Israel sees slow but growing acceptance for gay Orthodox

TEL AVIV, Israel (RNS) Though never short on spectacle, this year's
annual gay pride festival was even more colorful with a parade float,
sponsored by Google, representing the country's religious gay and
lesbian communities.

Dressed in shorts and T-shirts bearing the words "Religious Pride
Community," the 20- and 30-somethings who accompanied the float on
Friday (June 10) smiled proudly if even a bit self-consciously when
onlookers did a double take or shouted, "Good for you!" 

While Israeli law forbids discrimination based on sexual orientation
in most areas of life, and gay soldiers can serve openly in the
military, the public at large is only beginning to accept the notion
that observant Jews can be both openly religious and openly gay.

Religious Jews who are gay or lesbian have traditionally hidden
their sexual orientation from their rabbis and others because
traditional interpretations of the Torah consider same-gender sexuality
an "abomination."

Within Orthodox communities, the Modern Orthodox are much more
open-minded than the ultra-Orthodox, many of whom still view
homosexuality as an unspeakable sin.

The irony, activists say, is that gay religious Jews don't just
remain in the closet; many simply stop living a religious life
altogether.

"Many religious people who realize they're gay feel rejected by the
society they grew up in and decide to become secular," explained Talya
Lev, a spokeswoman for Bat Kol, an Israeli-based Orthodox lesbian
organization. "Yet there is a growing number of gay religious people for
whom religion is an integral part of who they are, and they won't give
it up."

Activists say there are thousands of religious gays and lesbians in
Israel, the majority of them still in the closet. But in the past five
or six years, she said, more have summoned the courage to "come out" as
Orthodox and gay.

"They're no longer running away, and some communities are even
embracing them," she said.

A few mainstream Jewish institutions are also reaching out. Last
year, the U.S.-based ROI Community of Young Jewish Innovators gave Bat
Kol a $10,000 grant to develop an English-language website that is now
accessible to observant lesbians.

While conceding that "there's still a long way to go," Lev said
Orthodox Jews are at least "beginning to acknowledge that (we) exist."
Part of the shift can be traced to "Trembling Before God," a
groundbreaking 2001 documentary that followed American and Israeli
Orthodox gays and lesbians as they struggled to reconcile their religion
and sexuality.

Daniel Jonas, spokesman of Havruta, an Orthodox gay men's
association that also belongs to the Religious Pride Community
coalition, said the film "had a strong impact on religious society."

"Some of those interviewed were kicked out of their homes, their
communities, committed suicide," he said, putting the religious
community's exile of gays and lesbians on full display.

He also credited -- of all things -- Israel's 2005 withdrawal from
the Gaza Strip for changing attitudes. He said many Orthodox Jews began
to question their faith after the Israeli military forcibly uprooted
religious settlers from Gaza, despite rabbis' assurances that God would
not let this happen.

"Suddenly, perhaps for the first time, people realized they cannot
put all their trust in the leadership of their rabbis," he said. "They
had to think for themselves. It gave space for the individual in modern
Orthodox society."

Even so, many Orthodox Jews and institutions stick with tradition,
believing that homosexuality is a preference, not an orientation, that
can be unlearned with the help of "conversion" therapy.

Gidi Grunberg's father told a family therapist that his son was ill.

"The therapist asked my father whether he could change his height or
his eye color. When he said `no,' the therapist said, `That's how it is
with being homosexual. Your son is who he is."'

As a teenager, Grunberg said he quit his religious youth group
"because I knew they wouldn't accept me if I came out of the closet."
Today, he coordinates three groups for Orthodox gay and lesbian teens
and young adults that draw about 100 participants to "discreet"
locations.

"It's a place where they can be themselves," Grunberg said, "both
religious and homosexual."

Lev, the lesbian activist, remains convinced that familiarity will
breed acceptance, however slowly. As religious Jews realize that gays
"are not strangers, but are in fact their friends, students, neighbors,
and children," people will be "more willing to accept the person, even
if they have issues with the act of homosexuality itself."

That's how it's been for Daniel Jonas, a spokesman for Havruta, the
gay men's Orthodox group, who lives in a quiet Jerusalem neighborhood
with his partner, Uri Erman.

"Our neighbors figured out that we're gay and they're cordial," said
Jonas, who prays every day. "But I think the religious girls downstairs
are still trying to come to grips with it."

Erman, who is no longer Orthodox, and Jonas keep a kosher home and
they attend traditional Shabbat-eve dinners together at their Orthodox
parents' homes. While they could find more acceptance in more secular
Tel Aviv, they plan to stay in conservative Jerusalem.

"It would be very easy to leave," Jonas said, "but I love this city
and feel committed to fight to make it a more tolerant place."