Coming Out of Comfort: Hard Questions & the Search for Connection

Tal Keinan, God is in the Crowd (New York, 2018), p.205.

For those who hope for a Jewish future, the challenge is to offer a model of Judaism compelling enough that the vast majority of Jews, in America and in Israel, will embrace it willingly. This model will have to be exclusive enough to delineate membership in the Jewish nation clearly. It will have to maintain fidelity to the traditions that define us, but at the same time it will have to be inclusive enough to allow individual Jews to participate fully in modernity. That is a tall order.

Pittsburgh Platform, 1885

4. We hold that all such Mosaic and rabbinical laws as regulate diet, priestly purity, and dress originated in ages and under the influence of ideas entirely foreign to our present mental and spiritual state. They fail to impress the modern Jew with a spirit of priestly holiness; their observance in our days is apt rather to obstruct than to further modern spiritual elevation.

Pittsburgh Principles, 1999

We are Israel, a people aspiring to holiness, singled out through our ancient covenant and our unique history among the nations to be witnesses to God’s presence. We are linked by that covenant and that history to all Jews in every age and place.

We are committed to the (mitzvah) of (ahavat Yisrael), love for the Jewish people, and to (k’lal Yisrael), the entirety of the community of Israel. Recognizing that (kol Yisrael arevim zeh ba-zeh), all Jews are responsible for one another, we reach out to all Jews across ideological and geographical boundaries.

We embrace religious and cultural pluralism as an expression of the vitality of Jewish communal life in Israel and the Diaspora.

We pledge to fulfill Reform Judaism’s historic commitment to the complete equality of women and men in Jewish life.

We are an inclusive community, opening doors to Jewish life to people of all ages, to varied kinds of families, to all regardless of their sexual orientation, to (gerim), those who have converted to Judaism, and to all individuals and families, including the intermarried, who strive to create a Jewish home.

We believe that we must not only open doors for those ready to enter our faith, but also to actively encourage those who are seeking a spiritual home to find it in Judaism.

We are committed to strengthening the people Israel by supporting individuals and families in the creation of homes rich in Jewish learning and observance.

We are committed to strengthening the people Israel by making the synagogue central to Jewish communal life, so that it may elevate the spiritual, intellectual and cultural quality of our lives.

Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, I'm God, You're Not (Woodstock, VT, 2010), pp.84-5.

One of the happier parts of my job as the rabbi of a congregation was making guest appearances in the preschool. Being a conscientious teacher, I would initially prepare short lesson plans. But then it dawned on me: I could tell them anything and they had never heard it! "Abraham was the first Jew," and they'd say, "Wow! What's a Jew?" They were, in other words, a fairly easy group to teach.

A few years ago... the preschool teacher asked me, instead of visiting their classroom, to give the children a tour of the prayer hall... Initially, things went as planned, but before I realized it, the time must have got away from me... Not wanting to rush through removing the Torah scrolls from the ark, I decided, instead, to postpone this for a later session. "Next week, boys and girls, when we meet again, I'll open these curtains and show you something very special inside." They all said, "Shalom, Rabbi," and, like little ducklings, followed their teacher back to the classroom.

The next morning, their teacher showed up in my office with the following story. Apparently the preceding day's hastily concluded lesson had generated a heated debate among the little people as to what exactly was behind the curtain. No one knew for sure! The teacher swears the following four answers were given. (I now suspect they may exhaust most, if not all, of the available meanings of sacred text.)

One kid, doubtless a budding nihilist, thought it would be empty. Another, with a more traditional bent, guessed that it held a Jewish holy book or something. A third, apparently a devotee of American television consumer culture, opined that "behind that curtain was a brand-new car!" But one child, the teacher recounted, explained to the rest of the class, "You're all wrong. Next week, when that rabbi man opens the curtain, there will be a giant mirror!"

Somehow, the little one already intuited the great mystery of every sacred text: it is holy because, within its words, we meet ourselves. The idea is so elegant and yet elusive that it must be rediscovered anew by each generation.

David Dunn Bauer, "Choose Life (and Be Not a Skunk)!" in Lisa Grushcow, ed., Jewish Perspectives on Sexuality New York, 2014), pp.735-36.

Human love and desire energize us and inspire us. Conversely, though, they can completely knock us off track... The same impulse propels us both to achieve and to run amok. To feel desire both empowers and endangers us...

Traditionally, the risks of an erotic life are addressed morally. We receive the pastel-colored instruction "Be good" and the more vivid admonition "Don't be bad."

Starting with these polarities (Am I good? Am I bad?) is one big mistake, one very big mistake.

They aren't irrelevant questions, but asking those questions first sets up a lifetime supply of pain and oppression, especially for Queer folk, members of erotic minorities in a straight-dominated world. Traditionally we have ventured out into the world imprinted with a sense, a knowledge (we were taught) of being bad. For all people, spiritual growth, reliance upon religion, and creating functional relationships with our fellows and with God are challenging tasks. For Queer folk, these have been made harder by our being taught to question, "Am I good or am I bad?" before being taught the skills of creating safe, pleasant, productive relationships with others and with God. None of this part of life is easy; being haunted with a sense of being bad makes everything unnecessarily harder.

..."Don't first judge desire as good or bad." First, respond to its effects with mindfulness and skill. Second, ask, "Will this lead to sh'leimut [wholeness] and shalom [peace]? Am I treating myself and the person I desire with true respect? Am I throwing away my time, wandering in a wilderness?"

Michael Walzer, Exodus and Revolution (1985), p.149.

We still believe, or many of us do, what the Exodus first taught, or what it has commonly been taken to teach, about the meaning and possibility of politics, and about its proper form:

—first, that wherever you live, it is probably Egypt;

—second, that there is a better place, a world more attractive, a promised land;

—and third, that “the way to the land is through the wilderness.” There is no way to get from here to there except by joining together and marching.

Rachel Adler, Engendering Judaism (Boston, 1999), p.26.

A contemporary Jewish praxis would reduce our sense of fragmentation. If we had a praxis rather than a grab bag of practices, we would experience making love, making kiddush, recycling paper used at our workplace, cooking a pot of soup for a person with AIDS, dancing at a wedding, and making medical treatment decisions for a dying loved one as integrated parts of the same project: the holy transformation of our everyday reality...

We cannot simply resurrect the old premodern praxis, because it no longer fits us in the world we now inhabit... the old praxis can be preserved intact only if we schizophrenically split off our religious lives from our secular lives and live two separate existences with two different sets of values and commitments. But the obligation to be truthful and the yearning to be whole are what made us progressive Jews in the first place. To be faithful to the covenant requires that we infuse the whole of our existence with our religious commitments. How is that to be done in our specific situation?

Rabbi Jamie Gibson, Temple Sinai, Kol Nidre 5779

One of the most powerful aspects of Judaism is that as much as we care about each individual soul, we see ourselves as part of something larger, a family called the Jewish people. This peoplehood means that you, every one of you, is connected to all Jews living anywhere in the world...

This home, right here, is where you can come and be accepted and, at the same time, be challenged to grow and be the soul you have always had the capacity to be, to live the life you have wanted to live, whatever challenges you face.

The cost of admission? Your desire to take part. You can bring along your heart and your mind for free. Your troubles are welcome here, especially if you are looking to lay them down. Your loneliness has a place here if you want to kiss it goodbye. You do not have to be alienated or isolated unless you want to be. This should be a home for you, your Jewish home.