Two Calls
From the Editor
by Larry Gordon
I received two phone calls last Friday in rather rapid succession, and the subject matters of both calls had nothing to do with each other beside the fact that they both dealt with highly sensitive and controversial matters.
The first call was from a group named Eshel that deals with providing support for parents of LGBTQ children. The director of the group would like us to do a feature story on the work they do. They also offered to put me in touch with several parents who recently attended a support retreat on how to deal with the matter when it occurs in one’s family.
The dilemma as it was explained to me is that parents of children who choose this lifestyle do not want to see their sons or daughters lost to the Orthodox way of life that they have, in most cases, been brought up in.
My conversation with those involved had me asking questions from a perspective of one who has no knowledge of or familiarity with these matters. Some of my questions at the outset were regarding the necessity of publicizing matters that I felt most people would want to keep private. In other words, why is it necessary to air out the subject, discuss the retreats, and possibly advertise the experiences of both parents and children?
The response I received for the most part was that these young people feel ostracized and to a certain extent excluded from the community. They feel a need to publicize this matter as part of a campaign for broader acceptance.
The co-founder of Eshel speaks eloquently and openly, demonstrating some knowledge of Jewish law, and when we spoke, she mentioned the anguish of parents whose children leave the fold when they feel they are not accepted.
She related to me that she understands that there are some things that according to Jewish law, men cannot get involved in if they want to remain true to Orthodoxy. So, as you can see, it is a difficult subject for this newspaper to handle, but at the same time, it is something that is real and out there and at the very minimum it is perhaps incumbent upon us to acknowledge the issues that people and families are dealing with. After all, at some point we deal with all kinds of other issues, so is it right to just ignore this? I’m not really sure and I don’t have a definitive answer to this question. What do you think?
The co-founder of Eshel Miryam Kabakov can be reached at miryam@eshelonline.org.