By Eli Lurie Sobel
It’s Pride. It’s also a really hard time to be LGBTQ+ in the United States, and an especially challenging and often dangerous time to be trans. Regardless of whether or not you hold any of those identities, it’s a scary time to be a person in this country, period.
What’s helping me right now is recalling historical struggles and seeing what we can learn from them. The LGBTQ+ community has been in crisis before. I’m thinking especially about the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 80s and 90s. Our people have lived through times before when it seemed like the world was ending, and it’s true that far too many lives were lost. And still, here we are. Queer people are not obsolete, by any stretch. We are under legal attack, yes, but we are also thriving and dancing and making groundbreaking art and celebrating Pride across the country. So when I find myself grasping for hope in a terrifying time, I ask the question, how have we survived in terrifying times before? Because we have done it before, and we will do it again.
In answer, I want to share the story of how the San Francisco Jewish community responded to the AIDS epidemic. In 1977, they founded an LGBTQ+ synagogue, Congregation Sha’ar Zahav*, meaning “golden gate.” It’s still there, thriving, as are others like it across the country. When the AIDS epidemic hit a few years later, Sha’ar Zahav’s community was decimated. Rabbi Allen Bennett, the congregation’s rabbi in the early 80s, remembers that, on average during that time, he lost one friend or acquaintance to AIDS every week for five years.
One of the Jewish principles that informs Keshet’s work is “Lo Taamod al Dam Reiecha,” “do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor.” In that time of prolonged emergency, the Jewish community of San Francisco did not stand idly by. They mobilized in so many ways: they started a program of bikur cholim, visiting the sick, where they spent time with AIDS patients who were otherwise isolated, neglected, and often denied medical care. They formed the first known group of gay and lesbian hospice volunteers. They started several meal delivery programs, some of which still exist today. They regularly brought a string quartet to visit the AIDS floor of the local hospital. The women of Sha’ar Zahav started a women’s blood drive when gay men were not permitted to donate blood. Across the country, lesbian and queer women took on such a vital role caregiving for gay men with AIDS that their work birthed a movement to rearrange the acronym, which was at the time GLBT. It became LGBT, with the L moved to the front to honor the contributions that the lesbian community made during this crisis.
This context was the backdrop for one of my favorite stories in recent Jewish history. This setting– San Francisco, when it seemed like the world was ending– was the birthplace of Debbie Friedman’s “Mi Shebeirach,” the prayer for healing that so many of us know and love. The prayer that so many Jews sing every week, often multiple times. Debbie Friedman and her then-partner, Drorah Setel, were lesbians and congregants at Sha’ar Zahav. Friedman and Setel wrote together their now-famous “Mi Shebeirach” at a time when so many of their community members were dying from an incurable illness. They knew they needed something that would speak to both the need for individual healing and the need for communal healing. Everyone was suffering. At the same time, at that point, AIDS was a death sentence, and Friedman and Setel were wary of offering a healing blessing that would be a tefilat shav, a prayer in vain that people might find ultimately disempowering if they didn’t recover. So they focused the language of the blessing on spiritual healing, defining “refuah sh’leima” as “renewal of body and renewal of spirit.” They called forth the courage that both sick people and those who loved them would need, in their words, “to make our lives a blessing.” And it is believed that it was at Sha’ar Zahav where Rabbi Yoel Kahn originated the practice of going around the room with an outstretched hand, inviting in the names of people in need of healing who couldn’t be in the room.
Every time I sing this blessing, I remember the immeasurable resilience of the LGBTQ+ Jewish community in San Francisco, and so many other communities at that time, who responded to devastation and despair by coming together and taking action. My people, our people, both queer people and Jews, have a legacy of showing up for each other when we need it most. Of finding the way to honor the dignity of every individual, even when the rest of the world does not.
So when you are feeling despair about the spirit of our country, how it treats LGBTQ+ people and how it treats other groups equally worthy of care, remember this story. Remember that you always have the power to show someone respect. Things that might seem “small,” like inclusive bathroom signs or adding your pronouns in your email signature, have a huge impact. A meal delivered to a sick person’s home is a seemingly small act, but in the larger context of a world that continually disrespects and invalidates that person, it is both a heroic and holy act. Every time you take action like this, every time you correct yourself when you accidentally use the wrong pronoun, every time that someone comes out to you and you respond with “mazel tov,” it counters that narrative. Every act that honors my queer siblings reinforces our inherent worth and belonging, both as citizens and as Jews.
Our people have survived crises before, and they did it by leaning in with a hand outstretched to exactly the people that others were turning away from. Today’s political climate is presenting us with an opportunity to do that again.
When everything feels like a crisis and there is so much work to be done, I look around at my community, and I hear the words of the “Mi Shebeirach” in my ears: “Help us find the courage.”
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*Congregation Sha’ar Zahav continues to flourish and partners with Keshet often. Check out their events calendar! Some recurring events that are open to the public:
Further reading about Congregation Sha’ar Zahav’s response to the AIDS crisis:
Keshet envisions a world in which all LGBTQ+ Jews and our families can live with full equality, justice, and dignity. Stay connected by joining our email list and following us on social media.
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