For the purposes of this blog entry, I decided to review the Jewish Queer Youth's website. First, I notice the use of bright colors originating from the rainbow as the icon of homosexual culture. A nifty paragraph on the homepage announces their goal is to give young (18-30) homosexual Jews a comfortable place to anonymously discuss various issues facing their identity as both Jews and homosexuals.
Directly under the Home link is a link which leads to an article titled "Gay?" which addresses the issue of 'coming out'. "No matter how you look at it, according to Yahadut (Judaism), there is no aveirah (transgression) in having homosexual or transgendered feelings. What prohibitions are involved in terms of actually carrying out one's desires involves major halachic (Jewish legal) discussions. The GayJews' Homepage goes more into a halachic discussion of homosexuality. You may also want to check out the Open Halacha website." I tried to look at the links to see what they were referring to, but they were broken links.
An interesting thing about JQY is found in the FAQs page. After looking over the various questions and answers, I found that most, if not all the questions were about homosexuality and didn't reflect any concerns of judaism. For me, it seems that this organization focuses more on the homosexual identity than the jewish identity.
Another interesting tab was the 'experiences' tab where young Jews described their struggles with between their homosexuality and their Jewish ancestry. One woman tells a sad story of how her parents arranged her marriage (I believe she was Hasidic or Chabad. I don't remember which). She married the man and had children quickly but in a few years, she fell in love with a woman. Eventually, this led to a 'road to discovery' and she took the children and left her husband to pursue a new life, free to explore her new found identity. These messages were very touching and really captured the suffering some people go through, simply trying to be themselves.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Paskudnyak by Sonia Pilcer
First, I'd like to point out that I did a little research on Sonia Pilcer. (Thank you Wikipedia). According to Wikipedia, she has written stories that are loosely based on her own life.
In this story, Zosha is part of a Polish Jewish family. Her parents are Holocaust survivors Genia and Heniek (he escaped from Auschwitz so he has numbers). If Wikipedia is to believed, these people were real people. Anyway, this short story deals with the pressures on young people to assimilate into American culture while traditional households encourages tradition. This leaves our protagonist and narrator, Zosha torn between two worlds. There is an interesting progression in this story because in the beginning, little Zosha seems to enjoy the Jewish traditions, even to the point of wanting to ink numbers on her arm to be like her mother (though it's father who has the numbers). As usual, a young child doesn't really understand what it means to be Jewish and in this case, she thinks that numbers and as such, suffering is a part of her identity. As the girl grows into a teenager, she comes to abandon her Jewish identity in favor of being an American teenager. She dresses as her friends dress, wearing tight outfits, short skirts and boots (something her parents detest, thus conveying their traditional lifestyle). Desperate, her parents take her to a rabbi but she will have none her it. She refuses to speak hebrew and denies entry to a hebrew school. This is an emotional scene but she has effectively abandons her faith in favor of her American life.
In this story, Zosha is part of a Polish Jewish family. Her parents are Holocaust survivors Genia and Heniek (he escaped from Auschwitz so he has numbers). If Wikipedia is to believed, these people were real people. Anyway, this short story deals with the pressures on young people to assimilate into American culture while traditional households encourages tradition. This leaves our protagonist and narrator, Zosha torn between two worlds. There is an interesting progression in this story because in the beginning, little Zosha seems to enjoy the Jewish traditions, even to the point of wanting to ink numbers on her arm to be like her mother (though it's father who has the numbers). As usual, a young child doesn't really understand what it means to be Jewish and in this case, she thinks that numbers and as such, suffering is a part of her identity. As the girl grows into a teenager, she comes to abandon her Jewish identity in favor of being an American teenager. She dresses as her friends dress, wearing tight outfits, short skirts and boots (something her parents detest, thus conveying their traditional lifestyle). Desperate, her parents take her to a rabbi but she will have none her it. She refuses to speak hebrew and denies entry to a hebrew school. This is an emotional scene but she has effectively abandons her faith in favor of her American life.
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