It's delightful, it's delicious, it's dlevy!
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@itsdlevy sorting thru boxes of ancient photos today. #betterwithage twitter.com/johannahble/st…
— Hannah Weisman (@johannahble) September 11, 2012
This week I had a reunion with my first kiss. We haven’t seen each other since some time in the middle of high school. (She was from a different state. We knew each other from our youth group, USY.) I think we both turned out all right. Then she tweeted this picture of the two of us at the time of said kiss, circa 1992. We’ve come a long way.
As I mentioned earlier this week, I was invited to give the sermon this Shabbat at Temple Beth Zion in Brookline, MA for their Pride Shabbat. If you’d like to read what I had to say, it’s behind the cut.
I saw Falsettos on my second-ever trip to Broadway, the summer before I started high school. I don’t know that there’s ever been another show — or ever will be — that spoke so directly to me.
I had just returned from a six-and-a-half-week cross-country summer trip with USY on Wheels, a Jewish summer program that combined seeing the country with learning about religious Jewish living. For the first time in my life, I was starting to really grapple with what being Jewish meant to me. I was also 14, with all that entails.
Something about seeing Will Finn work out his own sexuality in such a Jewish milieu helped something click in my brain. Although I still had a lot of coming out to do, I more or less knew where I stood with regards to my sexuality. But I could work out my Judaism in a homosexual milieu. And, well, that’s what I’ve been doing for the last twenty years.
This coming Saturday I’m going to be the guest speaker at Pride Shabbat at Temple Beth Zion in Brookline, MA. If you’re local, come hear me tell this story and more as I talk about “what’s Jewish about gay pride.”
This photo is probably the most accurate summation of who I was in high school. (Not much has changed since then.)
ETA: If I recall the circumstance of the photo correctly, it was at a youth-group dance in a local synagogue, and I was singing a karaoke rendition of “Stoney End.”
Daniel (D.J.) Kaplan’s farewell address as USY International President, delivered at USY’s International Convention last week in Philadelphia. Full text of speech is here.
In DJ’s speech, he talks about how each of us struggles with difference. He relates his own struggle to a text from Pirkei Avot. He comes out as gay. (If you don’t want to watch the entire video, start at 4:40.)
For those of you who know my story, you can imagine how incredible this makes me feel. I don’t know DJ. I haven’t been to a USY convention in many years. But Jules Gutin, the outgoing director of USY, knew that I’d want to hear this speech and emailed me a copy (with DJ’s blessing).
When I was a kid, I wanted nothing more than to be able to get up in front of my USY friends and make a speech like this, but I wasn’t able. Seeing a leader do so makes me incredibly hopeful for the future.
This doesn’t mean that the work is over. But it’s a testament to the work that’s been done, and the organization’s readiness to take the next steps. I’m proud to be a leader in Keshet, an organization that is helping USY and other Jewish youth movements move forward to become more inclusive of all Jewish kids.
