I’ve been marching in Delight parades since 1995, however I received’t be marching this 12 months in New York, the place I stay.
Delight Month has all the time been a few political and progressive embrace of our rainbow of decisions. However currently I discover myself feeling alienated by loud voices amongst activists within the L.G.B.T.Q.+ neighborhood on all sides of the Israel-Gaza battle. They’re illiberal of nuance, complexity and opposing views.
I’m an Israeli American queer religion chief and social justice activist. Together with my brother and cousins I signify the thirty ninth consecutive technology of rabbis in our household, in accordance with our household historical past, and I’m additionally the primary overtly queer rabbi in our lineage. Lengthy earlier than Oct. 7, 2023, Jewish progressives like me protested the Israeli occupation and preached a simply two-state resolution. I’ve helped to pioneer faith-led Delight packages which might be grounded in Jewish values, preventing for freedom and liberation for all.
So it’s painful to confess that I don’t really feel welcome as my full self in lots of queer public locations that when felt like house.
Many queer activists who’re mobilizing for the plight of Palestinians are satisfied this battle constitutes genocide and depart no room for different interpretations. In the meantime, from the opposite aspect, many pro-Israel queer activists are conflating opposition to this brutal battle with help for Islamic fundamentalism and take into account all criticism a betrayal. As activists on both finish of the spectrum demand full allegiance, they’re squeezing out these of us who don’t fall in line.
We’re being advised to decide on a aspect and to sentence the opposite as represented by bigots and apologists for homicide. There’s a a lot larger and extra complicated image of Israel and Gaza that defies the truth of Instagram reels and catchy slogans.
I see too many progressive allies failing to sentence antisemitism when it arises in our midst. In January I joined a pro-Palestinian protest in New York Metropolis’s Union Sq., the place a few dozen protesters, clad in rainbow flags, shifted their chants from blaming Israel to “Kill the Jews.” Some within the crowd shrugged, some objected, however it took time earlier than the mantra modified. Fearing for my bodily security, I didn’t stick round to see what occurred subsequent.
I like and sympathize with the passionate rage with which many in my progressive communities demand justice and an instantaneous finish to the tragic actuality in Gaza and Israel. However the antisemitism incident, like many others on screens and in streets, unintentionally strengthens these on the proper, a few of whom are illiberal of individuals within the queer neighborhood. On the similar time, the rainbow flag, an emblem of liberation and inclusion, has been co-opted by Israelis preventing the battle. Israeli homosexual activists and official Israeli media channels have posted pictures of Israel Protection Forces troopers waving the flag among the many rubble in Gaza.
This all appears like a betrayal of what Delight means. If the queer neighborhood can’t deal with nuance, who can? I worry for what meaning in each of my homelands and for all of us.
Delight has by no means been about unity of perception. At Delight marches, the company floats with gleaming logos don’t precisely align with the extra anti-capitalist radicals. Delight began as a riot and have become a public protest and celebration, and for me it has all the time been a spot of complexity, disagreement and radical inclusion.
At some Delight parades I’ve drummed in drag with activists. At others I’ve marched with my youngsters and our queer household. I’ve additionally led multifaith rallies and rituals as a rabbi, wrapped in a prayer scarf. Delight weekend is, for many people, each a vacation and a holy day.
However I’ve felt discomfort at Delight marches earlier than. In the course of the N.Y.C. Delight March in 2015, I paraded down Fifth Avenue with my household and sooner or later my then 5-year-old noticed a small Israeli flag on the road, picked it up and began waving it with pleasure. Then some cheers from the sidewalk had been changed by boos and expletives and a jeer of, “You don’t belong right here!” We had been shocked, however we marched on.
That summer time, I marched in Jerusalem Delight in Israel, and though the overwhelming response was optimistic and enthusiastic, some counterprotesters from the ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhood hurled insults and threw soiled diapers at us.
Public satisfaction nonetheless issues as hatred and discrimination proceed to threaten our rights and lives, however parades aren’t the one strategy to have fun and advocate progress. From my queer elders, I discovered the smart methods of one thing known as a coronary heart circle, the place we sit and hear to 1 one other with respect and persistence, eye to eye, coronary heart to coronary heart. Regardless of our hurts, we decide to our shared therapeutic.
And from my Jewish elders I inherited the knowledge of the Passover Seder, with its fraught conversations and debates across the desk, recharging after which recommitting to pursuing liberation for all.
So this 12 months, with respect and gratitude to these organizing marches and exhibiting as much as struggle for freedom, I’ll be gathering a coronary heart circle as an alternative. We’ll break bread collectively as queer companions with totally different political views to mourn the insufferable losses, to have fun Delight, to course of our ideas and emotions regardless of the deep, principled divides that exist, to listen to and to heal someplace within the messy center, as loving, sincere and loud and proud as we will be. Maybe subsequent 12 months we’ll march for peace and satisfaction, collectively once more.
Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie is the non secular chief and a co-founder of Lab/Shul, an everybody-friendly, God-optional congregation in New York Metropolis. He’s the topic of the documentary “Sabbath Queen,” which premiered on the Tribeca Pageant.
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