Jerusalem parade spotlights struggle of religious gays (News Feature)

By Ofira Koopmans Jun 24, 2009, 13:00 GMT

Jerusalem - Thursday's Gay Pride Parade in Jerusalem may not be the largest in the world and may not be as flamboyant as the one held two weeks ago in Tel Aviv.

But it will feature a group absent from many pride marches elsewhere - observant Jewish, even ultra-Orthodox, gays.

Some 5,000 Israelis are expected to march modestly in the city's eighth annual parade, compared to the at least 30,000 who gyrated to pulsating music through central Tel Aviv, many of them dressed only in bathing suits.

The contrast between the largely secular sea-side metropolis, with its hedonist character and reputation as the regional gay capital, and the more solemn, overwhelmingly religious Jerusalem is stark.

While the march in Tel Aviv is a 'celebration of existing rights,' the Jerusalem one is more of an attempt to highlight 'lacking rights,' Yonatan Gher, of Jerusalem's Open House for gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders, tells the German Press Agency dpa.

Thursday's parade once again spotlights the dilemma of what to do when you are both an Orthodox or observant Jew, and gay, and your sexual orientation is at odds with the strictures of your community.

Chaim Elbaum, 28, is one such religious Jew who experienced it all first hand. His short film And Thou Shalt Love (2008) expresses the emotional turmoil he went through as a student at an all-male Yeshiva, or school for Torah study.

'Raised in this (Orthodox) society, I was very lonely. I thought I was the only one. I was very frightened. I lived all my life with lies, and living your life with lies makes you very mentally tired and mentally sick,' he recounts after a screening of his film.

His rabbi, he remembers, one day approached the troubled teenager and told him: 'I think I know what your problem is.'

Elbaum was too embarrased to hear the rabbi say it out loud, so the rabbi asked if he would like it put in writing. Elbaum could only nod. The rabbi scribbled something on a piece of paper and Elbaum sprinted away as far as he could, clutching the note. He remembers feeling both relief and despair when, once alone, he opened it and read: 'Problems with sexual identity.'

He subsequently underwent five years of psychological therapy, trying to change, torturing himself everytime he had homosexual thoughts. For one, he would go to the mikveh, or Jewish ritual bath, in the early morning, when the water was still all but boiling.

At a certain stage, he reached the conclusion that for him the essence of religion was truth and honesty, ended the therapy and began a new life studying film making and 'trying to accept myself both as gay and as religious.'

It was 'not easy' to make And Thou Shalt Love, his graduation project at the Ma'aleh School of Television, Film and the Arts in downtown Jerusalem, where as he puts it '99 per cent' of its students are religious. Since then, however, it has won a series of awards, including Best Short Film at the 2008 Jerusalem Film Festival.

The casually clad young man in glasses and a red-knitted yarmulke says he came out of the closet very publicly, 'to make the religious community look again at what is written and what is not written.'

The Torah, he and other Orthodox gays explain, only explicitly prohibits one specific act between men - sodomy. He points to Leviticus 18:22, which reads: 'Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind: it is abomination.'

But nowhere is it written, he argues, that loving and living with a man is forbidden.

The Torah, he adds, also forbids many other things and every religious man must decide what is most important for him to observe.

When it comes to women, the Torah contains no specific, written prohibition against lesbians, says Rivka, 31, of the Bat Kol organization for Orthodox lesbians, who prefers not to give her real name because she has only come out to her immediate family.

Nonetheless, the issue is an absolute taboo. 'The idea of not getting married is something that is unthinkable in the religious community,' explains the daughter of a rabbi.

She only came out a few years ago, after finding a forum on the Internet for Orthodox lesbians. Before that, she says, 'It (living a gay lifestyle) wasn't just something I thought was impossible. I couldn't even think about it.'

Now living with her partner in Jerusalem and hoping to raise a child together, she says she feels 'sadness' for all the years she thought she was alone. The parade, for her, is important. It allows other women like her to realize her organization, founded in 2005, exists.