Immigrant Mom musings

I guess I should take comfort in the fact that the experience of being an immigrant parent is something I share with my brother, my mother, and two of my great grandmothers, Pearl Antine & Fannie Diamond.

Today's Bat Mitzvah tekes (ceremony) at Gabi's school began with a learning session.  For the first activity the teacher asked everyone not born in Israel to stand up.  Alen & I stood with about four, yes only four other people, and two of them seemed to be grandmothers.  The other immigrant moms are the moms of my daughter's best friends in her class, who are Russian.

Then she asked everyone whose parents were not born here to stand with us, and then everyone whose grandparents weren't born here, and by then most of the room of parents and kids were standing with us.  Only a small number of kids and parents stood in the place for people whose grandparents were born here.

We learn from this that we were a nation of immigrants, but I learned from it that we are no longer one.   I felt sharply how we are different here and how we stand out, in my daughter's class at least.  She feels it and we feel it.  I know that other schools in town and other towns in Israel have different compositions, but we are mainly around people who were born here.

Then we had a Beit Midrash, which fittingly enough began with a verse from Psalm 126, "When G-d returned the capitivity from Zion we were like dreamers."  I had plenty to say, as did the other parents, but I was conscious how the girls in the group, my daughter and her friends, were not talking much, and of her strictures to me earlier that I was to keep my mouth shut.  We were two men, four women, three girls, and one man did most of the talking.  I would have said more but for the pressure I felt to be quiet from my daughter.

The story was about Honi HaMaagel, who slept 70 years and woke up to a world he couldn't understand.  I can relate.

At the ceremony itself, the 59 Bat Mitzvah girls from her grade in the middle, the boys in two sections on either side.  I'm thinking how much I hate gender, the whole thing about what girls are meant to be and look like, the whole confusion.  The girls are wearing white with garlands of flowers on each girl's long hair.  I'm thinking of all the conflicts and contradictions of this age.

Two moms tried to sum it up in their blessing and couldn't - saying that times have changed, that girls can be anything, knowing full well that if they choose "anything" they will give up on some other parts of things.  They reminded the girls to stay true to what is real in being girls and women, whatever that means.  One mom said that the girls should speak up or be quiet as they wish - could it be I am a mom who speaks up with a daughter who prefers to keep quiet? 

I was emotional all along, but got most emotional hearing the boys sing, with cracking voices, about how "Mashehu hadash matchil achshav" (Something new is happening now).  There was something so cute and poignant.  Each boy gave a girl a plastic flower with a heart, very embarassedly.  And the girls did their dance, and everyone clapped.

Then at the end Hatikva, and me feeling emotional that I am here, and in a Jewish setting, and at the same time wishing I was some place that felt familiar or comfortable in any way.  I'm probably the only person who thinks at the end of Hatikva, "play ball!"

And my daughter came out smiling, until about two minutes later when she got mad at me for posting a photo I took of her, and stomped off.  And in the car on the way home she told us how the moms who gave the blessing, the kind of moms I like, aren't cool and how I had better never stand up and say anything like that at any event.

And I came home feeling......like an immigrant mom of a teenager, awash in a future and a country I will never understand.

Ancient History - Part Two

I suddenly realized Coming Out Day will come and go and I won't have finished my story - yikes!  I just re-read the last installment and it feels so raw.  I'm impressed I was able to feel that close to that time last week and aware why it kept me awake.

That's something I remember - waking up at about 4 am every day.  Not know how to know myself, not knowing who I was. 

Secrets are bad for me from a young age when I started keeping some.  So that month of not telling anyone went very much against my nature.

I decided to tell someone.  An old boyfriend - maybe my most recent serious boyfriend - was coming to town and I thought maybe I could tell him.  First we spent some time together.  I think I told him I had something I wanted to talk to him about but I was afraid to tell him.  I never write about sex particularly but that was the last time I had sex with a man.  Then I got up to go to the bathroom and said, "I'll be right back, don't go away," and when I got back he said:

"You know, sometimes you say things and I don't know if you mean me to hear them."

And I said "what do you mean?"

And he said, "when you got up you said, 'by the way, I'm gay.'"

Which I never said, I said, "I'll be right back, don't go away."  I have proof he misheard things because once before I had told him something like, "I love you very much" and he thought I said, "I want to make you lunch."

So that was the first person I came out to, and I know G-d was acting in my life because he heard me say what I was afraid to say.

Then I started telling other people and all their reactions totally annoyed me.  Lesbian friends said, "oh, we always knew you were gay," and I was like, "how could you know when I didn't know, how can you say that?"  And straight friends were either like, "so what?" or "really?" or "yeah, we knew that," and I'm like, "It's a really big deal" and "Yes, really" and "How could you know that if I didn't?"

I wasn't happy with anyone's response.  Can't think of one person I felt like talking to about it except maybe the woman I was starting to have a crush on.  And one other friend who was coming out at the time.

So then I told my parents.  Why not, right?  I guess it was Thanksgiving.  I was applying to rabbinical school.  My mom said being a lesbian rabbi was like shooting yourself in the foot.   She said I would never have kids.  Then when I said I still wanted kids she said they wouldn't have a father and it would screw them up.  Yup.  Lesbianism was fine for all her friends but not for her daughter.  Makes sense.  I don't remember what my dad said, but no doubt it had something in it about the importance of biological reproduction and reproductive relationships being better than other kinds. 

I like my parents.  I'm not writing this to dishonor them.  This is really what they said.  You can read elsewhere on my blog about how my grandmother responded when I told her about 7 years later, after I had met Alen.  The good thing about my parents is they never stopped the dialogue and eventually, in time for our wedding about 9 years after this, they got it together, and after the wedding they really got it together.

I remember at the time I read some great books - Mary Borhek's classic Coming Out to Parents and another book called Parents Matter.  The Parents Matter book was based on a survey that found that the greatest relationship damage/danger of coming out was actually between lesbians and their fathers.  The most ruptures were there.  But the average time from coming out in the people surveyed for the book was 7 years and my boss told me it wasn't long enough.  She told me after 15 years there's real acceptance, and I have found that to be the case.

Coming out was like shedding a skin.  Everything was raw.  Nothing made sense and everything made sense.  I don't know how many years it took for the shock to wear off.  It was being comfortable with myself and no one else, it was making sense in a different way of everywhere I had been, it was hard and it was real.

A shout out at the end of this installment (I don't know if it is the end or not) to the ex-boyfriend and dear friend mentioned above and to others including Alan Kaufmann z"l.  I don't remember when I told and who I told (except the story above) but I remember I was met with love and support.   And to all my other friends who weathered the storm and stuck with me and to all my friends especially from work who showed me the way and to my family too who were always with me despite some memorable things they said.

Ancient History - My Coming Out Story

National Coming Out Day is October 11, and I have been thinking about when I came out in 1987 and what it meant to me then and means to me now.

The events aren’t fuzzy in my mind but the dates are.  I thought I was 26 turning 27 when I came out, but I am sure it was 1987, and that year I was actually 25 turning 26.  It was the fall.  I had received a call, I think in early September, asking me to take a job with the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence.  I left where I had been working, at Women Against Abuse in downtown Philly, and took the job in Reading PA.  The understanding was that this was temporary, for less than a year, until they could do a real search, for which I would also be able to apply.

Taking this job allowed me to move from downtown, where I had been working, to a more suburban part of Philly (Mt. Airy) which had more of a Jewish community.  My brother was living there and we rented an apartment together.  I’m not sure the sequence of events that fall – what happened first after the new job – the move or the monumental conversation that changed my life.

It sounds kind of funny, naïve and trite, but this is what happened:

I was working with a brilliant lesbian attorney and we were travelling the state.  The head office was in Harrisburg.  We also had meetings all over the state – I think we tried to meet each month in a different county with legal advocates.  Mostly this involved driving.  We also had trainings several times a year in different parts of the state.  Early in the fall, Ellen Pence, may her memory be a blessing, came to do a training.  I don’t remember where it was.  I remember of course how brilliant she was.  I don’t think it was the first time I heard her speak, but being in a room with her was always wonderful.   I read something online after she died that so captured the way she was in a room – at the same time making you feel really good and also challenging you to be so much better.

So my boss, me and Ellen were in one of our hotel rooms after this training.  And somehow the topic came around to me, and how I “thought I was not a lesbian.”  And Ellen told me that I was making a mistake if I thought I was going to marry a man, and that it was a bad idea, because one day, I would be working on a committee with some woman, and I would look into her eyes and fall in love, and if I was married to a man it would be a messy divorce, maybe a custody battle.  She presented it very romantically and I laughed and said, “Will she wear glasses?”

I said, “Why do you think I’m a lesbian, just because I am masculine?” and she said, “no you’re not, you are a fembot.”

Ellen was such a huge personality – when she tells you something about yourself, it’s not something you can shrug off.  Or maybe had I been more straight I could have, but as it was, I started thinking.

And I asked myself, “is it possible I am a lesbian”?

And the answer that came to me was that I had no idea, because for me any kind of feeling I might have for any woman was locked behind a door that said “don’t come in here”.  I couldn’t know if I was attracted to women or any woman because it was not something I allowed myself to feel.  Opening that locked door to wonder was a step toward finding out about myself.  In the words of Geneen Roth I read just recently, it was a beginning toward treating myself with kindness and curiosity.  It was an opening to learning about myself rather than trying to force myself to be what I thought the world wanted me to be.

It was about accepting myself and being myself.  What a concept.

Now that I have a 10 year old daughter, I see the process close up of how we (especially girls but probably boys too) try to mold ourselves to be what we think the world (in the form of our cruel peers, our teachers and others) wants from us.

What I felt in the coming out process was that all of a sudden I could re-access my 8 and 9 year old self.  I had energy, exuberance, and joy.  My 8 and 9 year old self had wanted to be a rabbi.  And lo and behold, I suddenly felt free to apply to rabbinical school.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

First I spent a month, a whole month, not telling anyone about this.  I spend a month driving 75 minutes each way to work and crying, wondering if I could be a lesbian and trying to figure out what that would mean in my life.

One day on my return trip from work I heard Joni Mitchell’s Song for Sharon.  And cried over the first verse:

I went to Staten Island, Sharon
To buy myself a mandolin
And I saw the long white dress of love
On a storefront mannequin
Big boat chuggin' back with a belly full of cars
All for something lacy
Some girl's going to see that dress
And crave that day like crazy

I cried because I was so sure I would never wear a wedding dress, cried again that January when I saw a photo of Jan Pierce in her wedding dress, after she died suddenly and I guess I was with her daughter looking at her old wedding album.

And I knew at the same time that if what I wanted from heterosexuality was that day and that wedding dress, it probably wasn’t enough.

Stay tuned for Part 2!

The End of Exile

The End of Exile

There’s a woman or man like me

Waking up this morning

In Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver

In London, Berlin, Amsterdam

In Stockholm, in Sydney, maybe even in Tokyo

Waking up next to a lover, a partner, a soulmate

She’s thinking of California, New York, Massachusetts, Florida

He’s thinking of how they met in Provincetown, Manhattan, San Francisco, Miami

In Rio, or Jamaica or Amsterdam

It’s been 5 years, 10 years, 15 or like us 20

Of falling in love, of worry, of lawyers bills, of fears and new horizons

Of losses greater than could be borne – of learning greater than ever dreamed

They have friends, family, new roots of all sorts

They have bills, mortgages, contracts, commitments

Is this home? They wonder
 

For years home has been where you are, choices limited, decisions made by others
For years I have held injustice, reached for acceptance, tried to understand G-d’s plan

For years we have missed loved ones, family events, a sense of all that’s familiar

It has been a kind of wall at each side, defining a narrow path

 

And suddenly, in an instant, what has held, constrained, controlled us for decades has fallen away
I am left standing, wondering, laughing, crying

Reaching for meaning in all we have walked through

Knowing that wherever you are is home

Once upon a time...

I've spent the past week in a kind of culture shock feeling of weirdness, triggered by spending the weekend with an LGBT birthright group.  We were invited to bring our family and be kind of Israeli gay role models of sorts.  Expecting to find ourselves somehow mirrored by this group of 20 somethings, we were instead confronted by how the world we came out into has disappeared.  Nearly all the women in the group had long hair.  Anyone who looked much like Alen had transitioned to being male.  We saw scars from "top surgery" for the first time (at the pool).  Rather than finding ourselves mirrored, I found myself fighting to understand what I saw, searching in vain for the world I came out into in 1987, the community I thought I belonged to.

It took quite a few emails with a young friend in Boston, and a conversation today with a gay man my age to get back my sense of humor and to remember that Romanovsky and Phillips already described this phenomenon in their song, "Once upon a time..."

Best of all, my old brain remembers all the lyrics (more or less):

Once upon a time when life was simple and serene
My roommate was a lesbian and I a happy queen
I lived to go out dancing in my tightest fitting jeans
While she read the well of loneliness and lexus magazine

But now I go to pot lucks where the food is rather bleak
And I've joined a new support group that meets every other week
While she lives to go out dancing with her hair done up in curls
It's getting hard to tell the boys from the girls

Once upon a time when life was easy to predict
Sex was something I could get and I could get it quick
I'd look at all the men and know that I could take my pick
While she frowned upon my lifestyle with each and every trick

But now my sex adventures while still fun are rather tame
While she's discovered Joann Loulan and she'll never be the same
Cuz she dates a lot of women and she buys erotic toys
It's getting hard to tell the girls from the boys

Once upon a time when life was crystal clear
Each of us had favorite music that we loved to hear
I'd go dancing to sylvester down in key west every year
While she went to music festivals and worshipped holly near

But now our taste in music has completely turned around
And instead of going to michigan she goes to provincetown
While I play alix dobkin on my walkman now and then
It's getting hard to tell the women from the men

Times they change, fashions rearrange themselves
If you don't stay on top, you find yourself
Parked on a shelf

Once upon a time when life was black and white
I used to do the drag shows to be famous for a night
While she drank her beer without a glass and shopped for Mrs. Right
I'd cruise the local customers just asking for a light

But now she is the only one who steps out in a dress
While I've been wearing all her flannel shirts and sandals I confess
Now she smokes Virginia Slims instead of lucky strikes
It's getting hard to tell the boys from girls, hard to tell the men from women, hard to tell the faggots from the dykes.

Now if all of this should seem to show that everyone's gone mad
It's only part and parcel of a somewhat larger fad
Look no further than the glint of gold in many a straight boys ear
It's getting hard to tell the breeders from the queers.

Thanks to Romanovsky and Phillips and to my friends for reminding me I'm just getting old, and this happens every few years.  I don't know if I'm parked on a shelf yet, but I apparently need to heed their advice to "stay on top".

Mikvah, Safety and more

A visit from Aliza Kline of the Mayyim Hayyim community mikvah brought up a kind of intense and weird nostalgia and homesickness in me today.

When Aliza arrived at my work, she called to ask about parking. I said I'd meet her outside and when I got there, the driveway was blocked by a van. After I yelled and got the van moved, the driveway was still made very difficult by cars parked on either side. Then she had to take her car down the steep, curved incline to our parking, while I was simultaneously berating the man who was blocking easy entrance (he said he wasn't) and talking to a student who wanted to talk to me.

Later, after the presentation, her entrance seemed like a metaphor to me about my life in Israel. There was one moment during it when I thought "wait, she's not an olah, she may not be able to handle this".

Aliza started her presentation talking about what makes a ritual work. In 11 years in Israel, I feel I have not heard people ask this kind of question. I had trouble understanding it - rituals work and don't work - it's rarely one or the other to me. She asked the students what a ritual was and they had answers - I could not remember what a ritual is. I was trying to figure out which parts of my life are ritual and which are not, and did not feel sure I could distinguish.

But I should back up. That was after another conversation on our way over to the Beit Midrash. My boss had mentioned the old mikvah in Brighton, and I said I had been there before my wedding, and then started on thinking about that and about what it has meant to me to pass at the mikvah - pass for straight that is, because I've never been to the mikvah when I was not a lesbian, and I've never been out at a mikvah, whatever that would mean.

Aliza talked a lot about safe space and what it means to create a space where people are going to feel safe taking off their clothes. I didn't even feel safe talking about it. I noticed most faculty were not there, and I noticed the relative ease with which the students participated, and I thought about how much more restrained a culture Israel is when it comes to talking about sexuality.

I thought about my kids, and about how I went to the mikvah before I got pregnant, for a period of months each time, and about how I was always passing as a straight person. I thought, and almost said something, about how the mikvah lady told me "livriut" and about how I prayed to get pregnant each time. I thought of the Reform rabbi who married us and who had recommended mikvah to me when I was trying to get pregnant, and I thought of the ultrasound technician who, the day after the first time I went to the mikvah in that process, asked me, "did you go to the mikvah?" Could she see it on my face? It was the one and only time in the fertility process that I was asked. I didn't think of, but think of now, the kavannah a friend gave me for mikvah, and how I prayed for everyone who was trying to get pregnant, and how until this day I have a track record - all the people I have prayed for, there and elsewhere, that they be blessed to become parents, have received that blessing.

I listened to Aliza talk about making mikvah in Massachusetts safe and accessible space for everyone. It kind of reminded me of how I feel when I daven with a Reconstructionist siddur - like, oh, my spirituality used to be like that - open, full of possibilities. Aliza had asked for an example of what doesn't work and when I said, "when you can't bring your whole self there" she said, "like maybe when a mechitza isn't done in a way that can work for you," and I thought of the many Shabbat mornings I spend in a mechitza shul where I daven and what it means to try to bring my whole self there to a space that doesn't reflect my values and what it means to pray or be part of any ritual moment and not be all of me but still feel transformed and uplifted. And what it means to sit with contradictions and discomfort and not knowing.

I thought of the parking lot entrance, and how much that feels like my ritual life here. I wondered if I will one day experience some reclamation of mikvah. Alen said maybe we shouldn't be planning a trip to disney world and instead should be thinking of going back to Massachusetts for a trip to Mayyim Hayyim. Then I think of my very real moments in the mikvah, and my very real kids, and thank G-d.

Coming out again!

Those of you who know me or read this blog regularly probably know that to get lots of medical services I drive about 5 km to an ultra-orthodox west bank settlement.

Today after I got home from work and dropped the kids to their sport, I ran to get a prescription filled for Alen. I didn't have her health insurance card with me.

At the pharmacy were 2 orthodox or ultra-orthodox women behind the counter, the pharmacist whom I don't know and the well-baby/child nurse whom I do know but have not seen for awhile.

So I asked the pharmacist could she put the charge on my card (it goes direct to my bank account) and she said, but who is Anne (Alen)? Who is she to you? So I said, she's my partner (bat-zug) and she says, she's your friend? Where's her card? What's her ID number?

So I said, it's here on the prescription and she's my partner. And she says, they will want to know, who is she to you, and I say again, as if I'm talking to a 2 year old, she's my partner. And I see her writing in the computer "haverot" (friends). And I said, "what, is it forbidden for you to write partner?"

She's flustered and I'm getting pissed off and the well baby nurse says, "Oh hi, how are your kids, your son is Alex right?" And the pharmacist says, "one pill four times a day." And me and the nurse say, "these are eye drops". Then the pharmacist goes off to answer the phone and the nurse and I continue talking about Sasha and whether he gets another appointment and I give her my phone number to call me.

This nurse really saved me from myself and from feeling bad. I try not to make waves in Beitar, but at the same time, if someone asks me directly, I'm going to say and stand up for my family. The nurse gave me a very positive message, "I know you, I see your family, I recognize you. This community may be homophobic but I'm not - I know you and I like you."

Enough coming out for today.

I owe her my life - Ellen Pence z"l

My heart is breaking because the woman I owe my life to has left this world.

There must be thousands of women who owe Ellen their lives, because she devoted her life to fighting against violence against women, and to training women who worked with battered women. You can see a video of her talking about it here

But you have to take 20 plus years off her to see Ellen as I saw her, yet lose none of the sureness and none of the humor.

Ellen was an amazing teacher, and she taught us how to teach. She talked about Paulo Friere, and about what it meant to empower women in the way we taught. Listen to the video - she is teaching about teaching by listening. Every day I get up to teach, Ellen is with me.

But the reason I owe her my life is that she was the person who told me to come out. I was working with women all the time but living a straight life, and Ellen, in a warm, joking, absolutely certain way, told me I needed to stop. She told me, with a smile, that if I got married to a man, I'd eventually be divorced, because I would meet a woman and fall in love. I said, "will she have glasses?"

That was in the fall of 1987.

The rest is history.

Ellen, you are not gone. Your inspiration lives on in me every day, as I know it does in your son, in your partner, and in all the people whose lives you touched.

My Pinkwashed Life

The title of this post is a tip of the nib to Ma Vie En Rose, a great film!

So I heard about Pinkwashing last spring, but it's gotten a lot of press recently with Sarah Shulman's Op Ed in the New York Times.

The basic accusation of pinkwashing is that Israel, seeking to win support of both gay and left-leaning people around the world, touts its record on gay rights to obscure the serious violations of the rights of Palestinians. For a well done example of this kind of PR, see Bret Stephens' video, Will Israel Survive?.

I have two responses to Sarah Shulman and those who accuse Israel of pinkwashing. The first was summed up on my friend Rich's facebook post with the link to her article: No matter what we do, they hate us. I would say it differently like this: When Israel is wrong we're wrong and when we're right we're wrong.

My second response is that of course I agree. Of course gay rights are an incomplete indicator of human rights. I've had ample time to think over the past 11 years about whether it is right that my partner and I took advantage of the benefits allowed us under the law of return and moved here while millions of Palestinians do not have the right of return to this area and while my neighbors across the green line in Wadi Fukin and Husan do not have the right to vote and have limited freedom of movement.

But for me it's not about pinkwashing, it's about reality. It's about my life. And my reality is that my family can't live in the US because my partner and I are a bi-national same sex couple. So gay rights in Israel isn't theory for me, it's fact. It's not something to like or not like, it's something that makes my family life possible. And no David, this is not about my pain. This is about my reality.

The reality is the every country that surrounds Israel has human rights issues. Nothing is black and white, and every country lives with a messy reality. Because Israel is subject to an organized media campaign of de-legitimization, and because Israel cares about its image in the eyes of the western world, for self-serving reasons no doubt, we have people out there making the case for what's good about the reality here. Whether you like that or not, it doesn't make a difference to me. I can't live in the US as a lesbian and I'm here because of the reality of gay rights in Israel.

It's not lost on me that Sarah Shulman is in all likelihood, like myself, a descendant of Sarah Imenu. And perhaps that's a good thing. We are a people with a conscience and our arguments and differences are leshem shamayim. For better or worse, the Jewish people still want Israel to be a light unto the nations and for many people it is love of justice and of the Jewish people and the Jewish tradition that motivates their criticisms of Israel. I would not for one minute want my brothers and sisters to stay silent about what they believe is right. I just ask that they remember that there are people, including gay Palestinians, for whom these issues are not words on a page, are not a matter of spin or of "washing" one way or another. There are many people whose lives are directly impacted by the reality of gay rights here - for the good.

None of us knows where this is all leading - if the decline of women's rights in Israel is any indication, nothing is working out the way we planned. I'm grateful that the anti-gay policies of the US government compelled my family to move to the place where the Jewish tradition and politics are intertwined, where the messy imperfection of reality is the challenge that faces me every day.

The last time I saw Grandma

Yesterday was my grandmother's yahrzeit. Around the time she died, I wrote in my journal about my last visit with her. I wanted to publish it but couldn't really work on it. These days publishing is so much easier. But I'm not sure where my journal is.

And I'm still afraid, perhaps more afraid because this is more public than some small lesbian journal. A friend describes the "rolling the grave factor" and how she will do things that would cause her parents to roll once, but not more than once.

My grandmother was not shy to state her opinions. But I'm not sure I can convey the love and the pathos of our last meeting, or do justice to who she was when I describe it.

So let me start here - I had one grandparent for 22 years. Grandma was larger than life in part because encounters with her never ended there - they were always the subject of extended family conversations, often long after the visit and certainly for the first week or so. A certain amount of decompression was always necessary, and analyzing, describing and talking about Grandma was a family pastime.

Grandma was formidable. My dad explained to me that she had strong opinions but no higher education and that when one doesn't have higher education, convention becomes more important. I'm sure that's part of it. Grandma left school to work at either 12 or 14 - my aunt says it was age 12. But prior to that also, Grandma was highly alert for what it would take to succeed in America and absorbed every possible lesson available. I wrote more about this at her yahrzeit last year - you'll find it under family history.

Grandma lived to be 93. In the last few years of her life, she lost some of her fight. It was a great relief and at the same time very painful to see. Grandma had always been able to shoot to the heart, as she did when she said to me when I was in college, "you should get Judy your sister to show you how to put on make up so you can get more boyfriends" and when I said, "I have plenty of boyfriends Grandma" she had the perfect retort "yes, but they aren't Jewish."

But at the end, the zingers were gone. The stories were gone. I went to see her in Florida in 1995 and I knew it would be the last time I saw her. I gathered my courage, and I told her about Alen.

It goes without saying that Grandma was homophobic, with the reflexive homophobia of her generation and of someone who cared so much for convention. The gender issues raised by the women's movement were a constant challenge to her, along with her career-oriented daughter-in-law (my mom). When my brother and sister went down to visit her and my brother was about 11 or 13, Grandma said he should not use creme rinse on his hair and told my mom it would make him gay.

So talking to Grandma took some courage on my part. It went something like this, "Grandma I've met someone I want to share my life with, it's a woman, her name is Alen. We are going to have a wedding. I hope you will come."

"Grandma, remember so-and-so, who I brought to Florida a few years ago. You really liked her. She was also my girlfriend. I'm a lesbian."

I don't remember the responses to this part, but they weren't real positive.

At one point I said, "Look Grandma, you have lots of different kinds of people in your family. You have lawyers, you have dentists, you have lesbians". Grandma said in a wry tone, "Well the lesbians I could do without." She didn't mean me she could do without. She meant me being a lesbian. I got that. I'll never forget her tone, her laugh. It wasn't a criticism of me, it was a statement about how much change a person can handle in nearly 100 years of living.

The next morning I tried again. "Grandma, I hope that you can be happy for me. I have found someone I want to spend my life with." She said something like, "Well I don't see why you have to have a wedding."

As I write this, I'm only thinking two things. One is how much I loved Grandma and how I still miss her after 16 years. And the other is a kind of awe of myself that (after I had been out for more than 6 years), I actually had the guts to come out to her. I'm so grateful that I got to tell her I found my life partner before she died.

Grandma, as I sat crying in bed telling you this on the morning of March whatever it was 1995, I had no doubt in my mind how much you loved me and how much I loved you. As I sit crying writing this now, I miss you still.

Comments on Sisterhood

Comments that came to me from a reader via facebook got me thinking about this wonderful piece by Bernice Johnson Reagon and because of how the world works these days I googled her and when I couldn't find it I wrote to her and she wrote back (which is amazing, because she's one of my role models) and told me how to find the piece which is printed on someone's blog here, and found in an easier downloadable word format if you google Bernice Johnson Reagon Coalition Politics, and published in a wonderful anthology called Home Girls, which is a must read, and if you never read this article, read it now. It relates exquisitely to what I wrote in my last post but please don't think I am comparing myself to this amazing woman - she is light years ahead of me and her website is here.

Sisterhood, Coming out again, and lesbian mainstreaming

Here's a song I learned at the Seneca Women's Peace Camp in 1988 - suitable for Parshat Beshalach

Come come sisterhood, come joy eternal
Our love is mystical, our love is carnal
I'll dance nimble steps, I'll be a Miriam
Leading my people across the water

It's a rewrite of a Shaker tune. The Shakers, along with my grandparents pictured on the post below, roll in their graves when I sing it.

I came out in 1987, while working in the Battered Women's Movement. I was surrounded by women's community and much influenced by a close co-worker who considered herself a separatist. With her and a bunch of other women, I went to Michigan, the mythic women's music festival, in the summer of 1988, a life-transforming experience. I joined a women's mystery school around that time and went on six retreats with a group of women. I joined Achyot Or, a Jewish women's group that meets every memorial day weekend. I was surrounded by sisterhood.

This week Felice Yeskel, a guiding light and spirit in Achyot Or, a tremendous woman and role model for me, died. You can read more about her here.

On the day of Felice's funeral this week (and the day of Debbie Friedman's funeral), I went to give a talk to a small group of North American volunteers about same-sex Bi-national couples. I made a power point presentation and told them about Alen's and my story, as well as about how immigration is part of our family's stories. It was the first time I had done anything like this and it was very well received.

On the way home, I picked up a soldier who was on his way to Beitar Illit, the Haredi settlement near us. I said I wanted to support anyone from Beitar who serves in the army. As we drove up the hill I considered what I would tell him about myself, and eventually told him I have a female partner. He checked my language in Hebrew to be sure I meant Bat Zug and not Ben Zug. I could almost feel the change in him as he sat next to me. For him, an ultra-orthodox man, it's probably the first time he's ever met an out lesbian. We had a wide-ranging discussion that included his asking me some questions like how we had our children. Did I open his eyes? Does this make change? I don't know.

In 1990, a few years after I came out, I went to hear Starhawk talk on Valentine's Day. Those of you who know anything about her and anything about me know that our religious lives and directions are very different, but I definitely felt at this presentation that I was in the presence of a Holy person. One thing she said I remember - that it was time to work together - for women to work with men. I found that hard to accept, but in some level I took it as true, and have worked with men almost ever since, and for the past ten years, intensively. It's been a hard change for me to swallow, based on where I came from, but shortly after that time I let go of whatever separatist direction I might have gone in.

Yet and still. I miss sisterhood. I miss the intensity of the world I came out into. Alen and I ordered DVDs of the L word and we've been watching it. It's nice to connect with lesbian identity in some way. Our lives are SO mainstreamed - to the point where we have to work to find and be part of any kind of gay or women's community.

This is written in love for all my friends of all the years - especially in my heart are all the women who supported me when I came out, Lisa who went to the Starhawk talk with me (can that be true? On your birthday?), Felice's partner and daughter, and all my sisters from Achyot Or. Your thoughts and feedback are sincerely requested!!!

What Would You Do, Dear?

Anyone remember those books by Maurice Sendak - What would you do, dear? and What would you say dear? They were great!

Ok, here are two challenging scenarios from today. For those who read my earlier post on coming out again, this first scenario can be titled Not Coming Out Again!

Visiting a very ill colleague in hospital - actually I was outside with her family. Her brother in law (looks somewhere between orthodox and ultra-orthodox) says, "Do you have a husband, a family?" I demur, some kind of nod, he asks how many kids I have, their ages, we move on. Here's the kind of situation I don't come out in. The nursing home where I volunteer sometimes is about the only place where I don't speak up. Back when I lived in the states, I had these kind of encounters nearly on a daily basis. Mainly due to Alen's job working with youth, we kept what I would call a very low profile while not being in the closet exactly. Today these situations are so few and far between that they grate. I almost always tell people, I have a partner, which in Hebrew comes out female. I've even had people correct me, you mean "ben zug" and I say no, I mean "bat zug".

Challenging scenario number two was harder. We went to the library and Gabi picked out a book from the "time tunnel" series - they had read one in her class. Then at dinner she tells me she's gotten to a chapter where they get uniforms, and that they are in Poland, in some place that hates kids and all the kids are in some kind of institution. My ears perk up and I run to her room to find the book - one of the chapters is entitled "carts full of clothes arrive in the ghetto". I immediately call the mother of one of her friends who doesn't answer and then my brother for advice.

After several calls the consensus seems to be not to take the book away from her because that will make it mysterious. Her friend's mother suggest she update me on the story as it goes along and Gabi suggests she read the book to me. (O joy.)

The friend's mother also says she would probably not have agreed to the book, but I didn't look closely and might not have realized at first glance that it is about the Holocaust. I would probably be a bit less traumatized if I wasn't currently reading a book about the Shoah myself (A Death in Vienna by Daniel DaSilva). I tell Gabi the book is probably too old for her, might scare her, talks about a difficult time, and she says she wants to continue reading it. My brother tells me they learn about the Shoah very early here - this mom is not ready.

What would you do dear?

Coming Out Again

I think I want to rename this blog and call it, "It's complicated."

Alen was home sick and heard some young teen girls gathered outside our house talking and saying, "That's the yard of the lesbians." She was pretty sure one of them lived in our building.

I had a pretty good idea of who it was and while Alen was dubious about it, I decided to go talk to our new neighbors. I thought about what I would say for some time. On the one hand, what other people think of us is none of our business. On the other hand, my kids also live in this building.

So I asked to talk to the mom privately, and I told her what happened, and that I thought it might have been her daughter, but that I was not sure, and her first response was "my kids have no idea about you. We haven't said anything. It's a completely private matter." These kids are about 13 and 15. I'm not sure what planet this lovely woman is living on.

I said, "Well, we don't keep it a secret that we are two women raising two kids."

She said, "No of course not, it's nothing you need to hide."

And there we have the dilemma in Israel - it's nothing to hide but it's a completely private matter.

So I said, "well, it's totally your call, but maybe you want to talk to your daughter. She might have questions about it."

Then she told me about her teenage son who has become orthodox under the influence of Shas type activists who were in another part of our town influencing teenage boys but have supposedly left, and how against it she and her husband have been and how she would never mention something like this to him (her son) because of the attitudes of that segment of the religious population.

So I said again, "it's totally your call, but maybe you want to talk to your daughter."

And she told me she was glad I said something to her, and she thinks we're great and our kids are great.

And I'm left wondering, if she talks to her daughter, what on earth will she say? That it's a totally private matter not to talk about but nothing to be ashamed of?

Stay tuned for why I'm ambivalent about joining a speakers bureau for GLBT issues. It's not what you think.

Reflections on our wedding - August 18, 1996

Yesterday was our 14th wedding anniversary. (And the first we've ever spent apart - Alen is at the Bird Fair in Rutland Water, England.)

A few thoughts about our wedding - in 1996 a gay wedding wasn't nearly as common as today. It was actually just starting to be at all fashionable. We did find a gay wedding consultant - they helped us with the invitations. We had a wonderful (Reform) rabbi, who was nothing but supportive through the whole process. I think it helped our guests that he was a man with a beard - he looks like a rabbi and that gave a sense of "normalcy" to the proceedings.

Alen wore a tux and I wore a wedding gown - something I had always wanted to do. The tux store lady encouraged Alen to wear tails - a cutaway which fit over her hips as a jacket would not have done.

My gown was altered by a lady who was very into weddings. On our fourth visit in which I had not exactly told her what kind of wedding it was she said to me, "Gail, I know."

We didn't tell people at my congregation. I had been told that either you invite the whole congregation or no one, so we opted for no one. This was largely because of Alen's work with a youth organization in a state that did not yet have a non-discrimination law. I told my congregation president a couple of months before that we were doing this privately. As I recall, he was concerned what others in the congregation might think.

Our lack of openness meant that on the day before our wedding Alen had to go to work. There was some big event and she had no excuse to get out of it. At the time I thought I'd never get over it - today it just seems like a piece of evidence about how not out we were compared to now.

We went back to work wearing wedding rings. Alen's very straight boss asked her if her ring meant something and then said something like, "Congratulations, Gail is a lovely girl."

What we didn't anticipate was how our families took us much more seriously after the wedding. Neither of them had been particularly enthusiastic and we dealt with quite a bit of negativity on the way to the chuppah. But somehow the ceremony gave us more legitimacy in their eyes. At least that's how it seems.

I'll never forget the toast Alen's brother made at the wedding - he said that this kind of thing was completely not done in Trinidad, but that he saw how much love and acceptance we had around us and that he hoped that in future, we would have more, also in Trinidad. And I feel that this really has come to pass in the 14 years since then.

Our friend Debbie and Shoshana sang a wonderful song which ended: "Here's a toast to Hannah who today is undercover. May she soon be blessed with a sister or a brother." Hannah, our dog from those years, passed away without getting to meet Gabi and Sasha. But Debbie and Shoshana's blessing has also come true.

Mazal tov to Mindy and Alan, who share our wedding anniversary and just celebrated 8 years, to my parents, who are celebrating 52 years of marriage today, and to Sara Rivka and Gideon who are getting married tomorrow.

Driving Questions 2 - Gabi and Prop 8

Once they learn to read, it's a whole new world of parenting.

A recent care package from our friend Rosalind who lives in California included a bag of buttons, "NO on 8". When we picked up the package on our way to the pool, Gabi wanted to know, "what is NO on 8?".

So I was trying to explain Prop. 8 to her and that some people don't want people of the same sex to be able to get married. She thought she understood that, "so when the law passed, people like you and Ima have to get divorced???"

That just about made me cry - that she would think they would pass a law that we have to get divorced. Then she decided it would have to have a grandfather clause, "No, people won't have to get divorced, just new people can't get married."

So I tried to explain to her that there's a difference between being married in the eyes of G-d, family and friends and being married by law. She understands the G-d, family and friends thing, and she checked that Ima and I are married that way, but she didn't really understand what being married by law means. It was weird to tell her we aren't married by law after all these years of telling her we are married. It felt very strange to tell her that not everyone recognizes our marriage. I mean, this is the kids whose classmates when they came over wanted to know which one of us broke the glass at the wedding. How much more married can you get in their eyes?

It's even more complicated because here in Israel, there's a long legal tradition of giving folks who are common law married, in Hebrew "known in public", the same rights as legally married folks. And our courts have extended those rights to same-sex couples such that there really aren't so many legal rights that have not been or could not be claimed by same-sex couples. So here in Israel, not married by law does not have so much force.

But of course that's not true in the US, as any bi-national couple like us can tell you.

But the hardest part of the whole discussion was the punch in the stomach impact of her 7 year old words, "so if the law passed, people like you and Ima have to get divorced?" As though a vote in California could create havoc in the lives of thousands of kids like her. Thank G-d it is more complicated.

what started this blog

I wrote this message, Reflections on Arevut (Mutual responsibility) and Sinat Hinam (causeless hatred) on August 2, 2009. The shooting in the bar noar gay youth club in Tel Aviv is what caused me to start this blog. The shooter has not been found.

The young people who were murdered last night in Tel Aviv at a gathering place for gay youth and buried tonight were named Nir Katz, 26 and Lizzie Tarboushi, 17, z"l.

I heard two parents on the radio today - Nir Katz's stepfather and the mother of a young man who had stepped outside when the shooter came in to the center last night. Both were incredibly supportive of their children. Nir Katz's stepfather talked about how most people in Israel are supportive as his family is - that this crime was committed by one person whose views are shared by few. He also spoke about the shootings as an act of "sinat hinam" - the very thing whose consequences we were calling to mind in our fast last week.

I spoke today about how Israel is considered a "high context society" - what happens here in the news has such a direct impact on us all. I had my ears open today to the radio - checking to see that the murders would get covered, would get taken seriously. The coverage sounded like what I know of Israel - I was even heartened by the message of Shas - that murder is against Jewish law and Jewish tradition (in case anyone wondered after last week's Torah reading).

This morning while on my way to work I stopped for a stranger who flagged me down and asked me to help him jump start his car. He got in my car and we drove around back of his house where his young daughter waited in the car, started his car and I went on my way. As we did this, I was thinking how I could not do this in the states, how fear for my safety would stop me. I live in a culture where people in certain defined ways and contexts and with exclusions, help one another and consider ourselves responsible for one another. It has its ups and downs, but that basic social contract, even covenant, the idea that we are partners in a common enterprise and attached to a common fate, that makes life here feel very worthwhile most of the time. Sinat Hinam seems to me the opposite of our Arevut, and that's part of what makes this such a painful day.

I pray for the families of those killed and injured, for a speedy recovery to all who were injured, and that they catch the person who did this soon.

My column from the Attleboro Sun Chronicle

It's not new, but it's good. Click here!

Losing and Finding Love

Lots of people are commenting on Jay Michaelson's recent piece in the Forward, How I'm Losing My Love for Israel. When I got a link to it on the Jewish Mosaic weekly newsletter, I decided I had to post my thoughts.

I thought of calling this entry How I'm Losing My Love for Jay Michaelson. But I don't actually know Jay Michaelson, I just admire him from afar as an out Jewish gay leader, part of a new younger generation who have moved so far forward on Jewish LGBT issues. I see him referred to often in Jewish Mosaic posts. In the awful aftermath of the Bar Noar shooting August 1, I was so touched by the response of Jewish Mosaic. I felt that I really was part of a worldwide Jewish LGBT community responsible and committed to one another. So Jay's article was a big disappointment.

I thought of calling this entry How I'm Losing My Love for the USA. Of course, that goes back awhile, to 1993 when I met and fell in love with a woman who is not a US citizen. The year we married the US passed DOMA, and four years after that we were on our way into exile here in Israel because the US has no same-sex partner immigration rights. But my love for the country I was born and raised in and its ideals has been on the upswing since the recent elections and I still entertain hopes that some of the grave injustices present there will turn around.

I thought of calling this entry How I'm Losing My Love for the American Jewish Community, but that would be pretty self destructive to write. I've spent the past 16 years working full time in or for the American Jewish Community - one way or another it's the resources of that community that pay my salary. And half my family and most of my friends are part of that community. So despite my frustration with how easily many North American Jews are willing to dismiss Israel, as though somehow it might be possible for them to disconnect from the world's largest Jewish population center, from the history, the heritage and the miracle that Israel is despite its faults, I can't say I'm losing my love or giving up on the community I grew up in.

I thought of calling this entry How I'm Losing My Love for the Gay Community, but such a statement would feel even more heretical and betraying. I've often felt very ambivalent about the gay community, which makes very little place for observant Jews like myself, but organizations such as Jewish Mosaic and Nehirim have help me maintain a sense that I am part of something, and this blog is in part my attempt to be more out and more connected in the aftermath of the Bar Noar shooting last month.

So I thought the only honest thing I could call this is How I'm Losing My Love of Love, at least the romantic ideas of love I had when I was younger. From where I am today, love is more an action than a feeling. Love is holding my 3 year old when he was vomiting last night and the 2 hours my partner watched the kids so I could sleep it off this morning. Love is going to a parent meeting exhausted at 8 pm and struggling to understand the Hebrew and the completely foreign culture so I can be part of my daughter's education. Love is the hundreds of volunteer hours put a couple of dozen families here in Tzur Hadassah so that we can have a thriving progressive synagogue, the only one in this area. Love is the hours that I and my co-workers spend helping North American students (like Jay Michaelson once was) find funds, housing, Shabbat meals, and all they need to be here in Israel for however long they can and make a connection. Sure, it's our paychecks, but we do it because of our love and commitment to the Jewish People.

M. Scott Peck explained this in The Road Less Travelled. I'll paraphrase him badly no doubt, but he said that when we love, we want what is best for our beloved, and through our love and commitment, we work toward that. All kinds of wonderful things here in Israel, from the Israel Religious Action Center, the Reform and Masorti movements, the Jerusalem Open House, Rabbis for Human Rights, BeTzelem, etc., are here because of the actions and the love of Jews in North America.

So if you feel like your love for Israel or for anyone or anything in the world is waning, think about what the last thing you did was to nurture the connection. Love is an action.