On Being Lesbian or Gay and jewish
By Todd Kline, M.D. (Dr Kline is a third year resident in psychiatry at University of Colorado Health Sciences Center)
My friend Rob and I were talking earlier this week about the process of coming out. He was comforting me in my struggles to help my close-knit family with their first year of knowing that I am gay. Rob told me what a difficult time his mother initially had, and just how far she had come since that time nearly 10 years ago. "Last week she sent me pictures from a trip in Europe." he said. "In Amsterdam, she stood proudly in front of what’s known as the ‘Homo monument.’ She now actually relishes the fact that I am gay."
"The Homo monument?" I asked.
"It’s a statue dedicated to gays who were killed in the Nazi death camps."
"Oh..." I gulped, a chill creeping over me, remembering my own trip to Amsterdam and my visit to the Anne Frank House. As a gay Jewish thirty-year-old, I realized that just fifty years ago, I would have been sentenced to death on two counts. But two counts of what? Being Jewish and gay are two aspects truly integral to me, special to me; and they have been hated, decreed abominable throughout history, and still today throughout the world.
But I am lucky. I am a resident doctor in America in 2002. I feel freer to express my sexuality to whomever I choose, and I have increasing rights to have a partner of my choice and even gain health insurance for that person should we marry (a right just procured at The University of Colorado, hooray!) I am free to express my Judaism as well, attend synagogue if I want and wear a Star of David around my neck. The world is changing quickly for the moment.
In Twice Blessed: On Being Lesbian or Gay and Jewish, the homosexual and Jewish populations and cultures are compared and contrasted. This is a very readable collection of twenty-five essays written by lesbian and gay Jews of vastly differing backgrounds, and experiences. It was collected and edited by Christie Balka and Andy Rose and published in 1989. This 260-page book is arranged into five sections, each taking a particular direction in understanding what it means to be both homosexual and Jewish, and why individuals can often feel estranged from both groups. There are introductions to each section written by the editors.
The first three groupings center on multifaceted experiences of growing up gay and coming out, and how to both reclaim historical aspects of Judaism, while still honoring present homosexual relationships. The last two sections act like a springboard, discussing the ways in which new communities of Gay and Lesbian Jews may be formed in the future. The Epilogue is named "Transforming our Visions into Action."
The compilation explores many themes, and I will touch on a few of them here. The first is the way in which the experience of being homosexual can be similar to the experience of being Jewish. "Like Jews who assimilate," states Balka, "we learn to ‘pass’ as heterosexual--dressing the part, omitting a lover’s gender from conversation, or refraining from public displays of affection." Jews, as Balka relates have tended toward exchanging their tallit and kipas (prayer shawl and skullcap) for business suits and ties. This theme is carried through the anthology. In Confessions of a Feygele Boichik, Burt Schuman relates this theme in his father’s fears of appearing Jewish in America. Schuman relates: "This was painfully evidenced when my father’s business associates would come to dinner, or when my father expressed fears about displaying an electric menorah in the window or mowing the lawn on Sunday."
Similarly, in Hiding is Unhealthy for the Soul, Rachel Wahba describes the difficulties her Jewish family experienced during a period that they lived in Iraq: "You never know what danger awaits you," Wahba’s mother had explained to her. "Be careful and have eyes in the back of your head because you never know..." Wahba describes that "The parallels between being a Jew and a lesbian are obvious. We struggle against prejudice and for civil rights, and we struggle for the right to be visible without fear. We strive to preserve self-respect and maintain self-esteem in the face of bigotry and ignorance."
In Journey Toward Wholeness: Reflections of a Lesbian Rabbi, the author describes a report she had heard regarding the "secret Jews of New Mexico, remnants of the Marranos, the crypto-Jews of late medieval Spain who hid their Jewish identities in order to escape persecution at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition." Regarding the fact that she actually writes the essay under a pseudonym, she states that "like the Jews of New Mexico, I too and an "escondida," a hidden one. I am a Jew. I am a woman. I am a rabbi. I am a lesbian."
In addition to exploring the ways in which homosexuals and Jews hide and the ramifications of that invisibility, this book expresses that homosexual people come in numerous varieties; that in truth, gay people cannot be lumped together into a single category. This is well described in the great spectrum of individuals who have written essays in this anthology. Each author is unique. For instance, In You Didn’t Talk about These Things: Growing up Jewish, Lesbian, and Working Class, Felice Yeskel describes what it is like to identify with the three differing groups and parts of herself. She relates: "I felt shame when I had to tell kids what my father did... I wasn’t sure which was worse: being a bagman or a peddler... Again, I found myself in the position of being different and not having a name for my difference." So, for each of us, socioeconomic upbringing has far-reaching effects on our self-image, and how we approach the world.
In Different Like Moses, Alan Zamochnick describes that "growing up with cerebral palsy and a severe hearing impairment was not easy." He relates that he began questioning his sexuality "in abnormal psychology class." He continues: "I learned about the homosexual stereotype and the resulting social stigmatization. I could not identify with it, but the erotic images of the hairy nude male kept floating back into my mind’s eye." For Zamochnick, who reports struggling to find a partner who will accept him, his physical disabilities are a major factor in his image of himself, as much as being Jewish and a gay man.
My favorite essay, called Gerry’s Story: An Oral History by Jeffrey Shandler, begins with a quotation from Gerry Faier, from a fund-raising letter for SAGE (Senior Action in a Gay Environment): "I’m a seventy-nine year-old great grandmother who also happens to be a lesbian." Faier relates: "I was a person who felt like such an outcast... I carried guilt, embarrassment, shame, isolation, and all of the ugliness that society heaped on my kind of people--gay people--and we internalized it all to such a degree that it made us sneaky...And my life was lived that way for a long time, until I realized that I’m a person, I’m a wonderful person, I’m a very unique woman." Age also affects one’s sense of self, particularly when he or she has lived a proud life. Shandler writes: "As a female, a Jew, a poor person, a single parent, a labor organizer, a Communist, a lesbian and now as a senior citizen, Gerry sees her otherness not only as deviance from an establishment order, but as the fulfillment of her own pattern, of being true to the uniqueness of her life’s course."
This book stresses that an individual’s experience as a gay or Lesbian Jew can vary widely based on the "vicissitudes of religious identity, gender, age, class, geography, physical ability." This reminds me that as lesbians and gay men of all religions or none, we are amalgams of the different aspects of ourselves. We are Jewish lesbian middle age, middle-class teachers, Wealthy thirty-something Hispanic Baptist businessmen and homeless teenagers (as best described in the recent film Out in the Cold, directed by Eric Criswell). We enjoy sports and needlepoint, raising families and partying all night long, planting flowers, bowling and political activism. There are multiple aspects of ourselves, which define us, characterize us, and make us unique. We are human beings.
As homosexuals, we share a common experience, having to come to terms with our sexuality, which is different often from those around us. But, as human beings we exists in the same multitudinous variety as heterosexuals. I recommend this anthology to your homosexual patients, particularly the ones who are Jewish. It serves to explore well the experience of being Jewish and gay, as Balka puts it "doubly other." More than that, the essays conveys that, so long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else, homosexuals ought to feel the same freedom as heterosexuals to express whatever may be important in their lives.
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