"Let us make man in our image, after our likeness" (Gen 1:26)

For most of us, one of the very first tenets that we are taught as we begin to nurture our own spiritual awakening in this world as Jews is the belief that we are all created “B'tzelem Elohim” in G-d’s divine image. Taken together with our duty to love thy neighbor is a discussion recorded between Rabbi Akiva, who declared this verse in Leviticus to contain the great principle of the law Kelal gadol ba-Torah, and Ben Azzai, who pointed to Gen. v. 1 ("This is the book of the generations of Adam; in the day that God created man, in the likeness of G-d made he him"), as the verse expressing this leading principle, which gives to the term "neighbor" its unmistakable meaning as including all men as being sons of Adam, made in the image of G-d. The Midrash Tanḥuma goes on to further explain that: "If thou despises any man, thou despises G-d who made man in his image.”
In its totality one would infer that the Jewish diaspora at large is a community principled upon acceptance, inclusion and to be welcoming to all. However, for a young man, born and raised in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (a predominantly Hasidic Jewish community in New York), not so much. As one of three children born to Stanley Denker, a sheet metal mechanic and Maxine Denker (of blessed memory) a school lunch worker, my parents were of limited financial means doing the best that they could to raise a family of five at the time in a one bedroom apartment. My twin sister, older sister and I attended public schools in our neighborhood and my earliest memory of being introduced into the world of Judaism was when I was about the age of 5 or 6 when my parents enrolled us mid-year into an ultra-conservative Hebrew school in Midwood, Brooklyn. To the best of my recollection that experience lasted only a few months impeded by a lack of financial means together with the time commitment in traveling to/from our Williamsburg apartment to Midwood, Brooklyn three times a week with both my parents working their respective jobs and my father being the only driver in the family.
For most of my childhood the experience of being Jewish meant that we were the only three students in our public school (aside from the staff) who were of Jewish faith. We would often be chastised for eating certain “weird” traditional foods that my mother would pack up and send us with to eat for lunch at school during various chagim; foods like Benz’s gefilte fish, noodle/potato kugel, stuffed derma, and the like. Food that was quite unfamiliar and strange to our fellow classmates.
At home, our holiday observances usually meant my mother finding a convenient day (even if not on the actual hag) that everyone had off from work for our extended family to come and feast on a home cooked holiday meal together while my mother took inventory of how many hamantaschen or mandel bread her batch of baking yielded and was meticulous at keeping track of who was packing up goodie bags and how many pieces any one particular person took of these special treats.
I have many memories as a child of my mother walking us up and down Lee Ave together with our cocker spaniel “Cocoa Pop”, in and out of stores like Mealmart, Flaum’s Appetizing and Sanders Bakery where my mother would walk in wearing no sheitel and wearing pants. As she began ordering in Yiddish, one could not ever mistake the puzzled and dismissive looks on the faces of these Hasidic shop owners, clearly personifying that we just did not belong.
The one consistent memory I have of my dear departed mother was her conviction which she would always voice to us and to those in our family that intermarried; “from the day you were born until the day you die, you are a Jew, never forget that.”
As the age of becoming a B’nai Mitzvah was fast approaching, my mother sought to provide my sister and I the blessing and honor of becoming a Bar and Bat Mitzvah. My mother enrolled us in Hadassah’s Zionist Youth Movement Young Judaea where we would begin to meet others of our age who were also Jewish and began to experience some of our more common observances, having our first shomer shabbat at Camp Sprout Lake and the organizations various weekend conferences. And shortly thereafter, thanks to close family friends who owned Park Side Memorial Chapels (at the time), we were introduced to Rabbi Joseph Potasnik of Congregation Mount Sinai in Brooklyn Heights. To this day, Rabbi Potasnik remains someone I have grown to revere as a father figure, a true mensch in every aspect off the word, who is not only a role model, so very deserving of great admiration but a man for whom had I not had the blessing and privilege of getting to know, I would have never been afforded the opportunity to discover, grow and nurture my own sense of a Jewish identity and develop a love for Torah.
As a result of the loving kindness and generosity of Rabbi Potasnik and others at Congregation Mount Sinai, I got to attend Hebrew school, I received a Jewish education and preparation for becoming a Bar Mitzvah. While many youngsters often desire to stop attending Hebrew School and cut ties once they complete their bar/bat mitzvah studies, I was the opposite. As a young impressionable teenager, inspired and encouraged by the kindness and sense of community I had finally found, I sought to immerse myself even more. I became an active volunteer working as the Youth Director and Assistant to the Educational Director of Congregation Mount Sinai, I became a member of the regional Young Judaea leadership team (mazkirut) planning and leading various family and youth programs for both institutions.
As a junior in High School, once again through the generosity, support, and encouragement of Rabbi Potasnik, I was blessed with having a profound, life changing experience. In 1996, I along with thousand of other Jewish teens traveled to Poland and Israel as a delegation of the International March of the Living, marching in solidarity three kilometers from Auschwitz to Birkenau in commemoration of Yom HaShoah concluding with my very first trip to our Jewish homeland Eretz Yisrael in observance of Yom Hazikaron and Yom Haatzmaut. An experience that will forever live within me the rest of my life. To this very day nearly 25 years later, a friendship was born out of that experience between two Jews of entirely different denominations. A friendship that I cherish with a person that I love like a brother who just so happens to be an orthodox Jew raised in Kew Gardens Hills, New York. To no surprise, I went on to study at the City University of New York’s – Queens College as a student in their Jewish Studies Program, seeking to build upon my knowledge and understanding our heritage, our traditions, rituals, and teachings learning from some of the best Jewish educational professionals around including the renowned Elisheva Carlebach (my favorite Professor of all).
While quenching my thirst for knowledge at Queens College, I began to struggle looking with myself in the mirror; feeling “different”. Feeling lost once again, as if I did not belong. What would come of that struggle was the realization that not only did I identify as a proud Jew, but that I was also a homosexual. Naturally, as one would imagine, being the only male born to my parents, such a realization did not go over very well. It was this realization, and the need to find my own inner peace and acceptance that I would come to struggle with for several years to come.
In 2009, at the age of 29, I met my ex-husband and by 2011 we would look to be married. My ex-husband was not of Jewish faith, but was very welcoming of our traditions, our holiday observances and of great support in my love for Judaism. With one month to go before our wedding, under the leadership of Governor Andrew Cuomo, New York became one of a handful of states to pass legislation that led the way to same-sex marriages becoming legal in all 50 states across the nation. However, despite this milestone and achievement for the LGBTQ+ community, I was still faced with a dilemma that would become that transformative experience that would lead me toward the pursuit of endeavoring to continue my studies with the goal of entering the Rabbinate and receiving Semicha.
For what would normally be a period and time of joyful celebration, preparing to go to the chuppah and entering the sacred covenant of marriage with my loved one, quickly became a time of immense disappointment and discouragement.
One Rabbi after another turned us away as I had desired to be married under a chuppah in accordance with the rituals of kiddushin, with the sacred traditions of our people handed down generation after generation. I recall it as if it were yesterday. One Rabbi (who had coincidentally been married to a Ba'al Teshuva) met with us and concluded our meeting by saying “while I am confident there is more of a Jewish presence in your home than many members of my congregation, I cannot get over a voice over my shoulder that says Jesus under the chuppah.” While another Rabbi in our local town who already declined to officiate at our wedding responded when we inquired as to the possibility of an Aufruf the preceding Shabbat before our wedding “While this might be hard to swallow, I would be happy to come bless you in the privacy of your own home but once you both are married, we would be proud to welcome you with open arms as members of our Congregation.”
While my wedding ceremony had aspect of our customs and traditions intertwined, we were forced to have a friend to officiate merely trying to incorporate my Jewishness into our wedding ceremony because not one Rabbi we reached out to was willing to officiate at our wedding, ultimately leaving a fellow Jew to go without.
It was this experience that brought about an awakening in me. One in which I genuinely believe no one individual should be forced to choose between being who they are and being true to themselves. No one should be forced to go without, and no one should be “excluded” from the traditions and rituals of our people that we hold dear just because of who we choose love. Remembering that very first and early tenet that we are taught… we are all (not some), but all of us are created in the divine image of G-d, and we are all to love our neighbors, all our neighbors as thyself.
What could have easily become a reason to stray and put aside my pride as a Jew became the oxygen fueling that flame ignited within me years earlier by one very special Rabbi who saw promise in me, and through his devotion in helping a ten year old non-affiliated Jewish boy from Williamsburg, Brooklyn without a sense of belonging to find a place, a belonging, a home within our community has led me to this chapter, this journey and my desire to join the Rabbinate. It is my hope and it is my prayer that Hashem grants me the strength and the courage of conviction to be an inspiring and inclusive leader; a resource for others who may have traveled similar journeys as myself so that they may never have to experience such dilemmas, disappointments or ever have to go without.