It Gets Beautiful: One Rabbi's Perspective on Being Jewish and LGBTQ

Living on Long Island as a sheltered teenager in the '80s, the term "lesbian" might as well have been a country in the Middle East, somewhere in the Interzone between Mesopotamia and Bilitis, due south of the Well of Loneliness.

That was a long time ago. I came out in college, and am now married to my partner of 13 years. All told, we are officially married in Canada, officially domesticated in New York City and religiously married by a rabbi with a proud history of civil disobedience -- and we have the requisite assortment of children and cats. While some might stereotype my life as being heteronormative, I am an unapologetic queer, who has never been either heterosexual or normative.

I am also a rabbi. I grew up as a Lutheran, went to Brandeis (not knowing it was Jewish), discovered Judaism there, studied and converted in Israel and was ordained by the Academy for Jewish Religion in New York City. By some accounts, the different aspects of my identity should be in tension with each other: a rabbi with non-Jewish parents, someone who is both religious and gay. In reality, though, all these elements are integrated and related. An essential part of my theology is that God wants us to live fulfilling, joyous lives. "Choose life," we are told in the Torah, "so that you and your descendants may live" (Deut. 30:19).