Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Why Would a Non-Gay Female Rabbi March in the Pride Parade?

Toronto Rabbi Elyse Goldstein explains why she'll be among the throng:
I’m marching because I know what it’s like to feel like a thorn.

I’m marching because I remember as a woman what it meant to be told I cannot, should not and must not. I remember breaking glass ceilings so that others would not have to cut their heads. I remember the fear, the surprise, the shock, the anger, the verbal and public dismissals of my personhood and my place in the Jewish community time and time again, and not so very long ago.

I’m marching to say that Jewish life doesn’t look just one way or like just one type of person. It’s not all mom, dad, 2.2 kids and a dog. We don’t all wear shtreimls, and we don’t all eat gefilte fish. We aren’t all white. We aren’t all married. We aren’t all successful, middle class businesspeople. We aren’t all heterosexual. The Jewish community is as complex as we human beings all are. I’m marching because the Jewish community should – and could – be as vibrant and diverse as this wonderfully diverse city.

I’m marching because it stretches my own envelope, my own comfort zone. And I’m marching because it reminds me that God’s image is mysterious and diverse, and doesn’t look only like me.
I'm not marching because I'm not gay; don't know what it's like to feel like a thorn; and have neither the desire nor the reason to stretch my own envelope/comfort zone.

Also, because Pride caved in like a bunch of pussies to the anti-Zionists.

But, hey, that's just me.

2 comments:

Carlos Perera said...

My own guess, inferred from personal knowledge of Rabbi Goldstein types in my life, is that she is marching because all of the cool and influential people she knows and reads about have turned into rhinoceros, and she wants to be one too. What better way to establish her rhinocerotidean bona fides than to march in the Pride Parade and be seen by all the other ungulates, as she exhibits her spiffy horn and shiny hide?

As for that inconvenient Queers Against Israeli Apartheid thing, well, they're part of the rhinoceros herd too. Hey, you don't really believe Rabbi Goldstein is going to let a minor inconvenience like the existential peril of the Jewish homeland interfere with getting stroked by all of the enlightened rhinoceros in her congregation, do you?

scaramouche said...

I don't know the Rabbi personally either, but I think you've done an excellent job of explicating her mentality.