(upbeat groovy music continues) (lighthearted guitar music) good morning. welcome to mosaic. i am honored to be your host this morning. june is lgbtq pride month. usually we are used to this kind of a conversation about lgbtq life in a public arena within the political spectrum. one of the stories we

don't talk about much is lgbtq life in the faith community. i would like to invite you into a conversation with maxine epstein who is director of institutional advancement at the jewish community high school of the bay in san francisco and the rabbi is the director of music at the congregation bethel in berkeley. welcome. >> thank you. >> this is a different kind of a conversation that we usually have but lgbtq life in a faith community in the jewish community, let's start and ask each of you what has your experience been in the jewish community itself? maxine. >> wow, well, i am going to date myself. i am twice blessed. being a lesbian and being jewish, it was difficult because i didn't come out until graduate school. i didn't think being queer had anything to

being jewish. i had no role models, had no one to model myself after. i didn't think i could be jewish and be queer until i met somebody in graduate school at the same seminary that i attended as a communal professional studying nonprofit management. and my first woman lover was there at huc and usc. i thought oh my god, the heavens opened. talk about two parts of myself that became integrated. >> it's a very similar and very different story for me. being transgender, the trans community is one might say in broad

strokes running similar experiences perhaps 30 or 40 years after gay and lesbian people. so the kinds of stories you are telling are the kinds of stories trans people now are experiencing right in this moment. i get calls all the time simply because i am a transgender rabbi. i get calls from all over, e-mails, post cards. people still send post cards apparently. people are having the same experience you described. growing up, they think they're the only trans jewish person, the only jew who experience this had and they're reaching out to talk to somebody. or they're perhaps really struggling because they perhaps believe what many people have believed which is jewish life has no place for people gender nonconforming or gender variant which thank god is no longer true but is still true

too much of the time. >> between the two of you, if we can say there is a generational difference, all kinds of say liberation struggles change language by experience and by ways in which we integrate into the wider community. one of the words in lgbtq is q, queer. for a certain generation of folks, that word was a word that was degrading and has over the years been reclaimed by lgbtq community as a word that's affirming. i am wondering sort of between the two of you if you can comment on that transition. in some ways, you embody that language shift. >> i have always reclaimed the in being lesbian and have always been much more comfortable with that word because it meant everything i thought i was,

which was funny and smart, powerful, empowered simply to be who i was. i am comfortable and would love it if it were dgbtq as opposed to l but that's just me. >> i was admitted to rivinical school 14 years ago and stepped on the issue you just brought up. because there were reporters calling me things which was very surprising. i identified as queer because i was 24 and everybody was starting to use queer even though we had grown up with it as a school yard insult. that was the horrible word hurled at us. but it was at the time when we began to try to say we need a different word. i think the feeling amongst my generation is we made a

different word because -- need a different word. none of them are the same as what queer now means which is a more expansive kind of identity that is not just about personal affectional nature necessarily but also about a certain political alliance, about a certain orientation on fluidity and potential. so queer means to me a very different thing. it doesn't mean what they used to call us on the school bus. >> thank you so much. we are going to take a quick break and return to this wonderful conversation in honor as lgbtq pride month. please join us in just a moment back here on mosaic.

good morning. welcome back to mosaic. i am honored to be

your host. we are in the middle of a wonderful conversation in honor of june as lgbtq pride month. we want to welcome back maxine epstein, director of institutional advancement at the institutional high school of the bay. and rabbi from director of music. welcome back. we were talking about shifts in language and your relative experiences in the jewish community around lgbtq issues and landscape. i am wondering if you can talk a little bit about institutional changes you have seen over the years and even in places in which you work that cover some of the social shifts, theological liturgical shifts, some shifts people don't typically think of because they're not necessarily overtly political or overtly something that the news reports on. rabbi, what do you reflect on in that way? >> i have worked in synagogues

for about 15 years. it has been an ongoing evolution to figure out how do we not just say sure, lgbtq people are welcome to walk in here? but also when we do walk in, does what's going on in that synagogue speak to our lives? does it reflect who we are? does it include the things most important to us? that i think is where some parts of the jewish community have done wonderful work and some haven't started that part yet. for example if we are one of the things that's been important for lgbtq communities has been gender equality and talking about god and prayer. hebrew prayers talk about god as he all the time. one of the major questions frequently dealt with is who says god is a he? what does that mean? what is gender anyway? so reframing those

questions and perhaps putting in a prayer book, a gender less prayer book for example. or if we are calling someone and their lube roux name is son of someone or daughter of someone which is how we do the traditional, what if someone says i don't want to be identified as male or female? we need to come up with new ways to make hebrew names. those are the kind of things we have been engaged in. >> we should say when someone is called to the torah to have the honor of having a bible portion of the week read in their honor, that in that liturgical sequence that somebody is named by their hebrew name and the formula is so and so the son or the daughter of and then naming one's parent or parents. interesting that on that simple

liturgical experience that we have this deep conversation that impinges on how we in fact relate to god. >> it's only one example. but it's something i think before 10 or 15 indoors ago none of us had thought of as a problem. now we realize it has limitations we need to address. >> maxine from your experience, even things people think were not particularly an issue but need to be highlighted? >> working at a high school, high school teenagers, it's the age of ism. from 9th to 12th grade here are teens grappling with who they are, their identity. why i love working at this high school and why i have a daughter at this high school is because it is not only a rigorous academic place to study but it educates the whole person. it helps every single student become the best of who

they are and who they will become. and it's small because the faculty can give this to every student. we have a number of students who have come out recently in a very loving and supportive environment. that never were to happen when i was in high school. it has transgender students. and the logo on the both room even to that point of we never thought of that, is all gender logo. it is a pluralist tick place to be. i wish it was here when i was a teenager. >> me too. >> not just for religious observance but for just being who you are naturally and accepting that. more than just tolerant of it, understanding it. >> it seems part of the sub text of what you are saying, especially in a faith-based

framework, is that within a jewish context what we are moving toward is not saying that we welcome you in. it's really saying god approves of you. you reflect god as you are just as much as any other person and just the fact that we don't necessarily have the language attached to it doesn't mean you are less legitimate, that in fact maybe something as simple as gender identity restrooms represents god's evolving creativity as it becomes known to us, that it is something that's always existed but we are discovering it in that context. >> it's making all of us walk the walk. whether you are a teen who doesn't believe in god whatsoever, there is still a place for you at this high school. it is pluralist tick. yes, god loves all of us. >> absolutely. we will say good-bye and welcome another guest. thank you so much for remaining with us. maxine epstein will remain with us.

please join us in a moment when we consider this conversation here on mosaic.

welcome back to mosaic. i am honored to be your host. we are in the middle of a wonderful conversation within the context of june as lgbtq pride month and lgbtq life in the jewish community. welcome back maxine.

we would like to introduce you to gene plecer, community manager in the bay area. welcome. >> thank you so much. it's a pleasure to be there. kesha is an organization based in boston that does national work around the country. we were founded 20 years ago in a different environment and at the time it was very hard for people who were lgbtq to feel like they could live fully integrated jewish lives. when they entered jewish spaces they had to leave their queer, lgbtq identity at the door. we were founded with the mission of trying to change that and create a world where people could be queer and jewish at the same time. we have spent the last 20 years working across the country helping make jewish institutions more inclusive and accepting of lgbtq people. >> wonderful. in hebrew your name means rainbow so it is a deliberate reference point from a faith based perspective to the

bible story of noah and seeing the rainbow which is considered to be the first sign of covenant. >> it also means bow as in a bow and arrow. >> what's your experience from your perspective? >> i am a second generation gay. my parents are lesbians. i grew up in north carolina, grew up going to a synagogue part of the conservative movement. we for the most part had very few issues. we were fully accepted by our congregation. there were always a few awkward conversations, a few people who were surprised or didn't know how to react. i never felt discrimination or felt unwelcome. sort of speaking to what the rabbi was saying previously, there still are corners where people are less tolerant, less accepting, less able to comprehend. there was an

orthodox minion, orthodox prayer gathering that met on the lower level of our synagogue every week. because it was a smaller community, they would seek out people to join and create the ten people you need to have a prayer service. they would come recruiting upstairs. one time i joined them. i was brought down there, and they wouldn't call me up as the son of two women. they insisted on calling me as the son of abraham which is sort of what you do generically when you don't know who somebody's parents are or when they're adopted and you don't know who their parents are. i remember that moment feeling wow, this is not something i am not comfortable with. they're not accepting and my family for who we are. i remember feeling a distance to judaism i hadn't felt before and i never went back downstairs. >> so based on this experience, where are places that we still need to be better, to explore

and get better in our jewish community? >> as a mother of twin daughters who went to a jewish day school, we were the first two mommy family to go to this jewish day school in marin. i will never forget when the kids were in first grade, we got a call from a parent who said what do you mean you are a two mommy family? yes, hi, we are a two mommy family. we know your son. he is in our daughter's class. my son wants to know how comers' not having two mothers as well? you've made it very difficult for me. i said well i guess you are unlucky. that was the conversation, which it is so nice to hear what a trail blazer your parents were. >> yeah. >> so i think there is a lot of work still to do, as much as we

accept and try, there is always the nice people who don't say anything in front of us. but they'll always be behind closed doors. >> we talked earlier about the intersectionality which is a word that typically comes out of the social justice arena around race but has been used more globally for other kinds of integration of identity. in this particular context, jewish and lgbtq, which is also compounded by jews of color in our community as well. so i am wondering in that context, are there ways in which you feel like it's not exactly run parallel? some places there is more jewish advancement. sometimes there is more lgbtq advancement. they're not always in sync. how do you work with that issue within the context of

our jewish community either personally or professionally? >> i will say a big part of the work we are doing in the bay area is just letting the community know that we exist, that we are here. there are people who share both of these identities who are jewish and lgbtq. as the rabbi said in the previous segment, some people think they are the only one. they must be so rare. as we found, running community programs where we create spaces where people who are jewish and lgbtq can come together and meet each other and compare their experiences and their shared identities. they discover there is in fact dozens if not hundreds of people in the bay area who share these combined backgrounds and really gain a lot by coming together and seeing that you are not alone, that there are so many people who are out there who share these experiences, and you can connect over them. >> we will take a quick break and come back to consider this

conversation in just a moment here on mosaic.

good morning. welcome back to mosaic. we are about to finish a wonderful conversation in honor of lgbtq month in june here in the bay area and really nationwide. we'd like to reintroduce you to maxine, director of institutional advancement at the jewish community high school of the bay and gene goldstein p. welcome back. we have a little bit time left but we were having a conversation about places that still have a bit of darkness that need more light shed on them ways in which the jewish community this issue needs to have a little bit more progress and advancement. so maxine, what are your reflections on this issue? >> i think speaking as a woman, gay or not gay, jewish or not jewish, i think within our community, i am still making 79

cents on the dollar. we have such a very straight heterosexual male-run organizations across the board. so there is always disadvantages of being female as a communal professional, working in our jewish community in nonprofit management. and it's the system. it's a corporate model where even social workers are being replaced with lawyers or business execs because we think or whomever thinks that running a nonprofit like a for profit is the way to go. i don't necessarily agree. >> it reminds me that now we have orlando. and orlando now has become a word with

tremendous potency attached. it's not just a city on a map. it means a lot on a lot of levels. we are going to end up mining that and parissing that for many years to come. in that context, it was not just the largest domestic terror shooting in our country. it was predominantly to the lgbtq community and latin community. because this particular lgbtq club was having its latin night. and the community has responded in orlando as we see with tremendous love and attention on many different levels. i wonder how you think of the simple relational level at which it seems that even in the bay area as jean was saying earlier that people can feel alone and alienated even in a place where lgbtq is so predominant. i am

wondering as a place we need to get to just in a couple sentences, what's your reflection on what is that lack of relationship? what is that alienation? what is that aloneness? >> there are moments of light and moments of hope. jchs, the place where i work, what i do love so much, i love a lot about it, but what i love is one of the youngest victims akira murray who was only 18 graduated from a small high school, a faith-based parochial high school. i think it was west catholic high school in philadelphia. our school sent letters of condolence as faith based to faith based. >> we have a couple seconds left. do you have a sentence or two? >> i will say that our work with teens across the country we think is some of the most urgent

work we are doing. there are still such high rates of bullying and lack of acceptance among teens directed at lgbtq teens across the country. the work we are doing to support and bring queer teens together i think is some of the most important and it's a real focus of ours. >> thank you. thank you so much for being with us on mosaic. have a wonderful day. and happy lgbtq pride month.

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