Imagine being told you belong to a faith that is fighting to keep you out—and refusing to leave.
In this week’s Madlik, Geoffrey Stern and Rabbi Adam Mintz welcome Rabbi Steve Greenberg, the first openly gay Orthodox-ordained rabbi, for a deeply personal and wide-ranging conversation.
Rabbi Greenberg recounts his early struggles attending Yom Kippur services, hiding under his tallit and weeping as the verses about forbidden sexual relations were read — and the moment when he finally decided to step forward and take the aliyah himself. He describes how, in that moment, “My 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“
We explore the parallels to Tamar in Parshat Vayeshev, a woman who refuses to be pushed out of the covenantal story, and Judah’s transformative admission: “צדקה ממני — She is more righteous than I.”
From there, the conversation opens up:
- Why so many LGBTQ+ Jews today refuse to leave Orthodoxy
- How bottom-up change is reshaping communities
- Why Orthodox parents become unexpected activists
- The spiritual depth emerging within the queer Orthodox community
- The extraordinary midrash about the tailor who calls the Sanhedrin the oppressor
- And why, as Rabbi Greenberg says, “a community that only has a vision for straight people is a club — not a shul.”
A profound, candid, and hopeful conversation about Torah, identity, tradition, and the people determined to remain part of it.