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.
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