Jake Cohen: Beg Gay And Beg Jewish Have Dictated My Career | HuffPost Life

Contents:

• WHAT IT'S LIKE TO BE YOUNG, GAY, AND JEWISH
• HOW N YOU BE GAY AND JEWISH?
• BEG GAY USED TO BE TERRIFYG. BEG JEWISH WAS EASY. NOW IT’S THE OPPOSE.
• JAKE COHEN: BEG GAY AND BEG JEWISH HAVE DICTATED MY CAREER
• LGBTQ PRI MONTH: OY VEY, WHY ARE SO MANY JEWS GAY?
• MY SECRET LIFE AS A GAY ULTRA-ORTHODOX JEW

WHAT IT'S LIKE TO BE YOUNG, GAY, AND JEWISH

As social attus toward lbian, gay, bisexual, transgenr and queer (LGBTQ) people have unrgone a sea change globally, stanc taken by Jewish lears and movements have changed along wh, same-sex marriag are regnized by the Reform, Conservative, Renewal and Renstctnist movements, and each movement’s rabbil semary ordas LGBTQ stunts.

A later, the Conservative movement reversed s longstandg ban on gay sexual activy and reversed s policy of not ordag gay and lbian rabbis.

All the chang were preced by the Renstctnist movement, which began beme the first movement to accept gays and lbians as rabbil stunts 1984 and whose rabbis have long been ee to officiate at same-sex while the liberal Jewish muny has shifted markedly on this issue, homosexualy remas a vexg issue Orthodoxy, which ntu to hold fast to the Torah’s seemgly flexible rejectn of homosexual acts. ” Many thori nsir this prohibn to be one of Judaism’s rdal ss and believe mt not be transgrsed even at the threat of one’s Readg the Prohibn Agast Homosexualy ContextEven the most tradnally-md terpreters of the verse acknowledge that the Torah do not prohib homosexualy as such, but merely one specific sexual act — generally unrstood to be anal sex between two men.

HOW N YOU BE GAY AND JEWISH?

However, later rabbic thori expand the prohibn to clu lbian sexual acts and all male homosexual activi short of anal terurse.

The biblil vers are also generally not unrstood as rejectg homosexuals as dividuals, but merely homosexual differ sharply along nomatnal The Reform movement was the first of the major nomatns to take a liberal posn toward homosexualy, adoptg the first of many rolutns on behalf of gays and lbians 1977.

The movement’s rabbil school, Hebrew Unn College — Jewish Instute of Relign, ceased discrimatg agast gay applints 1990. Conservative: In 2006, the Conservative movement nclud a polarizg bate over homosexualy wh the endorsement of two ntradictory opns — one upholdg the movement’s prev rejectn of gay relatnships, and another retag the Torah prohibn on male anal sex but allowg for other forms of sexual timacy between members of the same sex. Orthodox: Orthodox Jews on the whole ntue to reject homosexual behavr as fundamentally nsistent wh Jewish law.

BEG GAY USED TO BE TERRIFYG. BEG JEWISH WAS EASY. NOW IT’S THE OPPOSE.

While there is ltle ditn that this posn is severely ntted wh that muny, let alone likely to change the near future, there have been iativ to make Orthodox muni more welg of gay Jews. A statement thored 2010 and signed by over 200 Orthodox rabbis exprsly weled gay Jews fully to synagogue life even as reerated tradnal Orthodox opposn to gay sex and same-sex marriage. And a number of grassroots groups for gay, lbian, bisexual and transgenr Orthodox Jews and their fai have emerged, cludg JQY and about gay marriage?

The Reform movement now nsirs same-sex marriage to qualify as kiddh — the rabbic term for betrothal, a holy unn between two 2012, the same three Conservative rabbis who thored the more liberal opn on homosexualy noted above published a seri of ruals and documents pertag to same-sex marriage ceremoni and divorce. Other Conservative rabbis, believg that gay marriage mt enjoy the same stat as tradnal heterosexual marriage, have sisted on applyg the tradnal marriage ruals wh only the most mor modifitns genred language.

JAKE COHEN: BEG GAY AND BEG JEWISH HAVE DICTATED MY CAREER

Conversn therapy — sometim also lled reparative or change therapy — refers to the effort to “cure” gays of same-sex attractn and enable them to lead heterosexual liv. Though the largt Orthodox rabbil group, the Rabbil Council of Ameri, had at one time mend JONAH’s work, publicly whdrew s endorsement 2012, cg evince that the therapy was effective and had potentially negative the Orthodox muny still support nversn therapy, however, part bee they believe is impossible that homosexual sir uld be both unchangeable and proscribed by the Torah. The issue of transgenr people Judaism is of more recent vtage than the qutn of homosexualy, but attus among the major nomatns track que siarly.

The Reform Hebrew Unn College—Jewish Instute of Relign has been acceptg gay applints sce 1990, and the Renstctnist movement’s rabbil school has been dog so sce 1984. The Conservative movement’s flagship Jewish Theologil Semary revised s applitn creria 2007 to allow for gay applints and admted s first openly gay stunts the followg year.

Orthodox semari still do not perm openly gay stunts; however there is at least one Orthodox gay rabbi who me out subsequent to his is the LGBTQ muny treated Israel? Israel has regularly touted s achievements on gay rights as a sign of s progrsive Wtern worldview, a practice some crics have rid as an attempt at “pkwashg” — that is, to distract om s treatment of the more on LGBTQ Jewish life, vis MyJewishLearng’s Khet blog. Two vers Levic (Levic 18:23 and Levic 20:13) exprs unequivol nmnatn of male homosexual sex (although is not clear whether what is referred to is terurse or all sexual acts between men).

LGBTQ PRI MONTH: OY VEY, WHY ARE SO MANY JEWS GAY?

”READ: Puttg The Prohibn Agast Homosexualy ContextAs evint by s language, the biblil prohibn do not extend to female homosexual acts, though later mentators disapproved of lbianism. One rabbic source associat female homosexualy wh the activi of the Egyptians and Canaan, om which the Jews are supposed to absta. Several tradnal sourc temper the harshns of the “abomatn” by cg the lack of procreative potential as the reason for the abomable nature of the homosexual act.

Nohels, the tradnal Jewish posn on homosexualy is still difficult for many liberal-md Jews, and the liberal nomatns have bated the extent to which gays and lbians n be fully tegrated to relig Conservative Halakhah and HomosexualyThe first and least ntroversial step taken by the Conservative, Renstctnist, and Reform movements was to endorse civil equaly for gays and lbians. In 1977 drafted a ll to crimalize homosexual sex and to end all discrimatn based on sexual how do one get around the apparently unambiguo biblil prohibn agast homosexualy?

Many who seek to tablish full relig rights for gays and lbians employ the rearch that pots to the voluntary nature of homosexualy. Th some Jewish thori have argued that sce homosexualy is not chosen, s exprsn nnot be, the Reform movement do not nmn homosexual sex, and openly gay people are eligible for admtance to Reform rabbil schools. In addn, the Reform movement approv of rabbic officiatn at same-sex marriag and mment Denomatnal Approach on Ordag Openly Gay and Lbian RabbisDaniel Siegel, the Rabbic Director of ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal, has endorsed same-sex marriage specifilly bee he believ that hols should not be limed only to certa people and certa relatnships.

MY SECRET LIFE AS A GAY ULTRA-ORTHODOX JEW

Usg this as her startg pot, Rebec Alpert, a Renstctnist rabbi, has argued that the ernment’s refal to regnize same-sex marriage vlat relig rabbis wh the Conservative movement also ce the ncept of on ( which an dividual has no real choice) permtg homosexual sex. In December 2006 the Conservative Movement’s Law Commtee voted to accept two ntradictory thuvot (posns) on homosexualy halakhah — one reaffirmg the stat quo, and one affirmg change. The rult of the vote is that rabbis, synagogu, and other Conservative stutns may choose to ntue to not perm mment ceremoni and not hire openly gay or lbian rabbis and ntors, or may choose to do so.

The cisn also paved the way for the movement to orda openly gay recent years, there has been an creased awarens of the prence of gays and lbians more tradnal Jewish muni as well. Steven Greenberg, a gay Jewish tor who was ordaed as an Orthodox rabbi, wr and lectur on the possibili for gays and lbians the Orthodox muny. Fally, Tremblg Before G-d, a crilly acclaimed 2009 documentary about gay Orthodox Jews, has ma a signifint impact raisg nscns about homosexualy the Orthodox world.

He wrote rponse to lls at the time to ncel the sodomy law (which was ultimately ncelled only 1988, thanks to Shulam Aloni) I, as an Orthodox Rabbi, Support Legalizg Same-sex Marriage We Sharpened the Assailant's Knife In Their Own Words Livneh was neher ultra-Orthodox nor Orthodox, but rather a Jewish natnalist, yet his ma argument was that homosexualy is foreign to Judaism, nstut a foreign fluence by generate Wtern culture and should be the op-ed he claimed that for hundreds of years Jews the Diaspora succeed prervg their muni om those “sexual perversns, ” or as he phrased : “It is totally absurd to have suffered for many generatns the Diaspora, while strictly prervg, nurturg and refg the heterosexual prciple, only to return to the Land of Israel and renew the ‘gentil’ abomatn’ here. ”The history of homophobia fact prov that Livneh’s claim (which many Jews have upheld and still uphold to this day) is, if anythg, a “foreign fluence.