by Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback
June is known as Pride month in America as an acknowledgment of the transformational change in perception around LGBTQ+ inclusion over the past five decades since the Stonewall Uprising on June 28, 1969. What was once considered shameful by so many has now become a matter of pride and celebration.
We have come a long way and there is indeed much to celebrate. I am particularly proud to be part of a religious tradition that is dynamic and adaptive in this regard. What our Biblical ancestors and other civilizations considered an “abomination” three thousand years ago is increasingly accepted across the denominations of Judaism. Our own Reform movement and Stephen Wise Temple are fully inclusive when it comes to LGBTQ+ marriage, ordination, and participation in the religious life of our community.
Israel is a beacon of LGBTQ+ inclusion in the Middle East and beyond. Israel’s LGBTQ+ citizens are afforded a broad range of rights and protections denied to many even in the Western world, including prohibitions on employment discrimination and civic recognition of marriage equality and adoption by same-sex couples.
At this moment of vicious anti-Israel rhetoric, it is important to note just how extraordinary this is. While there is still much work to be done, Israel is truly an outlier in the region when it comes to LGBTQ+ inclusion. What is troubling to note is the general lack of appreciation of this fact in the progressive community especially. Hen Mazzig is a gay Israeli of Mizrahi descent who has written about ways in which Jews and Israelis have been discriminated against within the LGBTQ+ community. Rainbow flags with Jewish stars on them have been banned from Pride marches because they were deemed “triggering” by organizers while Palestinian flags were welcomed.
It would seem to me that progressives who care about LGBTQ+ inclusion and women’s rights would be particularly supportive of Israel’s achievements in these areas.
We’ve come a long way and there is so much to be proud of. What’s shameful is that there are those who refuse to celebrate such progress when it’s particularly and uniquely bound up with the State of Israel. May the time soon come when all we can appreciate one another fully: gay or straight, cis or trans, progressive, liberal, or conservative. We are—each of us—created in the image of the Divine.
