It’s a near-universal truth that parents want to protect their children. That overriding impulse can start even before a baby is born, and if anything, it often strengthens once children grow out of toddlerhood and dependence and meet the world with increasing independence. It stays with parents even as their children become adults, and become parents themselves.
But it’s not always clear how parents can protect their children, particularly as the world, with its assumptions and realities, changes. It can be particularly unclear when the way to protect a child might put parents at odds with the community within which they live.
Which is a long way to say that although it’s easier to be the parents of a child in the LGBTQ community now than ever before, it’s still not easy, especially if you’re also an Orthodox Jew. According to their read of the halacha — the Jewish law — that shapes their lives, men are not permitted to have sex with other men. That makes acceptance of a gay son difficult; by extension, it makes accepting a lesbian daughter hard as well.
But parents don’t give up on their children. Their instinct is to support their children, even if at first they don’t know how. They often come to accept their children’s certainty on how they’ll find happiness.
That can leave parents feeling unmoored. That’s where Eshel comes in.
Eshel — find it at eshelonline.org — posts this as its mission statement: Eshel envisions a world where LGBTQ+ people and their families are full participants in the Orthodox community of their choice.
It offers an annual retreat for Orthodox parents of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer Jews; the most recent one, at the Pearlstone Retreat Center in Reisterstown, Maryland, was held over a few days, centered on Shabbat, in May.
Parents come from across the country, Miryam Kabakov, its executive director, said. They represent much of the Orthodox world, from modern Orthodox through chasidic. Many are parents of gay sons and lesbian daughters; some are parents of trans kids. Some had been to the retreat many times; others were there for the first time. “This year, we gave a discount to first-time parents, to help lowering the barrier for them as they made the big decision to come,” she said. “We had about 20 new parents this year.”
This has been a hard year for the Jewish community and the LGBTQ community, Ms. Kabakov said. The new problems they face come at them as Jews and as members or allies of the LGBTQ cohorts. Those problems come from the outside world, often propelled by politicians and the hateful rhetoric they spew. “This year, we are particularly sensitive to the parents of trans kids, who are very anxious, particularly about the potential change to their children’s access to health care. We wanted to meet them with resources, community-building, and the ability to ask the right questions to the right people.” Although in other years they had no need to do this, and so they didn’t, this year, “we had two lawyers sitting in on the meetings,” she said.
It’s important to figure out “what’s white noise, that you don’t have to be worried about, and what you should be worried about,” Ms. Kabakov said. Although many of the threats come from the federal level, “it’s important to get involved locally,” she continued, citing the advice of one of the lawyers, who is involved in his own community. “Change does happen on the local level, and there are ways to affect change in your town.”
A positive way to “deal with all the hate is by providing more community spaces for people to meet each other,” Ms. Kabakov added. “I did an icebreaker at the retreat. I had people write what they’re most anxious about on post-it notes, and we posted them on a wall. The things that made them anxious were big things — legislation proposed at the state and federal levels, the war in Gaza — big things that we are not going to solve in a weekend. And then, at our closing circle, I asked them to take those anxiety post-it notes, and if they no longer feel what’s written on them as a threat, to throw them in the trash.
“Afterward, I looked at the notes in the trash. They were all about those big issues.
“What parents need is each other. Our programs help fortify them. They help bring down the anxiety levels. But we will get through this. We will get through it together. It is important to be together. That’s the beauty of these retreats. We aren’t going to solve the problems, but we can work with each other to figure out how to work, with and around them.”
Robin Siegel of Teaneck, a social worker and therapist whose “outlook always is from a mental health perspective,” was at the retreat. It was her fourth, she said. “I was there because I have a son who is gay and still trying to find his place in the modern Orthodox world. He is out, he is comfortable with himself, he lives in Israel, and my primary goal is to be an advocate for him.
“He’s flourishing, but it’s not easy. There are plenty of Israelis who accept him, but it’s hard for him to find people like himself, who are LGBTQ but who are on the other side of the spectrum when it comes to Israel.” Even in Israel, she explained, many if not most of the people her son meets who are comfortable with his identity as a gay man are uncomfortable with his pro-Israel position. “I am lucky that my child still sees Israel from the same vantage point as I do,” she said. “But that puts him in a uniquely odd situation, but he is a strong kid.
“Often this means that he has to forego something.”
She’s seen changes in the Orthodox world since her 21-year-old son first came out. That was a long time ago, she said. “We suspected that he was gay from the very beginning, and I was very in tune with that, so that, thank God, his coming-out story was uneventful. It was more like, ‘Okay. Great. So now we can advocate! That kind of thing.
“There’s been growth. It hasn’t been a quick as I’d like it to be, but I’ve learned, and Eshel has helped me to learn, to slow down. To understand that this kind of stuff is going to take time. And if we just go in complaining, that’s not how we make change happen.
“So I have seen change. I have been faced with some obstacles, with a lot of placating, with schools saying things like, ‘Yes, we know, and our heart is with you, but…’ But 20 years ago, they would have been more like, ‘Sorry. We’re Orthodox. We don’t do that.’ Now it’s more like ‘Our heart breaks for you, but there’s not much we can do.’ But maybe there is something.
“Some places are going a step or two farther than that. It’s taking time, but I do see change happening. I am cautiously optimistic, especially because I think that my son’s generation will make more changes.”
Ms. Siegel has four children. Her gay son is a twin; both the gay and the straight twin made aliyah and live in Israel now. She also has a son and a daughter who both are in high school.
The retreat “is amazing,” she said. Because of the way her son came out, she didn’t have to adjust to his being gay, but many of the parents at the retreat did have that experience, and it can be tough. “A lot of them didn’t see it coming. The retreat is a place where you can talk to other people who are or have been in a similar situation, and they’re able to hold each other up.