Taking Pride
This was the announcement of coming attractions at the end of the Shabbat service: “Join us for our Pride Shabbat in June when we celebrate the LGBTQ members of our community. And then we will celebrate Juneteenth and acknowledge the racial diversity in our synagogue.”
Huh? My head went spinning.
Born in 1954, I am a quintessential boomer. I am a child of the 60’s coming of age in the 70’s, The only black Jew I ever heard of was Sammy Davis, Jr. There may have been a couple of families in downtown Boston. A couple. Not enough to celebrate in the Jewish community.
And don’t get me started on the gays and lesbians. Good God, looking back on my time in my early rabbinate, I am ashamed of my attitudes and my language back then. No wonder gays and lesbians stayed in the closet. They stayed there because of me, because of us. We dehumanized them and considered them freakish. Eighth grade boys have a spectacular predilection for cruelty. We all traveled through the eighth grade on the stupid and mean teenage train. Grappling with our own budding sexual insecurity, we called our fellow friends and enemies alike homos and fags. How terribly cruel we were.
Like every candidate applying for rabbinic school in the 1970s, I had to travel to my future campus to run through a half day battery of psychological tests, including a few hours with a psychologist/psychiatrist. I am not sure of the official training of my gatekeeper. All the applicants knew the well-known secret. A major part of the testing regimen was to determine if the future rabbi might be homosexual, a mark of deviance that would exclude the applicant from Jewish learning and professional education. Only heterosexuals had the moral fitness to serve the spiritual needs of the Jewish community. From today’s vantage point, that statement seems absurd. But back then, it was as obvious as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west.
Every candidate was given a Rorschach test. I took Introduction to Psychology in my freshman year and studied the inkblots, giving me a leg up on my psychological gatekeeper. “What do you see in this picture?” “Bears, dancing bears. And these are butterflies. And clouds, lots of clouds.”
“Do you see anything else?” Are you kidding me? You are showing me vaginas and breasts and phalluses. I know that you know that I know that you know.
“No. Bears, butterflies, and clouds. Wait, I think this might be a tree.”
If you think I am going to tell you some of the perverted sexual images running around in my brain and jeopardize my admittance to seminary so instead I would have to go to law school and I saw the Paper Chase and I really don’t want to go to law school and if you think I am going to admit to what I see in those weird pictures you must think that I am really stupid and I am not stupid.
One month later, I was sent my acceptance letter and Judi and I started planning for our year in Israel.
And now, some fifty years later, Jews celebrate Pride Shabbat in the synagogue. We celebrate the fact that gay and lesbian Jews feel comfortable in hanging out with us straight cisgendered folks, that we identify as one community sexual preferences not withstanding. My head is spinning, but my heart is full.
My change of heart was gradual. But it should have been abrupt. I was enriched by the emerging out of the closet gay folks I counseled. They taught me more about being human and the nature of love than I taught them. For me, the issue of gay acceptance started as a civil rights issue. And then it became a basic human issue. People are who they are and they love who they love. As long as people are honest and kind and love who they love with integrity, why shouldn’t everyone be celebrated like everyone else who comes through the synagogue doors? It took me years to undo and relearn and accept and then celebrate.
I worshipped in the synagogue on Pride Shabbat and my heart and soul were glad.
I also learned something else that I want to share with you.
When we categorize people and lump them into groups, we by definition dehumanize our brothers and sisters. Before they emerged as homosexuals, they had names. They are Allie and Susie and Hannah and Rachel and Deborah; Michael and Rick and Jeff and Robert and Sam. These people are individuals, like each one of us, defined first by their names. When we recognize someone with a name before their identity, they start out as human beings. We are all in this human journey together. Who we love and how we love does not define our humanity.
The same holds true for us Jews. We are Chayim, Shlomo, Esther, Avital, Judah, Shimon, Gavriella and Miriam—human beings first and foremost. And then we celebrate our Jewishness within the greater human family. All of us live with fears and anxieties and hopes and aspirations and achievements and disappointments and loves. We are each of us distinct individuals. And we share our human experience with each other. Both our uniqueness as Jews and the commanality of our humanity demand to be celebrated.
On the subway to my interview at the Hebrew Union College, I was smug. I was newly married. I had good grades and scores and recommendations. I had a new suit for the occasion and a yellow power tie. I had studied up for the inkblot test. I was going to fulfill my aspirations to be a Jewish leader and a better human being.
Fifty years later, I am not so smug. Looking back, I have learned a lot about love and human beings. I take pride in how far I have come and the lessons I have learned since my eighth grade wonder years. I wish I would have arrived here sooner and been kinder to more people. But I guess we could all say that. Moving forward, let’s take pride in our neighbors and pride that we are no longer the people we thought we had to be.
Looking back, life is a whole lot better now than it was.
I take pride in that.
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Whether we are going backwards or forwards, none of us is standing still. And successful people can move both forwards and backwards at the same time.
Until next time, shalom,
Jonathan