Bottom Up Torah: How Queer Jews Are Changing Orthodoxy

What does that mean for the Judaism of tomorrow

Adam Mintz [00:01:38]:
Welcome to Madlik. My name is Geoffrey Stern, and at Madlik, we light a spark or shed some light on a Jewish text or tradition. Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz, we host Madlik Disruptive Torah on your favorite podcast platform. And now on YouTube and Substack, we also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show notes. This week we read Parashat Vayeshev. This week on Madlik, we welcome Rabbi Steve Greenberg, founding director of Eshel, to explore whether our tradition is ready not just to make room, but to grow. Well, welcome, Steve. This is an absolute pleasure and I understand that you know Adam from the good old days on Roosevelt Island.

Steve Greenberg [00:02:20]:
Adam used to come to Roosevelt island when I. It was my first pulpit and he used to come and actually provide laning and davening to kind of, you know, actually needed him because he was lonely on Roosevelt island in those years.

Adam Mintz [00:02:35]:
I’d say camaraderie was the best part of it.

Steve Greenberg [00:02:39]:
It’s good to be here with you, Jeffrey and Adam.

Adam Mintz [00:02:42]:
So anyway, I was doing my research and I came across this unbelievable YouTube. It’s a three minute clip of you where you talk about the first time you decided to get the aliyah, maybe even lane, the aliyah from Yom Kippur. And at Mincha, where we read this parsha that deals every sort of sexual, illicit relations in the eyes of the Torah. And you said that your willingness to be vulnerable to the text required the text to be vulnerable to me and everyone like me. The people who decide what this text means have never heard my story and the story of people like me. And if they did, they would no longer be so sure of the meaning of this text. The letters will become faces. So this Yom Kippur, I got the notice from my rabbi that I was lad on Mincha, and he said, I only have the first two aliyot, and the chazan was going to take the third aliyah. And I said to him, the chazan has nothing else to do in Yom Kippur but to take the third aliyah. Well, we have an amazing chazan, and he happens to be gay. And I think that he was following a minhag that you created in this little vignette that you recorded. And I don’t know whether you realize that there are gay people who are taking that aliyah to own it, but also to give a face behind the text. Welcome, Rabbi Steve.

Steve Greenberg [00:04:14]:
Thank you so much, Jeffrey. It’s a beautiful story to hear.

Adam Mintz [00:04:17]:
So tell us your story, Al Rey Alechad, and then we’ll get into some of the verses. And as you said, I’m optimistic.

Steve Greenberg [00:04:24]:
Well, firstly, I just want to say that.

Steve Greenberg [00:04:27]:
That was the very beginning of my struggles. I spent, you know, 15 years going to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services and putting the tallis over my head and weeping when those verses were read. And finally, after, like, I had run out of tears, I decided to.

Steve Greenberg [00:04:50]:
See if I could get the aliyah. And I found that, you know, it was a possible way for me to actually walk directly into the lion’s den, you know, like on Yom Kippur on the day that is a death rehearsal and an opportunity to square yourself in Kolsh, Baruch hu. And it was terrifying. But when the verses began to be read, a calm came over me that was like nothing. I expected that, as you said, I being willing to be vulnerable to the text, my not walking away actually required the text to respond to me and in a way, to acknowledge people like me. And on some level, I recognize God did. It’s just the rabbis, we’re not, like, up to speed yet. And so the question that I had to figure out was, well, I don’t know what these verses mean, but I don’t think anybody else does quite yet either. And so I began to actually focus my attention on learning what might have been the possible readings of that text that could still allow for gay and lesbian people to feel like they belonged in the covenantal community.

Adam Mintz [00:06:04]:
And believe it or not, you know what, the rabbis can change the meaning of a verse 180 degrees. They actually in the midrash say, and he never ceased to be with her after that. So I think it’s true that.

Adam Mintz [00:07:33]:
Once we take a face behind a verse, we could go 180 degrees. It struck me between the eyes.

Steve Greenberg [00:07:40]:
Well, that text is actually really a powerful one. I’m not sure it parallels the story perfectly for a couple of reasons. But what it demonstrates, I think, is that the pathways toward God’s will are not always obvious and sometimes are counterintuitive. And that we actually know from the story of the Mashiach in general who comes through all kinds of fractures in the traditional that are, they remain prohibited. Right. Yet nonetheless, they become a piece of the story. And so part of the tension that I experience in this work is to how do we get communities to commit to a tradition and make room for people who don’t obviously fit? There’s a new movie out that Eshel is behind, which we’re supporting in many places called Holy Closet. And it’s a story of 7, 8, 8 minute vignettes of the life of queer Orthodox Jews. And it’s life cycle moments. It’s dating, it’s marriage, it’s children. And each one of these stories is powerful because they’re not waiting for rabbis to say it’s okay they’re deciding that they are going to retain their faith, they’re going to retain their commitment to halacha, and they’re going to live out a life of love and commitment, even if they don’t have a full answer to these questions and even if the community is only partially willing to engage them. So part of what’s changing is the recognition that the energy, you might say, of Tamar is to imagine that she is called to be part of something. That the pathway is not clean or easy. And that I think is where we are, is that we are refusing. Here’s what we used to do. We used to either be silent, marry against our needs and someone else’s needs, right. Or undermine or live a life of loneliness. Or we left. And now what we’re trying to claim is you can be real about who you are and stay. And that possibility of demanding to be part of the system, even when it’s not clear how that will work out, is a piece of the energy that I think is generating a lot of success both here and in Israel.

Adam Mintz [00:10:18]:
Now, how much, Steve, do you think that that’s a result of the fact that generally communities are more bottom up than top down now means authority within the Jewish community is less important than maybe it was when we were in Rab?

Steve Greenberg [00:10:37]:
Well, I think that’s partially true, although one could claim that it’s always been that way. It’s just that it hasn’t been recognized. Meaning, I think, you know.

Steve Greenberg [00:10:50]:
In other words, the rabbis recognized that they couldn’t either portray God as an imperious dictator, nor they themselves could be one. And why? Because they had to make the Torah livable to the human beings that they loved and cared for, because so did God. And so on some level, I think the insight may be now.

Steve Greenberg [00:11:12]:
I can tell you that I do same-sex commitment ceremonies. They’re not kedushin, but they do celebrate the love of two men or two women. And Orthodox family members and community members are showing up and dancing. And they’re not asking their rabbis, is it okay or not okay. They are simply saying, I love these people and I’m not gonna live in a world where I can’t celebrate the love of people who I care about.

Adam Mintz [00:12:03]:
I mean, I’ll just tell you, in conversion, I find that a lot of that changed over Covid. It’s like you said about rabbis, you know, over Covid, you were allowed to find Google rabbis because you didn’t got a shul anymore. And you know that to me, that changed everything. So all of a sudden, if you wanted to convert and your rabbi said no, it didn’t make any difference because I can Google Mints and I can convert or I can. I can Google green, find someone to, you know, to officiate at my ceremony. So, I mean, it’ll be interesting, you know, over time how much, how we’ll see how much Covid changed all these things.

Steve Greenberg [00:12:40]:
I think you might be right. It’s also just. I think it’s the fact that people want to be personally committed to something rather than controlled by it. And I think that Orthodoxy, we have a tension in Orthodoxy of passion and submission. There is this tension of personal passion and commitment and personal involvement of Kavanaugh vs. Kavua. Right. Of Keva. So I kind of think you’re probably correct that we get requests. I can talk about Escher a little bit, the organization for LGBTQ Orthodox Jews, and we have support groups and we have conferences and retreats for queer people, for the families of Orthodox, for Orthodox parents. We have a warm line and we are getting an unbelievable number, you know, this too, Adam, of queer people who want to convert to Orthodox Judaism. So there’s something about Orthodoxy that conveys a kind of mature ability to respond to. To these kinds of challenging questions and nonetheless remain disciplined and knowledgeable and committed. And I think that is an exciting change in kind of the way Orthodoxy was framed even 20 years ago.

Adam Mintz [00:14:07]:
So let me just jump in. I think this a bottom up. You also see in Israel, even within the Orthodox who don’t accept the Rabbanut anymore, who don’t want them to marry them, and they are also coming together in their own services that maybe they end up being common law partners, but they don’t want to use the Rabbanut anymore. That can be a part of it. But I think this, what. What really came across to me, you talk about the kabbalistic mystical tradition where the Messiah comes out of Moab, where he. He lives with his daughters, and it comes from Ruth, the Moabite. But even in the Halacha, without getting into the mystical here, we have a situation in t.

Adam Mintz [00:14:53]:
She on the one hand, is not allowed to marry her brother in law while the brother is alive. And Then you get in Deuteronomy, this law of Yibum, which literally means to build up.

Adam Mintz [00:15:07]:
I think the most obvious question that I would say or I would pose to a gay Orthodox person is, here is a religion that rejects you. Why do you want to still be Orthodox? And what we’re finding is, again, it’s this. This attraction that, no, I belong. You are not going to tell me whether I am a part of my community. It’s my Shabbat, it’s my Pesach, and I want to be a part of it. And I’m going to be as tenacious as a Tamar or Benoit Tzalafkad, or any of those quote, unquote, outsiders. And I think that is very ham. It’s very. From the arm oriented, and I think it’s very powerful. And ultimately, if you were a student of Jewish law, it’s the way many changes happen from the bottom up.

Adam Mintz [00:16:08]:
I just before Steve, you answer, I just want to add one little piece, one question, and that is the bottom up. What about top down? Have you seen any movement from the top from the rabbinic establishment different than it was 20 years ago?

Steve Greenberg [00:16:25]:
Yes, of course, because eventually, you know, rabbis hear stories of people. People come to them, you know, and cry and open up their hearts. And rabbis, hearts break.

Steve Greenberg [00:16:40]:
I said, well, I could tell him what you told me, Yitzchak, Gabe, you will never. You’ll never love. You’ll never dance with someone you’re passionate about. You will never be held by someone when you’re sad or when you’re sick. You will never make love to another human being your entire life because something is terribly wrong with you. He said, oh, my God, I’d never say that. I said, yitzi, you just did. I said. He said, well, what would you say? I said, why not this? You know, Yitzi, I don’t. I mean, you got Gabe, I don’t know why God makes gay people and gives them a nearly impossible life, but here’s what I’m going to tell you to do. You keep 612 mitzvot and you do the best you can. And when you go to Shamayim and on the day you have to account your life in front of the Holy Throne, you will have a damn good argument was merciful, it’ll all be fine. And join my shul. Can you do that? And he said, I could. And then I said something else. I said, I’m going to push you one step further. Could you say to Gabe, Gabe, I’m 40 years older than you. I’ll be in Shemaim before you get there. I want to make you a promise the day that you make that argument in front of the Holy Throne while you kept the mitzvot, but this. You had to choose life instead. You had to choose a life of love and connection. I will be behind you, cheering you on. And he began to cry. My goal is to make rabbis feel that they hold responsibility for the lives of hundreds, if not thousands of people who want just a normal life of commitment and love and connection and Shabbos and Yontef and learning. But they don’t want to be alone. And therefore the tradition has to actually find mechanisms by which that can be made possible.

Adam Mintz [00:19:00]:
I mean, I think it’s so strong in our tradition that laws that are not sustainable ultimately go away. I think taking interest Ribbit, where it uses the same sort of emotionally laden language to describe it as disgusting and commerce needed to go on. I think that there are members of the community who might in the morning go to school. This is my grandfather, and go to the office in the afternoon. They had to make a living under every circumstance we get to understand. And this, I think, is the thread that I want to continue on. Not only should they be accepted, but there are situations where people make compromises. People take that zigzag course and don’t go straight where they are truly holier than us, where this is a community that by their very existence and trying to. And staying with Orthodoxy are making so much more of a sacrifice than any one of us. It’s almost like, who are we to judge? And I’m speaking in the. In the. In the. In the presence, in, in from the voice of the institutional, the. The past.

Adam Mintz [00:20:34]:
Identify as LGBTQ. And you have people like Lao Lavie who are saying it makes sense. These are people who are sensitized to suffering. He talks about perfectly suited for communal work because they believe in community. The most people who have gone through an experience of coming out know what it means to really care the attention about the people who are around you. I just love that it’s not a coincidence, it’s not a tick. It’s the actual program. And I do think that what I’m seeing, what you see in Israel, and I’m curious to know your impressions, are there Orthodox families who are. Whose children have. Have come out and maybe through the help of an organization such as yours, or independently are starting to realize how holy their children are and are starting look at those children with awe and say, maybe they’re holier than I am.

Steve Greenberg [00:21:43]:
First Lang. Of course this is happening. And.

Steve Greenberg [00:21:48]:
Part of the difficulty with our work is that we engage with parents who love their kids and want to accept their kids, but it’s not enough. They also want the Orthodoxy they love to not reject their kids as well. And they’re frustrated. It’s not so simple to say love your kids and then go to a shul that rejects them. So they become parents, become real activists, impressing their communities to be really responsive and thoughtful. And that is actually, we see that among the most articulate defenders of queer people are their parents. Right? So that’s one thing that’s happening. The other, I would just say is that, you know, you mentioned that there’s a lot of spiritual life in the queer community. And I think in part it’s because when you don’t fit expectations, you ask yourself a lot of questions about who am I? Where am I? What do I care about? Where do I belong? And I’m looking for a tradition. I’m looking for a way to fit. And then I encounter this tradition that is cacophonous and wild and open and thoughtful and has all kinds of spaces in it for controversy. And I think maybe I can fit there. And it’s really kind of remarkable to me. But it is true that there is a kind of spiritual energy inside the queer community that is really.

Steve Greenberg [00:23:15]:
Has and will in the future enrich the Jewish community and in particular the Orthodox community. A community that says, we have a vision for your life.

Steve Greenberg [00:23:29]:
Even if you’re LGBTQ is a community that is responding to the whole human being. A community that says, we only have a vision for your life if you’re straight is a club. It’s a club for straight folks. And nobody really wants to be in a club for straight folks. They want to be like me. I want to belong to a shul that has old and young and straight and gay and people of different colors and people who speak different languages. I want the human experience to be alive in the religious community. And that is what our organization is doing in many different ways all over across the US and Canada as well. You should know that on March 13, March 13 this year to the 15th, we have our national retreat this year in Baltimore. And it is a wonderful queer gathering of Orthodox, queer Jews and all kinds of people who fit in those categories in various ways. And then the very last day of April and the beginning of May, April 30, I guess, until May 3, is our parent retreat. And it’s also in Baltimore, and it’s an amazing gathering of 150 parents of queer Jews who come together and support each other and make the world, you know, the Jewish world more comfortable for their kids.

Adam Mintz [00:24:48]:
I have a question. You talk about a club versus a shul or, you know, a religion of accepting different kinds of people. And I always understood that a big part of the opposition to accepting queer children or members of the shul is this fear that it won’t be a club anymore. Meaning that they’re so used to it being a club, they’re so used to everything fitting into the box, that the fear that it might not be a box anymore is extremely frightening to the establishment. How do you respond to that?

Steve Greenberg [00:25:28]:
That we all have to become Chabad? And what I mean by that is Chabad. And the Rebbe, I think, envisioned this, though maybe even the rabbi maybe didn’t realize how far it would go. He created the biggest tent for Kadosh Baruch Hu imaginable. My brother, when he met the Chabad rabbi, didn’t keep kosher, didn’t keep Shabbos, nothing. He was respectful. He loved me, but. But they welcomed him in fully, with open arms, without a commitment to every last mitzvah as long as he was willing to engage them on the mitzvot that he found that he connected to through them and with them. And today, my brother’s in a very different place than he was when he met them. An open tent is a tent that says, look, we have these structures, we have these commitments, and we recognize that it’s a moving target. People need to fall in love with the Torah. They need to fall in love with Kadosh Baruch Hu. And that is not immediate. And it’s not about control. It’s about discovery and passion. And so therefore, you have to keep the doors open. And this, on some level, is Avram Avinu and Sara. You know, the Parshios of Bereshit are amazing around this.

Adam Mintz [00:26:47]:
This.

Steve Greenberg [00:26:48]:
Avram and Sara opened their door to total strangers and Sodom is fearful of them. So if you want a shul like Sodom that closes the doors and says, oh, you know, and not poor people and not really, you know, people who are different from us, then, you know, you can exclude the people and make a Mitzvah dome that cuts off the legs of people who are too tall or stretches them too short because they have to look just like you. So. So this notion that our world is made. Look, let me just say another thing. We are all addicted to familiarity. And it’s okay. There’s nothing evil about our love of our small groups. We just gotta be ready when called to. To open the doors. Because that is also what Avram and Sara do. And so we’re both. We’re both an exclusive people. Here’s right, Adam. We are. We have our exclusive commitments. Becoming a Jew is not easy, but we are a people committed to every last human being on the planet as well. And therefore our doors are open.

Adam Mintz [00:27:50]:
You know, there’s a short story by Arthur Miller, and in it he has a line. The Jews have their Jews. And it seems to me that the characteristic. It’s actually about Vichy France. But what it seems to me is that the characteristics of the orthodox, queer gay community is one that wants families, they want community, they want Shabbat, they want and are willing to fight for and make sacrifices for. And in a sense, And I’m not. I’m like a broken record, I keep on pushing you. And I’m saying, I think at this point, what we’re seeing is that the gay community, Orthodox gay community, is inspirational. It is actually potentially leading us in a new direction. But part of it is because it reflects what the Jew has always been, a persecuted minority. A minority that has certain values that we all attest to. And I just, you know, I’m wondering, and I don’t think that you can have an answer to this. I know that right now you do not do an actual kedushin ceremony because you’re working within the parameters that exist at this time. But I think there is such potential here. And it’s not as though our people haven’t gone through an evolution in terms of statuses. And I mean, the whole Kohanim was something that came and went and is gone. It’s just a fascinating moment, I think, in Judaism and also a moment that I think we should be open to any potential triggers and catalysts that help us rejuvenate ourselves and help us move to that next level. And I just think that it’s a wonderful moment. And what I want to do in closing is spend a little bit more time. You described Eshal in terms of the retreat, and I can only imagine how profoundly empowering it must be for parents who can’t talk about their children with the pride that they want in their community back in Brooklyn or Washington Heights or in Muncie. And now can come like mothers, new mothers who can’t describe what it’s like to feed their child in the middle of the night or whatever because they grave another mother who understands what, what the joys are, what the fears are, what the challenges are. What other things besides the Shabbaton do you do? What’s your geographical reach?

Adam Mintz [00:30:25]:
Where is your growth? What projects are you working on? Let’s finish talking about Esso.

Steve Greenberg [00:30:31]:
Well, thank you. So our new strategic plan is very exciting for the next three years. We’re growing our hubs and we’re going to be in different places around the US we’re going to expand that, we’re working in schools and we’re going to grow that. We have a resource library that we’re building so that we will be actually, I think if you are an Orthodox person or committed to tradition and you’re looking for the nexus of these issues, we will be a go to space for finding materials that you might need for educators looking for curricular ideas. Lastly, I would say we are a space where the frameworks for an Orthodoxy that is really open-hearted toward difference is actually moving. So we have the Make Space for Difference project where principals or rabbis or teachers can put up a sign on their doors to demonstrate that they are standing up for the openness to difference, and it includes queer difference. We are developing an allies project because often what happens is Orthodox people who feel like they’re supportive don’t know quite what it requires or could offer to them and what is it that they should do or think that might make this actually happen in their communities. While there are a growing number of communities that are partially welcoming, there are many Orthodox communities where there’s anxiety and fear and even bullying or language that’s really unpleasant, especially now in the political frame that we’re in. And so we’re offering people to gather and figure out, what do you do when a homophobic comment crosses your Shabbos table? And how do you respond to a teacher that has said something in class that’s hurtful, like about gay people, and your child has a gay uncle. So. So how do we help people engage the realities that they’re facing? We have a warm line that is growing every year for people literally all over the world who are encountering these two challenges and trying to put them together and trying to find ways to understand themselves and find a community. If you are a queer person and you finally found someone to love, but you don’t know where to live because you have no idea what synagogue will be there for you, we have interviewed over 300 Orthodox rabbis of congregations, and we can tell you Sunny Epstein is like, is the expert in this, and she can tell you where you can move to, where you can find one or two or maybe even more congregations where you can belong and find a school and maybe a summer camp for your kids. I want to end with one. The real question at the core of this is whether or not the tradition itself can move. So I want to just end with one beautiful midrash that I just love to pieces. When I found it, I was incredibly joyous. Is that there is. The rabbis are studying the book of Kohelet, Ecclesiastes, and the fourth chapter begins in . I saw the oppressed, and there’s no one to help them. And they have no power. And their oppressors have all the power, and there’s no one to comfort them. And. And he raises his hand. A tailor raises his hand. Daniel Chayota. He’s not a rabbi. I know who that verse is talking about. He’s talking about Mamzerim. Mamzerim. Yeah. They’ve done nothing wrong. They’re totally innocent. They are innocent, but their parents screwed and messed up and had sex with someone they shouldn’t have had. And therefore they can’t get this Geoffrey. They can’t marry into the community. They are excluded from love. Love and partnership and community. Right. That’s what they’re excluded from. And he can’t bear it. He says, these are the oppressed who are their oppressors? The Sanhedrin, Hagdolah, the great Sanhedrin, who comes to exclude them from the Torah, from the community with a verse in the Torah, Mamzer loyvo bakala Mamzer can’t marry. And so he basically says he turns his Sanhedrin into oppressors. And since there’s no comforter, he says, he says he puts words in God’s mouth. Then I says, the Lord will comfort them. And then he says, at the end, in the end of days, all the Mamzerim will be pure. And so right now, we maybe not have an easy answer, but no, in the end, it’ll be solved. And if you look at the response, I think following Daniel, you’ll find that Chazal began to make it not so easy to reveal who is a Mamzer and not so permissible to tell anybody who is a mamzer. And ultimately, even if we didn’t get rid of the category, we made the category largely inoperative. Unless you happen to be an Israeli rabbi who’s trying to revive it. My point being is that you have this text here that basically claims that the Torah can be used to oppressive ends if the rabbis are not responsible. And being responsible means that you recognize that a verse that might have had use at one moment is no longer effective to accomplish its good ends and is actually now accomplishing bad ends. And now here’s the point. Why did the rabbis include a tailor in the canon of the rabbinic literature that accuses them of oppression? And the answer is they knew it, and they didn’t want to hide from the fact that it’s possible to read the Torah and wearing all the responsibility that you have and still be an oppressor, because you’re not taking the human story into your heart and into your thoughts and ultimately into your halachic equation. And so, yes, I believe actually the tradition will have room. It already has some, and it will have future more room for LGBTQ folks and others who want to actually be part of this grand imagination of Am Israel.

Adam Mintz [00:36:47]:
Amen. So we will include a link to Eshal, your organization, in the show notes. Anyone who wants to provide support is welcome. And hopefully you’ll be a guest on the podcast again. If there’s ever a parsha you want to talk about or current event, just shoot me a note. We’ll definitely have another Roosevelt Island reunion. Thank you for joining us. Shabbat Shalom Always, Steve.

Adam Mintz [00:37:13]:
Thanks so much.

Steve Greenberg [00:37:14]:
Be well. Pleasure. Everyone wants to be in touch. It’s stevechelonline.org okay, all the best.

Adam Mintz [00:37:21]:
Thanks so much.