community.

I recently had a conversation with a local Rabbi about his concerns in serving young people with Queer parents through the B’nai Mitzvah process. He was upset that he didn’t know the polite way to ask about the students’ family history to determine if they were, indeed, Jewish. The rabbi was worried that when these students left the bubble of the Bay Area, they would need tools to verify their place in the Jewish community.

Our families are complicated, unique, and so, incredibly holy. The ways we are Jewish are equally complicated. What happens when a child of Lesbians is raised to be a Jew, but the birth mother is not Jewish? The child’s mother is Jewish, because she has two. Why must the child be reminded that, in our society, her lack of shared genetics undermines the authenticity of her Jewishness? That the people she knows as her parents are not validated as real parents by our tradition? What happens when our beloved tradition is entrenched in homophobia and heterosexism? I know I raise complicated questions, but we are used to this. There are no easy answers to questions about queerness. Or Judaism, for that matter.

I began to explain to the rabbi that for many of our families, a piece of paper will not be enough to convince others of our Jewish identities.

That total ease and acceptance through the B’nai Mitzvah process will go much farther for youth with families like mine than a certificate verifying Jewish identity through birth or conversion. We need Jewish community where we don’t need to defend ourselves at every life cycle event. A strong Jewish identity fostered in a loving community is a tool more powerful than any other. I encouraged him to rethink the importance of those supposedly essential questions, rather than looking for sensitive language. In this case, we need love above all else.

And sometimes love is blinding. We want to believe that loving and accepting community is all we need. Because of our love for our family and community members, it is painful for us to see them struggle, and we unconsciously do not see their pain. It is easy to forget that even fierce love is not enough to keep racism, ableism, heterosexism or transphobia at bay. We forget that even if we create a community free of homophobia, we have not built a community immune to all other forms of discrimination. And we forget that mirrors for our experience in our family may not be the mirrors other family members need. Both my sister and I need other Jewish Queer families in our lives, but I must be aware that my sister is a Jew of color, and she needs different support in our community than I do. She moves through the Jewish world with greater barriers. My love for her cannot blind me to that.

On Yom Kippur, we mimic the Parshah – standing together in prayer while deep in personal te’shuvah. Today, I repent for those times when I ran ahead, forgetting that some of my peers cannot navigate with the same ease; forgetting that although we all stood there together to receive the covenant – a promise of prosperity – we are not all able to claim it here and now. Young Jews of color are still forced to explain their families in a place we believe is free from that pressure.

Te’shuvah is a reflection and returning, not to the same place again, but to a new place; a transformation. Today is a day of great grief for the past year, but also of renewal for the next. Sometimes, I am overwhelmed by the difficulty of building a community for all. There are too many hurdles. I grieve over the mistakes and opportunities I missed in the last year to be a good ally. And I grieve over the opportunities our community has missed to check our racism.

Our portion for the day gives us a gift; a reminder that we are capable. Moses reminds us that being true to the covenant, and being responsible to all people within it, is within reach. It is not in the heavens for someone to bring to you, it is not across the sea for someone to bring to you, it is within reach, in your heart and in your mouth.

I know the power to change my community is within me. It is not fair for me to wait for my queerspawn peers to demand attention. This year, on the holiest of days, my te’shuvah is to confidently move forward with love, do my part to recognize our diversity instead of ignoring it in the name of love, and to be vocal about how we have needs beyond those of other Jewish kids. I ask you to make the same commitment.

As we renew our covenant today, let us remember how we started as a people together on the banks of the river, and spread to a beautiful Diaspora. We have learned to redefine what it means to be Jewish every moment in every corner of the world. We have done this to take care of ourselves as a people, and to build sustainable Jewish identity amongst oppression, secularism, modernism, and globalization. And I want to remember how we got here as a congregation. We come from different experiences and relationships with Judaism. Many who did not grow up in this congregation came to it from a wandering – we come from places of exclusion to where we can be our whole selves, Queer and allied Jews. We must do what we can so that this legacy will continue. We each must take part in creating a community in which our youth and families can thrive. This year, in this place. We cannot wait.

Ruby Cymrot-Wu is a San Francisco-based activist in the Jewish Community and in the LGBTQ Family Movement.

The Leonard Lopate Show brings us a taste of what’s between the covers in an interview with Rebecca Walker, asha bandale and Liza Monroy. Their discussion is strikingly refreshing — a bold interview in “Redefining Family,” where we pry open the terms of family and take an honest look at how families have been, and will only continue to be, way more rich in variation than what is often typically discussed in mainstream media. A good reminder of why I and many others call for policies that go beyond marriage.

So, pick up a copy (I know I will be), and in the meantime, wet your palate with the Lopate interview below.

Today, Oprah did a show on Thomas Beatie, a mixed race transgender man living in Oregon, who is 6 months pregnant, and happily married to Nancy.

Thomas and Nancy wanted to tell their story for themselves, as already their story has taken the media by storm. From Access Hollywood to People and the numerous bloggers who are, sadly, blogging more on the ignorant tip of David Letterman’s not so funny top 10 list, everyone wants to know. And Oprah definitely didn’t hold back from asking incredibly sensitive (well, mostly) questions that Thomas answered with grace.

Thomas’ story hasn’t only taken the media by storm.

While the question on Oprah was, “is the world ready?”, some of us are well aware that, sadly, some folks in transgender communities aren’t ready. Filled with fear, internalized shame, and I’m sure in their own way, genuine concern, there are many on list servs and blogs, that have told Thomas he shouldn’t be speaking publicly. (I’m also unaware if any trans organizations or LGBT organizations have publicly supported Thomas).

I, for one, am incredible grateful to Thomas.

Thomas’ courage to speak about what are often such hidden stories–true desires and yearnings of trans people to have our identities valued, and our physical bodies not being censored, policed and controlled–is so important.

I am saddened to see how sometimes, we can still be our own worst enemy. How we can tear each other down. People want to tear Thomas down, or excuse why Thomas is doing it because Nancy is not able to. None of this should matter. Whether Nancy could have children or not, shouldn’t matter.

Thomas is doing an important service to trans communities by showing our variance, and by showing that, yes, we have more than one story. I say thank you to a story where someone says, no it’s not that I felt I was in the wrong body. It’s that I’m the person, the human being I was always meant to be! I say thank you to a story that says, yes I can be pregnant and feel strong as who I am as a man! I say thank you to a story that isn’t focused on being a victim, and also doesn’t hide the discrimination that is being experienced in this process! I say thank you to a story of people who are genuinely trying to live a full and happy life, and want a family as part of that picture. These are the many stories that make up our communities. And I for one am so thankful that there’s more than one being told, and that there’s this amazing story being syndicated nationally and internationally in such a positive and wonderful way. And that the story is moving beyond how typically young white FTM’s are the voices and stories covered in mainstream media.

Thomas put it so well when he asked all of us to be open and embrace: “the gamut of human possibility.”

Thomas says the desire to have children doesn’t make him feel like less of a man. “I have a very stable male gender identity. I see pregnancy as a process, and it doesn’t define who I am. It’s not a male or female desire to want to have a child…it’s a human desire,” he says. “I’m a person, and I have the right to have my own biological child.”

If I wasn’t moved enough already, I was bowled over when the interview turned to Nancy’s daughters from a previous marriage.

Nancy has two daughters from a previous marriage, Amber and Jen. Amber says she thinks Thomas and Nancy have a great marriage. “They’re an incredible couple,” she says. “They’re very much in love and they’ve been role models for my husband and I. We definitely look up to their marriage and model our lives after theirs.”

When Jen heard Thomas was pregnant, she says she was very excited. “There probably was a little bit of jealousy going on thinking that this little girl’s going to have such a great life with Thomas and my mom,” she says.

Although she’s excited to have another sister, Amber is also nervous about how people will react to Thomas’s pregnancy. “It’s a little scary,” she says. “We’re scared for them because I don’t know that the world is all that prepared, but we’re just regular, boring people and a regular family.”

Thank you Thomas, for giving me, and I have no doubt many people, the courage to also see ourselves, and give ourselves, the permission to live in our lives, our bodies, and our communities with as much honesty and integrity to how we want to build our families, and our tomorrows, as you have shown in this time.

I, for one, support you. Kol Hakavod!

Yesterday, I gave the drash at my morning minyan. I knew the day was coming, and had been thinking about what I’d say, but in the wake of my visit to Bethlehem I desperately wanted to talk about Abraham’s expulsion of Ishmael in this week’s parsha. But I’m still not ready to talk about it directly, because I’m not prepared yet to answer the questions that I know will follow. What follows is the drash I actually gave, followed by a quick note about what I hope I accomplished with it.

***

In last week’s parsha, Lech Lecha, Avram and Sarai convert to Judaism, and are given the good Hebrew names Avraham and Sarah. The first thing that Avraham does as part of this new covenant is to bring Ishmael, his son, into the covenant as well.

And god promises Avraham, “I will maintain my covenant between me and you, and your offspring to come, as an everlasting covenant throughout the ages, to be god to you and your offspring to come. I assign the land you soujourn in to you and your offspring to come, all the land of Canaan, as an everlasting holding. I will be their god.” (Genesis 17:7-8) My italics.

Avraham’s first response is to laugh at the prospect of having a child now that he is 100 and Sarah is 90, but his first words to god are, “Oh, that Ishmael might live by your favor!” (17:18) God promises to bless Ishmael, and Avraham circumsizes his son, and the 13-year-old firstborn son of our patriarch becomes the third Jew without even having a bar mitzvah.

In Vayera, this week’s parsha, baby Isaac is born, and weaned, and then Sarah tells Avraham to get rid of Ishmael. “‘The son of that slave shall not share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.’ The matter distressed Avraham greatly, for it concerned a son of his.” (21:10-11) Ishmael is now 14 years old. Avraham obviously loves him, and god has blessed him, even though, as we know, god is not so fond of firstborn sons. But Sarah does not recognize Ishmael as part of the family. The next morning, in what we can only imagine must have been a traumatic parting, Avraham gives Hagar bread and water and sends her with Ishmael into the wilderness.

“Some time later,” we read in the next chapter, “god put Avraham to a test.” (22:1) There is a midrash which records god’s conversation with Avraham as follows.

“Take your son.”
Which son? I have two.
“Your favored one.”
Which one? I love them both.
“Isaac, whom you love.”
Ah, now I know which son you mean.

(22:2, midrash source to follow later)

God asks Avraham to offer Isaac as a sacrifice, and he does not protest. The torah does not even record distress, as it does when Avraham loses his first son. The next morning, Avraham takes Isaac and rides out into the wilderness without telling Sarah. This year, for the first time, I read this and wondered if Avraham did this purposefully, so that Sarah might feel the same deep sense of loss that he felt over the loss of Ishmael. It’s a disturbing idea, but not implausible.

And Isaac grows up in a home that has been torn apart by the trauma of his own existence, and then lays quietly on an altar as his father raises the knife to kill him.

Now, I have a confession to make. In my family, I am Ishmael. And I’ve heard stories from many other families about rivalries, and jealousies, and painful estrangements that last years. Even the conflict in the middle east has been described by many as an ongoing sibling rivalry, based on this parsha. But the story isn’t over, and there is reason for hope.

We read next week about the death of Avraham. At that time, Isaac and Ishmael come together to bury their father. It’s a quiet moment, and unexpected, but the message it sends us is clear. No matter how complex, or difficult, or painful a relationship is, it is always possible to find a place to meet. Isaac and Ishmael bury their father and quietly go back to their own lives. One of the lessons we learn from this first family of our covenant is that even if we can never again live happily in the same home, we can learn to meet each other in peace and part ways again in peace. May all of us learn to move through our families, and the world, in peace.

***

When I finished speaking, several people came to me and thanked me for this drash; it obviously struck a chord with several people who also feel the status of outsider in different ways. I’ve written about this theme before, but without making such a deep personal connection, and without having images of Palestinian villages trapped by concrete walls in my head. It was very, very difficult to write this with these two highly emotional associations, and even more difficult not to speak directly about either.

But I’m pleased with the result: when it became clear that I was speaking primarily about Ishmael, I saw a few people stiffen; there are many people in Jerusalem who absolutely do not want to hear anything about their Arab neighbors. But when I said “I am Ishmael,” the room changed. Suddenly, the despised “other” they had been expecting became me, the young woman who comes to minyan every morning, who they have welcomed warmly into their community. And in that moment when their understanding shifted, my hope is that their minds were opened, however slightly, to the possibility of loving the “other.”

Some background on my grandma might be necessary here. She made most of the jewelry she wore by the time we were traveling; she took college courses in her 70’s and learned to make amazing silver jewelry. For her 75th birthday we bought her an acetylene blow torch so she could work at home, and she haggled over scraps of sterling with grad students less than a third of her age. She was fascinated by the process of making things, be it buildings, roads, writing utensils, and I never saw her cry at a movie.

Then she met Cindy’s Barbie collection, which, by the way, was absolutely nothing like mine. Limbs or head missing, legs spread, some in the process of being violated by strange objects, all of them grotesque and terrible and beautiful. I was in love. My grandmother was horrified.

“You never did that to your Barbies, did you?�? She paused, considering. Her eyes traveled over the naked, sprawled, plastic bodies, trying with difficulty to imagine what I saw that was appealing.

The first time it happened I was 16, and we were in Tel Aviv.

The second time, we were in Chicago. In the intervening 5 years I had taken art history courses, studied film, and spent 4 years in the liberal arts program of a major university, which had, if nothing else, given me the ability to explain what other people meant.

For the rest of the afternoon, we wandered at an erratic pace from image to image, and this time, when she asked what I saw in Sherman’s pictures that was so appealing, I was able to tell her. Each person was a character, displaced from her story. Each Barbie, stripped of any identifying characteristics, was somehow still recognizably a Barbie. At 16 I had wondered what would be left of me without my love of art, my freckles, my endless string of after-school activities. I found something reassuring in the fact that Barbie was still identifiably Barbie.

Believe me, I still rejoiced in the subversive element, I wanted people to be aware of the objectification and commodification of the female body, but some part of me also was reminded of my teenage longing for recognition. The non-Barbie work we saw that day kept me thinking along the same lines; Cindy herself, adorned as a milk-spurting Madonna, sprawled on horribly patterned hotel beds, always looked completely different, but was still recognizably Cindy.

It’s easy to be drawn to art that locates its subject in space or time, paintings or photographs of recognizable, safe types of people doing safe, recognizable activities. That’s why hotels are filled with paintings of peasants ploughing fields, young girls playing the piano, couples in every century strolling arm in arm. But life doesn’t hand us nice pictures with no conflict.

My grandmother understood perfectly. Blind acceptance is comforting, but not particularly interesting. Anything initially disturbing is also fascinating if you take the time to look. And we looked and looked, and finally sat and argued, and she turned the tables on me; how had I not noticed the oddities, the garbage, the uncountable things that surrounded each body? Wasn’t the detritus of a life just as important in understanding? Weren’t the artifacts left behind often the key to understanding the past? How could I have been so focused on the bodies that I ignored the chatchkes?

I hadn’t ignored them, but I hadn’t thought to give them that importance. I think I was more surprised by my grandma teaching me something about Cindy Sherman than I was about the new understanding itself.

Grandma and I sat and talked for a long time, and part of my birthday gift later that year was a beautiful book of Cindy’s Untitled Film Stills, which I adored. I still love Cindy Sherman, but what I loved most was the chance to find out just how amazing my grandma really was.

Note: My Grandma Ruth’s second yartzheit is tomorrow night, the 14th of Adar. ת”נ”צ”ב”ה

While James Dobson’s Focus on the Family continues to cherry-pick and distort research on LGBT families, Soulforce and Truth Wins Out are raising the stakes to expose what they call a harmful and alarming disinformation campaign discriminating against American families. A week after Robynne Sapp and Dotti Berry were arrested as part of Soulforce’s new “Focus on the Facts” campaign, Truth Wins Out has launched a new Web site, RespectMyResearch.org. “Dobson’s latest op-ed in Time was the last straw,�? declared Wayne Besen, executive director of Truth Wins Out. “I called five different mainstream researchers, all of whom were floored that their research was being used to denounce LGBT families.�?

Judith Stacey was one of them. “I’ve had to spend a lot of time correcting the record,�? Stacey confirmed. “When Dobson says thousand of studies demonstrate that children do better with a mom and a dad, he is not talking about research that studied gay and lesbian parents. He is talking about children who were raised by two heterosexual parents versus children who were raised by a single heterosexual parent.�?

Read on…

crossposted to jspot.org