A local synagogue will host a weekend of events later this month that seek to open a discussion about welcoming the LGBT community into the Conservative Jewish community.
Tiferet Bet Israel, in Blue Bell, will host “Opening our Tent Wider” from Jan. 28-30, a series of workshops and religious services led by special guest Rabbi Steven Greenberg, the nation’s first openly gay Orthodox Jewish rabbi.
The synagogue is a recent member of the Yes! Coalition, a local coalition of faith groups that are outreaching to LGBT communities, and also reactivated its Inclusion Committee, which fosters diversity among its members.
Greenberg is an accomplished author and teacher and, while he’s not yet able to serve as a rabbi in an Orthodox Jewish congregation, he said the movement continues to make progress toward acceptance of its LGBT members.
Greenberg was ordained in 1983 and came out publicly in a newspaper interview in 1999, after a long journey of self-acceptance.
A native of Ohio, Greenberg was raised as a Conservative Jew but, as a teen, felt pulled to the Orthodox movement, one of many “awarenesses” he said he would grapple with throughout his life.
At age 20, Greenberg was participating in an intensive Jewish-studies program in Israel with about 300 other young men when he decided to confess his same-sex attraction to a rabbi.
“I went to a rabbi in Jerusalem, and he was in a very cloistered religious community and much more to the right than my modern Orthodox community. But I chose him because I didn’t want to reveal these feelings to anybody in the world I was in,” he said. “So I told him, ‘I’m attracted to both women and men,’ which is what I thought, and he said, ‘My dear one, my friend, you have twice the power of love. Use it carefully.’ And I left elated. I thought, it’s OK to have these feelings, I can still get married and have a wonderful life. I thought it was all workable.”
Throughout his young adulthood, Greenberg continued to try to date women but found each relationship unfulfilling.
In 1993 he wrote about his coming-out process under a pseudonym in a Jewish magazine.
“My first line was, ‘I’m an Orthodox rabbi, and I’m gay.’ It was my first step out of the closet, and there was a number of people who responded to the magazine and were very encouraging, so I had my first taste of what it might mean to be out and to get support,” he said, noting that when he did come out publicly six years later, the reactions from the Orthodox Jewish community were varied.
“Some of my colleagues wrote me and said, ‘Congratulations, that was gutsy.’ Others didn’t say anything. And one said, ‘Greenberg’s not an Orthodox Jew because there’s no such thing as a gay Orthodox Jew. That’s like saying you’re an Orthodox Jew who eats cheeseburgers on Yom Kippur.’ My response to that was that nobody jumps off a bridge because they really want a cheeseburger. To deprive someone of intimacy, of love, of companionship is not the same thing as depriving someone of a cheeseburger.”
Since his coming-out, Greenberg said the Jewish community has, like society in general, gradually grown in understanding and acceptance of the LGBT community.
Greenberg commended TBI on reaching out to him and the LGBT community with this month’s event, an initiative he said can serve as a model for other communities.
“I think it’s extremely exciting that the Conservative movement, after many years of deliberation, finally found a way to welcome gay and lesbian people to their congregations and gay and lesbian rabbis and educators into their synagogues and schools. They’re leading the way for other communities.”
For a full list of events or to register, visit www.tbibluebell.org. Registration must be completed by Jan. 21.
Jen Colletta can be reached at [email protected].