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Embracing gays in the family
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By FERN LEVY
Special to the CJN
In 2004, Stephen Weiss, senior rabbi of Conservative congregation B’nai Jeshurun, gave a sermon denouncing Ohio’s passage of a federal law that defines marriage as only between a man and a woman, thereby, denying a basic constitutional right to gays and lesbians.
“I believe in full equality in all areas for the LGBT community,” he states emphatically.
That community includes his older sister Maddy, a lesbian. He remembers when she told him of her sexual orientation 25 years ago. She was a 20-year-old college student, and he had just graduated from high school in Simi Valley, Calif., where they grew up.
“I never had an issue with her being gay,” he maintains. “My love for her was genuine, and my respect for her choices was equally respectful.”
But Weiss and his sister vehemently disagree on major points regarding homosexuality and Judaism. While Weiss believes in the core values of acceptance and human dignity resulting in the full embrace of LGBT (lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender) Jews, he views homosexuality as not being within the bounds of Jewish law. He supports the traditional interpretation of halachah (Jewish law) going back thousands of years and, paradoxically, modernity’s insistence on full equality for gays and lesbians.
“We often struggled over the fine points between us, especially while I was in rabbinical school,” he says. “In the beginning, Maddy took it (my stance) as a rejection until she saw and heard my actions and words over the years. She had a hard time understanding how I could take both positions.”
In spite of their disagreements, Weiss is proud of the close relationship he has not only with his sister, but with her partner as well. “They’re part of our family, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.”
The two women were married last September in San Diego, where they live, and Rabbi Weiss was at the wedding. (Their nuptials took place before California’s passage of Proposition 8, restricting marriage to a union between a man and a woman.)
Conservative rabbis are split down the middle on the issue of homosexual relationships, Weiss explains. He falls into the half that believes while halachah does not legislate feelings or emotions (being in love with someone of the same gender), it does legislate sexual behavior.
Weiss feels badly that sometimes families “get torn apart by” and “create wounds” around having a gay family member. “The singular demonization of homosexuality has no legitimate basis in Jewish sources,” he insists. “It is clear that it is no greater sin than not observing Shabbat or not keeping kosher.”
…
Rabbi Steve Segar of Kol HaLev, Cleveland’s only Reconstructionist Congregation, chose to go to the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia largely because of its non-discrimination policy regarding openly gay applicants. Segar, like Weiss, believes from a Jewish perspective that homosexuality is not any better or worse than other biblical prohibitions.
Segar also has a gay family member who has played a big part in shaping his personal and rabbinic views on homosexuality and Judaism. As a young boy, Segar’s favorite relative was his mother’s younger brother, Bruce Aaron, only 10 years older than he. “I appreciated his observant Jewish practices, which included keeping kosher, putting on his tallit and tefillin, and praying three times a day,” he says.
While his uncle loved being an observant Jew, he felt it necessary, after coming out, to put his Jewish observance on the back burner, explains Segar. Currently a Gestalt therapist in Chicago, Aaron, now “a completely out and proud gay man, has, during the last 25 years, settled into his own identity”; he has returned to his earlier, traditional Jewish observance with friends in both the Modern Orthodox and Chabad communities.
…
Leah Kamionkowski, a retired accountant, adores her only grandchild, 7-year-old Tali, whose mother is Leah’s daughter Dr. Tamar Kamionkowski. Tamar is vice-president for academic affairs at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, the first woman appointed to the vice-presidential level of any rabbinical seminary.
A single lesbian, Tamar had Tali through alternative insemination.
“I thank God that Tamar didn’t listen to me when I told her not to do it,” says her mother. “That child is the center of my life.”
Twenty-five years ago, when Tamar was an Oberlin student spending her junior year in Israel, she told her mother of her sexual orientation.
“My concern was that she would never be married and have a family and the house in the suburbs that I expected her to have,” admits Leah. “I was terribly upset at the time.”
Tamar recalls being scared and nervous, afraid that her mother would be disappointed in her and that they would become estranged. Instead, she remembers her mother saying, “You can do anything in this world, and I will still love you.”
They both remember that it took them “some time to adjust, to figure things out.” But after a couple of years and one PFLAG (Parents, Friends, and Families of Lesbians and Gays) meeting, Leah realized that she was not experiencing the level of turmoil that other families were going through.
Telling Tamar’s grandmother was the hardest part. While Tamar was “out” to everyone in the family, they all warned her not to tell her 83-year-old bubbe from Ukraine because “it would be too much for her to take.” Leah decided to take the initiative and tell her mother herself because she no longer felt comfortable lying to her.
“When I asked her if knowing her granddaughter was a lesbian would make her love her any less, she told me that she now needed to love her even more,” recalls Leah.
Tamar knows that her experience has not been typical. “I’ve been blessed with a family that’s accepting,” she says. “And I haven’t had personal struggles like losing jobs and estrangement within the Jewish community.”
“I believe in full equality in all areas for the LGBT community,” he states emphatically.
That community includes his older sister Maddy, a lesbian. He remembers when she told him of her sexual orientation 25 years ago. She was a 20-year-old college student, and he had just graduated from high school in Simi Valley, Calif., where they grew up.
“I never had an issue with her being gay,” he maintains. “My love for her was genuine, and my respect for her choices was equally respectful.”
But Weiss and his sister vehemently disagree on major points regarding homosexuality and Judaism. While Weiss believes in the core values of acceptance and human dignity resulting in the full embrace of LGBT (lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender) Jews, he views homosexuality as not being within the bounds of Jewish law. He supports the traditional interpretation of halachah (Jewish law) going back thousands of years and, paradoxically, modernity’s insistence on full equality for gays and lesbians.
“We often struggled over the fine points between us, especially while I was in rabbinical school,” he says. “In the beginning, Maddy took it (my stance) as a rejection until she saw and heard my actions and words over the years. She had a hard time understanding how I could take both positions.”
In spite of their disagreements, Weiss is proud of the close relationship he has not only with his sister, but with her partner as well. “They’re part of our family, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.”
The two women were married last September in San Diego, where they live, and Rabbi Weiss was at the wedding. (Their nuptials took place before California’s passage of Proposition 8, restricting marriage to a union between a man and a woman.)
Conservative rabbis are split down the middle on the issue of homosexual relationships, Weiss explains. He falls into the half that believes while halachah does not legislate feelings or emotions (being in love with someone of the same gender), it does legislate sexual behavior.
Weiss feels badly that sometimes families “get torn apart by” and “create wounds” around having a gay family member. “The singular demonization of homosexuality has no legitimate basis in Jewish sources,” he insists. “It is clear that it is no greater sin than not observing Shabbat or not keeping kosher.”
…
Rabbi Steve Segar of Kol HaLev, Cleveland’s only Reconstructionist Congregation, chose to go to the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia largely because of its non-discrimination policy regarding openly gay applicants. Segar, like Weiss, believes from a Jewish perspective that homosexuality is not any better or worse than other biblical prohibitions.
Segar also has a gay family member who has played a big part in shaping his personal and rabbinic views on homosexuality and Judaism. As a young boy, Segar’s favorite relative was his mother’s younger brother, Bruce Aaron, only 10 years older than he. “I appreciated his observant Jewish practices, which included keeping kosher, putting on his tallit and tefillin, and praying three times a day,” he says.
While his uncle loved being an observant Jew, he felt it necessary, after coming out, to put his Jewish observance on the back burner, explains Segar. Currently a Gestalt therapist in Chicago, Aaron, now “a completely out and proud gay man, has, during the last 25 years, settled into his own identity”; he has returned to his earlier, traditional Jewish observance with friends in both the Modern Orthodox and Chabad communities.
…
Leah Kamionkowski, a retired accountant, adores her only grandchild, 7-year-old Tali, whose mother is Leah’s daughter Dr. Tamar Kamionkowski. Tamar is vice-president for academic affairs at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, the first woman appointed to the vice-presidential level of any rabbinical seminary.
A single lesbian, Tamar had Tali through alternative insemination.
“I thank God that Tamar didn’t listen to me when I told her not to do it,” says her mother. “That child is the center of my life.”
Twenty-five years ago, when Tamar was an Oberlin student spending her junior year in Israel, she told her mother of her sexual orientation.
“My concern was that she would never be married and have a family and the house in the suburbs that I expected her to have,” admits Leah. “I was terribly upset at the time.”
Tamar recalls being scared and nervous, afraid that her mother would be disappointed in her and that they would become estranged. Instead, she remembers her mother saying, “You can do anything in this world, and I will still love you.”
They both remember that it took them “some time to adjust, to figure things out.” But after a couple of years and one PFLAG (Parents, Friends, and Families of Lesbians and Gays) meeting, Leah realized that she was not experiencing the level of turmoil that other families were going through.
Telling Tamar’s grandmother was the hardest part. While Tamar was “out” to everyone in the family, they all warned her not to tell her 83-year-old bubbe from Ukraine because “it would be too much for her to take.” Leah decided to take the initiative and tell her mother herself because she no longer felt comfortable lying to her.
“When I asked her if knowing her granddaughter was a lesbian would make her love her any less, she told me that she now needed to love her even more,” recalls Leah.
Tamar knows that her experience has not been typical. “I’ve been blessed with a family that’s accepting,” she says. “And I haven’t had personal struggles like losing jobs and estrangement within the Jewish community.”
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