Sep 15, 2012 | Eshel in the News
Senior Year: APs, College Prep, and Coming Out in My Orthodox High School When I tell my friends who are not Orthodox that I’m out of the closet and attending a Modern Orthodox high school, many of them do a double take. Why would I subject myself to that, they ask. One even asked why I hadn’t [more]
Sep 14, 2012 | Eshel in the News
Eshel Goes to the Midwest! Amram Altzman courtesy of the American Jewish World “Eshel is the only place where I feel completely comfortable. I am completely out as a lesbian and I am not being judged (by outsiders) as an Orthodox Jew.” This quote, from Shulamit, one of the participants at Eshel’s recent Midwest Retreat, [more]
Sep 9, 2012 | Eshel in the News
Suicide rates high for Orthodox homosexual youths Research shows 20% of LGBT sample attempted suicide, compared to 3.5% rate for general youth population. Suicide rates among Orthodox homosexual youth are dramatically higher than that of their heterosexual peers, research published last week showed. The research on suicide among all Israeli youth, conducted by Hannah Bar-Yosef, [more]
Aug 14, 2012 | Eshel in the News
Orthodox Gays Need Allies, Not Just Compassion A few months ago, a young Orthodox rabbi decided to “come out of the closet,” in a sense, when he publicly identified himself as an “LGBT ally,” referring to lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people. Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz, founder of Uri L’Tzedek, an Orthodox social justice group, and a [more]
Jul 17, 2012 | Eshel in the News
Writing Her Way To A New Life Documenting the fraught journey from Jay to Joy Ladin. In an interview, Joy Ladin begins several responses, “When I started living as myself…” For the Stern College professor, poet and author, the boundary between then and now, between living a lie and leading an authentic life, is her transition from [more]
Jun 28, 2012 | Eshel in the News
Reconciling sexuality with religion One would be hard pressed to find instances of Orthodox Judaism and LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) occupying the same sentence. Yet for the women whose stories appear in the anthology, "Keep Your Wives Away from Them: Orthodox Women, Unorthodox Desires," reconciling the two is a familiar task. After coming [more]
