>> welcome to mosaic. i'm rabbi eric visen. it's all kindsover race, class, orientation. we invite you about lbgt leadership and would like to have you meet katherine tick, the director of leadership development at the jewish community in doughment federation and the peninsula and joining her is david robinson, the bay area director of a national nonprofit that works on inclusion for lgbt

jewish in the community. welcome, katherine and david. >> thank you for having us. >> i know the jewish community federation, the national nonprofit have been working on the issue of how paying attention for decades no and i want to just ask you, what's the latest interration coming out of the jewish bay area here? >> thank you, for asking, eric. we started a program late last summer called lgbtq, leadership development and then lunch, in november, actually technically, with 12 members and it initial cohort. the program was designed to bring folks who identify lbgt to the table, the proverbial

decision-making table. as an inclusive community, we have representation from recall of our jewish community, including the lgbtq community. the program is going to run about nine months. the idea is to give people leadership skills or participants leadership skills in order to have them ready, poised, and to join committees around the jewish community and in the pacific community and the lgbt community. everything was hoped through the jewish values and through their own leadership style. so this is sort of the tangible product of a bit of the federation of three years of our work and we will be greeting for our next cohort of pathways starting in may, june, it will be the next cohort. that's the latest/greatest.

>> i know for all of us in the bay area, we patining to the nomenclature of how we label ourselves and refer to other folks in the community who are not like us, but we want to show that we have a level of respect with the language we use. before we go further, why don't woe we just start outlining lbgtq and then folks know what those letters themselves mean. >> l stands for lesbian. g stands for gay. b is bisexual. t is transsexual, people who either have a gender that is different from the standard which is male or female and all male-bodied people having a male identity and all female bodied people having a male

identity. it can include transsexuals who have had a sex change or people who identify as just different in terms of gender in a variety of way and q is queer which used to be a derogatory term hurled at gay people but been reclaimed, especially by younger people over the last two decades and increasingly a term that's different from the mainstream in terms of sexually assault and gender. lgbtq, lesbian, gay, bi, trans, and quee! they've been barking on this. the pathways program and tack about a little bit from a jewish values and jewish landscape perspective do the

community consider this to be worthy of our attention and cultivation? >> the jewish community federation is really seeing itself as a catalyst for change in the jewish community and if we are going to truly be inclusive and engage our jewish community, we want to make sure we're including all of our jewish community, so this program, the pathways to leadership program came out because they saw a group of leaders at the jewish community fred ration. they're seen throughout the jewish community that there's lgbtq lay leaders. we've had a beautiful representation but the small representation, truth any, of hgbt lidars, and we felt it was time to putting in the next generation of lay leaders so

when we as a community make decisions on agent cities, at sports, in communities, we show all the voices, just not just those who happen to hope request. we look at and it and we thought it was a way to offer our interested participants and in this initial pathways program a way in, development, connections, information, knowledge about the jewish community. so in the end, they are ready to join our decision-making organizations and make it be a part of the community, not on the outside. >> let me take a quick break and back your when we return on

mosaic. boston marathon bombing and

with this particular program, the immediate genesis of it was the recognition that the same half dozen whenever someone wanted to hear, every committee or focus group turned to the same people who increasingly over the year were themselves over 50 or over 60 or just not able to represent the

incredible diversity of the lbgt jewish community let alone the lbgt community around the bay area. >> how does this particular leadership development program function? what are the aims? >> the aims are that we want to provide people with a context and frame for understanding the jewish community and then themselves as leaders in the jewish community. i like to say, we are offering opportunities to develop both black and white and gray skills. so the black and white are the tangible. we have a workshop on the sensible conflict management. and then anyone can learn, but certainly as a lay leader, manage really difficult conversation. the gray skills are who am i as a leader, what are my natural strengths, what do i need to work on, how do i understand myself in a room of leaders?

we began the program in a retreat to get to know one another and the program will end with a celebration of the year's work. in between, we are also going to have a session on fund raising, asking folks for money. established jewish organization to be immediately followed by a paneled discussion of new jewish organization, as you take a vision and make it a reality. >> i want to ask you a big question that i know is an ongoing question, the leadership programs always look to scale development like how do you have a relationship with a director or participate in a board or fund raising or participate in program development or implementation or build community, all of which are vital skills. i'm wondering, how then, you see this particular program as particular to the lbgt community or in other words, is there a particular lbgtq

identity formation issue, is there a particular lbgtq that's in its turn is of value to sitting on a particular board of any organization or the way money is raised or the way one looks to the cultivation of the vitality of a future in a faith community? >> as we recruited participants for the program, i sometimes got asked, well, if it's a rather small niche, do you need an lbgtq jewish program and there are issues particular to being out as lbgtq and quite different in other ways and also a great diversity of people who identify as l and just the fact that we have all

of these letters, really, there's a huge diversity of experience, identity, affiliation, and the aim of the program is to get people in both identities of the lbgt and the jewish and as a participant, where you might be and want to go. many differences like in the jewish community, it's proverbial, two jews, five opinions. there's a huge difference on issues of sexuality and what it means to be out and parenting and faith. so many things. so to be treated in understanding of your own identity which is hopefully evolving and the many differences, makes you a more powerful leader. >> we need to take a break and say good-bye to katherine david, but before we do, we

want you to let folks know if they'd like you to have more information, where do they go on the web or what number to call to find more about this wonderful opportunity? >> they can go to our web site, jewish sfjcf.org. >> thank you, we'll say good- bye to you and return to mosaic with two new participants for the wonderful conversation. please join us in just a moment here on mosaic.

>> good morning, welcome back to mosaic. inclusion in the jewish community, lbgtq and leadership

development. please welcome dara, of coheart and the federation's lbgtq alliance and sam goldman, of the lbgtq alliance. welcome. how is it for you so far? >> it's wonderful for myself and the other participants. a diverse group of people.

>> how many people are in this particular cohort? >> there are 12 participants in the cohort. >> how often do you meet? >> a monthly basis. >> wonderful. and you mentioned there were some eye opening kinds of presentations and conversations. can you give an example of what one of those might be for you? >> yeah, a couple of them, one has been looking at how do we tell a personal story and how do we use that in talking to the community and also having some rabbis that are self- included looking at text from both the lbgt perspective, especially some of the more controversial texts and some that are important to be able to versed in. >> i think it's highly important to talk about text, we talk about rabbinic text.

>> what do they did? >> offer to the lbgtq jewish community and make sure there is programming available, one of the main objectives is to oversee and maintain a grant that goes to really do most of the outside of the synagogues program for lbgtq jewish folks in the bay area. that program is only a few years old and it's really important in providing all kinds of really fun and innovative programs for the communities and we hope to provide grants in the future to other organizations and individuals that may want to provide programs for the lbgtq community as well. >> what attracted to you this

to this program? why was it something you said yes to? >> i think being able to make an impact in the jewish community for me personally is important, with the addition of being in the lbgtq community as well. those two things intersecting and making sure that other people get involved and feel like they have the home in the community, it's really important to me. >> and for me, this opportunity came around birthday, turning 40, realizing i need to both use eye cream and i didn't know what my place was formally in the jewish community and my father worked in federation for most of my life and other family worked in the jewish community but i haven't known what my personal place was going to be and hadn't realized i was super involved in the jewish community and that's something really missing from my life. >> come back as we continue

this wonderful conversation. come back here on mosaic.

♪

♪here i am. rock you like a hurricane♪ fiber one now makes cookies. find them in the cookie aisle. >> lbgtq and jewish identities.

>> i think that for me, it's been both an opportunity to bring together two core identities and a way of making sure that there is a diverse lbgt voice at the table of jewish organizations and incluesivity and an opportunity to look at who are the upcoming leaders and who are the friends that i have that are jewish and lbgt and a lot aren't involved in the jewish community and look at the history of what the alliance has done and what the leaders and mentors have done in the community and look at what the direction is that people are able to go in the future. >> i think that the federation's mission is to ensure that every jew in the bay area has a feeling of being in a home or a feeling of being connected and a lot of lbgt jews that i meet may have a

strong lbgt identity and may not be as connected to the jewish identity or finding ways they can engage in whether it's a synagogue program or volunteer programs or even new innovative programs that they may want to start themselves, i think, is really an important thing, and there's resources out there to make sure that happens. these are just programs that can bring people together to ensure that people know about them and make the community stronger as a whole. >> people across the country, really, across the world, come out at different points in their life, at different ages as lbgtq and i wonder for you, what's the age and the diversity and among here in the bay area? >> i think people are coming out younger and younger. for me, having come out at 19, for the generation before me,

it was really radical to have come out at such a young age and now we see folks in middle school embracing their identity and allowing jewish organizations to change and look at how inclusion is happening. >> from your perspective of the niches of the federation and what it looks at? >> well, the community is diverse and the lbgt community, it means a lot of different communities. you may be a single young gay man in the castro and how you serve the diverse audience is tricky but the lbgt alliance is going to help figure that out more as we bring in new leadership for the alliance and bring in more members and recruit people that may want to get involved and it's really

diverse. it's not like, you know, a typical, one typical jewish story. there's so many stories out there and bringing these programs together, beginning to hear these stories is more of the united community being helpful. >> it sounds like a leadership program in and of itself is inclusive with everybody in that particular framework. what do you hope the dreams are going to be? let's say five years from now. >> i would love to see there being the opportunity for the lbgt programming that happens in the jewish community or to have more leaders involved and also, to have both institutional organizations, jews that are lbgt jews at all levels. >> believe it or not, dara and sam a we've come to the end of

the time. we hope you'll continue this conversation on lbgtq inclusion in the faith community and the jewish community. we spent a lot of time here on mosaic interviewing people and asking them questions that you listen to in terms of their answer. in a world that needs so much healing, from your perspective, what heals? thank you so much for being here with us on mosaic. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

>> welcome to bay sunday. i'm frank mallicoat. we begin with your weekly pitch. if you've got a show idea, go to facebook.com/baysunday, comment on the page and hopefully we can get in touch. well, tv is forever changing. so many options from netflix to cable to web tv. there's a new series out that has captured a ton of buzz. it's called red sweep, part of a u.s. drug military experiment in exchange for his freedom. it debuted back in may and we're excited to have