What It Means To Be A Gay Teen In A Jewish Ultra-Orthodox Communy | HuffPost Voic

Contents:

• THE GAY ORTHODOX UNRGROUND
• A YOUNG HASIDIC MAN LEADS A GAY DOUBLE LIFE BLACK HAT
• MY SECRET LIFE AS A GAY ULTRA-ORTHODOX JEW
• WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A GAY TEEN IN A JEWISH ULTRA-ORTHODOX COMMUNY
• HASIDIC WOMAN FROM NETFLIX'S 'ONE OF US' COM OUT AS GAY
• MORN ORTHODOX JEWS ARE MOSTLY OBSERVANT, WEALTHY AND GAY-FRIENDLY
• WHY DID NETFLIX CUT ‘I’M GAY’ FROM DOCUMENTARY ABOUT EX-HASIDS?
• FILM EXAM STGGLE OF GAY ORTHODOX JEWS

THE GAY ORTHODOX UNRGROUND

There is no official membership, and only a handful of people are willg to put their nam on support-group Ashkazy, a gay-rights activist and Orthodox Jew who liv New York Cy, says he has spoken wh over 200 gay Orthodox Jews over the past few years. Filmmaker Sandi DuBowski, who produced and directed Tremblg Before G-d, terviewed hundreds of gay um (observant) Jews over the past few years for his movie.

Open and Secret Support Groups In the New York area, home to the largt ncentratn of gay Orthodox Jews, at least four support groups have spng up to meet their needs. ’" The three founrs of the Gay and Lbian Yhiva Day School Alumni Associatn chose that name specifilly to attract a gay group wh an Orthodox background. The first Wt Coast support group was found Los Angel by "Jab, " a 54-year-old Orthodox gay Jew who had been married and livg a New York suburb until ten years ago, when he nfsed to his wife that he was gay.

A YOUNG HASIDIC MAN LEADS A GAY DOUBLE LIFE BLACK HAT

He started attendg an Orthodox synagogue, but was treated as a send-class member (he did not receive aliyot [he was not lled up to the Torah], for example) bee he was gay. The issu for Orthodox lbians are different than for Orthodox gay men, part bee the Torah do not specifilly prohib lbian sex. Richard Isay, a gay New York-based psychoanalyst, timat that 15 to 20 percent of gay men marry women–bee they want to ny or "cure" their gayns, or want children, or to please their parents.

So, Shmuel (Adam Silver) leads a double life -- prayg at the synagogue and managg a dry cleang bs by day, and then traversg gay bars by night -- at least while his wife and children are out of town. Tremblg Before G-D, an 84-mute documentary film by Sandi Simcha DuBowski, troduc viewers to the troubled, nflicted world of gay and lbian Orthodox Jews who mt rencile their sexual inty wh their relig beliefs. The DVD versn of the film, recently released, clus special featur such as terviews wh the film’s director and a nversatn wh Rabbi Steve Greenberg (the first openly gay Orthodox Rabbi), as well as leted scen and a look at the life-changg movement of the film.

MY SECRET LIFE AS A GAY ULTRA-ORTHODOX JEW

The documentary is built around timately-told personal stori of gay and lbian Orthodox Jews who refe to give up their tradns. David, an orthodox gay man, me out to his Chabad Rabbi Israel who suggted David eat figs, try therapy and flick a bber band around his wrist every time he felt an attractn toward a man.

Refg to seek refuge more liberal Jewish circl, the Hasidim featured the film challenge the rabbis to rensir terpretatns of Jewish law to acmodate homosexualy.

But the dialogue between the Jewish muny’s most relig gay and lbian Jews and their lear has begun — and so has the hope that, wh unrstandg, passn will follow. I was still at school when I first tried tellg a rabbi I was gay but all he said rponse was: "It's jt a phase, happens to a lot of girls. " Here I found eply relig people tryg sperately to rencile their sexualy wh their fah visg wh openly gay people who fled the muny years ago and never looked back.

WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A GAY TEEN IN A JEWISH ULTRA-ORTHODOX COMMUNY

I've met beard Hasidic rabbis who joed this unr a girl's name bee they are transgenr, and teens thst out of their hom for beg gay who don't know how to live the secular world.

HASIDIC WOMAN FROM NETFLIX'S 'ONE OF US' COM OUT AS GAY

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. ” Throughout the morn perd natnalist homophob have claimed that homosexualy is nothg but a generative foreign cultural fluence on members of their people. For their part, the French nsired an English phenomenon: As late as 1991, French Prime Mister dh Crson said that homosexualy belongs to “the Anglo-Saxon tradn” and is foreign to the French Lat culture.

Israeli Print Ezer Weizmann, as is well-remembered, also said that there was homosexualy the Brish army but not the Palmach pre-state ia. Th the Nazis charged sexologist and gay rights activist Magn Hirschfeld that as a Jew he “brought the oriental vice to Germany.

MORN ORTHODOX JEWS ARE MOSTLY OBSERVANT, WEALTHY AND GAY-FRIENDLY

”Love thy fellow man as thyself – but reallyDurg the past 100 years, some Jewish thkers set themselv a more amb aim: to prove that homosexualy is an tegral part of the history of the Jewish people and Jewish tradn. In the 1970s he was a pneer of the mpaign to ncel the prohibn on homosexualy Germany (Paragraph 175) the prohibn on homosexualy often relied on the prohibn Levic 18, Schoeps wanted to make clear the ntext which this prohibn was promulgated. He might have been nsired a kd of msiah of the homoerotic gospel among the Jewish people had his unual kabbalistic theory not been silenced and phed to the his book “The Erotics of Kabbala” published 1923, Langer argued that “brotherly love, ” i.

” Had he not died before his time, he might have succeed spreadg the ia Israel that Judaism and homosexualy are not mutually exclive, but rather are nnected a plex way.

The LGBT liberatn movement appeared only the 1970s, as an Amerin-style, secular, liberal is not necsary to accept the theori propound by Laner, Schoeps and others like them, but their attempts to create a Jewish homosexualy are particularly relevant now.

WHY DID NETFLIX CUT ‘I’M GAY’ FROM DOCUMENTARY ABOUT EX-HASIDS?

Oprah asks Shterna, Toby, Chaya and Brocha, four Hasidic women raisg 32 children between them, what would happen if a child were born gay. A few months later an Orthodox rabbi was acced of hery and rptn for sayg that gay people should not be seen as “viant and problematic”. It said they had a relig duty to protect young people and their fai, and lled for a zero-tolerance approach to homophobic or transphobic guidance was reful not to challenge Orthodox teachg.

”JW3 found self at the centre of such bate a year ago when 25 ultra-Orthodox rabbis lled for a boytt of the cultural centre after held a gay-themed week of events and provid a meetg space for gay Jewish parents.

FILM EXAM STGGLE OF GAY ORTHODOX JEWS

That might be te for cisgenr or transgenr or genrqueer people, as well as heterosexual or gay or bisexual or asexual people.

In the end, Rosen and Branfman cid to “Yiddishize” words wily ed English wherever possible (nonbary be “nisht-tsveyig;” cisgenr, “tsis-mig”) and borrow wholeale other words om English, like genrqueer and gay. "Every Jew is obligated to fulfill the entire range of mzvot between person and person relatn to persons who are homosexual or have feelgs of same sex attractn.