‘It feels like home’
Local Orthodox parents of LGBTQ children find community at Eshel retreat
It’s a near-universal truth that parents want to protect their children. That overriding impulse can start even before a baby is born, and if anything, it often strengthens once children grow out of toddlerhood and dependence and meet the world with increasing independence. It stays with parents even as their children become adults, and become parents themselves.
But it’s not always clear how parents can protect their children, particularly as the world, with its assumptions and realities, changes. It can be particularly unclear when the way to protect a child might put parents at odds with the community within which they live.
Which is a long way to say that although it’s easier to be the parents of a child in the LGBTQ community now than ever before, it’s still not easy, especially if you’re also an Orthodox Jew. According to their read of the halacha — the Jewish law — that shapes their lives, men are not permitted to have sex with other men. That makes acceptance of a gay son difficult; by extension, it makes accepting a lesbian daughter hard as well.
But parents don’t give up on their children. Their instinct is to support their children, even if at first they don’t know how. They often come to accept their children’s certainty on how they’ll find happiness.
That can leave parents feeling unmoored. That’s where Eshel comes in.
Eshel — find it at eshelonline.org — posts this as its mission statement: Eshel envisions a world where LGBTQ+ people and their families are full participants in the Orthodox community of their choice.
It offers an annual retreat for Orthodox parents of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer Jews; the most recent one, at the Pearlstone Retreat Center in Reisterstown, Maryland, was held over a few days, centered on Shabbat, in May.
Parents come from across the country, Miryam Kabakov, its executive director, said. They represent much of the Orthodox world, from modern Orthodox through chasidic. Many are parents of gay sons and lesbian daughters; some are parents of trans kids. Some had been to the retreat many times; others were there for the first time. “This year, we gave a discount to first-time parents, to help lowering the barrier for them as they made the big decision to come,” she said. “We had about 20 new parents this year.”
This has been a hard year for the Jewish community and the LGBTQ community, Ms. Kabakov said. The new problems they face come at them as Jews and as members or allies of the LGBTQ cohorts. Those problems come from the outside world, often propelled by politicians and the hateful rhetoric they spew. “This year, we are particularly sensitive to the parents of trans kids, who are very anxious, particularly about the potential change to their children’s access to health care. We wanted to meet them with resources, community-building, and the ability to ask the right questions to the right people.” Although in other years they had no need to do this, and so they didn’t, this year, “we had two lawyers sitting in on the meetings,” she said.
It’s important to figure out “what’s white noise, that you don’t have to be worried about, and what you should be worried about,” Ms. Kabakov said. Although many of the threats come from the federal level, “it’s important to get involved locally,” she continued, citing the advice of one of the lawyers, who is involved in his own community. “Change does happen on the local level, and there are ways to affect change in your town.”
A positive way to “deal with all the hate is by providing more community spaces for people to meet each other,” Ms. Kabakov added. “I did an icebreaker at the retreat. I had people write what they’re most anxious about on post-it notes, and we posted them on a wall. The things that made them anxious were big things — legislation proposed at the state and federal levels, the war in Gaza — big things that we are not going to solve in a weekend. And then, at our closing circle, I asked them to take those anxiety post-it notes, and if they no longer feel what’s written on them as a threat, to throw them in the trash.
“Afterward, I looked at the notes in the trash. They were all about those big issues.
“What parents need is each other. Our programs help fortify them. They help bring down the anxiety levels. But we will get through this. We will get through it together. It is important to be together. That’s the beauty of these retreats. We aren’t going to solve the problems, but we can work with each other to figure out how to work, with and around them.”
Robin Siegel of Teaneck, a social worker and therapist whose “outlook always is from a mental health perspective,” was at the retreat. It was her fourth, she said. “I was there because I have a son who is gay and still trying to find his place in the modern Orthodox world. He is out, he is comfortable with himself, he lives in Israel, and my primary goal is to be an advocate for him.
“He’s flourishing, but it’s not easy. There are plenty of Israelis who accept him, but it’s hard for him to find people like himself, who are LGBTQ but who are on the other side of the spectrum when it comes to Israel.” Even in Israel, she explained, many if not most of the people her son meets who are comfortable with his identity as a gay man are uncomfortable with his pro-Israel position. “I am lucky that my child still sees Israel from the same vantage point as I do,” she said. “But that puts him in a uniquely odd situation, but he is a strong kid.
“Often this means that he has to forego something.”
She’s seen changes in the Orthodox world since her 21-year-old son first came out. That was a long time ago, she said. “We suspected that he was gay from the very beginning, and I was very in tune with that, so that, thank God, his coming-out story was uneventful. It was more like, ‘Okay. Great. So now we can advocate! That kind of thing.
“There’s been growth. It hasn’t been a quick as I’d like it to be, but I’ve learned, and Eshel has helped me to learn, to slow down. To understand that this kind of stuff is going to take time. And if we just go in complaining, that’s not how we make change happen.
“So I have seen change. I have been faced with some obstacles, with a lot of placating, with schools saying things like, ‘Yes, we know, and our heart is with you, but…’ But 20 years ago, they would have been more like, ‘Sorry. We’re Orthodox. We don’t do that.’ Now it’s more like ‘Our heart breaks for you, but there’s not much we can do.’ But maybe there is something.
“Some places are going a step or two farther than that. It’s taking time, but I do see change happening. I am cautiously optimistic, especially because I think that my son’s generation will make more changes.”
Ms. Siegel has four children. Her gay son is a twin; both the gay and the straight twin made aliyah and live in Israel now. She also has a son and a daughter who both are in high school.
The retreat “is amazing,” she said. Because of the way her son came out, she didn’t have to adjust to his being gay, but many of the parents at the retreat did have that experience, and it can be tough. “A lot of them didn’t see it coming. The retreat is a place where you can talk to other people who are or have been in a similar situation, and they’re able to hold each other up.
“A lot of parents have stories about their friends finally finding out and being supportive. Saying things like ‘You know we love you, and we’re here for you.’ It’s almost as if the kid just got a cancer diagnosis. It’s nebbech.
“At the retreat, they can daven in a place where they feel that everyone gets it. It’s not nebbech. Everyone is quote-unquote Torah observant. The davening, even with the LGBTQ stuff aside, is beautiful. It is a beautiful community and a beautiful Shabbes.
“For most people there, it feels like community. It feels like home.”
Stefanie Diamond of Teaneck is a photographer and the mother of three daughters. Her oldest daughter is bisexual.
This was Ms. Diamond’s fourth year at the Eshel retreat.
“Each year I am different, therefore what I get out of the retreat is different every year,” she said. “Although my daughter came out at 15, I didn’t go to the retreat until she was 18 or 19. She was closeted outwardly for much of high school, except to us and her closest friends. That retreat was during her gap year in Israel. She came out, so I could come out as a parent.
“Every year I come to the retreat as a different person, because I am different, my kids are different, my approach is different, and what I want to get out of the retreat is different.
“The first year, I went in all blazing. I wanted to make a lot of changes in our schools and in our shuls. I was coming from a place of anger at the world. We can’t necessarily change our institutions overnight, but over a few years we can see how far we’ve come. Our schools are making changes. Our shuls are making changes. More and more Orthodox shuls are now announcing gay engagements and weddings. That didn’t used to happen. We are seeing so much hope.
“This year, I even debated if I should go to the retreat, because I didn’t think I necessarily needed the support. I’m not coming from a place of grief. There isn’t anything I really need for my family. And then I walk into this space and I realize that I am here because this is community.
“I am here because there is something amazing about having four days to focus on yourself, on family, on parenting, and especially on parenting adult children.”
One of the retreats’ many joys is “when you meet someone new, after ‘who are you’ and ‘where are you from,’ the next question is ‘why are you here?’ You cut right to the chase. You learn so much from other parents.
“We are not parents who need to be told, ‘Okay, you still have to love them.’ Eshel parents are far beyond that. That is not what we are dealing with. Obviously, we love them. Obviously, we always have room for them at our Shabbat table. That goes without saying. What we have to learn is how to advocate for them. And we talk about logistics. Do we let their same-gender friends sleep over? This year, there was a lot of focus on weddings. What do weddings look like? It is so hopeful. You get to hear from people who are able to say, ‘This is how I did my kid’s wedding.’ What does the ketubah look like? What do you leave out? What do you include?
“Weddings can feel like typical Jewish weddings. So people want that. Some don’t.” All of them can get ideas and begin to imagine possibilities.
Another element of the retreat is being able to pay it forward, Ms. Diamond said. She remembers how helpful other parents were to her at her first retreat, and found herself acting as that elder to another woman this time. She watched as this other mother, “who had been fighting for her kid so much that she didn’t realize how much she wanted to advocate elsewhere too. She left the retreat feeling, ‘I’m good. My family is good now.’ And she left with an advocate hat that she didn’t know she wanted, and she didn’t know that she had — but she has it.”
To look at Rabbi Mike Moskowitz is to assume that he’s a charedi — you’d be right — and that he’s chosen to live his life in a way that almost entirely excludes the LGBTQ community. There you’d be wrong. Rabbi Moskowitz, who chose observance and whose choice took him to Lakewood, where he lived for years, and whose deep knowledge and supple intellect, his combination of faith and creativity, could take him wherever he wants to go, now lives with his wife on the Upper East Side, works at Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, Manhattan’s LGBTQ shul (although he’ll leave soon to devote more time to writing and speaking) and is a fiery advocate for LGBTQ causes in general, and for the trans community in particular.
He began to work with that community when a dear family member came out as trans, Rabbi Moskowitz said.
This was his first time at the Eshel retreat. “It is a special gathering,” he said. “It shouldn’t be novel. Parents want to protect and support their children. Parents want a world that contributes to the healthy upbringing and growth for their children. So the idea that you have to have this kind of parents’ retreat speaks to breakdown in society.
“For people who are in the margins, or are in relationship to people in the margins, equality feels like liberation. This retreat created a space free of hate and oppression, and that itself is significant.”
But it’s more than that. “It’s also a microcosm of a healthier world. It’s not just the absence of the negative, but actually teeming with the positivity of acceptance, celebration, and love.”
He doesn’t talk about politics, Rabbi Moskowitz said, but “what’s helpful is to speak to our values. Our connection to the truth, to the wisdom of our tradition, transcends party. I believe that we have the capacity to answer wickedness with wisdom, that we have to have intelligent things to say that are not simply the rejection of what the people we dislike are saying.”
Remember, Rabbi Moskowitz continued, that “God doesn’t put extra people in the world. It can’t be that you can just deport or erase or incarcerate or deny the right of existence to so many of God’s children. And when we think about those who use religion to oppress people, to prey on those who are vulnerable and exposed, we need to speak truth to perceived power.”
It is normal for parents to want to protect their children, Rabbi Moskowitz said, and as they grow up, they become more independent, and parents can and should do less protecting. “Parenting includes planned obsolescence,” he said. But parents keep worrying, and sometimes they have to, even over things that they cannot possibly control.
“Parents wonder, ‘Why are people hating my kid. Why is the government afraid of my child? And what can I do? Because there’s really nothing that I can do about it.’
“That’s where the role of faith comes in, and the role of the community. And there’s the role of hope and optimism, of faith as a call to action and to organizing. So being in a community can be really nourishing, in that a person doesn’t feel alone.
“And it’s good to be reminded that although there is a power differential between us as individuals and the government, which is a massive entity, we’re also in partnership with the infinite source of the universe, and that’s the great power differential. So we should remind ourselves that God runs the world and try to focus on what it looks like for us to do the divine will, engage in partnership with the divine.
“It means organizing. It means praying and not giving up. It means creating joyful experiences and losing our humanity in the hate.”
It’s also important to feel joy, Rabbi Moskowitz said. “There was joy in the retreat. There is joy in the world. And I think joy is part of a spiritual resistance and a political resistance.”
Eshel recently surveyed about 500 LGBTQ Jews, both Orthodox and non-Orthodox, “to see how they’re feeling in LGBTQ spaces,” Ms. Kabakov, said. “We discovered that a large percentage of them are feeling very uncomfortable there. They’re facing antisemitic attitudes, and people behaving in ways that feel very unsafe to them. So they’re leaving those spaces. What they want is more Jewish spaces, but many of them feel that those spaces aren’t available to them.”
Eshel’s response is “to build out our program to meet people where they are,” Ms. Kabakov said. That will involve giving people the chance to meet in person. She knows that “we have a very broad audience, a lot of people at very different stages in their lives. In our big events we work together, and in the short term we’ll just hang out in an evening together, but we want to be able to program in more specific ways for specific ages and stages.
“We know that our people are all very different from each other, but they all want to hang out in Orthodox queer spaces.
“We are not trying to create an Orthodox gay shul. People want to be able to connect to the Orthodox community where they are living. Som people can do it; others try to but they can’t. Or they do but they don’t feel comfortable. We want to create a network of possibility for them, but in the meantime we want to create more opportunities for people to find each other.”
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