A gay Orthodox Jew comes home

A gay Orthodox Jew comes home

Ely Winkler of Eshel makes a complicated, heartfelt return to the community of his childhood

Ely Winkler
Ely Winkler

The idea that time is not a flat circle but a spiral is easy to see during Rosh Hashanah, the chaggim that follow it, and the other holidays on the Jewish calendar.

If we’re lucky — and yes, not all of us are — we gather with family or friends, every year, to celebrate the year’s joys and, particularly this year, to mark its horrors.

It’s never the same from one year to the next. It can’t be. We’re all, by definition, one year older. There might be new babies. There might be new partners. There might be empty chairs. The food’s the same, but the people eating it are the same but different.

So what does this have to do with Ely Winkler?

Mr. Winkler, who was born in 1987, grew up in Fort Lee. He’s the youngest child of Rabbi Neil Winkler, who led the Young Israel of Fort Lee from 1978 until exactly a decade ago, when he and his wife, Andrea — Ely’s mother, and a community stalwart — made aliyah.

Mr. Winkler had a typical Bergen County Orthodox childhood and adolescence. He went to the Moriah School in Englewood, then to the Torah Academy of Bergen County in Teaneck, followed by a gap year at Yeshivat Torat Shraga in Jerusalem and then Yeshiva University, where he majored in psychology.

“But after I left YU, I struggled to find my place in the Orthodox world,” Mr. Winkler said.

Why? Because he’s gay.

He didn’t come out while he was at college, he said. He was afraid to do it. “I helped YU run that famous 2009 panel, the first of its kind about being gay. But I did it from behind the scenes, because I was a Bergen County boy, and I didn’t want to see myself on the cover of the Jewish Standard.”

That panel, “Being Gay in the Modern Orthodox World,” was sponsored by YU’s Tolerance Club and its Wurzweiler School of Social Work. According to a contemporary report by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the discussion, conducted in front of an audience estimated at between 600 and 800 people, concentrated on personal stories and was seen as ground-breaking.

After college, Mr. Winkler did come out. And “when I came out, I felt that I was losing my community,” he said. “All those people who hugged me and loved me and pinched my cheeks when I was growing up no longer treated me that way.” Remember, he was the beloved rabbi’s son, so he’d have been the center of even more attention than a random cute, sweet, smart kid, the son of regular shul-going parents, would have been.

“I grew up in a world of deeply connected communal experiences,” he continued.

Ely Winkler stands between his parents, Andrea and Rabbi Neil WInkler; Rabbi WInkler retired as the longtime leader of Young Israel of Fort Lee.

But it wasn’t all joy, all the time. Not that it ever is for anyone, of course. Ever. But “I was called gay even before I knew that I was gay. The kids at TABC seemed to know, and they didn’t spare me anything, in that mid-2000s era.

“So it really felt like a struggle to navigate my own life in the city, especially once my parents left,” Mr. Winkler continued. “I went to social work school at Hunter, and got my MSW. I wanted to do community organizing for Jewish LGBTQ people, but the opportunities to do that were few and far between, and the organizations for us also were few and far between.

“So in order to connect to what I cared about, I went into working in fundraising at yeshivas and day schools.

“Now I have, thank God, 11 nieces and nephews,” he added, with clear pride, “and one of my nephews just started at TABC. They’re all going through the yeshiva day school system.”

But “I did struggle a lot as a queer child, and I wanted to be present for children like me, like I was. I wanted to be a voice for them. A face for them.”

Meanwhile, as he maintained his place in the Jewish educational and organizational world, he was trying to find his spiritual home. That was harder.

“I explored lots of shuls in New York,” he said. “Not only Orthodox shuls. I looked all over. I was looking for the love that I had felt in Fort Lee and in Teaneck, and I wasn’t finding it.”

He tried Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, the LGBTQ synagogue in Manhattan, and although he liked it, he found that it wasn’t for him. “I am pulled by the Orthodox world in ways that I am not by other streams,” he said. “Even though I respect them, I don’t connect with them in the same way.”

Every year, he’d go to his sister’s house in Teaneck. “I wanted to find my own community, didn’t want to lose the connection to this community,” he said. “But I found it very difficult.”

It wasn’t the shul, he stressed, it was him, and his relationship to it, but “after a certain point I began to lose my connection to HaShem.” To God. “I didn’t see myself in those spaces. I felt so different from the people who were there.”

For one thing, he said, “I would often be the only adult male without a tallit or a kittel, because those were only for married men.” And beyond that, he just felt different. “I let a lot of unknowns keep me from feeling part of the community,” he said.

“And then the distance overtook the community, and I would go to my sister’s house, and have meals there, and hang out with friends, and feel the warmth, but I wouldn’t go to shul anymore.”

It’s hard, he said, not with any self-pity but instead with clarity. “It is not easy to acknowledge this, but the Torah does not provide a path for me. But I still want to find a path in the Torah.”

He yearns for a connection that he does not find in “LGBT spaces, because they focus on queer affirmation.” That’s also a good thing, Mr. Winkler said, but “for me there is a deeper connection for me in engaging with HaShem. My experience is that I am gay and I am Jewish, and to an untrained eye those things don’t necessarily make sense together, but I have to engage with it. I have to feel my connection.”

Mr. Winkler spent 14 years as a fundraiser — he worked for Ramaz, the big, prominent Orthodox day school on the Upper East Side, and for Prizmah, the organization that provides a network for Jewish day schools throughout North America, among other institutions — “but after October 7, I really felt that I wasn’t engaging with my passion and my community directly enough.

“I was proud to work supporting day schools and day school kids, but I felt that it wasn’t enough.

“And then a friend of my sister’s, Stefanie Diamond, reached out to me to say that Eshel was planning a spring gala, and they could use some help.

“I saw that as a little bit of help coming from HaShem.”

So — Stefanie Diamond of Teaneck is a photographer and the out-and-proud mother of three daughters, one of whom is queer. Eshel is an organization whose “mission is to build LGBTQ+ inclusive Orthodox Jewish communities” and that “envisions a world where LGBTQ+ people and their families are full participants in the Orthodox community of their choice.” That’s according to its website, eshelonline.org. (Although Eshel does a great deal of work online, it also organizes and sponsors many programs and retreats in person; that includes a retreat for Orthodox parents of LGBTQ kids.)

Mr. Winkler decided to accept Ms. Diamond’s offer to volunteer with Eshel to help with the gala, and that has changed his life.

For one thing, he’s no longer a volunteer; he’s now Eshel’s director of advancement, where he can use his decade and a half of work in the organized Jewish world to help with some of the issues closest to his heart.

“It has been incredible,” Mr. Winkler said; he’s seen many of his childhood friends and their parents support his work. “Eshel has done the work to help people see me, see us, see our experiences, and realize that we like to feel included.

“So in July, when my sister asked me if I was coming for yom tovim — usually when she asks, usually around July, I say ‘It’s too early, leave me alone’ — this year I said yes, and please get me a seat.

“I need to talk to HaShem this year. I don’t care if everyone else in the shul is straight. I am ready to hang up my discomfort at the door.

“This is the year for our community, for Judaism, for the Jewish future. It is more important that I connect with HaShem.”

This year has been a turning point for Mr. Winkler, as it has been for many Jews, both in Israel and the diaspora. “I grew up with a very strong understanding that Israel ensures the safety of Jewish around the world,” he said. “When I saw it under attack, and I saw a significant number of my friends in the queer community quick to pick up anti-Israel slogans without learning about them, or understanding them, or coming to me, their Jewish friend, whose parents live in Israel, to ask for the facts, but instead taking a stand on something they don’t know much about — when I saw that, I knew I had to reconnect with my roots. I have to feel strong about who I am, instead of fighting with my friends about the memes they’ve posted.”

He’s lost some friends over October 7, he said; he didn’t actually say “and good riddance to them” but it was strongly implied.

The Orthodox world, like the world around it, has changed in the way it approaches the LGBTQ community, Mr. Winkler said. Some LGBTQ people have left because they feel unwelcome. “But we never want people to leave the community,” he said. “That has never been a Jewish value. We want them closer.

“I have a working hypothesis that I am trying to prove with data showing that after October 7, the Jewish community, including the Orthodox community, realizes that we can no longer eat our own. We have to be strong as a Jewish community. We have to strengthen our people, we have to strengthen Israel, we have to support the Jewish people. And there is more of a willingness to do that since October 7.”

Miryam Kabakov is Eshel’s executive director.

“From what I’ve been seeing and hearing, LGBTQ Jews no longer feel that welcome in LGBTQ spaces, in non-Jewish, secular spaces, because there is such a lack of nuance around what is happening in Israel,” Ms. Kabakov said. “We are hearing that Eshel has become the place where people can express themselves more freely and feel more connected to their Jewishness. They don’t have to hide their feelings about Israel.”

Ely Winkler will be in shul in Teaneck during this season’s chaggim, connecting with God and his community, as he has done since his childhood. He’ll struggle with complicated feelings — he will not be alone in that — but if anything at all positive can said to have come from the barbarism of October 7, it is in the ingathering of the community. All parts of the community. To all the community’s shuls and organizations.

Learn more about Eshel at eshelonline.org.

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