Uncategorized
LGBTQ Israelis fear setbacks as homophobic parties win a place in Netanyahu’s coalition
TEL AVIV and JERUSALEM (JTA) — It was the day before Israel’s Nov. 1 election. In a classroom in downtown Jerusalem, Avi Rose was teaching about Jewish identity through art to a group of Jewish students from abroad spending a gap year in Israel. Suddenly, movement outside caught his eye.
Rose stopped his lecture and approached the second-story window. He was unprepared for what he saw. Dozens of religious Jewish youth from the homophobic Noam party were marching down Jerusalem’s Jaffa Street, chanting and carrying large anti-LGBTQ signs.
The sight was distressing for Rose, a gay Israeli artist who emigrated from Canada 20 years ago. In 2007, he and his husband, Ben, became the first Israeli citizens to have their same-sex marriage certificate from abroad recognized in Israel.
“I’m teaching this wonderful group of young people that have come from all over the world to have their moment in Israel, to finally be free in their Jewish homeland, to be in this democratic Jewish safe space. And they have to see their own teacher going, ‘Oh my God. There are these people out there who their sole purpose is to hate me.’ And it was a dissonance,” recalled Rose, who lives in Jerusalem with his husband and their 10-year-old twins.
“I mean, what the hell am I doing here if that’s the way we are as a Jewish people?” he continued. “And I was scared. I won’t lie to you. I was scared…. I had flashbacks about what my grandparents went through in Europe. And I had to remind myself we aren’t quite there yet. I’m not at the point [where I am going to] pack my bags and protect my children and get out of here.”
By the end of the next day, 14 members of the union of three far-right parties — Noam, Otzma Yehudit (or Jewish Power) and National Union — became the third-largest slate in the Knesset and the second largest in the governing coalition that Benjamin Netanyahu is now assembling. Netanyahu’s other coalition partners are two haredi Orthodox parties, Shas and United Torah Judaism. It will be the most right-wing conservative, religious government in Israel’s history, and its leaders are already vowing to roll back rights that LGBTQ Israelis have only recently won.
Israel does not permit same-sex marriage. But its Supreme Court has strengthened protections for Israelis who enter same-sex marriages abroad, requiring that the marriages be recognized by the state and ensuring that same-sex couples be permitted to adopt children and pursue surrogacy. Now, a Shas lawmaker could be appointed to head the ministry in charge of granting marriage licenses, and a self-proclaimed “proud homophobe” is poised for a leadership position as well.
“I don’t think they’ll criminalize my marriage or take my children away,” said Rose. “But there is a general sense of fear seizing the LGBTQ community.”
Noam, the smallest of three factions making up the joint Religious Zionism list, has focused on advancing policies that prevent the creation of non-traditional families, such as same-gender parents or children created through surrogacy, which it calls “the destruction of the family.” The party’s election slogan was a call to make Israel “a normal” nation.
A man sits outside Shpagat, a gay bar in Tel Aviv, in November 2022. (Orly Halpern)
In a 2019 tweet, the party outlined its vision for what “normal” means. “A father and a father is not normal,” the list began. It ended by alluding to the party’s opposition to Pride flags: “Asking to remove a flag that represents all this madness — that’s actually quite normal.”
One afternoon last week, two male cooks wearing tight black T-shirts exposing prodigious biceps were preparing for opening hour at Shpagat, Tel Aviv’s first gay bar. “Ohad,” who asked not to use his real name out of fear of being harmed, told JTA that there was great concern among his peers about how the new government would shift budgets, change laws and policies and deny LGBTQ Israelis their rights.
“I’m concerned that we will lose all the rights we gained with the recent government and over the last few years,” said Ohad. The outgoing government, a centrist interlude after more than a decade of right-wing leadership, was the most progressive in Israel’s history in terms of the gay community. “We’re talking about the most basic things, like being allowed to donate blood, being allowed to parent children through surrogacy, cancelling the prohibition of LGBTQ+ ‘conversion therapy.’ It’s both to cancel things and to go backwards.”
Yair Lapid speaks at the Tel Aviv Pride Parade on June 10, 2022, weeks before becoming Israeli prime minister. His government was Israel’s most progressive on LGBTQ issues.(Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images)
Indeed, one of the memes that worried Israelis have shared widely since election results came out reads, “Don’t forget that tonight, we are moving the clock back 2,000 years.”
Another issue is the distribution of government funding. Israel’s Ministry for Social Equality, for example, allocated 90 million shekels ($26.7 million) this year to benefit the LGBTQ community, which included funding for LGBTQ centers in some 70 cities. The education ministry and local municipalities also provide budgets to the Israel Gay Youth organization, and for teaching in schools about LGBTQ inclusion. Avi Maoz, the head of the Noam party, said he wants to cancel “progressive study programs” about gender.
A spokesperson for the Noam party was unable to make Maoz available and declined to otherwise offer comment.
Transgender Israelis could face the most stark changes. About 40% of transgender people have attempted suicide at least once in their life, according to the health ministry, and more than half avoid receiving medical care. Last year, the outgoing government’s health minister, Nitzan Horowitz, who is gay, set new policies to make healthcare more accessible to the transgender community.
Now the fear is that these policies will be canceled, as will be subsidies for sex reassignment surgeries and drugs. “For all the boys and girls who are in the process of defining their gender identity physically and emotionally, it will make their treatments very expensive or unaffordable,” said Ohad. “That can jeopardize their lives.”
It’s clear that the right-wing party leaders are not sympathetic to the plight of LGBTQ Israelis. Bezalel Smotrich, the head of the Religious Zionist party, identifies himself as a “proud homophobe.” In August, his party protested the enrollment of a third-grader at a religious boys’ school who had transitioned from his gender assigned at birth.
“There is no place in the national religious school system for such confusion of opinions and views that seriously harm the values, natural health and identity of its students,” Smotrich wrote to the education ministry.
The right-wing parties have trained their sights on Israel’s Supreme Court, which has delivered crucial victories to LGBTQ advocates and other minorities. The parties say the court is out of step with Israeli values.
One of the first legislative measures the next government intends to pass is the High Court Bypass Law, which would allow a simple majority of the Knesset’s 120 lawmakers to override Supreme Court rulings on laws that the court struck down, thereby undermining the court’s ability to protect human and civil rights.
“It will leave us as a defenseless minority,” said Liad Ortar, the head of an environmental, social and corporate governance firm, who spoke to JTA from the Climate Change Conference in Egypt. Ortar and his husband have 8-year-old twins through a surrogate from Thailand.
Liad Ortar, right, is concerned that Israel’s incoming government could enact policies that hurt families like his where both parents are of the same sex. (Courtesy Ortar)
Many LGBTQ Israelis fear that lack of tolerance from government ministers could translate into incitement, harassment and physical attacks in the public sphere, and that the religious right-wing extremists who have directed violence towards Palestinians will now target them as well.
“In recent months there has been a very extreme escalation in what’s happening with the settlers and their violence, including the army, that doesn’t really provide protection,” said Ohad. “Not long ago there was an attack on a left-wing woman activist.… Those people are now going to become the ministers of education and culture. So aside from the Arabs and what the settlers do to them there, the next easy target is the gay community.”
In 2015, a religious Jewish man stabbed and killed Shira Banki, a 16-year-old girl marching with her family in Jerusalem’s gay pride parade — weeks after he completed a 10-year sentence for a similar attack in 2005. Now, members of the Religious Zionism slate have called to abolish gay pride parades.
“It’s not only that we are really afraid and worried about our own future. But it’s also our kids’ future. How will it look? And not just the kids of a gay couple, but gay children,” Ortar said. “We’re going to go back to the time where homosexuality can’t be shown publicly, whether at school or in the public sphere. Where they might beat the hell out of a gay couple because they walked hand in hand. Or cursing children in schools because their parents are gay.”
Not all LGBTQ Israelis are alarmed by the incoming government. Gilad Halahmi, a gay man who lives in Tel Aviv, has been active in promoting the Otzma Yehudit and has developed a personal rapport with its leader, Itamar Ben-Gvir. “The fact that he and Smotrich have an anti-LGBTQ agenda doesn’t mean they hate [us],” he said.
Halahmi said he believes his involvement has mitigated Religious Zionist stances on LGBTQ issues, and he also said Amir Ohana, a Knesset member from Netanyahu’s Likud party who is gay, had helped shift right-wing politicians’ views on those issues. But even without that, he said, the tradeoff to get the policies he wants on other issues is worth it.
“I give up LGBTQ rights, but I get something that is much more important to me in return, which is the economic issue, the security issue, the migration issue, governance,” Halahmi said. “It’s things that are 10 times more important to me than public transportation on Shabbat or whether I’ll get married in Israel or abroad.”
But for those who value religious pluralism and LGBTQ rights — and polls have shown that a majority of Israelis do — the current moment is alarming. On Sunday, Ben-Gvir vowed to revoke government recognition of non-Orthodox conversions to Judaism, in the latest sign that a far-right coalition would seek to create practical changes quickly.
For Rabbi Mikie Goldstein, the new government’s threatened assault on pluralism and LGBTQ rights offers a one-two punch that has him questioning whether he should continue living in Israel. Goldstein, an immigrant from England, was the first out gay pulpit rabbi in Israel when he took the reins of a congregation in Rehovot in 2014. Now, he leads the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly in Israel, working to support rabbis and their congregations who belong to the movement, known as Masorti in Israel.
“If I can’t do my work properly, if I’m not accepted — how much can you take?” Goldstein said. “I’m not prepared to give up yet [on Israel] but it’s certainly crossed my mind.”
LGBTQ activists say they won’t give up rights without a fight — and that they are prepared to mount one.
“We are very much united,” said Ortar. “We have a very strong civil infrastructure. The LGBTQ community is very well established in social and demographic groups. A lot of us are in the media, industry, high tech. After the statement about abolishing the parade, you could hear the drums beating. There will be demonstrations if that happens.”
In 2018, some 100,000 people demonstrated — outraged after then-prime minister Netanyahu voted against a bill to allow gay couples to use surrogacy.
Members of the LGBTQ community and supporters participate in a demonstration against a Knesset bill amendment denying surrogacy for same-sex couples, in Tel Aviv, July 22, 2018. (Tomer Neuberg/Flash90)
Last week, Netanyahu tried to assuage fears and ordered officials in his close circle to tell the press that his government would not allow any change to the status quo regarding LGBT rights. But he did not come out saying it himself.
“This is the time to be angry, not scared,” said Rose. “We can’t be complacent anymore. The privilege of complacency has come to an end. That has to be the message of this election. You have to fight for what you want.”
—
The post LGBTQ Israelis fear setbacks as homophobic parties win a place in Netanyahu’s coalition appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Abdul El-Sayed and Jamie Raskin sidestep Hasan Piker, and Israel, in Michigan campaign stops
(JTA) — ANN ARBOR – As Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed made campaign stops with a prominent Jewish congressional leader on Wednesday, there was one subject neither he, nor his Democratic allies onstage, were interested in discussing.
“Don’t any reporter ask me again about Hasan Piker,” Michigan U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell told the crowd at an Ann Arbor, Mich., town hall, to cheers. “It’s not what November is about.”
Dingell’s crack was the only time the prominent left-wing streamer’s name was mentioned at all during the pair of El-Sayed rallies that day. Piker’s recent comments that American Jews who “tie” themselves to Israel would “suffer the consequences of the actions of that state” prompted uproar from several corners of Democratic leadership. Despite this, El-Sayed’s new Jewish campaign surrogate, U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, avoided the topic altogether.
That reluctance to talk about Piker on the campaign trail Wednesday extended to the candidate himself. El-Sayed didn’t mention Piker, nor Israel, once in either of his campaign stops with Raskin, except when asked directly by reporters.
The former county health official campaigned with Piker during the primary — including at one stop at the University of Michigan a stone’s throw away from Wednesday’s event — as the two made opposition to Israel a central issue of his candidacy. But at a press conference following his Ann Arbor event, El-Sayed described Piker as “a streamer in California,” adding that the media was putting too much focus on his most prominent supporter.
“I’m less interested in going to the tabloid version of our politics where we cover this as who’s in, who’s out, who’s up, who’s down, who’s talking to who,” El-Sayed said. “I’m a lot more interested in talking to the people in the state who had a bum deal because of Donald Trump and the politics that [El-Sayed’s GOP opponent] Mike Rogers has been the epitome of for a very long time.”
Raskin, one of the most prominent Jewish Democrats in the House, also showed a reluctance to talk about Jewish voters in general. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency asked the congressman in Ann Arbor how he would sell El-Sayed to Jewish Democrats uncomfortable with his rhetoric. In response, he did not mention Jewish concerns.
“Those of us who have been fighting Donald Trump and his authoritarianism and corruption and violence against American citizens and immigrants for 10 years now understand that this is an essential referendum about the future,” Raskin said in response. “Will we have democracy or will we have autocracy?”
He added that he has been “campaigning for Democrats all over the country,” and praised the party for being “a very big tent.”
“Just like any big family Thanksgiving dinner, there can be arguments and people jostling, and there’s unruliness,” Raskin said. “But fundamentally, we all believe in democracy and freedom and the progress and prosperity of our people.”
Yet questions about Piker, and how close the movement he represents may come to remaking the Democratic Party’s values, hang over both Michigan’s Senate race and the future of Jewish inclusion in the party. As the party fights to retake Congress this fall, some liberal Jewish voters believe the growing backlash against Israel among the “big tent”’s progressive wing is damaging their historic coalition. A growing number of Jewish voters in Michigan who previously backed Democrats are now supporting Rogers instead, and El-Sayed’s association with Piker is often cited as a key reason why.
In playing the role of uniter, Raskin is slaloming carefully between the party’s different factions. Before campaigning with El-Sayed, the congressman stumped for Michigan Rep. Hillary Scholten, a moderate Democrat who has withheld her endorsement of El-Sayed while specifying his association with Piker as a sticking point.
Also being silent on the rallies is a key target of Piker’s: Michigan state Sen. Jeremy Moss, whose likeness the streamer had made his latest comments in front of. The Jewish and pro-Israel Democratic congressional candidate is running in a heavily Jewish district that encompasses Oakland County, where El-Sayed’s second rally of the day took place. In recent days, Moss said that El-Sayed was “going to have to demonstrate some serious outreach to Oakland County’s Jewish community.” He declined to comment to JTA about the day’s rallies.
As they largely avoided the elephant in the room among Democrats, El-Sayed and his allies also preached the importance of party unity in taking on their Republican opponents.
“There’s a big effort to divide us,” Raskin told the second rally’s audience in Farmington Hills. “They’re trying to pick on disagreements in our party, trying to exacerbate conflict, because we have freedom of thought in our party and freedom of speech in our party and freedom of dialogue.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Abdul El-Sayed and Jamie Raskin sidestep Hasan Piker, and Israel, in Michigan campaign stops appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Dolly Parton’s legacy includes the Jewish children’s book program she inspired
(JTA) — Dolly Parton, the singer who died Tuesday at age 80 after a brief bout with cancer, was mourned around the world as a stellar songwriter, consummate country hitmaker, savvy entrepreneur and generous philanthropist.
In Jewish circles, she was also remembered as the inspiration for PJ Library, a program that sends free children’s books to Jewish families in order to foster Jewish values and traditions.
In 2015, when Harold Grinspoon launched PJ Library, he took a page from Parton, who a decade earlier had started Imagination Library, a literacy program that mails free children’s books to families across the U.S.
After hearing Parton interviewed about the program, Grinspoon, a philanthropist in and out of the Jewish community, signed on as a sponsor of the Imagination Library in Western Massachusetts, where he lives.
“We should create a Jewish version of Imagination Library,” said Grinspoon, according to a 2023 recollection by his daughter-in-law and president of the Harold Grinspoon Foundation, Winnie Sandler Grinspoon.
“Harold was looking for ways to build Jewish literacy,” she wrote. “He was witnessing a lack of connection to the values, stories, and traditions that have been at the center of the Jewish experience for millennia.”
Two decades later, PJ Library has more than 670,000 subscribers in 40 countries.
On Tuesday, in a tribute to Parton, PJ Library and the Harold Grinspoon Foundation recalled a meeting between the two in 2023. According to an Instagram post, “she shared the following with him: ‘I am honored to get to help inspire a love of reading in children. They truly are our future.’”
“Harold remembers Dolly as ‘a truly amazing person — not only a great artist, but a great entrepreneur and philanthropist,” according to the post. “We honor Dolly for educating millions, for her remarkable career, her kindness, her art, and especially her generosity.”
“Dolly’s generosity of spirit extended far beyond inspiring the creation of PJ Library,” Alex Zablotsky, PJ Library’s executive director, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Parton drew inspiration for her art and philanthropy from her hardscrabble roots in rural Tennessee. She was one of 12 kids growing up in a one-room log cabin in the Smoky Mountains. Parton’s father never learned how to read or write.
“This actually started because my father could not read and write, and I saw how crippling that could be,” Parton said of the Imagination Library at a ceremony where she was awarded a Carnegie Medal for her partnership with a pediatric hospital in East Tennessee, now named for Parton.
“My dad was a very smart man. And I often wondered what he could have done had he been able to read and write. So that is the inspiration,” she said.
Parton had a close bond with other Jews, notably Sandy Gallin, the manager who guided her from Nashville to mainstream pop stardom, according to the Forward.
When Gallin died in 2017, Parton said, “Nobody could quite get how the Christian Southern girl and the New York Jewish boy could have so much in common. But it was real.”
One trouble spot, however, came in a 1994 interview with Vogue Magazine, when Parton mused about starting a television series about a country singer who turns to gospel music. She gave up the idea, she said, because “most of the people out here [Hollywood] are Jewish and it’s frightening for them to promote Christianity.”
She later apologized in a letter to Abe Foxman, then head of the Anti-Defamation League, JTA reported at the time.
“I know how stereotypes can be hurtful,” she wrote. “Like all Americans of good will, I recognize the importance of rejecting prejudice.”
Foxman accepted her apology. “Whatever she said was unfortunate, and she recognizes that,’” Foxman told The New York Times. “I know it’s not easy for celebrities to publicly say they made a mistake. As far as we are concerned, the matter is behind us.”
On Tuesday, Laura Liebman, director of development for The Bronfman Fellowship for young Jewish leaders, paid tribute to the singer, who was a feminist and an ally of the LGBTQ+ community.
“Dolly somehow managed to transcend race, class, religion, politics and gender,” Liebman wrote in an essay for eJewishPhilanthropy. “As the Jewish community becomes increasingly siloed, we could all learn from Dolly’s radical acceptance and show more love and compassion for our fellow Jews.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Dolly Parton’s legacy includes the Jewish children’s book program she inspired appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Second Reform synagogue in Israel has windows broken
(JTA) — TEL AVIV – A window was broken at a Reform synagogue on Sunday in the central Israeli city of Ramat Hasharon less than two weeks after a similar incident occurred in Jerusalem in an incident the mayor called an act of vandalism.
Congregation Darchei Noam called the incident a hate crime, and Ramat Hasharon Mayor Itzik Rochberger condemned the incident and called for police investigation.
Police said the damage was most likely caused by rocks thrown at the building during the night but said the motive remained under investigation.
Rabbi Eli Levin, who leads Darchei Noam, said a heavy paving stone had been used to smash the window.
“This wasn’t children playing and a stone accidentally being thrown,” Levin told JTA.
The incident came just over a week after vandals broke into Kol HaNeshama, a prominent Reform synagogue in Jerusalem’s Baka neighborhood. In that occurrence, a group of youths smashed a window, entered the prayer hall, damaged artwork and tore down Pride flags displayed by the congregation. No worshippers were present at the time. Police opened an investigation but have not publicly announced any arrests.
“The smashing of the windows tonight at the Reform synagogue in the city is a serious act of vandalism and we will not let it pass without response,” Rochberger said, calling on police to thoroughly investigate the attack and bring those responsible to justice.
He added that Ramat Hasharon was committed to “freedom, tolerance, pluralism and coexistence” between religious and secular residents and said the city would not allow extremists to intimidate residents or damage the fabric of communal life.
“We will stand together against any attempt to harm the character of Ramat Hasharon and the values on which it is founded,” Rochberger said.
Democrats MK Gilad Kariv, a Reform rabbi who previously headed Israel’s Reform movement, linked the attack to recent violence against Reform congregations, businesses operating on Shabbat and anti-government protesters.
“They will smash and break – we will repair and build,” he wrote on X.
Darchei Noam was founded in Ramat Hasharon in 1981 and serves residents of that city, Herzliya and northern Tel Aviv. The congregation holds egalitarian services in which women and men participate equally and also runs educational programs, bar and bat mitzvah preparation and community volunteer activities, according to its website.
The congregation spent years fighting for the right to build a permanent synagogue. After the municipality declined to allocate land to a non-Orthodox congregation, the dispute ultimately reached Israel’s High Court of Justice, which ruled that the community could receive a plot.
Darchei Noam said it would hold its regular Friday night service as planned and called on supporters to attend in a show of solidarity following the attack.
“We will continue and we will not be deterred,” Levin said. “We will continue to hold egalitarian ceremonies and celebrate the holidays in our Jewish-Israeli way.”
The incident came as Ramat Hasharon and nearby Herzliya have been locked in disputes over businesses operating on Shabbat. In June, a Tel Aviv court dismissed a petition seeking to force the Ramat Hasharon municipality to enforce its existing Shabbat closure bylaw at the BIG Fashion Glilot shopping complex after the city pledged to apply the law under a new enforcement policy.
The municipality has simultaneously sought Interior Ministry approval to amend the decades-old bylaw to permit businesses to open on Saturdays in designated areas. Rochberger has repeatedly defended that effort, saying Ramat Hasharon should remain pluralistic and protect both freedom of religion and freedom from religion.
Just a few hundred meters away from the synagogue, businesses in the Neve Israel neighborhood of Herzliya have repeatedly been vandalized after opening on Shabbat. The local Othello ice cream shop was attacked three times before its owners stopped opening on Saturdays, citing safety concerns, while the windows of the nearby Pasta Basta restaurant were smashed in late July. Pasta Basta continued operating on Shabbat.
Herzliya Mayor Yariv Fisher has urged residents to support businesses that remained open on Saturdays.
“This will only spur me to keep working day and night to ensure that Herzliya remains a beacon of liberalism,” Fisher wrote on Facebook. “I invite the public to support all the city’s restaurants, entertainment businesses and cafes.”
Jerusalem has seen a parallel fight over Shabbat commerce in recent weeks. Cafe Basimta, near the Mahane Yehuda market, has faced weekly demonstrations by haredi Orthodox protesters since early July over its decision to remain open on Saturdays. Police have been deployed repeatedly at the site as protesters and counterprotesters faced off. A 75-year-old woman was arrested this month on suspicion of repeatedly vandalizing the cafe by damaging its lock and throwing garbage at the premises.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Second Reform synagogue in Israel has windows broken appeared first on The Forward.
