Queer Jews deserve better than AIPAC, Mike Pence, and Hillel’s Standard of Partnership
A Reflection on OSU Hillel kicking B’nai Keshet Out of the Community
This week, Ohio State University’s Hillel ousted their LGBTQ Jewish organization, B’nai Keshet, because it chose to co-sponsor an event in support of LGBTQ refugees with, among 15 other student organizations, Jewish Voice for Peace. Each time I see a new article on the incident, it brings a lump to my throat or a tear to my eye.
This. this. is everything that is broken in our Jewish community. This is why I choose to protest, along with a thousand other young Jews, at AIPAC this weekend.
OSU Hillel had an opportunity this week to say to the world that they stand unequivocally with their LGBTQ students. That supporting refugees is a Jewish value that can build bridges across difference. That their LGBTQ students are rational, intelligent, discerning human beings who love being Jewish and that they trust those students’ judgment.
In 2017, this should not be a question. There should. not. be. a choice here.
It should be obvious that our community organizations, especially one as far reaching and life-saving for students seeking community, love, and home as Hilllel, stand behind their LGBTQ students. That they need us, even in the face of donors who have their own ideas about what is, or should be, happening on campus.
Even if you think BDS is a threat to Judaism (which, to be clear, I personally do not), it should be obvious to everyone, EVERYONE, that claims to be a progressive Jew that the choice to stand and support queer Jews carving out their Jewish home on campus outweighs a loose affiliation with another organization around a single topic that has nothing to do with the event they are putting on.
The message that I heard this week over and over again is that Hillel International doesn’t value me as a Jew.
Thank G!d the college I went to declined to affiliate with Hillel’s out of touch McCarthyism. Thank G!D they choose to maintain a Jewish community that is safe, welcoming, and home to Jews no matter their political beliefs, the tactics they support when working for justice, or the communities they choose to affiliate with. I would certainly not be heading to rabbinical school this fall if that weren’t the case.
My heart goes out the young, closeted Jews at OSU who now have to choose between a Jewish community and queer community.
I, too, have questioned whether being queer will mean that I have to leave my Jewish communities. Whether I have to choose between the empathy with those marginalized, such as Palestinians and refugees, that my queerness has helped me to understand, and the Jewish community that has loved me, raised me, and taught me that empathy since day one.
It’s an absolutely terrible choice to feel you have to make.
I pray, with all my heart, that the young Jews seeing this debacle and wondering if they’ll ever be able to be their whole selves in this world, will find the individuals and communities that refuse to compromise their values for donor money. I hope that they will find communities that love and affirm them, welcome them, allow them to grow and explore and come to their own conclusions about what justice in Israel and Palestine looks like and how to gain it.
This week, AIPAC will host the largest national convening of Jews in the US. Mike Pence. MIKE PENCE. is the keynote speaker. Mike Pence is a politician who stands in opposition to my very existence and safety as a queer person. AIPAC, Hillel, The Jewish Federations — all of these institutions force queer Jews like me and the students at OSU to choose between funding for our communities and standing for our values.
But we refuse to make this choice. Judaism taught us to love my neighbor, to love the stranger, and to love ourselves.
We will build a home that welcomes LGBTQ Jews out of chewing gum and matchsticks if we have to, as long as it means that we can have a Judaism that doesn’t require a litmus test to participate.
