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To be young, "Orthodox" and openly gay
Orthodox Jewish high
schools in the United States try to balance concerns for their
reputation and their students, as growing number of teens openly
identify as gay.
NEW YORK — Though he had lots of friends, Amram Altzman
still felt alone at Ramaz High School. As a 16-year-old sophomore at
the modern-Orthodox Manhattan institution, Altzman worried about what
people would think, whether they would accept him, if they knew he was
gay. “Being gay and being "Orthodox" just wasn’t something that was talked
about. It was isolating,” says Altzman, now 19 and in college.
He
told his closest friends first, then his parents. Before long, almost
everyone at Ramaz knew that he was gay. While there were a few negative
comments, Altzman felt accepted overall. At home in Mill Basin,
Brooklyn, however, it was a different story. There, comments were so
routinely hostile that his parents moved the family to a different
community, in order to take Amram and his younger siblings out of an
environment they felt could alienate their sons from Judaism altogether.
And while Altzman says that he was embraced by both his friends and his
family,
he wishes that Ramaz handled the issue of homosexuality
differently, framing it not as a sin and a chosen lifestyle, but rather
as an identity.
should we also cut the pesukim that deal with it out of the Torah?
Like
a growing number of students, the topic of homosexuality is beginning
to come out at Orthodox high schools in the United States. Until very
recently, the norm for gay "Orthodox" Jews was to come out in college or
later. But for a few years now there has been a marked shift.
Students
at Orthodox high schools who identify as gay are increasingly pushing to
not only make sure that they are not overtly bullied, but also wholly
accepted and able to explore what it means to be both gay and "Orthodox".
Now that same-sex marriage is legal in 18 U.S. states, and American
attitudes are becoming, in many places, far more accepting, the
challenge to Orthodox high schools is growing.
It
is complex terrain that school leaders are tentatively beginning to
navigate: On the one hand they have a growing concern for the safety and
emotional well-being of their students. On the other hand they face
communal attitudes, which, informed by verses in Leviticus and Orthodox
Jewish law, still
routinely condemn homosexuality.
The Haretz is linking to the RCA who said these "objectionable" statements.
1. The Torah and Jewish tradition, in the clearest of terms, prohibit
the practice of homosexuality. Same-sex unions are against both the
letter and the spirit of Jewish law, which sanctions only the union of a
man and a woman in matrimony.
2. Attempts to ritualize or celebrate same-sex unions are antithetical
to Jewish law. Any clergyman who performs or celebrates a same-sex union
cannot claim the mantle of Orthodox Judaism.
“There
is a growing awareness in the Orthodox day-school community that GLBTQ
issues need to be addressed, because these are real issues that kids and
families face,” says Idit Klein, executive director of Keshet,
a Boston-based national organization devoted to working for the full
inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer Jews.
It
recently ran a day-long workshop at the Greater Miami Jewish Federation.
Participating local organizations included Orthodox schools.
“Conversations are happening very, very slowly and carefully,” says Miryam Kabakov, the executive director of Eshel,
a group focused on creating community for "Orthodox" GLBTQ Jews and their
families through retreats and support groups. The organization has
begun to prepare curricular materials for use in Orthodox schools.
Multiple
aspects of the issue require addressing, experts say: creating safe
space for students during classroom time and extracurricular activities;
dealing with attitudes of the Orthodox communities of which the schools
are a part, which in many places offer little but wholesale
condemnation; resolving questions of accepting students with same-gender
parents and faculty members who are openly gay; and tackling school
administrators’ concerns about how the school will be perceived if it is
open about these issues. In reality, just a handful of the most modern
of modern Orthodox high schools are beginning to explore these issues.
“Many
rabbis and Jewish educators have moved to a profound empathy but are
not sure how to navigate that alongside a
2,000 year old prohibition and
parental fear that addressing these issues will lead to unwanted
behavior,” says "Rabbi" Steven Greenberg, coexecutive director of Eshel
and the first Orthodox rabbi to publicly come out as gay.
notice that Greenberg is saying that the Torah prohibition of homosexual relations does not go back as far as Sinai
Los Angeles’ Shalhevet High School last month brought in Eshel staff to quietly begin exploring the topic with faculty.
“We
walk a very fine line,” says Rabbi Ari Segal, the head of Shalhevet,
which has 180 students. “
We have families in the school that would feel
very strongly ‘of course we should have a GLBTQ club,’ and then families
that feel strongly that an Orthodox school should not. They would frame
it, ‘
You wouldn’t have a Shabbat violators club.’”
While
the school has not yet had out gay students or applicants with gay
parents, Segal said he has explored with rabbinic authorities whether
they could accept them. He says they could, while requesting that
same-sex couples “not be demonstrative” at school events, he says. A
girl with gender-identity questions recently graduated and
has since
transitioned to living as male, said Segal. He adds that she had told
him, before graduating, that as long
as the school did not have a GLBTQ
club she wouldn’t feel totally accepted, but notes that she did address
her struggle at a school poetry reading, and has since written him a
letter thanking the school for its attitude.
“We’re
not dealing with 25- or 30-year olds. We’re dealing with fragile
adolescents going through regular adolescent life. There’s a constant
tension there,” says Segal.
“Liberal
Orthodox schools are concerned that if they open up this conversation
then parents will think they’re not Orthodox enough for their kids,”
Eshel’s Kabakov says, adding, “There is still a lot of homophobia on the
ground among teachers. Even just to say the word ‘gay’ instead of
‘homosexual’ is a big deal. It’s not that they don’t want to make the
school a safe place, it’s that they’re concerned about how they’re
perceived.”
But
attitudes toward gay and lesbian Jews are changing in some corners of
the modern Orthodox world, as in America in general. “There are
different responses today than there were. Orthodoxy has always mirrored
what goes on in regular society. People are way more used to hearing
about GLBTQ things. Gay marriage is legal in 18 states. It’s out there.
In the modern "Orthodox" world homophobia is not as tolerated,” says
Kabakov.
unless she want's to literally define homophobia as the irrational fear of homosexuality, we have a problem that she can even make such a statement
Keshet’s
Klein also sees incremental change. “
Over the years we have had many
requests for individualized consultation with Orthodox educators,
occasionally rabbis. These have not been public conversations,
all-faculty trainings or official invitations to Keshet as we have with
many other schools. These have been often driven by some incident or
crisis, request for support or help,” says Klein. But, she adds, “
In the
last couple of years we have started to see some "Orthodox" day schools
be willing to connect with Keshet and seek support more openly.”
As
a junior at Ramaz, two years ago,
Altzman asked administrators if he
could start a club about GLBTQ issues. Knowing that past students had
sought to start a Gay-Straight Alliance and been turned down, he framed
it differently. “The administration was hesitant at first but after a
lot of talks decided to approve the club,” which is called the
Sexuality, Identity & Society Club. “There was a lot of talk about
how to strike a balance that would support students but not ‘condone’ a
lifestyle that the school could not condone,” he says.
Paul
Shaviv, head of school at Ramaz High School, which has 430 students,
told Haaretz, “The school has many constituencies to respect and we
felt, and the students at the time and our staff all felt that that was a
more appropriate and less confrontational title. I have never been in
favor of sex or identity-based groupings in school. I wouldn’t have a
heterosexual pride day and
I don’t think I would have a homosexual pride
day. I don’t think either of them are appropriate.”
notice his language is stronger on the former rather than the later,
Altzman
says he has come to understand that the way homosexuality is framed in
Orthodox schools needs to be changed. “
Part of the problem is Orthodoxy
in general, this narrative responding to one or two verses in Leviticus
and navigating a lifestyle, which is becoming increasingly unproductive
in terms of creating a meaningful way for GLBTQ people to be included,”
he says. “I didn’t want to lead a crusade for or against a certain
lifestyle. I came out in high school because I was hoping that my
friends and teachers would be supportive. I was just interested in
existing and being an average high-school student.”
His
parents soon realized they needed to move. The father of one of
Altzman’s friends said to their synagogue’s teen minyan that gay people
being out of the closet “is an abuse of free speech,” Altzman recalls.
“There were a lot of homophobic comments made in his and our presence
before he came out,” says his mother, Elana Altzman, a pediatrician.
“That’s just the way things are in that community.” After a guest at a
mutual friend’s Shavuot meal said that homosexuals shouldn’t be allowed
at kosher hotels, Elana and her husband decided to move to a new
community, for the sake not only of Amram, but his three younger
brothers as well. They now live in Linden, New Jersey.
If
Orthodox high schools do not adopt a more embracing attitude towards
gay students and families, there will be another, perhaps unanticipated
cost, Elana says. “Rejection in the school undermines their religious
commitment. Why should they remain "observant" and committed when people
of authority are using that religion to push them away?
so we should ignore the Torah's clear Prohibition?What’s at stake
isn’t just 5 to 10 percent of the population that happens to be gay,”
she said. “It’s their siblings. Add two siblings for each gay student
and you’re up to 15 percent of our Jewish kids. Why would we want to
lose them? By having schools and synagogues and camps that are
supportive, where gay kids feel safe, where they can count on some
support, in the long run will help ensure their "religious" commitment.”
Though
the way GLBTQ issues are addressed in Orthodox high schools is changing
very slowly, there have been some significant recent shifts. Just “five
or six years ago even modern Orthodox high schools were part of the
problem. Homophobic things were tolerated and instituted from the
schools themselves. That still goes on to a lesser extent, but now the
question is safe space, not necessarily of harm,” says Mordechai
Levovitz, a social worker and coexecutive director of JQY, or Jewish
Queer Youth, which works with Orthodox teens in the New York area.
“Then
modern Orthodox high schools were sending their kids to a conversion
therapy program. The school psychologist would try to change them from
being gay to straight.
Their methods included having the kid repeating
the verse in the Bible over and over again for 45 minutes. Looking at
pictures of AIDS victims and colorectal cancer victims and say ‘this is
what comes of homosexual sex.’ Kids were being traumatized if that is "traumatizing" what do you think hell looks like . We haven’t
heard that lately. Now the complaints kids have is that they don’t hear
anybody from the administration using the word ‘gay’, and worry about
what would happen if they come out.
"Orthodox" high schools are starting
to think proactively about it,” says Levovitz. “We’re heading in the
"right" direction.”
(
haaretz) highlights my additions
