Books

by Gregg Shapiro

TO BE JEWISH AND QUEER

A new anthology addresses the intersection of the two identities

Caryn Aviv and David Shneer are the editors of the new essay collection Queer Jews (Routledge, $19.95). Picking up where the groundbreaking Twice Blessed left off a dozen years ago, Aviv and Shneer-who met at Sha'ar Zahav, a synagogue in San Francisco-have compiled enlightening and thought-provoking essays by queer Jewish writers from across North America.

Gregg Shapiro: In your introduction to Queer Jews, you mention a shortage of "major books by and about lesbian and gay Jews" published in the United States. However, there is no shortage of queer Jewish writers. Why do you think queer Jewish writers spend more time writing about being queer than about being Jewish?

Caryn Aviv: That's a great question. I think that what happens is that [with] queer Jewish writers, Jewish identities come through in their writing, but not necessarily explicit, and they don't necessarily write about what it means to be Jewish. Part of that is because so many queer Jews have been so alienated by Judaism since they came out and felt unwelcome in Jewish communities, and it was difficult to maintain a connection to those kinds of communities, traditions, and practices that were so hostile to who they were as human beings. A lot of writing comes out of pain [laughs], whether it's the pain of coming out in a hostile society as queer or coming out as a queer Jew out of communities that might or might not be Orthodox or secular but that don't necessarily embrace that aspect of who they are as queers. That's why there aren't a lot of volumes that specifically look at the intersections of those two identities.

David Shneer: I guess you could ask the same question of why there were so many Jews involved in the '60s leftist movements-not as Jews, per se. I don't think there are easy answers for questions like why, especially in the 20th century, Jews have been over-represented in movements for change, not necessarily as Jews. There's this great article by Isaac Deutscher. He was a professor of philosophy at Oxford, from Poland. He coined the term "the non-Jewish Jew." His basic premise was that Jews have always lived on the margins of other societies and have therefore had a particular sensibility toward seeing beyond the specific and looking at, in his words, "the universal."

This also crosses over into other areas-for instance, music. There are plenty of queer musicians who sing openly about being Christians. At present, I can only think of one lesbian singer, Minna Bromberg, who has found a way to combine both her queer and Jewish identities-although Phranc did do a cover of "Tzena, Tzena, Tzena" on her most recent disc.

CA: Right [laughs]. I think there are a couple of lesbian feminist folk singers from the '70s. I'm thinking of Alix Dobkin, for one, who has incorporated her socialist, Yiddishist past and secular Jewish culture into a lot of her songwriting, which is very lesbian. I think it's harder to do that today. Also, it's harder to have Jewish audiences if you're going to sing about queer stuff.

DS: I think that one of the things that we saw when we were putting this book together was that the reluctance to mark yourself as a Jew in your activism is changing. One of the great things about this collection of essays is that these are people who are active in changing culture and society broadly as Jews. That's something new. For example, there's an essay by Jo Hirschmann and Elizabeth Wilson, who are both Marxist-inspired leftist activists. Their entire political program is inspired by Judaism. Thirty years ago, you would not have had socialists who were working for Marxist-inspired universal change as involved as they are in Jewish traditions.

I'm glad that you mentioned Hirschmann and Wilson. There is a definite San Francisco slant to the essays in the collection, which also includes writing by Nagle and Kanegson. San Francisco has long been a home to political radicals and activists. Do you think it works in the books favor to have such a strong focus on San Francisco, where the liberal and leftist community is still thriving?

DS: I think you could see San Francisco-and for the past 40 years, San Francisco has probably seen itself as-where everyone else might be in 20 or 30 years. If that's the case, then in 20 or 30 years every major federation is going to have a gay and lesbian outreach. Because of its focus on San Francisco, and maybe New York, I guess the book is slightly triumphalist, in the sense that people lament the state of queer politics, but part of what we're trying to say is that a lot has changed. That could be from the vantage point of San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, and Toronto. That could be a rose-colored view of the world.

Avi Rose and Christie Balka's essay prompts me to ask about the influence that their book, Twice Blessed, had on you.

CA: It was huge! That was the book that helped me come out 10 years ago. I only came out, officially, like seven years ago. I was married. I was working at Women & Children First, a feminist bookstore in Chicago. I was surrounded by dykes, and I knew that I was queer and trapped in a bad heterosexual marriage. That [book] really helped me, because I so identify as a Jew. Because I grew up religious, I was really despondent that there was no way for me to come out safely and publicly and also maintain a connection to my Jewish communities. I really struggled with that for years. Twice Blessed was kind of a light at the end of the tunnel, [in that] there were people out there doing this and who were committed to Judaism and active in Jewish communities and openly gay. The other important book was Nice Jewish Girls, edited by Evelyn Torton Beck, which was specifically about dykes. That gave me some hope that there was a critical mass of Jewish dykes out there [laughs] who were out and still Jewish.

Rose and Balka's essay and Joan Nestle's essay appear to have been written specifically for this book. What were your criteria for soliciting work from writers?

CA: Specifically from them, we wanted Avi and Christie to write a reflection about how the book has changed the social landscape and what the reception was and their experience of writing it and doing a road show. Joan [Nestle] has been an intellectual mentor for 15 years. As an undergrad, she was my femme/dyke/diva role model.

DS: The process that we used was that we sent out queries electronically, because things travel really fast over the Internet [laughs]. Sometimes we solicited writers. We knew we wanted to have Avi and Christie in the book precisely because we felt like we were the next step in their work. Joan Nestle wrote back a critical response to our very rough introduction to the book. She's very much coming out of a tradition of non-particularity, of the universalist message. She thought we were being a little parochial. It was very important to hear that, and we really wanted to have her voice in the book. I kind of like that her essay is critical of our introduction. Ask two Jews something, and you get three opinions. It adds to the tension of the book. Not everyone agrees. Things aren't rosy for everybody, and I think her voice is important in that sense.

Being published, as it is, shortly after the release of the film Trembling Before G-d, and with an essay by Sandi Simcha Dubowski ["Trembling On The Road: A Simcha Diary"], would you consider Queer Jews to be a literary companion to Trembling Before G-d?

CA: Yes and no. Sandi is a friend of mine, and I'm so deeply honored that he contributed to the volume. I think that Trembling Before G-d is like a watershed moment in Jewish history. It's an amazing movie, and I think it speaks to overlapping but different audiences. Trembling Before G-d brings to the screen voices that have never been heard before in public-voices that are so shunned, marginalized, and stigmatized in Orthodox communities because the homophobia is so virulent there. He really hones in on the existential tension that people feel of "Can I maintain my commitment to Jewish law and to my Orthodox Jewish community and still honor my own integrity as a queer person?" That tension exists to a certain extent in other Jewish communities, but not nearly as it does for Orthodox Jews. Our book is, in a way, broader. Contributors come from all the different movements across the spectrum of Jewish communities in the United States and Canada. I like that about our book, because you hear a range of voices and it also complicates the notion of what does it mean to be Jewish.

DS: I think the projects are very different, actually, and I think Sandi would agree with me on this. I think for Sandi, his film was still in what you might call the wrestling stage. Queer and Jewish, for the people in his film, are clearly not reconciled. I think the story that Sandi wanted to tell was there is this whole closet within Judaism that we're not talking about-the Orthodox, and especially the ultra-Orthodox, world. In his film, he talked about it. If anything, we're at the other end of the spectrum. These people who are writing in this book are not necessarily conflicted. But, by and large, the people in Queer Jews see themselves as queer and as Jewish and are activists as both. There isn't as much wrestling in this book as there was in Twice Blessed, and there isn't as much wrestling in this book as there is in Trembling Before G-d, and I don't think there is as much pain as there is in Trembling. What makes it such a powerful film is that, yes, we have Will & Grace, and yes we have this book talking about all these queers changing the face of Jewish society. But there are still a lot of people in pain about their sexual identity. Not everything is as triumphant as Will & Grace might want it to be [laughs].

Eve Sicular, in her essay "Outing the Archives," puts the parallels between Jewish and queer cultures into perspective when she writes, "As members of both an ethnic and a sexual minority, we are attuned to 'get' both queer and Jewish cues; straight Jews have the privilege of not paying attention to, or not even realizing the existence of, the lavender wavelength."

CA: I think she's hysterical, and I think she's right [laughs]. When you grow up feeling different, as either a Jew or a queer, you learn to read yourself into texts in a different way than people who are part of a dominant group-in a way that they don't have to. I think queer Jews think about those things. "Am I going to be humiliated in a synagogue? Will my partner be allowed to come up to the stage where people read Torah and participate in the service? Is my child going to be taunted at school if their classmates find out that I'm a lesbian?" I think that queer Jews have created a whole sub-language of reading themselves into things where they were previously ignored or erased. I think Eve's essay speaks to that.

DS: I'm not sure I would put it in the same way. Now that the book has come out, many more queer people are interested in talking about it than Jewish people, thus far. For example, the interviews that we've been doing have almost exclusively been with queer publications and queer media-not yet with Jewish publications and Jewish media. We are doing a couple of Jewish book fairs in the fall. They were interested in having us. There has been more receptivity on the queer end thus far. What Eve experienced on her tours when she was talking about queer motifs in Yiddish films is something similar. I think what she is saying is that queer audiences were more receptive to learning about the Jewish films than Jewish audiences were to see the queer subtext. However, if my mother is any example, there are plenty of straight people interested in reading the book [laughs]. She is the head of the gift shop at her Conservative synagogue, and they are going to stock the book.

In her essay "Breaking Ground," Inbal Kashtan writes about "Jews who grew up disconnected from traditional Judaism because of our sexual orientation. . . ." Do you think that a change has taken place in Jewish households in regards to making sure that there is still a connection to traditional Judaism, regardless of an adolescent or young adult's sexual orientation?

DS: Certainly. Inbal was writing about her experiences back in the '70s. I think that what she was expressing was that she was disconnected at a younger age because of her sexual identity. As an adult, she now felt like she had the tools to bring those back together again. Things have changed since then [Inbal's youth]. There are possibilities to be raised in connection to tradition and to being queer. Sandi's film says that there is still a long way to go in regards to the Orthodox closet. A lot of the contributors [to the anthology] have fine relationships with their families, although some don't. Both Caryn and I do. We're both relatively connected to Jewish backgrounds. There is more space now to be traditionally Jewish and queer. I think because of queer Jews feeling empowered now, families don't really have a choice. If you want your kid at the table, they're going to bring their partner. If my family doesn't come with me, then I'm going to make my own family. It's no longer my biological family or no family.

CA: I think that the majority of Jews in America today go to synagogue to be Jewish and don't do a lot of ritual stuff in their homes to be Jewish. Community centers and synagogues and organizations are public places where people can be Jewish. I don't know how friendly those places are for people who are publicly out. It depends on region and which movement you're talking about. Certainly, in Reform and Reconstructionist Jewish movements there has been a lot of progress made for queers to be out and open and take leadership positions and not be stigmatized if they come out at the age of 17. That's not the case for Conservatism and Orthodoxy.

Pop culture journalist Gregg Shapiro is also a published fiction writer and poet.

QUEER JEWS AT HOME

Mishpachat Alizim, the gay-and-lesbian Jewish group, and Congregation Beth Israel, will host two more sessions of the Gay & Lesbian Jewish Study Group on November 14 and December 19. Now in its second year, the study group began this series in September. Sessions take place at Beth Israel (5600 North Braeswood) beginning at 7 p.m. New participants are welcome for the final sessions, according to Alan Hurwitz, one of the group organizers. "We have had a range of topics, everything from the Book of Job, Jewish guilt, human sexuality, Jewish traditions and writings, and various holidays to Jewish concepts of the afterlife," Hurwitz said.

The husband-and-wife team of Congregation Beth Israel associate rabbi Brenner Glickman and Rabbi Elaine Glickman facilitate the study group. More info: 713/771-6221, 713/523-3673, or ahur111@aol.com. -TB