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Shabbat Shalom,
I did not decide to become a rabbi in order to be in front of large groups of people. If that was my life’s goal, I should’ve been a Public Address announcer at Yankee Stadium or a TSA agent at Newark Airport on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.
That being said, being a rabbi has taught me the power that large groups of people wield in coming together and connecting: people + prayer = spiritual energy. And there was plenty of it this past Friday night as we brought in Shabbat with over 200 of our B’nai Abraham community. It is a gift to us clergy that nourishes our own souls and affirms our own path. Today’s weather (keynahora) looks patio-worthy once again. Hope to see you there for Tot Shabbat, Kabbalat Shabbat, or on Saturday morning.
We are now a few weeks out of Pride month and I wanted to reflect on this past month vis-a-vis Jewish thought and values. For Pride Shabbat on June 6th, we were joined by Jennifer Williams, city councilwoman from Trenton and the first transgender person to be elected to public office in New Jersey. Jennifer is not only a trailblazer but a boundary breaker, expelling assumptions about her own identity: She is transgender, a republican, comes from a military family, and is a practicing Catholic. She does not hold these presumably dissonant aspects of her identity in tension, rather, as she said here on our bimah a month ago, she holds them in harmony; they make up the venn diagram that is her life and identity. Jennifer is a mother, a public servant, and like all of us, someone who strives for a good, safe life for her family.
Pride month is meant for what it sounds like, pride. To be proud of one’s identity, or to be proud to be an ally. June was witness to plenty of moments of celebration and joy: parades in the streets, vibrant rainbow flags, and stories of triumph and resilience.
Yet this June was also a reminder of the backtracking and erasure that is taking place right here in America, a country founded on the freedom of self-expression.
In June alone, the Supreme Court ruled that the military was free to ban and remove transgender military personnel from service. The order affects roughly 4,000 servicepeople: West Point grads, Bronze Star recipients, officers, soldiers who have served countless tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, all given an ultimatum to leave with an honorable discharge or face negative repercussions.
Also in June, the government instructed the national suicide prevention hotline (988) to stop offering specialized support for LGBT callers. The stop-work order was effective as of yesterday, July 17. And the USNS Harvey Milk, a naval auxiliary ship named for the Jewish navy veteran, and the first gay man to be elected to public office in California, was renamed in order to “take the politics out of ship naming.” All of this coming in the wake of the State Department removing the T from LBGT on all federal .gov websites and limiting resources for gender-affirming care.
Erasure is one of the most sinister forms of oppression; it begins by denying existence and ends by justifying annihilation. It turns dehumanization into state policy. We Jews are unfortunately well versed in where this leads. Throughout our entire history, ruling authorities and oppressors sought to erase our cultural practices, and religious identities in an attempt to melt us into the rest of society. The Greeks tried to ban circumcision and Shabbat, the Romans renamed Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina, there were public burnings of Jewish books throughout the Middle Ages, and of course the Nazi-era cultural suppression which led to physical annihilation.
I’m writing here about allyship, though we also know that being Jewish and LBGT are overlapping identities. The Torah teaches that allyship can grow from not just a sense of shared oppression, but from the taste of redemption:
You shall not mistreat the stranger, for you know the soul of the stranger, as you were strangers in the Land of Egypt (Exodus 23:9). Our own history of oppression must inform our sense of justice for others. We know what mistreatment feels like. But also, this text teaches that we were strangers, and we know what redemption and freedom tastes like, and that should inform our allyship too.
In this way, we have signed on as a partner organization of Keshet’s Thrive Coalition, “a coalition for Jewish community institutions that want to protect and advance LGBTQ+ civil rights on both state and federal levels.” This will give our community access to resources and information all in the name of affirming and supporting our own Jewish LGBTQ+ youth. The coalition members include the ADL, Hillel, JCRC, all major liberal rabbinical schools and movements, and hundreds of synagogues across the country - it is a big tent and we are proud to lend our voice.
Shabbat Shalom,
Max
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