California State Sen. Robert (Bob) Hertzberg’s Oct. 8 Sukkot brunch and legislative update drew about 30 Jewish social justice leaders.

Guests gathered inside a sukkah at his Van Nuys home as Hertzberg, a member of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus, discussed a package of housing bills written to address the state’s homeless crisis and his commitment to reforming the cash bail system, which he said undermines the American idea of the presumption of innocence.

Valley Beth Shalom Rabbi Noah Farkas also attended and was a guest speaker. He drew connections between the fragility symbolized by the sukkah and the situation facing the homeless. He also discussed the symbolism behind the lulav and the etrog, two of the four species used during the holiday of Sukkot, which was Oct. 4-11.

Barri Worth Girvan, Hertzberg’s district director, welcomed guests and asked everyone to introduce themselves as one big family.

Artwork from San Fernando Valley synagogues Temple Beth Hillel and Adat Ari El, which are located in Hertzberg’s legislative district, decorated the sukkah.

From left: Teenagers Yoni Kollin, Sunshine Schneider, Maccabee Raileanu and Anthony Palomera participated in a JQ International Forum, “Today’s Teens: Voices of Queer and Ally Youth.” Photo by Anna Michele Falzetta.

The Teen JQSA (Jewish Queer Straight Alliance), the first communitywide youth group in Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning (LGBTQ) and ally Jewish teens ages 13-18, held an Oct. 8 panel titled “Today’s Teens: Voices of Queer and Ally Youth” at the West Hollywood City Council chambers.

JQ International, Builders of Jewish Education and the city of West Hollywood organized the event. Teen JQSA is a JQ International program.

Panelists Maccabee Raileanu, Yoni Kollin, Sunshine Schneider, Anthony Palomera and Emma Aronoff-Aspaturian discussed challenges facing LGBTQ youth.

“I just want my administrators and directors and adults in my corner of the Jewish community to realize what they’re really asking when they ask for queer teens to be their own advocates,” said Raileanu, a longtime JQSA participant and El Camino Real Charter High School senior. “I want them to step into the shoes of the people they’re talking to, because then I think a lot of changes will happen. They will realize how scary and how weird and uncomfortable that experience can be, and they’ll step up as the adults in the situation and realize what they’re working with.”  

Social media personality Stephanie Frosch, known on YouTube and Instagram as ElloSteph, moderated.

The gathering drew about 50 attendees, including JQ staff members Asher Gellis, Arya Marvazy, Anna Goodman and David Kazdan, and Temple Judea Rabbi Samuel Spector.

Organizations that partnered with JQ to make the event possible included Congregation Kol Ami, Hebrew Helpers, the Malibu Jewish Center and Synagogue, Kol Tikvah, IKAR, Adat Ari El and Camp Lightbulb, an overnight summer camp for LGBTQ young people.

JQ has been engaging in teen health and wellness work thanks in part to a grant from The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles and its L.A. Jewish Teen Initiative.

Alyse Golden Berkley, the new board president of the Jewish National Fund Greater Los Angeles. Photo courtesy of Jewish National Fund.

The Jewish National Fund (JNF) Greater Los Angeles has named Alyse Golden Berkley as its board president.

Berkley succeeds Matt Fragner, who has served as JNF regional president for the past two years.

A JNF Oct. 16 press release announcing Berkley’s appointment said she is a “proud Zionist and active within the Jewish community.”

In a 2016 video, Berkley said her life changed after participating in a five-day JNF mission to Eilat.

“I actually could see the difference that I could make in my lifetime for Israel,” she said. “I could make a difference and I could improve the life of Israelis. Now, I devote pretty much close to full time volunteering for the Jewish National Fund, which is my pleasure, my honor.”

In a statement, JNF Greater Los Angeles Executive Director Lou Rosenberg welcomed the new regional president.

“We are very excited to have Alyse assume the leadership of Greater Los Angeles,” he said.

According to its website, JNF is the “single largest provider of Zionist programs in the U.S. Its work is divided into seven program areas: Forestry and green innovations, water solutions, community building, Zionist education and advocacy, research and development, heritage sites, and disabilities and special needs.”

Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills Rabbi Emerita Laura Geller was named a Next Avenue Top 50 Influencer in Aging for 2017.

Next Avenue, a journalism website focused on America’s booming older population, has named Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills Rabbi Emerita Laura Geller as one of its Top 50 Influencers in Aging for 2017.

Next Avenue recognized Geller for her efforts in creating Next Stage: Boomers & Beyond, an initiative designed to address the needs of community members who are 50 and older, and her more recent venture founding ChaiVillageLA, a partnership between Temple Emanuel and Temple Isaiah that enables people to age in place as they grow older.

Working in partnership with public television organizations, including PBS, Next Avenue divides its coverage into five areas: health and well-being; caregiving; money and security; work and purpose; and living and learning.

Geller, the third woman to become a rabbi in the Reform movement upon her ordination in 1976, was the only Jewish clergy member named to this year’s list. She made baby boomers a focus of her pulpit before her retirement in 2016, even speaking about it from the bimah during the High Holy Days.

Geller served at Temple Emanuel for 22 years. She currently is working with her husband, Richard Siegel, on a book titled “Getting Good at Getting Older: A Jewish Catalog for a New Age.”

Based on a statement she provided to Next Avenue regarding one thing she would change about aging in America, Geller said, “I would encourage the creation of religious and secular rituals to mark transitions in the journey of growing older, whether closing a family home, becoming a grandparent, reaffirming marital vows, sharing ethical wills or beginning new adventures. Marking transformations provide spiritual and practical guides for growth, connection and wise aging.”

Entertainment executive David Geffen has pledged $150 million to the building LACMA campaign. Photo by Bruce Weber

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has received a $150 million pledge from Jewish philanthropist and entertainment executive David Geffen toward the museum’s new galleries, raising the fundraising total for the Building LACMA campaign to $450 million. The campaign goal is $650 million.

In a press release, LACMA described the donation as “the largest single cash gift from an individual in the museum’s history. … [T]he new Peter Zumthor-designed building will be called the David Geffen Galleries in honor of his extraordinary gift.”

The David Geffen Galleries will replace four of the museum’s current seven buildings.

“At a time when federal funding for the arts is threatened, it’s important that we foster public-private partnerships, like this one, to support arts and cultural institutions,” Geffen said in a statement. “We must ensure that the public, everyone, has access to these venerable institutions. I am proud to partner with the County and other members of the community in helping LACMA move this remarkable project from vision to reality. Together, we can and must make sure every person has access to the arts.”

LACMA CEO and Director Michael Govan said Geffen’s gift is an unprecedented gesture of dedication to the exhibition of the arts in Los Angeles.

“David’s commitment demonstrates his belief in the power of art museums to reach a broad and diverse public and create significant civic benefit,” Govan said.

LACMA board of trustees co-chairs Elaine Wynn, a Jewish businesswoman who co-founded Mirage Resorts and Wynn Resorts, and Jewish-American businessman Tony Ressler also expressed gratitude for Geffen’s contribution.

Geffen, 74, is a movie and music mogul who founded Asylum and Geffen records and co-founded DreamWorks SKG with Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg. The son of parents who met in what was then Palestine, his estimated net worth is $7.8 billion.

From left: Friends of Sheba Medical Center Executive Director Nina Lieberman, honoree Shannon Massachi and gala emcee John Lithgow. Photo courtesy of Friends of Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer.

Actor John Lithgow hosted the Friends of Sheba Medical Center’s 47th anniversary gala, “Embracing Our Future,” on Oct. 15 at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.

Philanthropists Robert and Beverly Cohen co-chaired the event, which drew 725 guests and raised more than $2.5 million for the medical center in Tel Hashomer, Israel. The funds will be used to support Sheba Medical Center’s new neonatology center. Sheba’s Department of Neonatology and Neonatal Intensive Care is one of the largest in Israel and births approximately 170,000 babies annually, including those born prematurely or requiring intensive care treatment.

Keynote speaker Dr. Tzipi Strauss, chief of neonatology at Sheba Medical Center, discussed Sheba’s work in advancing neonatal care.

Meanwhile, Lithgow presented Shannon Massachi, an e-commerce entrepreneur who has helped promote and advance Sheba’s medical research and pediatric neuro-oncology work, with the Laurel of Leadership award. After dinner, the Ruth Flinkman-Marandy and Ben Marandy family received the Professor Mordechai Shani Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of their support for education, art, research, health, Israel and Sheba Medical Center.

Attendees included Marilyn Ziering, who announced a $1 million donation; Max Webb; Soraya and Younes Nazarian; Stanley Black; Jean and Jerry Friedman; and Dina Leeds.

Lithgow’s appearance included the reading of an original fairy tale about the life-saving work of the medical center, written by Hollywood writer and producer Jeff Astrof. The fairy tale featured a tiger and a goat — natural enemies — meeting and becoming friends through their life-saving treatment at Sheba Medical Center.

— Esther Kustanowitz, Contributing Writer

A gay man is suing Pressman Academy of Temple Beth Am, claiming the Conservative Jewish day school discriminated against his 8-year-old daughter because of his sexual orientation.

The suit refers to the man only as “John Doe,” a single, Israeli-born man whose two daughters, referred to as “Jane Doe 1” and “Jane Doe 2,” were enrolled at Pressman Academy until the end of the 2016-17 school year.

Filed Sept. 20 in Los Angeles Superior Court, it alleges that Pressman teachers and administrators “failed to address the bullying that Jane Doe 1 was subjected to because she has no mother.” It says a teacher at the school insisted on “informing everyone in the class that Jane Doe 1 was different,” even after the student asked her not to. The suit alleges civil rights violations, fraudulent business practices and infliction of emotional distress, asking for an unspecified amount in damages.

The first hearing in the case is scheduled for Dec. 20.

Adam Wasserman, the attorney for the plaintiff, declined to comment on the case.

Erica Rothblum, head of school at Pressman Academy, said in an emailed statement to the Journal, “While we cannot comment on the specifics of the lawsuit, it is important that everyone know that we are a school committed to the physical and emotional safety of our students.”

She added, “We are a community that embraces diversity, and we remain an inclusive community for LGBTQ students and families. Our commitment includes a life skills class in our middle school that explicitly teaches about sexuality and identity, as well as an active partnership with Keshet, a national organization that works for full LGBTQ equality and inclusion in Jewish life.”

The 47-page complaint alleges that Pressman Academy, a preschool through eighth-grade day school operated by Temple Beth Am on La Cienega Boulevard, engaged in false advertising by selling itself as a “warm embracing community” that “balances a rigorous academic education with social, emotional and spiritual learning.” It claims other students teased Jane Doe 1 by calling her an orphan, pushing a chair into her, circulating rumors about her and, at one point, putting thorns on her pillow.

“The inaction by the faculty and staff at Pressman sent a direct message to the students that tortured, taunted, physically, and verbally abused Jane Doe 1, ‘that this behavior is acceptable at Pressman,’ ” the suit alleges.

After a school therapist learned Jane Doe 1 and her younger sister were the daughters of a single gay man, “everything began to get progressively worse,” according to the suit. Allegedly, a teacher announced to a third-grade class that “Jane Doe 1’s family is different,” and Jane Doe 1 was discouraged from attending a Mother’s Day event.

As a result of this treatment, the suit claims, “Jane Doe 1 became severely depressed and talked to her tutor about wanting to kill herself; she isolated herself socially and would not play with other children at recess because they picked on her; she would lock herself in rooms because she felt safer alone than with other students, staff, and teachers.”

Eventually, according to the suit, a Pressman Academy counselor told John Doe it would be better if he withdrew his daughter and sent her to a local Reform day school.

At the advice of a third-party therapist, John Doe withdrew his daughters from Pressman Academy, according to the suit. Jane Doe 1 had attended the school for six years.

In her statement, Rothblum, the head of school, painted a very different picture from the one in the complaint, describing the school as a place where “everyone should feel safe and comfortable to tell a teacher, counselor or administrator” if they encounter bullying. “Those adults will then take prompt and effective action,” she wrote.

She added, “Pressman Academy is a community of support and engagement, and we are invested in the well-being of our children and our families.”

Edith Windsor, the gay rights activist at the heart of the Supreme Court’s landmark 2013 decision to nullify the Defense of Marriage Act, died Sept. 12 at a Manhattan hospital, according to The New York Times. She was 88.

Windsor was the lead plaintiff in the case that extended federal recognition and a number of government benefits to same-sex couples. Later, a 2015 Supreme Court ruling built on the so-called Windsor decision to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide.

Windsor’s case arose from a tax dispute after the death of her wife, Thea Spyer. Both women were Jewish.

Spyer died in 2009, two years after the women were married following a 40-year engagement. Windsor was denied a $363,053 estate tax refund by the Internal Revenue Service and sued, appealing up to the nation’s highest court. In a 5-4 decision, the court struck down the 1996 law — and ordered the IRS to issue Windsor the refund, with interest.

Rabbi Denise Eger of Congregation Kol Ami in West Hollywood, the first openly gay president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, was in front of the Supreme Court on the day of the Windsor decision, the same day the court heard arguments challenging a same-sex marriage ban in California, Proposition 8.

“I remember when she emerged after the hearing with the California plaintiffs,” Eger said of Windsor in an email to the Journal. “The crowd went wild with joy upon seeing her and her attorney Roberta Kaplan. She was smart, funny, strong and loved meeting people.”

News of Windsor’s death was met with mourning by LGBT communities across the country.

“We celebrate Edie Windsor, we mourn her, we live her legacy,” Congregation Beit Simchat Torah (CBST), the LGBT synagogue in Manhattan where Windsor was a member, wrote in a post on Facebook, using the nickname favored by her friends and family.

CBST Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum and Cantor Steve Zeidenberg planned to speak at a vigil for Windsor in New York on the evening of Sept. 12.

“Windsor helped clear many paths during the many decades of her life, all of which surely prepared her to become the revered and beloved role model that helped make love and true marriage a cause célèbre in the 21st century,” Rabbi Lisa Edwards of the Pico-Robertson LGBT synagogue Beth Chayim Chadashim wrote in an email to the Journal. “I join with many in gratitude to her for her tenacity, and blessed by her presence in the world.”

Edwards wrote that “surely it was no coincidence” that two Jewish women — Windsor and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg — played pivotal roles in legalizing same-sex marriage in the United States.

“We are all the beneficiaries of Windsor’s stalwart determination and righteous indignation at the affront of not being treated as a widow by the Federal government,” she wrote.

“We all owe her a debt of gratitude for her willingness to sacrifice quality of life for quality of action at an age when most people expect younger activists to take the demanding lead,” Kehillat Israel Senior Rabbi Amy Bernstein, one of the Los Angeles area’s leading LGBT rabbis, wrote in an email to the Journal. “She is an important teacher for all of us, but especially for women, that we are capable of having more impact than we think possible in our elder years. She will be missed and her memory will be, I have no doubt, a powerful blessing.”

Eger called Windsor “a proud Jewish woman who brought more justice into the world.”

“Her name should be remembered and taught in every school,” she wrote. “She stood up for what was right and just and her courage in doing so remains inspiring.”

Windsor was the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants James and Celia Schlain, according to The New York Times. She is survived by her wife, Judith Kasen-Windsor.

Israel may pride itself on being an oasis of LGBT tolerance in the otherwise hostile Middle East, but many gay citizens are less than wowed.

On Sunday, the government came out in favor of effectively preventing adoption by same-sex couples. Responding to a petition to the High Court of Justice challenging the current policy, it said that given the “reality of Israeli society,” same-sex parents put an “additional burden” on their adopted children.

Led by some gay celebrities, Israel’s LGBT community and its allies have launched a campaign against the government’s declared position, earning widespread public support. The Israeli media have been filled with criticism of the country’s right-wing leadership alongside accounts of loving same-sex parenting.

Many have accused politicians of touting Israel’s LGBT bona fides to the world while failing to stand up for gay rights at home. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who in a U.N. speech in 2016 talked about gay rights, was singled out. But the top target of criticism has been Cabinet minister Ayelet Shaked, whose Justice Ministry, along with the Welfare Ministry, helped make the government’s case against same-sex adoption.

On Sunday, gay Israeli pop star Harel Skaat urged young LGBT Israelis to vote politicians like Shaked out of office. He further suggested they protest the government’s position by refusing to contribute to the country, or even by leaving.

“I call on you not to join the army! And you know what, not even to pay taxes on the money you will earn,” he wrote on Facebook. “Go and disperse all the great and varied good that you have to give in places that accept you and not those that don’t.”

Singer Amir Frischer-Gutman declared on television that gay Israelis were done making the country look good without getting government support in return. Pro-Palestinian activists over the years have accused Israel of “pinkwashing” its conflict with the Palestinians by promoting its gay-friendly laws and culture.

“We as people have for years felt they are not accepting us. We are good only for speeches at the United Nations and to be the fig leaf of this country,” Frischer-Gutman told Israel’s Channel 2 on Monday. “I will not have an answer for my child the day he asks me why I have to pay taxes to this country. And why should I go to the army for a country that does not respect you and me?”

Ohad Hitman, 40, a top Israeli singer and composer, told JTA that gay artists like him are stepping up because they are “dreamers” who want to create a better world. He said he personally felt an obligation to “speak his truth.”

On Monday, Hitman, who is married to TV commercial producer Ran Hurash, 30, wrote a Facebook post addressed to Shaked from the perspective of their 2-year-old twins, Eva and Berry. The tongue-in-cheek message purported to agree that gays are bad parents, saying the children’s “emotional burden” includes limited TV watching privileges and early bedtime.

The post concluded with a call for an “in-depth dialogue of love” and national unity. By Wednesday it had received 24,000 “likes” and hundreds of mostly supportive comments.

Hitman described himself as mostly apolitical, but said representatives of several Israeli lawmakers have called to consult with him. Meanwhile, other members of the gay community have publicly pushed the government to change its position on adoption.

Although adoption by same-sex couples has been legal in Israel since 2008, in practice it has been nearly impossible. Because opposite-sex couples have been given priority, only three same-sex couples have adopted in Israel out of 550 applicants. More than 1,000 opposite-sex couples have adopted in the past nine years.

In its petition to the High Court, the Association of Israeli Gay Fathers, together with the Israel Religious Action Center of the Reform movement, called these policies discriminatory. In its response, the government essentially agreed but called them justified.

Meanwhile, surrogacy has grown increasingly popular. In 2013, Israelis had 227 births by surrogate mothers; 87 of them were gay couples.

Hitman and Harush paid a surrogate mother. In April 2015, they were among a group of gay male couples that made a high-profile flight to pick up their children from Nepal following a massive earthquake there.

Gay couples cannot marry in Israel, but the state recognizes unions performed abroad. Hitman and Harush married in New York.

Amid the public outcry over the government’s position against same-sex adoption, the National Association of LGBT in Israel quickly organized a protest of the policy to take place Thursday outside the Kirya government compound in Tel Aviv.

“We will not be silent when our government call us ‘exceptions,’” the group said on Facebook. “We will not say thank you because here we are not thrown from the rooftops.”

On Tuesday, Amir Ohana, the only openly gay lawmaker in the ruling Likud party and Hitman’s neighbor, said he would refuse to vote with coalition lawmakers until the government changed its stance on adoption.

There are signs the pressure was having an effect. The High Court on Tuesday gave the state two months to reconsider its position on adoption. Welfare Minister Haim Katz had asked the court for time to do so, saying the state’s response was unfortunately worded.

Spokeswoman Sharona Mann said the Welfare Ministry is recommending a “complete overhaul of the outdated law” on adoptions, though she said her suggestion is not immediately “connected to same-sex parents.”

A poll commissioned last month by the Israeli religious pluralism group Hiddush found 76 percent of Israelis, an all-time high, supports gay marriage, compared to 53 percent in 2009.

Tom Canning, the associate director of the Jerusalem Open House — the LGBT group behind the Jerusalem Pride March — said such attitudes could ultimately make it difficult for the government to sustain its “regressive” positions.

“We’re seeing overwhelming support in Israeli society for same-sex marriage and acceptance of LGBT people in different walks of life, even outside Tel Aviv,” he said. “Even regarding the latest adoption decision, there has been a huge outcry not only from LGBT people but from all Israelis, who feel it does not reflect their beliefs.

“I don’t know if it’s enough to change government policy, but I think it’s going to be a concern for the government to manage public opinion.”

Still, Hitman said he and his friends in the gay community are not optimistic about their future in Israel. He said they feel under siege by the country’s growing and increasingly powerful Orthodox Jewish population and by right-wing politicians they say are unwilling to stand up for democratic values.

“People are worried and angry about the situation. They see Israel becoming like ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’” he said, referring to the hit Hulu TV series about a right-wing religious cult that takes power in the United States. “Everyone knows that 20, 30, 40 years from now, the most religious people will be the majority. All of us are afraid for the first religious prime minister.”

Eventually, Hitman said, he plans to live outside Israel — in New York or London, where he hopes to stage his musicals – and believes his children will have more opportunities there. He is worried the Israeli government will make them, and their parents, “second-class citizens.”

Hitman noted another challenge faced by gay couples: All children of non-Jewish surrogate mothers must undergo an acceptable conversion if they are to be considered Jewish by the Chief Rabbinate, which controls Jewish marriage and divorce. While this is little more than a formality for babies of opposite-sex couples, the Chief Rabbinate does not allow the conversion of those who will be brought up in gay households.

“In Israel, they are not Jewish, they can’t even get married in a normal way,” Hitman said of his children. “Abroad, I believe they will be respected for who they are.”

Despite his worries, Hitman said he has received dozens of positive messages about his Facebook post from religious Jews. Even several who oppose gay adoption told him they admired him and his family and wished them the best. He read JTA a message from a well-known religious singer, who told him that his Facebook post had inspired him to move toward coming out as gay. Hitman said he planned to offer counsel to his fellow musician.

“These aren’t bad people,” he said. “I just want my kids to grow up in a decent country.”

The journalist who first reported the ejection of three Jewish women from the Chicago Dyke March has been relieved of her reporting duties.

Gretchen Rachel Hammond, an award-winning reporter for the Windy City Times, a Chicago LGBT newspaper, has been moved full-time to the paper’s sales desk as of Monday. Hammond was the first to report that three women were kicked out of the Chicago Dyke March, an LGBT parade on June 24, for carrying rainbow flags emblazoned with Jewish stars.

Organizers of the march say the women were ejected because they were carrying flags reminiscent of the Israeli flag at an anti-Zionist event and had “repeatedly expressed support for Zionism during conversations” with other marchers. Jewish groups criticized the decision as anti-Semitic.

Hammond confirmed that she is no longer reporting for the paper, but declined to say whether she was moved because of her coverage of the Dyke March. She said the shift is not temporary, and that she is looking for editorial work elsewhere.

“Right now I’m in the sales department,” she told JTA Monday. “I’m still a part of the company, and it’s my only source of income. To keep what job I have, I can’t comment on it. As an employee of Windy City Times who has loved the company and loved her role in the company for the past four years, I have to respect my publisher’s decision.”

The paper’s publisher, Tracy Baim, confirmed that Hammond had been moved, but would not elaborate. Regarding the Windy City Times’ coverage of the Dyke March, Baim said the paper’s editors “stand by our reporting by Gretchen and our other reporters on that story.”

Organizers of the Dyke March were critical of Hammond’s reporting on the flags incident. “I thought Windy City Times failed in its journalistic mission [breaking the story] and not looking for a real response from the Collective before putting Laurel’s position out there,” Alexis Martinez, a core organizer with the Dyke March Collective, told Hammond in her last article as a member of the reporting staff.

Laurel Grauer, Midwest manager of programs and operations for the pro-Israel LGBT group A Wider Bridge, was one of the women asked to leave the march. In the first article on the incident, she told Hammond that she and her friends were “harassed” by a number of marchers for waving the star of David flag, which she said “celebrates my queer, Jewish identity.” She later denied assertions by members of the Dyke March Collective that she and the two other women asked to leave were chanting pro-Israel messages or button-holing other marchers.

But according to Martinez, Grauer had come to the march specifically to counter the organizers’ anti-Zionist message.

Martinez said she told Grauer, “Nobody’s got anything against your flag. Wave it proudly. I am asking you if you’re trying to present a pro-Palestinian, pro-Zionist point-of-view.” When Grauer said she intended to keep expressing such views, Martinez said she told her,”This isn’t the format to do that. Either you have to stop or you have to leave.”

Both Windy City Times and the Dyke March Collective received threats in the weeks after the incident.

I am a queer Israeli Jew of Arab and North African descent. I’m no stranger to oppression in many forms. My family escaped Iraq in the early 1950s as anti-Semitism in Iraq reached a peak. I grew up in an underprivileged neighborhood in Israel and struggled to make my way out of it. I served in the Israeli army as an openly queer commander for five years, and had to endure many battles on the path for acceptance. Yet I cannot wrap my head around the bigotry, hatred and anti-Semitism coming from my LGBT community.

On June 24, the final red line was crossed at the Chicago Dyke March. What was supposed to be a march for equal rights for an oppressed minority turned into a hate-fest targeting Jewish people — yes anti-Semitism in the guise of LGBT rights. Three LGBT Jewish participants were forced out of the parade for holding a rainbow flag with a Star of David on it. For the organizers, it was unacceptable to have a Jewish symbol at the parade. While you might think that they would try to apologize after this shameful act, they didn’t. The organizers took to Twitter and argued: “Queer and Trans anti-Zionist Jewish folks are welcome here …” In other words, some Jews can join, but they will decide which ones.

It is not a political stand; we all know it is not. If this were political, why are they not targeting the countless countries that ban homosexuality and target LGBT people on a daily basis? Would they be removing Iranians from the parade for holding a flag with crescent on it? In Iran, they hang gays every day. Why not Gaza, where they throw gays off of rooftops? Or Chechnya? It is not political, it is ideological, an ideology called intersectionality. The problem with intersectionality is that it doesn’t even adhere to its original meaning: All struggles for rights are inherently connected. It has now become a tool to be used against not only Israel, but Jews in general, who are accused of “white privilege” even though we’re not white.

What does the support of Zionism (the movement to liberate the Jewish people in their ancient homeland) have to do with your LGBT identity? What does your religion have to do with it? Even if you are critical of Israel’s politics and policies, as I am and many Israelis are, why are the organizers supporting only “anti-Zionists”? The only meaning of anti-Zionism is the destruction of Israel, the only Jewish state. For the organizers of the parade to support anti-Zionism can mean only that they support the end of Israel, destroying the Jewish state. Iran’s leaders, ISIS, and many terrorist groups hold similar views to the organizers of the Dyke March. It can be defined only as anti-Semitic.

We are witnessing a trend among many in the progressive camp, a camp of which I am a part, that is losing its true identity and being used by campaigners and strategists manipulating them. Some queer groups and other minority groups are being used as tools to promote hatred of the Jewish state and the Jewish people. They are being told to use their identity, be it their race, gender or religion, to fight Israel for a cause they have no connection to. These groups must ask themselves, before taking a stand about Israel, when was the last time they took a stand about another conflict around the world? When was the last time they’ve judged a participant in an event based on his ethnicity or religion? Why is it only with Israel and Jews that they feel that they have the liberty to boycott, to discriminate and to hate?

The signs are clear and this type of hateful incident is a red flag for the LGBT community. What is this community if not a community that is fighting for equality and justice, for our community and for all? Although it is not popular to stand up for the Jewish people and the Jewish state, we must remember the lessons of history. It might start with us but it never ends with us.

Also, everything can change very quickly. The just thing to do is to stand up to this type of hatred and call it what it is, nothing more or less than anti-Semitism.

Hen Mazzig is an Israeli writer, speaker and social activist from Tel Aviv. You can follow him @HenMazzig.

Jewish groups denounced the banning of Jewish Pride flags at a lesbian march in Chicago and called for an apology.

Organizers of the 21st annual Chicago Dyke March told the three women asked to leave the march that the rainbow flags with a white Star of David in the center would be a “trigger,” or traumatic stimulus, for people who found them offensive.

A Dyke March collective member told the Windy City Times that the women were told to leave because the flags “made people feel unsafe,” and that Sunday’s march was “anti-Zionist” and “pro-Palestinian.”

The Anti-Defamation League said in a statement Monday that march organizers should apologize to the women for what it described as an “outrageous” action.

“The community of LGBTQ supporters is diverse and that is part of its tremendous strength,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL’s CEO. “Both the act and the explanation were anti-Semitic, plain and simple. We stand with A Wider Bridge and others in demanding an apology. We appreciate the Human Rights Campaign’s support and we call on other leaders from LGBTQ and progressive communities to join us in condemning this exclusion.”

The Human Rights Campaign, which calls itself the largest national lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer civil rights organization with 1.5 million members, tweeted its support for the women.

“Marches should be safe spaces to celebrate our diversity and our pride. This is not right,” the group wrote.

The Chicago Dyke march in a statement issued late Sunday said that Palestinian and Jewish anti-Zionist marchers approached the women and expressed concern about the flags since they are “visually reminiscent of the Israeli flag” due to the placement of the Star of David in the middle, and because such flags are widely used in “pinkwashing” — what some activists say is Israel’s attempt to promote its progressive gay rights as a screen for mistreatment of Palestinians.

The women were asked to leave, according to the statement, after they began “defending the state of Israel and Zionism as a whole.”  The statement continued: “It became clear that the political position of the marchers was at odds with the anti-racist and anti-Zionist ethos of Dyke march Chicago.”

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights NGO, also denounced the banning of the Jewish Pride flags, saying it “brings disgrace to a movement that is dedicated to equal rights for all.”

“Equal rights that is except for Jews who dare to celebrate their ties to their people and the Jewish homeland,” Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the center, said in a statement.

He added: “The unbridled hypocrisy and anti-Semitism of these campaigners degrades the cause for equality for all in our society and for LGBTQ rights around the world.”

The Chicago Jewish Voice for Peace, which backs the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, offered its support to march organizers, retweeting their statement and declaring, “We stand 100% w @DykeMarchChi.…”

On why we asked folks to leave the rally at Piotrowski Park yesterday pic.twitter.com/4FKSStFFF2

— Chicago Dyke March (@DykeMarchChi) June 25, 2017

Jared Polis is already on to the next thing. That shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has looked at his resume.

By the age of 25, he had founded three companies, which would shortly make him a multimillionaire. He then turned his focus to education, establishing two charter school systems to cater to immigrant and homeless youth and serving on the Colorado State Board of Education.

At 33, he entered national politics, when he was elected to represent Colorado in Congress.

Less than 10 years after his Washington debut, Polis now has his sights set on a new goal: to serve as governor of Colorado.

The Jewish Democrat announced earlier this month that he was joining the already crowded race with an ambitious three-pronged platform: to ensure Colorado uses only renewable energy by 2040, provide free preschool and kindergarten across the state, and fight income inequality.

If he wins, the 42-year-old would make history in more ways than one — by becoming both the first Jewish governor in Colorado and its first openly gay person to serve in the post.

Polis’ candidacy has upset the gubernatorial race, where Rep. Ed Perlmutter, also a Democrat, was previously seen as the front-runner, said David Flaherty, a political consultant who runs the Colorado-based firm Magellan Strategies.

“Perlmutter was the odds-on favorite for the Dem primary, and I also think he was the odds-on favorite to win the general election, but that’s not the case now,” Flaherty told JTA. “And some discussions I’ve had with Democratic political insiders have really felt that Jared has a good shot of winning the primary — but the general is more of a debatable issue.”

Perlmutter, 64, a Christian with Jewish ancestry on his father’s side, served in the Colorado state Senate for eight years prior to being elected to Congress. He appeals to the “established Democrat crowd,” including those who voted for Hillary Clinton in November, said Flaherty.

Meanwhile, Flaherty said Polis, with his focus on renewable energy, appeals to younger voters and Bernie Sanders backers. Sanders won nearly 60 percent of the vote in Colorado’s Democratic caucuses last year.

“Right now it’s an even fight between Ed Perlmutter and Jared,” said Flaherty, adding that some of the other Democratic candidates also should not be discounted.

Polis was exposed to civic involvement from an early age, growing up in a Reform Jewish family in Boulder.

“My parents were active in the anti-war movement in the 1960s, so I grew up with a tradition of civic activism around our dinner table and going to different marches for different causes,” such as civil rights and anti-nuclear proliferation, he told JTA.

His family moved to San Diego, where he attended La Jolla Country Day School. As a 19-year-old student at Princeton University, he founded his first company, the internet access provider American Information Systems, which he later sold for $23 million.

In 1996, Polis founded the online greeting card company Blue Mountain, a spinoff of a firm started by his parents. He later sold the dot-com startup for $780 million. In 1998, Polis launched the online flower retailer ProFlowers, which he later sold for $470 million.

Polis, who is among the top five wealthiest members of Congress — his net worth is estimated at $90 million to $390 million — sees his business background as an asset to his political career.

“One, voters trust somebody who has a background creating jobs instead of just talking about it, who knows how to balance a checkbook, who knows how to build a business,” he said. “And second of all, the experience has been very helpful to me in creating policies that allow businesses to grow and flourish in our state and country.”

Polis dismisses accusations that he used his wealth to buy his way into office. He spent $1 million on his campaign to serve on the State Board of Education compared to his opponent’s $100,000, and $6 million on his 2008 congressional campaign, defeating Democratic establishment candidate Joan Fitz-Gerald in the primary.

“When people run campaigns they have to raise a lot of money, and I’ve been one of the top fundraisers nationally for the Democrats, and people do appreciate it when you’re able to say no to special interests and PACs, like I have. I’ve never accepted any PAC money,” Polis said.

His Jewish background has a large influence on his political beliefs.

“I derive a lot of the values that I try to bring into the public sphere from my private faith,” Polis said. “Certainly for me I focus a lot on education, and I’m running for governor to bring [free] preschool and kindergarten to our state and improve our schools, and that’s an important Jewish value.”

Polis, whose great-grandparents immigrated to the United States from Poland and Ukraine in the early 20th century, added: “And also being so close to the immigrant experience, I’m a strong defender of immigrant rights and refugees, of course with the experience that Jews had prior to World War II, that few countries wanted to accept Jewish refugees.”

Judaism also plays a big role at home for Polis, who with his partner Marlon Reis has two young children, 6-year-old son Caspian Julius and 2-year-old daughter Cora Barucha (named after Polis’ great-great-aunt Kasha Barucha). He is the first openly gay parent to serve in Congress.

The family attends three synagogues in Boulder: the Conservative Bonai Shalom, the Reform Har HaShem and the Renewal Nevei HaKodesh.

Polis, who defines himself as “in between Conservative and Reform,” won’t pick favorites.

“They’re all great. I like to support Jewish life in our community, and they’re all doing great things,” he said.

He also recently joined his cousin Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld, the rabbi of Ohev Sholom-The National Synagogue in Washington, D.C., for Shabbat dinner.

The lawmaker also has another way of connecting to the Jewish tradition — through food. When not cooking his way through his grandmother’s collection of recipes of traditional dishes, he and Reis, who also is Jewish, have been trying to re-create the cheese blintzes of Reis’ great-grandmother Dora.

Polis said they’ve tried “a few dozen times” but haven’t quite gotten it right yet. They aren’t giving up anytime soon.

“We’ll know when we get there if they taste the same as he remembers,” Polis said.

The Israeli Embassy marked LGBT Pride Month with a reception for Jewish and Israeli activists and leaders.

About 100 people attended the event, which featured an address by Talleen Abu Hana, an Arab Christian from Nazareth who won the first Miss Trans Israel beauty pageant in 2016.

The embassy also paid tribute to the 49 victims of last year’s massacre at the gay nightclub Pulse in Orlando, Florida.

“Just as the noxious fumes of anti-Semitism ultimately poison all of society, so too hatred towards the LGBT community threatens all of us,” Ron Dermer, the Israeli ambassador to Washington, said in brief remarks.

He also asserted that Israel is the sole country in the Middle East with the “values that progressives are supposed to champion,” referring to Israel’s legal and popular support for gay rights.

Abu Hana spoke about her experience as a transgender woman in Israel. After winning the beauty pageant, she was runner-up at the Miss Trans Star International Pageant and a contestant on Israel’s “Big Brother.”

As a boy growing up in Nazareth, Abu Hana grappled with an intense internal conflict between “body and soul,” she said. When she showed an interest in women’s clothes and makeup, her father lashed out at her.

“Transforming from the most beloved child to the one everyone hated … I was lost and started thinking of killing myself,” she said.

Abu Hana moved to Tel Aviv, where the LGBT community is known to be strong and accepting. One evening while hanging out with new friends, a transgender woman was talking about her transition.

“I didn’t get what she was talking about,” Abu Hana recalled.

Another male friend said, “She’s transgender, just like you.”

Abu Hana was taken aback and insisted she was not. The male friend then took her face in his hands and said, “You are going to be a woman and a beautiful one.”

In an interview before the Pride event, Talleen emphasized the importance of moving to Tel Aviv, where the support she found as a Christian and an Arab facilitated her transition.

Israel’s universal health service covers the costs of sex-reassignment surgery.

“The law is on your side,” Talleen said, referring to the ease of changing one’s gender and name on government-issued documents.

After winning Miss Trans in 2016, Abu Hana quickly rose to fame in Israel, where she is often mobbed by fans eager to take a selfie. In addition to modeling, she speaks to transgender youth at shelters in Tel Aviv and most recently at Casa Ruby, an LGBTQ community center in Washington. She said she is humbled to be “an ambassador for peace between one’s soul [and] one’s body.”

Abu Hana now lives with her boyfriend, who she met before her transition on a night of dancing at a Tel Aviv club.

“I’m lucky to be an Israeli,” she said. “Being an Israeli means being truly free.”

I do my most important parenting in the car — often not by choice. Living in Los Angeles, the car is simply the best place to talk.

The snack-covered leather seats of my black Honda Civic have been the scenes of multiple conversations with my twin children that I’ll remember forever. Like when my daughter, Juliette, then age 3, announced to my brother, as we picked him up from the airport, that she recently made a poo poo on the potty and demanded some sort of payment — or at least recognition from her uncle.

Or a year later, when that same daughter decided she wanted to convert and announced that she would like to be Christian because they celebrate “Eastern” and “Eastern” has better candy than Passover! I still remember her words ringing in my ears: “Eastern is better than Passover!” I tried my hardest to defend my position, but when it comes to candy … “Eastern” sort of wins.

And that was the easy stuff. These sun-scorched seats also witnessed some tougher conversations, like when Juliette asked, through tears: “Why does our teacher keep saying that we are adopted when we are not? I tell her every day I’m not adopted! I have two dads and they had a surrogate in order to bring me and my brother into this world.”

Never in my wildest dreams, though, did I imagine that it would be in this same car that my children — both of them — would come out to me! We were on Olympic Boulevard on the way to the Fish Grill, and they were 9 or 10 at the time.

How can this be happening, I thought? It took me until I was 21 to have enough courage to come out to my parents. I planned and rehearsed it for years. I was already a college graduate, and yet my kids are doing it before middle school (and on the way to the Fish Grill).

Truth be told, I never dreamed that this conversation would happen in the first place. As a gay dad, I was not prepared. Sitting behind the steering wheel, I started to understand how my parents must have felt. No one teaches you how to be a good audience when your kids give you life-changing news.

Plus, what are the chances that two kids with gay dads would feel the need to come out to their parents? I always swore that I would never let my son and daughter go through what I did: the secrets, the fear, the confusion, the feeling of letting down the rest of the family. I came out before “Will & Grace,” and doing that in the Reagan years was not easy or fun. 

So you can imagine how fast my heart began beating after Juliette, speaking for both herself and her brother, Harrison, apologized for their sexual orientation. In the backseat of our Honda Civic. On the way to Fish Grill. At age 9.

“Papa, you know Harry and me are straight … right?” 

Silence.

I tried not to crash the car. Looking back in the rearview mirror, I tried to see her eyes. Could this really be happening? My thoughts were going a mile a minute: How does she even know? She’s so young. Why is her brother not saying anything?

Neither of them could look at me. I could see they felt bad, like they let us down. As parents, we could not care less, but the more I told them that it was OK, the sadder they seemed and the more they felt they needed to explain.

Finally, I said the words that every child wants to hear, the ones that I’ve learned are so important to hear any day and every day. (I heard similar words when I came out at 21.)

“Daddy and Papa love you guys no matter what.”

This is sort of the Golden Rule of fatherhood, right? All the rest is commentary.

We continued: “We never assumed you would be gay just because we are. Nor do we care. We just want you to be happy.”

Just make sure your Auntie Vera in Boca doesn’t find out that you’re straight!  

Martin Finkelstein is executive director of advertising at the Jewish Journal and the father of two teenagers, Juliette and Harrison.

Amanda Maddahi, a 30-year-old, second-generation Iranian-American Jew, has made it her mission to address LGBT issues in Los Angeles’ Persian-Jewish community.

A year ago, she helped establish the Persian Pride Program at JQ International, a Los Angeles-based LGBT advocacy nonprofit. As its director of operations, Maddahi has helped develop and run an array of programming, including support groups, counseling, a panel series called “Out of Iran, Out of the Closet,” and a help line available six days a week for LGBT Persian Jews.

“What’s really innovative about this is that it didn’t exist,” Maddahi said. “It’s really addressing something that’s taboo in the community head on.”

If Maddahi had her way, the next phase would be expansion.  vBut the funds simply aren’t there yet.

“We get messages all the time from Persians in Boston and New York, saying, ‘When is it coming here?’ ” she said. 

Help might be on the way.

Slingshot, a New York-based nonprofit organization, has published its 12th annual list of 50 innovative organizations, projects and programs aimed at making an impact in the American-Jewish community. The guide is a popular resource for volunteers, activists and donors searching for ways to get involved with Jewish philanthropic causes. The group also released its first Los Angeles guide, spotlighting 26 of the city’s high-impact Jewish organizations. The Persian Pride program made it onto both lists. 

“This is one of the highest honors to date for us,” Maddahi, said. “We know the Slingshot guide features the most innovative nonprofits. To be included with all these amazing organizations is not only a dream but a beautiful reality.”

The complete national and Los Angeles guides can be found on Slingshot’s website, slingshotfund.org.

The Silverlake Independent Jewish Community Center (SIJCC) was featured for the third consecutive year. Its hip slate of programs for Eastsiders includes downtown pastrami walking tours, hootenanny community jam sessions and a cultural discussion series that recently featured Matthew Weiner, creator of the television drama “Mad Men.”

SIJCC’s development manager, Shannon Rubenstone, said that inclusion on the list helps validate the community-oriented approach to SIJCC’s programs and operations.

“Being named one of the nation’s most innovative Jewish organizations reaffirms for us that we’re doing good work,” she said. “We work closely with our community members to brainstorm programs, classes, workshops and events and will continue to involve the community in our programming decisions.”

With more than half of last year’s national guide featuring organizations either based or operating in California, Slingshot’s Executive Director Stefanie Rhodes figured it was time to publish regional guides for Los Angeles and the Bay Area.

“There are so many innovative things happening in Los Angeles’ Jewish community,” Rhodes said. “What’s happening with Jewish life in the Bay Area and Los Angeles is setting the pace for a lot of us right now. It’s a trend we’ve been noticing for years. The intersection of all of that made this year the right year to do California guides.”

Since its inception in 2005, Slingshot has highlighted more than 250 Jewish organizations through its guides. Rhodes estimated that each year, through the mailing of hard copies and online outreach, the guides reach up to 30,000 people across the country.

“We’ve heard tons of stories of people who learned about an organization from the guide and gave a gift or got involved because they saw them in Slingshot,” Rhodes said.

Slingshot’s pool of philanthropy foundation professionals, trustees and Jewish nonprofit experts judge applicant organizations based on innovation, impact and potential to grow in a community. A new wrinkle in this year’s evaluation, Rhodes said, was weighing life cycle — how long an organization has been in existence — and budget specifics, in an effort to level the playing field.

“When an organization is featured, it’s a sign that other funders have looked at it next to the criteria we’ve laid out and scored it highly in those areas,” Rhodes said. “For an organization, especially ones that are new to Jewish innovation and just starting out, it’s an excellent opportunity to get pooled in and gain exposure.”

Maddahi, whose program is entering its second year, said she is confident that inclusion in the guide offers more than just validation. It can also lead to new opportunities for the Persian Pride program.

“For us, being featured sheds light on the fact that this is a need within our community to address and we’re addressing it in a very innovative way,” she said. “This not only gives legitimacy to the work, it grants us exposure to potential opportunities to take this cause across the nation, even global.” 

By eighth grade, Micha Thau knew he was gay. But he also knew that being gay was not acceptable in many of the Orthodox spaces he inhabited. So he buried that part of himself.

But it didn’t stay buried. He began to suffer headaches, vertigo and other physical symptoms he attributes to his feelings of intense isolation. He relished days when the symptoms would send him to the doctor, just because “I got to leave the hellhole that was my life.”

“There were times when it was just crushing,” said Thau, 18, who graduates from Shalhevet High School next month. “I thought it was over, like I really could see no light at the end of the tunnel.”

Youth in Thau’s position face few options, none particularly rosy. They can quit Orthodoxy and live out gay lives, either as secular Jews or within another branch of Judaism. They can stay in Orthodoxy and renounce a part of themselves, living in celibacy or difficult relationships. Or they can do as Thau did and fight for openness and inclusion, and risk becoming poster children.

Still, as the secular world increasingly has embraced same-sex couples, the Orthodox has not been left totally behind. A number of congregations and communities, pulled by the conscience of some of their members, are taking a hard, wrenching look at their laws and traditions, and how they impact Orthodox youth.

When Thau came out during his sophomore year to Rabbi Ari Segal, Shalhevet’s head of school, and Principal Rabbi Noam Weissman, he was literally shaking. The administrators were surprised by the toll it had taken just to talk to them.

“We thought we had done an amazing job” promoting inclusion, Segal told the Journal. “And it turned out he had waited to come out to us because he was scared — he didn’t know what the school’s position was.”

Shalhevet student Micha Thau last summer at the Jerusalem gay pride parade. Photo courtesy of Micha Thau

Segal has since emerged as an advocate for teens like Thau. In an opinion column in the Shalhevet school newspaper, he called the dilemma they face “the biggest challenge to emunah [faith] of our time.”

Thau’s coming out has turned into something like a coming out for the entire Modern Orthodox community in Los Angeles: a highly visible test case for a virtually invisible issue. Thau has joined with Shalhevet’s administration to reshape perceptions of lesbians, gays and bisexuals in a religious community pulled in opposing directions — toward acceptance by its modernity and toward silence by its Orthodoxy.

The letter of the law

For the young people caught up in that struggle, the root of the problem lies in Leviticus, which labels gay sex a toevah, most often translated as an abomination, and, a couple of chapters later, prescribes the death penalty as punishment.

Strains of Judaism differ in how this law, like most laws, is applied. Reform Judaism suspends the prohibition, allowing clergy to officiate same-sex marriages. The two greater Los Angeles synagogues with outreach programs for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender members, Congregation Kol Ami in West Hollywood and Beth Chayim Chadashim in Mid-City Los Angeles, are aligned with the Union for Reform Judaism.

Conservative Judaism openly grapples with the law. As of a 2006 Rabbinical Assembly decision, gays and lesbians have been welcomed into Conservative congregations and rabbinical posts, but sex between men remains prohibited — the 2006 ruling did not address sex between women — and deliberations continue on same-sex marriage.

Orthodoxy generally adheres to the letter of the law, and homosexuality is no exception. Though outright hostility toward gays, lesbians and bisexuals is less common in the United States than it was before legalized same-sex marriage, so too is unconditional acceptance. Orthodox teens struggling with their sexual orientation in this environment can’t be sure how their communities will react if they come out, or whether they will risk losing friends and family.

Photo by Fabio Sexio/Agencia O Globo

It’s impossible to know how many teens are caught between their Jewish faith and their sexual orientation. Within the general population, multiple studies have found that around 3.5 percent of respondents self-identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual. But even those studies may not reflect an accurate count because not all respondents provide truthful answers, and many surveys, including the U.S. Census Bureau, do not ask about sexual orientation.

At Shalhevet alone, a school with an enrollment of slightly more than 200, general population estimates suggest there are something like eight lesbian, gay or bisexual students. Thau said he currently is the only out gay student at the school.

“For every Micha Thau at Shalhevet, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of gay, lesbian, transgender students at Orthodox institutions struggling, fearful, worried, self-destructive,” said Rabbi Steven Greenberg, the first openly gay Orthodox rabbi in the U.S. and an activist for LGBT Jews.

Walking a fine line

For Modern Orthodox communities, the word of biblical law translates practically into a stance that neither embraces same-sex partnerships nor outright condemns those who choose to undertake them.

“On the one hand, we’re not going to support it,” Rabbi Steven Weil, senior managing director of the Orthodox Union, one of the major national Orthodox institutions in the United States, told the Journal. “But on the other hand, we’re going to do everything we can to make sure that gay and lesbian members feel as much a part of the community as anyone else.”

Nonetheless, the model of an Orthodox marriage, without a doubt, is a husband and wife. Weil said, “Where there’s a little bit of pushback is where a couple wants to be discussed as ‘Mr. and Mr.’ or ‘Mrs. and Mrs.’ ”

For teens contemplating their romantic and religious futures, the range of answers they might receive from rabbis and school administrators is wide. For now, Shalhevet seems to represent the most progressive response they might receive in Los Angeles.

Valley Torah High School in Valley Village occupies a more conservative place on the spectrum. Reached by phone, Rabbi Avrohom Stulberger, the head of school, was quick to note that intolerance against gays, lesbians and bisexuals is not welcome.

“With my students, I feel it’s important that they understand that this is not something that we look down upon,” he said. “This is not a choice that people make.”

However, he wouldn’t budge on the issue of Jewish law: The rules are clear, and a student who wanted to live an out gay or lesbian life at the Orthodox high school would run into trouble.

“This would be inconsistent with the atmosphere — for a kid to say, ‘I’m gay, I’m acting out on it and I want to be a member of Valley Torah in good standing,’ ” he said. “It’s inconsistent from a halachic viewpoint.”

Asked whether such a student could, for instance, lead prayer services or school activities, he answered, “In 31 years, it hasn’t happened. But honestly, let’s just sort of change the question. I’d have the same dilemma if a kid came to me and said, ‘Rabbi, I love Valley Torah but I’m just eating at McDonald’s every night. That’s who I am.’ ”

At YULA Girls High School, the policy on gay, lesbian and bisexual students is in flux.

“We’ve had internal discussions, but we haven’t yet formulated a policy,” said Head of School Rabbi Abraham Lieberman, who plans to leave YULA Girls this summer after leading it since 2008. “It would obviously include the greatest amount of respect for the students and understanding of whatever they’re going through.”

He said the heads of the area’s Orthodox schools — including YULA Girls, YULA Boys, Valley Torah and Shalhevet — meet periodically to discuss important issues, including this one. As of now, they haven’t formulated a conclusion. But Lieberman expects that soon most local Orthodox schools will provide statements or policies on the matter.

As attitudes about homosexuality have shifted, with gay rights and narratives becoming more mainstream, hard-line positions have become more difficult to maintain.

Thau recalled telling his grandfather that he was gay and getting a surprising answer.

“He said, ‘So?’ ” Thau recalled. “And he said, ‘If you had told me that 10 years ago, I would have had a very different reaction.’ ”

Thau went on, “As much as the Orthodox community tries to isolate itself from the secular world, there are always cracks in the wall — no matter how high the wall is. Culture will always bleed through.”

Caught in the middle

But ensconced behind the walls of a Torah-observant lifestyle, many teens still face an awful choice between God and love.

“When you’re living in the Orthodox community, being gay and being religious — they’re not cohesive,” said Jeremy Borison, 25, who grew up in Cleveland and now lives in Los Angeles. “So me, if I had to choose one, I was gonna stay with the religious side of it.”

He said he’s now able to balance his faith and sexual orientation — but only because he found a welcoming community in B’nai David-Judea, an Orthodox synagogue in Pico-Robertson, where Senior Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky has been outspoken in favor of greater acceptance of gays and lesbians.

Others, like David, a gay man in his 20s who grew up in an Orthodox family in Los Angeles, no longer feel like they have a place in the Orthodox community.

Some of the gay and lesbian individuals interviewed for this story, including David, asked not to be identified by their real names or even the schools they attended, fearing they and their families would face sigma and untoward gossip. David still is wary about sharing his story publicly, for that reason.

At the Orthodox high school he attended in L.A., he knew he was attracted boys, but thought it was a phase, something all teenagers go through. There were no Orthodox Jews who were gay, as far as he knew; it simply wasn’t conceivable.

He had a good time during his high school years, though, enjoying his religious education and even getting close to some of the rabbis. But by the time he found himself in yeshiva in Israel, in a completely different environment, he realized his feelings weren’t going to go away. His first reaction was to treat them as something wrong with him that needed to be fixed.

A good deal of therapy later, David is leading an out gay life, but he finds that he’s uncomfortable in Orthodox spaces. His experience didn’t make him hate Judaism; he’s still finding his place in the religion. But he no longer considers himself Orthodox. How could he feel welcome in a community that considers who he is to be a great sin?

Every problem begs a solution

From time to time, students approach Stulberger, the head of school at Valley Torah, struggling with feelings of attraction to members of the same gender. Stulberger said he has “helped many students over the years in their struggle — but in a private way.”

His first reaction when students come to him with this issue is to assure them, “We are here to talk to; we are here to help you.” But after that he draws a line: “What I won’t do is give the indication that giving into your same-sex attraction is something that’s acceptable.”

To these students, he presents two options. One is celibacy. The other is to “get help, find the right professional who can help you to reorient.”

Stulberger alleges there are thousands of young men who have changed their sexual orientation with professional help. While the scientific and LGBT communities dispute its effectiveness, the internet is filled with testimonies from people who claim to lead happy, heterosexual lives as a result of “reparative therapy.” Stulberger even knows a handful of them, he said.

One of those is Naim, an Orthodox man in his early 30s who attended Valley Torah and who asked to be identified only by his middle name. For years, he struggled with his attraction to men but rejected the idea of living an out gay life.

“I didn’t want that lifestyle,” he said. “I wanted to get married. I wanted to have a family. I wanted to do what men do — period.”

Photo by Eitan Arom

By the time he was 28, he said, he’d been in and out of rehab for drug addiction and was addicted to gay porn. Then, he made an electrifying discovery on the internet.

“There’s a whole community out there — Jews and non-Jews alike — that don’t want to live that lifestyle and have struggled with it and gotten help, and now they’re married,” he said. “I thought, ‘Wow, this is incredible, God is talking to me right now. Why did it take 28 years to tell me this?’ ”

He enrolled in reparative therapy designed around what he called a “gender wholeness model.” He identified factors such as a troubled relationship with his father and an unhealthy identification with traits he admired in other men as the cause of his same-sex attraction, which he referred to as SSA. He treated it like a condition that needed to be fixed, he said, and he began to heal.

“My attraction for men has diminished significantly,” he said. “Usually, my SSA, on a scale of 1 to 10, is at a 0.”

Now, he’s looking for a wife.

“There are still days when I struggle every once in a while,” he said. “Thank God it doesn’t happen very often.”

Taking a pledge

Told that a Los Angeles high school recommends reparative therapy, Rabbi Rachel Bat-Or of JQ International, a West Hollywood-based Jewish LGBT support and education organization, was horrified.

“What it does is, it encourages people to kill themselves,” she said. California law bans the practice for mental health providers.

David moved away from his Orthodox community after high school and hasn’t returned, but some of its stigmas and taboos lingered with him. He sought out reparative therapy while in college, and while he didn’t find it particularly traumatizing, he said it made him hate himself. Since then, he’s blocked much of it out in his mind.

Now, Segal and Thau at Shalhevet are asking other Jewish schools to affirm in a pledge, written jointly by Thau and the administration, that they “will not recommend, refer, or pressure students toward ‘reparative’ or ‘conversion therapy.’ ”

“We believe that’s damaging,” Segal said of the practice.

The pledge includes five other points — which Segal insisted schools can adopt altogether or individually — including an assurance that gay, lesbian and transgender students won’t be excluded from school activities and will be provided with support services. The full statement is available online at jewishschoolpledge.com. As of now, Shalhevet is the only school to have signed it.

Asked about the pledge, Lieberman, the head of YULA Girls, said, “It’s very powerful,” adding that if YULA Girls were to issue a policy about LGBT students, “it would definitely gravitate toward that.”

The idea of the pledge has its origins in Thau’s coming out to Segal and Weissman.

“What could we do?” Segal said he asked the teen. “What could we have communicated to you, Micha, that would have helped?”

Photo courtesy of Builders of Jewish Education

The administrators realized that communicating anything at all would have been a good start. Even though both men assumed a gay student would be welcomed, Thau struggled through years of uncertainty because they had never said as much publicly.

“Schools and communities and shuls should have this conversation and decide what they believe, and then publish it,” Segal said — even if it is less progressive than what Shalhevet came up with.

Bat-Or said she hopes other schools will follow Shalhevet’s lead and take steps toward inclusiveness, for instance by circulating JQ’s helpline for LGBT Jews and advertising their counselor’s offices as safes spaces for students questioning their sexual orientation.

“On a scale of 1 to 10, this is a 150,” she said of Shalhevet’s efforts. “I really mean that. It took huge courage for [Segal] and for Micha to get together and to do this.”

A movement in the making

Cases like Micha’s make it increasingly difficult for Orthodox communities to ignore issues faced by their lesbian, gay and bisexual members.

“Centrist Orthodoxy is conflicted and not admitting the conflict,” said Greenberg, a Yeshiva University-ordained rabbi who came out years later and co-founded Eshel, a Boston-based organization that promotes inclusiveness in Orthodox communities. “They are pulled by much more traditional frames, and they are pulled by the human realities they’re facing.”

At least in some communities, that conflict has meant a long, slow drift toward acceptance.

Elissa Kaplan, a clinical psychologist who came out as lesbian 15 years ago while living in an Orthodox community in suburban New Jersey, has watched attitudes change before her eyes.

“The world has changed since then,” Kaplan, 55, said. “Gay marriage is legal now in the civil world. That’s enormous, and it has an impact. It matters. Even people who say they are not influenced in their attitudes by what happens in the secular world — it’s just not true.”

She’s felt the impact of those changes herself, she said.

“My wife and I would go into one of the kosher restaurants in the area and might get dirty looks from people,” she said. “That really doesn’t happen anymore.”

In Los Angeles, that change has played out in parlor meetings where community members get together to grapple with the issue of inclusiveness. In March, some two dozen Jewish teens and parents gathered in the dining room of a Beverlywood home, sitting on folding chairs and nibbling on cookies and cut fruit as they listened to Greenberg speak.

The parlor meeting was the work of Eshel L.A., a local group allied with the Boston-based organization. It first convened in June 2015, when Harry Nelson, a local health care attorney, invited community members to his home to meet Greenberg and Eshel’s other co-founder, Miryam Kabakov, the group’s executive director.

From there, they formed a steering committee. That December, they had the first of many parlor meetings on topics like how to curb homophobic comments at the Shabbat table and how to talk to their children about same-sex couples.

“The thing that struck me most with this issue is that the Orthodox tradition that I so value and the Orthodox lifestyle I so love were creating pain, intolerable pain, for people who are gay,” said Julie Gruenbaum Fax, one of Eshel L.A.’s principal organizers and a former Jewish Journal staff writer.

Fax and her peers are looking to create Orthodox spaces where lesbians, gays and bisexuals can exist openly and comfortably. Sometimes, that entails actually grappling with Jewish law. At the parlor meeting in March, Greenberg, 60, who has salt-and-pepper stubble and a professorial air, moved fluently through the halachah and commentary on the topic of homosexuality.

On the face of it, the law as it is appears in the Torah seems clear enough. Leviticus 18:22 states, “Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman; it is an abhorrence.”

But Greenberg pointed out to his Beverlywood audience that the rabbinate has created work-arounds for all kinds of mandates and prohibitions, such as those against carrying objects outside the home on Shabbat or farming during a jubilee year. The laws governing these exceptions are complex, but the point is, they are negotiable — unlike homosexuality, for most Orthodox rabbis.

During his presentations, Greenberg is careful to allow room for dissent and questions, and community members frequently take him up. One woman at the meeting, who wore a long black skirt and said she’d adopted Orthodoxy later in life, admitted that the concept of full acceptance for gays and lesbians in the Orthodox community makes her uncomfortable.

“I did this to bring boundaries to my life, to my kids,” she said of her decision to begin strictly observing Jewish law. “So when we start to open things up,  it scares me.”

She continued on the topic of boundaries: If you’re going to toss out the prohibition on gays and lesbians, she suggested, why not let women wear jeans instead of skirts?

Thau was sitting in the front row. As the woman went on, he turned around and began to cut her off, looking upset, but Greenberg gently put a hand on his shoulder, and Thau sat back in his chair. During an interview a week later, Thau said he was grateful to Greenberg for stopping him from saying something he might regret.

“I’m always in the hot seat as the poster boy for gay people, answering all the questions,” he said. “And it’s not a role I’m unwilling to take, but it is very difficult to be perfect all the time.”

Inching forward

Becoming a poster child is exactly what Nechama wants to avoid if she decides to come out.

A student at Shalhevet who asked that her real name not to be used, Nechama said she’s only questioning her sexual identity. But if she were to come out, she would be hesitant to speak about it with too many people at her school.

“I just feel very uncomfortable with the idea of being gay in a Modern Orthodox school,” she said.

While the school itself is progressive enough, some students come from more conservative backgrounds, she said.

She said she hopes to remain Orthodox, even though she struggles with some of the Jewish laws she’d be obligated to observe. To the community at large, her only plea was for empathy.

“We’re teenagers and we’re going through confusing times,” she said. She urged peers and parents “just to hear everything out, because it’s kind of hard to be alone in something like this.”

For his part, Greenberg is clear-eyed about the work in front of him: Creating a fully accepting Orthodox community will be neither quick nor easy. But he holds it as the responsibility of Orthodox leaders to sympathize with members of their communities who struggle with their identities.

“If you’re not willing to suffer with that kid who is caught in the crosshairs of this cultural and religious conflict,” he said, “if you’re not willing to be with that kid, then you don’t deserve the role of leadership.”

The near-messianic belief in President Donald Trump held by certain pro-Israel Jews dates to the campaign, when he seemed an unshakable friend to the Jewish state, especially compared to Hillary Clinton. But the president already has reversed himself on China, North Korea, Syria, Russia and NATO. Trump’s dizzying abandonment of once-unshakable positions raises the question of whether Israel will be the next ally he decides to pass over.

In fact, the Trump administration already has sent mixed signals that should worry hard-line Zionists. During the campaign, Trump firmly supported the West Bank settlement project, but in April he said expanding settlements “does not help advance peace.” His promises to move the Israeli embassy to Jerusalem have been downgraded to getting what Vice President Mike Pence calls “serious consideration.”

Though the many Orthodox and other conservative pro-Israel supporters of the president expect the embassy to move, they should be cautious. The man whose considerable ego is built on dealmaking has called Middle East peace “the ultimate deal” — and that means compromise. In his book “The Art of the Deal,” Trump boasted of aiming very high, but “sometimes I settle for less than I sought.” Another of his principles is to “never get too attached to one deal or one approach.”

West Bank settlers and their financial and political backers in the Diaspora see every one of their positions as inalienable. They will inevitably find any Trump-style deal regarding Israel thoroughly dispiriting.

Those confident that Trump’s commitment to right-skewing positions on Israel won’t share the fate of his promises to stay out of Syria and label China a currency manipulator point to his bedrock Evangelical support and the role of Jewish family members Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. Neither is a slam dunk.

So far, evangelicals have followed (the steadfastly pro-life) Trump more than the other way around – most prominently on gay rights. The Family Research Council and similar groups muted their disappointment when Trump didn’t issue an anti-gay executive order and reappointed an Obama administration gay-rights diplomat. Evangelical Zionist fervor could similarly wane should the president waver on Israel.

Regarding Kushner and his wife Ivanka, true believers on the right may be overly enamored with their own extremist belief that anyone with a more accommodating position toward Palestinians is necessarily anti-Israel.

Trump’s Jewish daughter and son-in-law have never identified with the most religiously and politically conservative segments of Orthodox Judaism. The rabbi responsible for the very fact they are a Jewish family is famously on the more accommodating side of Orthodoxy, and three years ago, the school associated with their Upper East Side synagogue invited a prominent Muslim critic of Israel to speak. While the invitation was later rescinded, the controversy would be unthinkable at nearly all other Orthodox schools and congregations.

It’s true that Kushner has been close to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for many years, but Netanyahu himself is suspect in right-leaning Zionist quarters for his support of a two-state solution and supposed excessive friendliness with Palestinian leaders. As for settlements, The New York Times says Kushner’s thinking “is not well understood.”

We may be facing a “Nixon goes to China” moment for both Kushner and Trump. That expression refers to President Richard Nixon’s 1972 China trip normalizing relations between the United States and the world’s most populous country At the time, Democrats would suffer political disaster for de-escalating tensions with the communist behemoth. But as a Republican with impeccable anti-communist credentials, Nixon was able to take that bold but important step.

The Likudniks who celebrated Kushner’s appointment as Middle East envoy were reading the wrong tea leaves. What use is a negotiator who could never budge? Trump’s thinking may very well be: if even Kushner is willing to pressure Israel to make concessions on settlements, Jerusalem, and Palestinian sovereignty, the administration will appear to be an honest and fair broker.

As a resident of Jerusalem, dual citizen of the United States and Israel, and center-right Zionist, I pray the administration vigorously defends the security of the State of Israel. But recent world events underscore what I told my pro-Israel friends when I told them I was voting for Clinton. Her pro-Israel credentials may have been suspect, but her stability and predictability were better for America – and, ultimately, Israel – than a president whose positions change radically as he learns on the job and discovers that being a president is a lot harder and less fun than being a candidate.

David Benkof is a columnist for the Daily Caller, where this essay first appeared. Follow him on Twitter (@DavidBenkof) and Muckrack.com/DavidBenkof, or E-mail him at DavidBenkof@gmail.com.

In recent days, reports have emerged about authorities in Chechnya rounding up scores of gay men, imprisoning them, beating them, with many dead.  Reports are now coming to light of concentration camps where gay men are being held and subjected to brutality, torture and murder.  Apparently, this deplorable treatment is in response to the application of a Moscow-based gay rights group to hold Pride parades in the region. Chechen authorities are denying these claims.  Alvi Karimov, a Chechen spokesman told Interfax, “You cannot arrest or repress people who just don’t exist in the republic. If such people existed in Chechnya, law enforcement would not have to worry about them, as their own relatives would have sent them to where they could never return.”

These reports of purging, murder, brutality and erasure are disturbing enough in themselves.  But this Passover, I am struck by another disturbing reality:  American ignorance of this issue in general, and Jewish ignorance in particular. Of course, we are living in times where our news cycle is overwhelmed with rising threats over Syria, North Korea and Russia.  At home, our media is beset over the latest scandal du jour in connection with the presidency.  It is indeed very difficult these days  to notice what is happening in a small republic in the north Caucasus mountains.

But we cannot afford not to notice.  If we have been paying attention to the meaning of our Passover seders, we know that we ourselves are a people who were brutalized, oppressed and murdered simply for being who we are.  We have gathered as families and communities, telling our story of having been refugees of slavery.  And we emerge from our seders with a clarion call to invite ‘all those who are hungry to come and eat’ together with us.  The beginning of our ethics, and our very Jewish identity, lies in our ability to empathize and to act on behalf of all those who still know the oppression that we have known.  And after the Holocaust, with Chechen authorities rounding people up, putting them in concentration camps, and murdering them, the silence of the Jewish people on this issue is unconscionable.

A danger inherent in the Passover experience is to read the Haggadah only in tribal, particularist terms:  God’s unique love and rescue of our people vindicates our people alone, and denigrates all other peoples.  That danger extends to all the times that we fail to see the story of who we are reflected in others, simply because those others are so different from ourselves.  I once spoke to an American Jewish woman who was a young mother during the years of the Second World War.  I asked her if she knew at the time about the internment of Japanese Americans, and she answered yes.  When I asked her what she thought about that internment during those years, she responded that there was a war going on!  She felt that it was not the time or place to speak out against such a thing, and frankly, it didn’t occur to her at the time to speak out.

The essence of Passover is that we, ourselves, were the ‘other.’ We, ourselves, were the ones whose plight was ignored by those who might speak up.  To be Jewish is to be, eternally, the other.  And in a very real sense, all those who are oppressed and erased must become a part of our people.  The gay men in Chechnya may seem so far away and other to us.  But in this case, they literally are us, as the story of the Jewish people is, and always has, included the story of LGBT people.

The good news is that our people do respond so often when called upon to speak out on behalf of the oppressed.  Organizations like HIAS and others are doing great work to raise awareness and to act on behalf of refugees and others in dire need of our help.  The challenge, however, is to endeavor to notice those who have escaped our attention–perhaps because their plight feels too far beyond our reach, or their stories too ‘other’ and different from anything we can relate to.  The most Jewish thing we must do, however, is to speak out and act on behalf of the very ones who seem the most ‘other’ to us.  It is only through their redemption that our own redemption from slavery can truly become complete.

Gil Steinlauf is a prominent Conservative movement rabbi in Washington, DC.  His opinions are his own.

In the Jewish Journal’s inaugural issue on Feb. 28, 1986, readers already could see it was not going to be their parents’ kind of Jewish newspaper. The Journal was different from its predecessor owned by the Jewish Federation, as well as the Orthodox-leaning B’nai B’rith Messenger and the crusading Jewish Heritage.

The new weekly, edited by Gene Lichtenstein, sent a message with its first cover story dedicated to anti-school busing and conservative Congresswoman Bobbi Fiedler, a former Los Angeles Unified School District board member. It was going to step outside the well-worn path of covering the status quo of Westside and Beverly Hills liberal politics, and broaden coverage to include a Jewish grassroots, right-leaning firebrand.

In the three decades since that edition, this broader approach — including news, features, opinions and eventually blogs from all points of L.A.’s Jewish communal compass — has been the newspaper’s guiding rule. Turning through old, bound volumes, with pages browned and edges foxed, the paper’s coverage presents a portrait of 30 years of change, growth and evolution within the local Jewish community. Here are 30 noteworthy topics and events that touched L.A. over the past 30 years, as reflected in the Journal’s pages.

1. Embracing LGBT Jews

Although a cover in 1986 announced the continuing conflict within Judaism over gay Jews, by 1998 a news feature detailed increased acceptance — and plans for the celebration of more than 25 years of the world’s first LGBT synagogue, Beth Chayim Chadashim. Getting over the shandah, the embarrassment, denominational Judaism began a serious conversation over transgender acceptance and rights, as reflected in another stirring cover story, this time in 2015.

2. King Juan Carlos Comes to L.A.

Almost half a millennium after the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, Spanish King Juan Carlos and Queen Sophia visited Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel on Wilshire Boulevard to make peace on Oct. 1, 1987. “For the Sephardic Jews of Los Angeles, the gesture is one of historical dimension,” Rabbi Shelton J. Donnell wrote. The Journal went on to chart the growth of a large and vital Sephardic community in L.A.

3. Intermarriage: To Worry or Not to Worry?

Concerns about intermarriage go back all the way to the Torah. But when the 1997 L.A. Jewish Community Survey found the intermarriage rate among couples who were married in the five years ending in 1997 was 41 percent, well, it didn’t seem so bad to some people. That changed for many when the Pew Research Center reported in 2013 a rate of 58 percent nationwide — and 71 percent among non-Orthodox Jews.

4. The Rise of Iranian and Russian Jewish Immigrants

With the Iranian Jewish immigrant community at close to 17,000 by the late ’90s, we learned to love lavash, Persian cucumbers and late night simchas, while recognizing (if not understanding) Farsi in Pico Boulevard shop windows. As for immigrants from the former Soviet Union, more than 24,000 flocked to the area by the late ’80s. Apartment buildings in West Hollywood began to fill with Russian immigrant families, and Santa Monica Boulevard became dotted with Russian bakeries and storefront markets. Were they here to stay? Da.

5. A Growing Orthodoxy 

With all the new kosher restaurants on Pico and Ventura boulevards, it seemed clear by 2000 that the Orthodox community was booming. For the kosherly conscious, there was a clear increase in the availability of heckshered foods, as well as public displays of Yiddishkayt, such as Tu b’Shevat street fairs and car-mounted menorahs, and a massive influx of Orthodox families into previously WASP-y Hancock Park.

6. The New Israelis

Around town, we grew accustomed to hearing Ivrit spoken in restaurants, movie theater lines, folkdance spots like Café Danssa, and the Fairfax record store Hataklit (both now closed). By 2007, especially in the Valley, Israelis had “their own cafes, markets, dances and social and business networks,” according to a feature by Tom Tugend. Drawing that community together was the Israeli American Council, begun in 2006. The IAC fires up the largest L.A. Jewish gatherings of the year with the annual Celebrate Israel festival in Rancho Park.

7. Logging On for Love

The inaugural issue of the Journal chronicled the angst of making a Jewish match in a city expansive enough to be its own diaspora with “The Single Life” column. But that was old school. Jewish computer dating began here in the mid-1970s, and rebooted in 1997 with the founding of JDate by Joe and Nickie Shapira of Beverly Hills. Swiping right, in 2014, were Sean Rad and Justin Mateen, two of the Jewish founders of the dating app Tinder. But face-to-face love connections thrived at “Friday Night Live,” an innovative singles-oriented Sabbath service started in 1998 at Sinai Temple that drew up to 1,500 souls.

8. Oy, Did We Have Mail!

The first message on ARPANET, the predecessor to the internet, was sent by a UCLA team led by a Jewish professor, Leonard Kleinrock, in 1969, altering forever the way we give and gain news about our lives. Joining that widening stream, the Journal first went online in 1996, allowing it to cover breaking news, and eventually providing a means for readers to instantly comment, kvetch and post blogs. Now L.A. is home to numerous virtual Jewish sites, and every congregation and organization is a click away.

9. Women of valor and power

With the newly appointed director of Brandeis-Bardin Institute, Deborah Lipstadt, on the paper’s cover during its first year, the Journal set the tone for covering local Jewish women leaders making waves on a national scale. These have included rabbis such as Denise Eger of Congregation Kol Ami, president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis; Laura Geller of Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills, the first woman to lead a major metropolitan congregation; Naomi Levy, author and founder of Nashuva, and Sharon Brous, founder of IKAR.

10. Higher Ratings for Jewish Identity in Hollywood

30 Something

TV shows with clearly drawn Jewish characters such as “Thirtysomething,” “Seinfeld” and “Northern Exposure” reflected a growing hipness and ease of being Jewish. Los Angeles, with a large contingent of Jewish writers, producers, and showrunners, filled the culture with characters such as Monica and Ross Geller (“Friends”), Larry David (“Curb Your Enthusiasm”), Ari Gold (“Entourage”) and Howard Wolowitz (“The Big Bang Theory”), as well as cartoon characters Kyle Broflovski (“South Park”) and Krusty the Clown (“The Simpsons”). More recently, Maura Pfefferman (born “Morton”) of Amazon Prime’s “Transparent” gave us a transgender take on Jewish life.

11. The New Jewish Side of Town

In 2004, famed New York-based streetwear brand Supreme opened a large shop on Fairfax Avenue, just up the block from Canter’s deli, signaling a change to a traditionally Jewish neighborhood that was filling up with trendy skate clothing shops and galleries. As Fairfax turned full-hipster, younger observant Jews, especially those with families, were moving to Pico-Robertson, which was transforming into the Jewish side of town complete with new kosher restaurants, shuls and markets.

12. New museums to look forward — and back

The Torah commands Jews to “zachor,” to remember, and with the opening of the Museum of Tolerance in 1993, and the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust in Pan Pacific Park in 2010, we had two new places to look deeply into our painful past as a way to navigate the present. Looking to the future, the Zimmer Children’s Museum opened, helping to transmit and create Jewish memories for children and families. And in 1996, the Skirball Cultural Center opened in the Sepulveda Pass, connecting art and culture with Jewish vision and values.

13. Mazel Tov, It’s Mitzvah Day!

First held in 1999 as a project of Temple Israel of Hollywood, Mitzvah Day was an expression of tikkun olam as volunteers painted, repaired and renewed their city. Begun by TV, theater and movie writer David Levinson, the idea flowered into a community-wide event that drew thousands of participants, changing its name in 2003 to Big Sunday, eventually evolving into a weekend, and then in 2016, into a month of events, attracting up to 50,000 volunteers of all faiths.

14. The Day Rabin Died

Shot by a right-wing extremist while leaving a peace rally on Nov. 5, 1995, the assassination of the Israeli prime minister who negotiated the Oslo Accords — for which he shared the Nobel Peace Prize — reverberated throughout the community, sounding an ominous warning to leaders who wish not to learn war anymore. Some 10,000 people attended a massive memorial rally on a cordoned-off Wilshire Boulevard to mark the end of a man, and a dream.

15. ‘Fighting On’ at USC; Making UCLA Cool to Jews

In the 1870s, Isaias W. Hellman, a German-Jewish businessman, banker and philanthropist was one of three men to donate the land for USC, which 100 years later was viewed as a home for WASP elitism. In 2002, a decade of increased inclusiveness at the school was reflected when Stanley Gold was appointed the university’s first Jewish chairman of the board of trustees. In 1972, UCLA was the first major American university to fund a Jewish newspaper, Ha’am, but by 2015 the school was getting headlines for a judicial board nominee being questioned over her Jewish background. In 2016, a student body president left the school alleging harassment by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. More hopefully, that same year, the school’s Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies and the Mapping Jewish L.A. project celebrated the history of Boyle Heights with an exhibition.

16. American Jewish University Goes Big

In 2007, the University of Judaism merged with the 1,500-acre Brandeis-Bardin Institute, marrying two 60-year-old L.A. Jewish institutions into the American Jewish University. And when big names came through town, from Bill Clinton to Bill Maher, a likely stop was a speaking engagement through the American Jewish University’s Whizin Center for Continuing Education, which drew thousands.

17. Got Kosher? Yup.

Beyond the opening of kosher Mexican and Thai restaurants, Los Angeles saw the rollout of multiple trucks selling kosher tacos and another truck selling kosher Montreal egg rolls. Add in Jeff’s Gourmet Sausage Factory — now offering concessions at home Dodgers games — and the pretzel challah of Got Kosher? There was bad news in 2013, though, when the Journal reported a  scandal at Doheny Glatt Kosher Meat market after a private investigator videotaped the owner allegedly bringing unsupervised animal products into his store.

18. The Dodgers Go Blue and White

Long after Sandy Koufax and fellow Jewish Dodgers brothers Larry and Norm Sherry, who both attended Fairfax High, put on Dodger blue, fellow members of the tribe Stan Kasten (president and part-owner) and Andrew Friedman (president of baseball operations) joined the team. And in 2000, the year they got Jewish slugger Shawn Green, the team began heavily promoting Jewish Community Day.

19. Harold Schulweis z’l

The issue of Dec. 18, 2014, marked the passing of Valley Beth Shalom Senior Rabbi Harold Schulweis at age 89, calling him “the rabbi of rabbis.” Arriving at his Valley pulpit in 1970, Rabbi Schulweis went on to pioneer synagogue-based chavurah, counseling centers, and outreach to interfaith, gay and lesbian Jews and converts. A superb thinker and orator, he insisted upon connecting the Jewish world with the larger community worldwide through foundations and outreach organizations like Jewish World Watch.

“Harold Schulweis is a rabbi,” said Rabbi Uri Herscher, founding president and CEO of the Skirball Cultural Center. “This is a little like saying a Rembrandt is a painting. Or a Stradivarius is a violin. … He has, as much as any rabbi in our time, given Judaism meaning, relevance and renewed purpose.”

20. The Rise of Mega-Synagogues AND Upstart Congregations

Large congregations such as Stephen Wise Temple, Valley Beth Shalom in Encino, Temple Israel of Hollywood, Wilshire Boulevard Temple, Leo Baeck Temple and Sinai Temple all thrived by doubling down on the full-service synagogue model.

At the same time, a 1982 guide to Jewish Los Angeles listed a few independent congregations, mostly Orthodox. In comparison, the 2016 Jewish Journal “City Guide” showed 16 independent, mostly nontraditional congregations, including Metivta, Open Temple, IKAR, Nashuva, Valley Outreach and Movable Minyan, taken together serving thousands of families. L.A.’s plethora of rabbinical seminaries — the Reform Movement’s Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, the Conservative Movement’s Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, which ordained its first class in 1999, and the Academy for Jewish Religion, CA (founded in 2000) — helped fuel their growth.

21. A Jewish Approach to…

As social awareness of issues like disabilities and addiction grew, so too did unique Jewish communal responses.  Beit T’Shuva, an innovative addiction treatment center, started 30 years ago and has grown to treat thousands.  And services for special needs greatly expanded to dozens of programs and organzations.

22. The First Intifada, 1987-1991

Besides the fact that no one knew it would be the first, the Journal did not know what to call it. It settled on, in 1987, the “hostility between the Palestinian youth and Israelis.” By 1989, a piece about the fear and hopelessness many were feeling in Israel, titled “Feeling helpless in the Intifada,” captured the anxiety of many Jewish Angelenos. The continuing conflict has led to the L.A. birth of Israel advocacy organizations like  StandWithUs and many, many rallies, op-eds and arguments.

23.  The Winning Campaigns of Jewish Candidates

For more than 50 years at the beginning of the 20th century, there was nary a Jewish city councilmember. That changed in 1953 with the election of 22-year-old Rosalind Wyman to the Fifth District seat, which includes the Westside and the Fairfax district. Now held by Paul Koretz, the seat has been Jewish ever since, with several who held the seat rising to higher office: Zev Yaroslavsky and Edmund D. Edelman to L.A. County Supervisor, and Michael Feuer to the State Assembly and position of L.A. City Attorney. Among numerous Jewish electeds, the highest profile is current Mayor Eric Garcetti.

24. The Fall and Revival of Jewish Centers

Disclosures of financial troubles and fiscal mismanagement within the former Jewish Community Centers of Greater Los Angeles in 2001 led to the closure of numerous centers, including Santa Monica’s Bay Cities JCC in 2002 and the Conejo Valley JCC in 2004. With pickets, posters and T-shirts, members of the Westside JCC rallied and eventually won independence, and the center in Silver Lake came back to booming life as well. A JCC continued in Long Beach and even though the JCC at Milken in West Hills closed in 2012 after Federation sold the property, the North Valley JCC was reborn as the Valley JCC in Woodland Hills.

25. Moving Westward and Beyond

The 1997 L.A. Jewish Community Survey was our statistical proof that we were moving westward, but the signs had long been there to read. New synagogues had opened in Simi Valley and the Conejo Valley, kosher markets and day schools too, and in 1997, Mount Sinai Memorial Park expanded to Simi Valley. By the new millennium, Jews were moving east as well — to Koreatown, Echo Park and downtown.

26. From Delis to Mainstream Dining

When Al Levy in 1886 first operated an Oyster Bar Pushcart, and later an Oyster House restaurant in downtown L.A., he was prying open the way for Jewish chefs and entrepreneurs to move into mainstream cuisine. Following in Levy’s footsteps, L.A. became home to the nation’s best family-owned delis, including Langer’s, Canter’s, Izzy’s, and Nate ’n Al.  Now, the city is home to chefs including Alma’s Ari Taymor, Mozza’s Nancy Silverton, Micah Wexler of Wexler’s Deli, and Jessica Koslow, owner of the always-hopping Sqirl, who made the cover of last year’s Passover issue.

27. A Local Legacy of “Schindler’s List”

A chance meeting in 1980 in a Beverly Hills leather shop between Australian author Thomas Keneally and the store’s owner, Leopold Page (Leopold Pfefferberg), who had survived the Holocaust due to Oskar Schindler, set in motion this movie, which won the Academy Award for best picture in 1994. Steven Spielberg directed the film, and at the Academy Award ceremony, he credited Page as the “catalyst for the film.” In 1994, Spielberg founded the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education, dedicated to recording the video testimonies of survivors and witnesses of the Shoah.

28. Federation: From Umbrella to Innovation

The Jewish Federation of Los Angeles worked to transform itself from an umbrella group funding and coordinating Jewish social services and aid here and abroad to a social innovator in its own right. In 2010, the Journal covered the appointment of then-52-year-old Jay Sanderson as president, determined, he said, to “throw the doors open.” Since then, Federation has launched numerous projects aimed at drawing younger Jews, new leaders, the entertainment industry and unaffiliated Jews into communal life.

29. Saving Jewish Buildings

In a city that usually bulldozes and paves over its history, three acts serve as towering achievements in historical preservation. One was the rescue of the Breed Street Shul in Boyle Heights by Stephen Sass and the Jewish Historical Society of Southern California in 2000. Another was the purchase of the original home of Sinai Temple in the Pico Union neighborhood by singer-songwriter Craig Taubman in 2013. And a third was the $100 million restoration of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Koreatown. All serve not only the Jewish community, but local neighborhoods as well.

30. School Choice

In the early 1980s, if you wanted to attend a Los Angeles Jewish high school, there was only one choice: YULA, known as Yeshiva University of Los Angeles. By 1987, enrollment at the seven Jewish high schools in Los Angeles covered just 720 kids, about 100 of them in one non-Orthodox school, a predecessor to Milken Community High School. Today, more than 9,700 children attend 42 Jewish schools, with another 10,000 in supplementary Jewish schools, about 7,500 in early childhood programs, and thousands more in camps. Cost is still a concern, but online learning and other innovative programs offer opportunities to reach even more of the young generation — and keep Los Angeles Jewish life thriving for many, many years to come.

Something’s eating Rabbi Ari Segal.

That’s why the head of school at Shalhevet High School, an Orthodox Jewish day school on Fairfax Avenue, penned a nearly 2,000-word editorial for the school’s student newspaper, The Boiling Point, on LGBT acceptance within the Orthodox community.

“The moment has arrived,” he wrote in the Sept. 14 op-ed. “We can no longer sit on the sidelines. As individuals and as a community, we must tackle this issue head-on.”

Titled, “The biggest challenge to ‘emunah’ [faith] of our time,” the editorial calls on Orthodox scholars to reconcile the Torah’s prohibition on homosexual activity with the lived experience of young gay Jews.

“The reconciliation of the Torah’s discussion of homosexuality represents the single most formidable religious challenge for our young people today,” Segal wrote.

In particular, he called on leaders at Yeshiva University (YU), where he received his ordination, to tackle the issue head on.

“I beg the YU roshei yeshiva [heads of school] and the gedolim [luminaries] of our community to take up the discussion now,” he wrote.

In an interview with the student newspaper, Segal urged readers to “stay tuned” for changes at Shalhevet aiming to boost tolerance and acceptance of LGBT students.

Responding to a request from the Journal to explain his reasoning behind the editorial, Segal responded via email from Israel:

Over the last few years, I have worked to create a loving, supportive, and safe environment for LGBT students in our school. More recently, however, I’ve realized we have not done enough to clearly demonstrate our full acceptance of these young men and women in our community. They’re still scared, and in pain.  And it’s not just gay students themselves, but so many young adults in our community who have lost faith in the divinity of the Torah on account of this particular issue. 

And while halakha is explicit in regards to homosexual activity, I felt I could not sit on the sidelines as we lose so many of our young people — physically and spiritually.  I started searching for that space between tolerance (the current status quo of “hate the sin, not the sinner”) and full-fledged acceptance/celebration. I felt the first step in achieving that is having this conversation, finding the words and the wherewithal to express the challenge, to release ourselves from the theological paralysis that we may feel around the issue. 

In short, what motivated me to write this piece is my deep love of these students and my deep belief in the divinity of the Torah. 

 Read the full editorial here.

Singer-songwriter Lady Gaga was visibly and audibly shaken as she took the microphone in front of Los Angeles City Hall on June 13 to speak words of consolation and anger to a heartbroken crowd of more than 2,000 mourners.

Moments before, Lorri Jean, the CEO of the L.A. LGBT Center, asked the crowd to hold the flashlights on their phone aloft in place of candles, which were disallowed by the Fire Department. A galaxy of glowing lights greeted the superstar’s surprise appearance.

Before Lady Gaga came on stage, Jean sounded a note of blame and shame towards religious and political leaders who incite hatred against homosexuals.

“These leaders have blood on their hands,” she said. “They might not have pulled the trigger, but they certainly loaded the gun.”

Makeshift signs aloft during the vigil for victims the Orlando nightclub massacre vented anger at Donald Trump, gun violence, homophobia and Islamophobia. One cardboard-and-marker poster summed up the mood of the crowd: “Enough is enough.”

But anger gave way to mourning as Rabbi Denise Eger of Kol Ami Congregation in West Hollywood urged the crowd to take time for their grief.

“There will be a time for action,” she said. “There will be a time for voting. There will be a time for rising up. But tonight, we must mourn our loss.”

Lady Gaga’s brief remarks were followed by a reading of the names of the victims. She was joined in the reading by a procession of L.A. community and political leaders, including City Controller Ron Galperin, the first openly gay elected official in the city.

Afterwards, the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles led the crowd in song.

“We are a gentle, angry people,” they intoned. “Singing, singing for our lives.”