Last year, I officiated at the first same-sex wedding in the 145-year history of my synagogue. For a Conservative congregation, this was quite a break with tradition.
The American Modern Orthodox community has just entered uncharted territory. Last week, our largest rabbinic organization, the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) formally withdrew its support of JONAH (Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality).
When Rabbi Steve Greenberg was a young rabbinical student at an Orthodox Yeshiva near Jerusalem in the mid-1970s, he was attracted to a fellow (male) student. He wanted to talk about his feelings of homosexual desire to a respected old rabbi — but was afraid to. So Greenberg fudged by telling the rabbi he was “attracted to both men and women.” The venerated old rabbi shrugged: “So you have twice the power of love. Use it carefully.”
A new survey of Jewish communal organizations found that 50 percent of them have taken significant steps to welcome gays and lesbians and their families.
A Conservative Jewish day school will not renew its Boy Scouts charter because of the organization\’s policy excluding gay and lesbian adults as leaders.
Israel’s association for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community is launching a center in Tel Aviv to combat anti-gay violence.
On Friday night, June 8 JewishJournal.com will be airing a live stream of Beth Chayim Chadishim\’s Shabbat services.
Both members of a lesbian couple who had a child together can be recognized as the child\’s mother, an Israeli court ruled.
Someday, maybe every gay Jewish youth will have as easy a time coming out as Elias Rubin did.
A lesbian couple was reprimanded by a guard for holding hands and asked to leave an exhibit at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco.
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