LGBTQphobia - A Wider Bridge

Yair Cherki, a religious affairs reporter for Israel’s N12, came out as gay via posts on his various social media accounts. Cherki comes from a religious background, and his father is a well-known religious leader, Rabbi Uri Cherki. We encourage you to take a moment to read the important and moving words of Cherki:

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“I write these words shaking, postponing for tomorrow. For next week, for after the holidays. Maybe it’s been ten years since I’ve been writing and erasing. But now I am thirty years old. And I write not because I have the strength to write but because I have no power to stay silent.

I love men. I Love men and love god. It is not contradictory, and it is nothing new. I am the same person I was; the only difference is that it is not only me who knows now, you know, too. It was important for me to say this publically, even though it is a private matter. To live neither in the shadows nor in hiding. To truly live.

=I live the conflict between my sexual preference and my faith all the time. Some have solved the conflict for themselves by saying that there is no god, while others explain that there is no homosexuality. I know both exist. And I try to reconcile this contradiction within myself in various ways. These are things between god and me.

This is neither a fashion nor a trend nor a political statement. It is simply me. It’s another part of who I am and who I have been since the day I made up my mind. My community is still the religious community. This is my tribe, and this is my family and friends. These are my beliefs. They did not change but took shape over the years alongside the doubt and complexity.

I know that this truth I shared here saddens people dear to me whom I love very much. I hope you find a place in your soul that allows you to discuss this properly and understand that this step was made after deep thought and consideration. Your sorrow, perhaps, also stems from a lack of understanding of what I am actually talking about here. I tried to ignore it for years. Then push. And repress. And treat. I do not regret any attempt and effort; maybe without these attempts, I would not have been able to reach my conclusions—it is just a shame that it took so long.

And now: family.”

As a response to Cherki’s statement, Havruta congratulated Cherki and said:

“It is moving to read Yair’s coming out of the closet post. The connection between religious and LGBT identities, which Yair describes, is at the core of what we do. The life of religious LGBT people is not easy, and we congratulate Yair for his courage and honesty, and happy that he took another step to show that we are here. Religious LGBT people – come out of the closet. Be who you are. No one can tell you otherwise.”

Thank you, Yair, for your beautiful words. And thank you, Havruta, Bat- Kol and Shoval for the life-saving work you do by increasing LGBTQ acceptance and inclusion in the religious communities in Israel.

The political discourse in Israel regarding LGBTQ rights and equality in the last couple of decades was heavily influenced by two major hate crime events: the shooting in the ‘Bar Noar’, a queer youth club in Tel Aviv, and the murder of Shira Banki, a 16 years old girl in the Jerusalem pride march.

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Bar Noar Shooting

On August 1st, 2009, a masked shooter stormed into the “Bar Noar”, a queer youth club located at the LGBTQ* center in Tel Aviv. It was a Saturday night evening, and the club was filled with teenagers and young people socializing in a club that was considered a safe space – for some of them, it was the only place that allowed them to be “who they are”, without hiding their sexual or gender identity. The shooter killed Nir Katz, a 26 years old who served as a volunteer in the club, and Liz Tarobishi, a 17 years old girl who attended it, and wounded eleven others, before escaping the scene. Until this day, the police did not manage to apprehend the shooter.

The traumatic event fueled a massive protest on behalf of the Israeli queer community, as it allowed it to stress out the LGBTQphobia and daily feeling of insecurity that all community members face. News coverage of the crime scene equivocally “outed” many of the club’s attendees – some of them minors – whose families and friends have learned for the first time that their children identify as LGBTQ* on national TV. Some of the victims who were injured had to deal with expressions of LGBTQphobia on behalf of their parents, who refused to visit them near their hospital bed to avoid the association with the LGBTQ* community. These responses reflected the deep LGBTQphobia that queer youth deal with to the broad national discourse.

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Shira Banki

Shira Banki, a 16 years old high school student from Jerusalem, was stabbed to death by Yishay Shlisel, an extremist ultraorthodox who raged a terror attack at the Jerusalem Pride March of 2015. Shlisel was known to the police due to another stabbing attack he committed ten years earlier, at the Pride March of 2005. After spending ten years in prison, Shlisel was released – and committed another stabbing soon thereafter.

The Jerusalem Pride March is not a typical march, as it is set in the highly sensitive public sphere of Jerusalem. Jerusalem is Israel’s capital, it is a holy city that bears special significance to both Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and its population consists of various population groups from different religious, ethnic and socioeconomic characteristics. For all of these reasons, the march in Jerusalem is symbolic and political. The call for rights and LGBTQ* equality, while coming from the streets of Jerusalem, receives a special political, social and even spiritual depth. The murder of Shira Banki, a 16 year old, by a religious extremist, was not only a shocking event for the Israeli public, but also highlighted the urgency of the demand for tolerance and inclusion in Jerusalem and in Israel as a whole.

Brianna Titone, LGBTQ, Israel

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Written by Rep, Brianna Titone.

Published first at The Colorado Sun

Shouting down the haters won’t turn it back. Changing the culture requires living out love as our authentic selves

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Marginalized communities are under attack. Here in Colorado, we know that all too well. The mass shooting at Club Q which killed 5 people and injured 25 is yet another violent attack on the LGBTQ community. There is hate all around us.

Our Jewish friends and neighbors are feeling particularly vulnerable. If you haven’t noticed the frightening mainstreaming of antisemitism, you’re not paying attention. It’s coming from everywhere.

It’s in our politics. The former president dines with white supremacists and holocaust deniers.

It’s in our streets. Jews are physically attacked, verbally assaulted, and in New Jersey the FBI warned them that they may not be safe going to worship in their synagogues.

And perhaps most alarmingly, we are in serious danger of allowing antisemitism to become mainstreamed in our culture.

Take conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ recent interview with cultural icon Kanye West and white supremacist Nick Fuentes.

The interview was a sensation. More than 3 million people viewed the video on Mr. Jones’ alternative platforms. Though every major news organization and social media platform refused to allow the content to be seen, they couldn’t keep up with the virality of the moment. Millions of more Americans saw the content on Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube in waves before it was taken down.

Millions of Americans heard loud and clear what haters have been saying more and more recently. They heard that Hitler did great things, that the Holocaust never happened, and that Jews control the media and the government.

This is not normal. In a previous era, a hateful person on the street with a megaphone was just that. One person can be ignored. Now, the reach of that same person’s voice isn’t limited to the people in the immediate vicinity. All the world can hear it.

History is not ambiguous about what happens when antisemitism is mainstreamed into society.

What’s particularly unique and dangerous about antisemitism is that it comes from left, right, and center. It comes from the religious and it comes from the secular. It comes from the rich and it comes from the poor. It comes from white people, and it comes from people of color. Where there’s a demographic in America, there’s antisemitism.

The reasons for Jew-hatred are as varied as the people who espouse it.

Whether it’s right-wing tropes about a Jewish worldwide conspiracy or some Christians branding Jews as Christ-killers, antisemitism is alive and well.

On the Left, where many American Jews find their political home, too many are being asked to speak for Israel and its actions — a state thousands of miles away for which they have no obligation to condemn.

Sadly, some Jews also feel forced to choose between their Jewishness and their LGBTQ identity. It has to stop.

It’s time to stop calling the rise in antisemitism anything other than an emergency.

In my years as an advocate for LGBTQ rights, I’ve been privileged to have a courtside seat to a sea-change in public opinion on these issues.

In 1998 just one in four Americans supported same-sex marriage. Now, the inverse is true. And President Biden just signed into law bi-partisan legislation that protects our right to marry whom we love.

This kind of change doesn’t just happen. It didn’t happen because we called out the haters and tried to shut them up.

It happened because we were brave, and we were proud. We had the courage to show our true selves to our families, our colleagues, and our friends. We ran for office, and we won. The American people saw our humanity and our love, and they embraced us.

We will be victorious, because we will live our lives as our true authentic selves.

Hug your Jewish and LGBTQ friends and neighbors and tell them you love them and that you support them. Stand with them.

Hate can’t be defeated with silence from us, and it can’t be defeated by silencing them.

Remember that hate can be defeated when we take away its power and shine a light instead.