It’s 2015 and I’m lighting my 12-year-old handmade chanukiah at the small window of my dorm room. The candles flicker out the 2nd-floor window and I wish for latkes, not only for the taste of home, but for their incredible power to fill the room with an odor that would be capable of masking the stench of weed that wiggles in every time I try to open the window. It’s 2015, and I’m reading prayers off my phone that after 18 years I wish I knew by heart.

“Baruch Atah Adonai Elohenu Melech ha-olam asher kid-shanu b’mitzvotav v’tzivanu l’hadlik ner shel Chanukah.”

“Blessed are You, Lord, our God, King of The Universe who has sanctified us with His commandments, and commanded us to light the Chanukah light.”

But alas, here I am googling which blessings I’m to say when, and in what order. There are only three. I really should know this. It’s 2015 and I’m thinking of something my mother once taught me about why it was we must light the candles frighteningly close to the curtains.

Chanukah is a minor Jewish holiday, and to Jews in the diaspora a primarily cultural celebration of events that postdate the Torah. It’s an event whose significance is often misinterpreted due to its occasional proximity to Christmas, but like all Jewish holidays, Chanukah tells a story rich in symbolism.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: The Chanukah story begins with the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. Judaism is outlawed, and thus forced underground. Two years later, after some fighting and some dying, the Jews were able to rebuild the temple and light its menorah, the seven branched eternal flame. They could only find enough oil to last one night, but miraculously, the oil burned for eight days, enough time to make more.

In celebration of the miracle, Jews light a nine-armed menorah, or chanukiah, for eight nights—representing the eight days that the oil burned—eat foods that have been fried in oil, and place their burning chanukiahs in doorframes and windows, where the light can be seen from the street. Unless, of course, it is not safe to do so (don’t actually risk lighting your curtains on fire). And like a Jewish Scrooge, this year I’m visited by Chanukah past.

I think back to 2011. It’s a cold Saturday in January, I am five months free of Shabbat School, having become a B’nai Mitzvah in Mid-August. I’m still adjusting to a normal schedule after two weeks of winter break. It is 2011 and there are police surveying the scene at our school, five blocks from home.

Mere blocks from our proudly hung mezuzah, scrawled across one of the towering stacks of commemorative bricks that surround the playground’s stage structure, in bright blue spray paint, is a symbol of our unwelcome. A massive swastika watches over the playground as the sun rises, its twin, a black swastika on a young girl’s bike that is locked to the bike rack just feet away. Between the two, a series of racial slurs and a phrase I’ve been taught to shiver at the sight of, “white power.”

Just a year prior, we were gathered in the gym to listen to the story of a Holocaust survivor after some rebellious middle-schooler wrote “hail Hitler” on their desk in the classroom of a Jewish teacher. I then got my first glance into how little non-Romani gentiles know of the Shoah.

It is 2004 and I am in the second grade. I am learning how to breathe through my newly-deviated septum, and how to count to ten in Spanish. It is 2004 and I am just beginning to question the legitimacy of the tooth fairy, but I have chosen not to reveal my uncertainty, for fear of losing my only source of income. It is 2004 and one of my friends, confused and concerned, is asking my mother why it is I don’t know who Jesus is. My identity is forcibly rearranged as I learn how many of my peers go to Sundays School instead of Shabbat School.

It is 2015 and I am lighting my 12-year-old handmade chanukiah at the small window in my dorm room. I am blissfully unaware of the string of unpublished anti-Semitic incidents that would occur in the following month, just outside my door. The two reports of swastikas on student’s doors, as well as a headless babydoll with the message “death to all Jews” would not be revealed to media outlets until early June, which was nearly two quarters after the incidents occurred.

It is 2015 and when I tell my friends that I have to stay in this weekend because I can not leave the candles in my chanukiah to burn without someone watching I am met with “Wow, really? You don’t look Jewish.” The phrase that has followed me for most of my life: “You don’t look Jewish.” It’s often said in a tone that attempts to be recognized as both a compliment and a misgiving, as if not “looking Jewish” is both incredible and impossible. Through every holiday. Every Passover lunch box. Every “I can’t, I have Hebrew lessons that day.” “You don’t look Jewish.”

It is 2015 and I’m calling my mother to tell her that I couldn’t light the candles at sunset because I was still in class, but that I am doing my best. She is shocked that I am lighting the candles at all.

She is shocked I am lighting the candles at all.

She is shocked because I was always the wicked child of the family (Passover is my favorite holiday, but I will always despise the moral intended by the four children allegory). The day after I became a B’nai Mitzvah I dyed my hair red. I’ve spent the years since casually  combing my Jewishness behind bleached bangs and layers of sunscreen. It was easier that way.

I’m white by U.S. racial standards. Unlike my friends who can’t remove their ethnicities—nor run from the prejudices that followed them—I could skip Hebrew lessons and go to school on Yom Kippur. I didn’t have to think, speak, or look Jewish. If I didn’t think, speak, or look Jewish, I didn’t have to worry about my Jewishness. And if I didn’t have to worry about my Jewishness I could focus on worrying about my much more obvious queer identity—which, unlike my Jewishness, I radiated. I carried my queerness with immense pride, showed it off at every opportunity. It influenced every choice I made, from the clothing I wore to the people I surrounded myself with. My whiteness afforded me the opportunity to denounce my Jewishness (and choose to exclusively perform my queer identity). But choice individual assimilation only goes so far.

It’s 2016 and I am laying in my bed in the middle of the night, scrolling through every Jewish-related tumblr tag and twitter hashtag I can find. I am giggling as I browse posts tagged “goyim gonna goy” and tweets followed by “#GrowingUpJewish”.

It is 2016 and I am rediscovering the culture I pushed away as soon as I was given the choice. The world I kept in my closet with embarrassing baby photos. The identity I avoided revealing because if I didn’t “look Jewish” then I didn’t have to.

It is 2016 and I am done.

I am done acting like I’ll burn in the sun. I am done tilting my head strangely in attempts to hide the hook in my nose. I am done hiding my “Jewish” features behind my WASP-y ones, and I am done being told that I don’t “look Jewish”. I am done carefully framing who I am in attempts to distance myself from my ethnicity.

I am done hiding my Jewishness, but I am not going to change who I am to fit the gentile mold of “looking Jewish.” I am not going to let my pastel hair grow out until it’s a thick, brown mane, I am not going to wear a massive magen david around my neck everyday, and I am not going to start attending Minyan every week just to prove that I am indeed a Jew.

It is 2016 and I am wrapping myself in a tallit and touching the corner to the torah cover at my cousin’s bar-mitzvah service. I am mumbling shehecheyanu under my breath in the corner of my favorite tea shop. I am mounting a mezuzah to the doorway of my first apartment. I am lighting my favorite chanukiah in the window of my family home. Five blocks from my second grade classroom. Five blocks from my grade-school playground. Five blocks from the place that my Jewishness was first dictated to me.

I am singing The Shehecheyanu.

“Baruch Atah Adonai Elohenu Melech ha-olam shehecheyanu vekiymanu vehigi’anu lazman hazeh.”

“Blessed are You, Lord, our God, King of The Universe who has granted us life, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this moment.”

Here I am. I am Jewish and I am done, but I have reached this moment. For that, and that alone, I am grateful.

Finn Piper is a graphic designer and compulsive note-taker from Portland, OR.

Image courtesy Finn Piper

The post “You Don’t Look Jewish”: A Chanukah Tale appeared first on Jewcy.

In that picture, you see a 16-year-old girl. She has frizzy, curly, reddish hair. Her eyebrows are thick and dark, and her nose is large. She enjoys reading and writing, and has dreams of working in publishing and live in New York City. She will get there someday; but first, she has to finish high school.

High school is rough. Whoever said that those are the best four years of one’s life was either home schooled or a compulsive liar. High school is especially hard when you don’t fit in, when you’re a minority.

My name is Deanna Schwartz. I am a proud Jew. I attend a high school in Howard County, Maryland where the vast majority of my peers are Christian. It may come as a surprise as to how few Jews there are in my city, considering areas not too far from me, like Baltimore and Potomac, have such high Jewish populations. Yet there are so few of us that I know most Jews in my county on a personal level, from one Jewish youth activity or another.

It’s 2016, so every day there’s a different trending topic celebrating diversity. This is good. Some may think that discrimination is a thing of the past. But, this is not true—especially for the Jews.

Oddly enough, my somewhat difficult experience growing up as a Jewish teen is fundamentally different from my parents’ experiences. My mom grew up in Philadelphia and South Jersey, where Ashkenazi culture is easily found. My dad, while primarily growing up in the same area as my brother and me, faced a completely different generation of tolerance and culture, since he was immersed in synagogue life and attending a heavily Jewish school.

My high school is a melting pot of socio-economic backgrounds and classes. You’ll see as many teenagers with “Bernie 2016” buttons on their backpacks as “Make America Great Again” hats. One area where we are not diverse? Religion.

It is easy to identify me as a Jew. I look like what people think of as appearing Jewish. I use Yiddish words as much as any good East Coast Jew should, and my last name is extremely, canonically Jewish. I wear sweatshirts from Jewish camps and am quick to correct someone if they wish me a “Merry Christmas.”

My parents have always made sure that my brother and I appreciate our differences for what they are. They pushed against the current of our Christian neighbors and classmates and enrolled us in Hebrew school. I had a Bat Mitzvah when I was 13, complete with a big party with all my friends and family. I participate in Jewish youth groups. My family has always attended or hosted Passover seders and lit candles for the eight nights every single year of Hanukkah.

Because of my proud Jewish identity, I have to deal with discrimination every day. It’s usually what the speakers think is subtle—people making Holocaust jokes, or saying I’m “cheap.” I once bent over to pick up a quarter that was on the floor in the cafeteria at school and heard someone mutter “filthy Jew” under their breath.

What did I do? What I often do— I pretended I didn’t hear it. Or sometimes I’ll laugh as if it’s funny. Or I correct people, but while hiding how much it actually hurts. I roll my eyes when they tell me that I’m going to Hell (both in jest, and in earnest; I once had a classmate ask me to leave the table during a meal so she could say grace. My presence as a Jew was too much for her to handle as she said her prayers to Jesus). I haven’t sought support from the school because I know nothing would change.

This is something that the Jewish kids in my school are used to— my closest friends are also Jewish and I have a twin brother, and I often hear other stories like mine. We grow up knowing that we are different. We are used to teachers assigning homework during Yom Kippur because it’s just a day off school to them, or seeing tweets from our classmates flippantly saying “thank you Jews for the day off!” We’re used to being assigned the role of “Jewish one” in friend groups. We’re used to holiday gift exchanges being called “Secret Santa” and feeling uncomfortable at Christmas parties.

One of the most frustrating facets of the teen Jewish experience in my area is the assumption that we are Christian. Everyone simply assumes that you are Christian. I’ll never forget when our warm-up question on a December day in fourth grade was “Are you excited to get your Christmas presents?” I was the only kid who put my magnet on the side of the board that said “No.” The teacher said to me, “Deanna, why are you so ungrateful?”

Moments like this are minimal, but they add up. Years and years of feeling that it’s wrong to be Jewish at one point made me start to resent my religion. I started to perpetuate the stereotypes and make the jokes myself. I screamed when it was time for Hebrew school. I experimented with makeup to make my nose appear smaller, and tried straighteners to get rid of that pesky curl that seemed so ugly to me. On my Bat Mitzvah, I had straightened hair.

Something every Jew can agree on is that it’s comforting to be around other Jews. A usual haven for many Jewish kids, myself included, is summer camp. For six years, I attended a Jewish sleepaway camp, Camp Louise. Being surrounded by other Jewish girls my age in a safe and fun environment was absolutely incredible, and included Saturday night Havdalah and learning Israeli folk dances. I don’t attend Jewish sleepaway camp anymore, but it had a profound impact on me and my life overall. It’s something to hold onto, to remind me that my identity is something to love. I would not be the same person without it.

I’m at the beginning of the summer before my junior year of high school. This is an important summer. I’m starting to look at colleges (a good Hillel is a must!), learning how to drive, and developing all kinds of new forms of independence. I’ve been thinking about the future since before I knew what it really meant, and Judaism has always been a part of my future. I plan to raise my children as Jewish, and I hope to be able to teach them the lessons I’ve learned and will continue to learn. I dream of a day where Jews will be more accepted. It’s the same dream my ancestors have been dreaming for centuries. But if there’s anything that the Jewish people are, it’s persistent. We’ve been the subject of hate and violence more times than any other religious group, and we’ve pushed through. Judaism is and will always be a huge part of my life. It’s shaped my ethics, morals, and personality. I love my religion with all my heart and will never stop being an advocate for acceptance.

Deanna Schwartz is a teenage writer and blogger from Ellicott City, Maryland. Books, theatre, writing, feminism, and Judaism are just a few things on the long list of things that she loves.

Images courtesy of Deanna Schwartz

The post The Struggle Continues: Being a Jewish Teen in 2016 appeared first on Jewcy.

Since the release of the film Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, the Internet has been abuzz with discussions of what traits define Superman as a character. Unfortunately, his Jewishness has been left largely out of the conversation.

About one thing everyone agrees: the director of Batman V Superman, Zack Snyder, has crafted a character who’s a far cry from the square jawed Boy Scout who many people picture when they hear “Superman.” Snyder’s take on the character is more that of an emotionally stunted god, and of course, Snyder layered the Jesus imagery on as thickly as he could. Since Snyder’s Superman is a fundamental misunderstanding of how heroism and kindness work, it’s hard to tell who Snyder hates more: Jesus or Superman.

This cynical depiction of Superman, however, is not new. When you look back over the history of Superman as a character, you see a pattern, one that actually mirrors the status of Jews in America. As Jews have assimilated, so has Superman. The edges got sanded off over the years, leaving a character who can be done justice by some writers, but is commonly the victim of misunderstanding. After all, a big guy who dresses up in an American flag-like getup and beats you up if you don’t follow the American way seems more like a Trump rally attendee than somebody to admire.

This wasn’t always the case. The very first page of the first appearance of Superman, Action Comics #1, released in June of 1938, begins with Superman’s origin. It’s a version of Superman’s founding myth that’s largely familiar, but the parts it’s missing might surprise you. Most people know the basics of Supe’s origin, and it’s never been formulated more poetically than by comic book author Grant Morrison. In a fantastic comic called All Star Superman, Morrison writes, “Doomed planet. Desperate scientists. Last hope. Kindly Couple.” Nothing has encapsulated the beginnings of the alien who stands for “Truth, Justice, and the American Way” better than those eight words.

So what’s surprising about that first appearance is that there is no kindly couple. The implication is that Superman has grown up in an orphanage. Plus, Superman doesn’t stand for that iconic trinity of values. “The American Way” is absent; it was added later, around the same time that “Under God” was appended to the Pledge of Allegiance. Furthermore, Superman can’t fly or shoot lasers or use his super ventriloquism to mess with people (believe it or not, the latter was a plot device surprisingly often in the 1960s).

Even more shocking for those who haven’t read Superman’s early exploits is how much of a, well, bully he is. He’s not yet a clean-cut American icon outsmarting mad scientists and humongous apes who shoot kryptonite out of their eyes.

Superman’s first adventure involves breaking into the house of the Mayor to save an innocent woman from death row. Supe then terrifies to the point of fainting a man abusing his wife, crushes the car of a group of creeps, and threatens to electrocute an arms dealer bribing a US politician. For his enemies, it’s like a horror story. You can run to the other side of the planet and Superman is standing behind you, threatening to straight up murder you if you don’t stop profiting off of the military industrial complex. And the wildest part is, it feels like he might just do it.

Superman is, in this incarnation, a progressive power fantasy, an icon of Jewish revenge against oppressors. He’s the pent up frustration of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster; two poor Jewish kids from Cleveland, the children of immigrants. They were losers and outcasts who were far from enthusiastic about the rich and privileged.

Without a Superman devoted to the “American Way,” the notion of the hero can seem a lot less safe and comfortable to those in power. He’s a nearly invulnerable alien who upholds a specific notion of truth and justice that abhors corruption and will force you and an enemy general to fight to death with your bare hands if you don’t acknowledge the futility of war and make a truce (see his second appearance).

Flash forward nearly 50 years to The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller and Klaus Janson. In this influential comic, you have an aging Batman fighting against both crime and the government in a 1980s dystopia. And who did Miller pick to represent the opposite of Batman’s armed revolt against the government? A very Reagany Superman, that’s who. A Superman who thinks that the best way to help people is by working for the government, even it means invading foreign countries, fighting the Soviets, and possibly starting a nuclear war.

So what happened in between these two drastically different versions of the Man of Steel? Well, assimilation happened. The status of Jews in America shifted dramatically. The price of getting into the country clubs turned out to be greater than expected, and Superman paid it too. Superman originally represented the Jewish immigrant experience, but that story drifted further and further into the past. His Kryptonian name, Kal-El, even sounds Jewish, especially in contrast with Clark Kent. But as Jews increasingly didn’t need to change their names to be successful, Superman’s dual identity became less of a potent metaphor and more of a fun gimmick. How is Superman going to prevent Lois Lane from figuring out who he really is this time? (Spoiler: The solution was usually robots. Superman had loads of robot duplicates of himself, which kind of lessened the tension.)

The decline of Jewish radicalism meant that Superman’s awesome power lacked that poignant purpose, and that’s where new themes came in to fill the gap. That usually meant totally absurd stories in the 50s and 60s, like the time that Superman turned into a lion man or discovered that JFK was a shape-changing alien.

Next, when Superman leapt from comics to films in a single bound, that’s when the big JC came in. Suddenly, the idea of somebody with awesome power choosing restraint and sacrifice became perfect for a generous helping of Jesus imagery. And so, this also means extra metaphor points for killing Superman off. When Superman died in 1992, for example, it was a huge deal. The comic sold like hotcakes, even though it came down to the inane conflict of Superman and a rock monster punching each other until they both die.

Still, some writers have not been content to abandon Superman’s more political, progressive roots. The aforementioned writer Grant Morrison worked on a series that had a great start in 2011 with an issue also called Action Comics #1, named for Supe’s introductory 1938 story. In a throwback, the issue begins with Superman threatening a corrupt businessman and declaring that there may be somebody who believes that the law applies the same to the rich and the poor in America, but that man is not Superman!

And next, Gene Luen Yang, a wonderful cartoonist who has been writing Superman comics, will be using the death of Clark Kent to introduce a new Chinese Superman, who by losing the “American Way” can perhaps recapture some of what’s been lost over the years. After all, Supe’s in the hands of an artist who is, like Superman’s original creators, the child of immigrants.

And perhaps the underwhelming performance of Batman V Superman at the box office has revealed a dissatisfaction with Superman as a brooding loner uncomfortable with heroism. Many have argued that the Superman we need has been the upstanding Boy Scout all along.

I believe the time is ripe for a Superman revolution. A rich guy who dresses up like a bat and punches poor people because he misses his parents? No thank you. An outsider who pretends to fit in while secretly working to undermine the systems that keep people down? Sign me up.

Israel Geselowitz lives in DC, where he reads lots of comics, writes lots of Python code, and wonders: Whatever happened to the man of tomorrow?

Image Credit: Wikipedia and Bago Games via Flickr

The post How Superman Stopped Being Jewish, And Why He’s Coming Back appeared first on Jewcy.

In case you were wondering what to discuss with your family when you’re home from school for Rosh Hashanah, Barry Kosmin and Ariela Keysar at the Trinity College Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture have released the preliminary findings of a survey of Jewish students on college campuses, New Voices reports.

Not surprisingly, the results point to similar trends as the Pew Research Center’s 2013 Portrait of Jewish Americans, but there are some significant differences that show how Jewish life in America is slowly changing, particularly among Millennials.

There are two fundamental events that defined world Jewry in the 20th century: the Holocaust, and the creation of the State of Israel. The college-aged Jews surveyed by Kosmin and Keysar believe these events to be less important in their definition of “being Jewish” than the Pew survey respondents.

60 percent of college-aged students said that “remembering the Holocaust” was “very important” to being Jewish, whereas 73 percent of Pew respondents said it was “essential.” That the Holocaust is losing its prominence as an important part of American Jewish identity may be surprising to older generations, but it is not shocking. As we move further away from the events of World War II, and survivors are no longer alive to personally relate their stories, the Holocaust becomes more of a historical event than a communal or familial one.

35 percent of the students surveyed by Kosmin and Keysar felt the Jewish state was “very important” to being Jewish, while 43 percent of Pew respondents said supporting Israel was an “essential” part of being Jewish. Yet, 62 percent of the college students had visited Israel (21 percent on a Birthright trip)—significantly higher that the 43 percent of Pew respondents who had been to Israel.

Also noteworthy: the students named Israel as a “top concern” when asked to identify the “crucial issues” concerning young Jews today. Given that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a hot-button issue on campuses across America—New Voices editor Derek M. Kwait refers to its “amoeba-like takeover of all Jewish life on campus”—it’s not surprising that some Jewish college students consider their religious and cultural identity to be separate from Israel. But the high percentage of students who have visited—and their degree of concern—indicates that they are still vitally engaged with Israel, although perhaps more critically than their parents.

The survey also shows an interesting balance between religious identity and the level of participation at religious services. 39 percent of Jews on campus considered themselves “secular” and just 23 percent identified as “religious” (quite different from the American college student population as a whole, where 32 percent identify as “religious” and 28 percent as “secular”). Yet, the survey also highlights that young Jews participate in religious services in higher numbers on a weekly and monthly basis than the American Jewish population as a whole. Fewer identify as “High Holiday Jews” than in the general Jewish population, but—puzzlingly—a greater number never attend services at all. “This seems to speak to the larger trend of our generation’s loathing of lip-service,” writes Kwait. “If we believe, we take it seriously (even if we take it seriously in a non-traditional way) and if we don’t believe, why bother with it at all.”

Some other fun facts to take away (approximate numbers):

1. 20% see “having a good sense of humor” as necessary to the Jewish identity.

2. 80% had a bar/bat mitzvah.

3. 40% say having Jewish children is a very important part of being Jewish.

4. 13% exclusively date Jews on campus.

5. 80% identify Judaism as a culture; 60% as a religious group; 40% as an ethnic group.

6. 64% were descendants of four Jewish grandparents.

As with any preliminary survey results, the findings are not 100% conclusive, but it’s still fascinating to look at the statistics and see what they point to. We’ll keep you posted on the final survey results, which will no doubt provide more clarity and provoke more questions.

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As a child, celebrating Purim was about dressing up and making noise when our rabbi chanted Haman’s name during his reading of the megillah. But two different life-changing events during my adolescence have led me to understand the holiday in a more complex light. What was once a day of dressing up and acting out has become, for me, a call to social justice.

Unlike most of my Orthodox peers, I celebrated my bar mitzvah on Purim. I traded the usual weekly Torah portion read on a Saturday morning for the much longer Megillat Esther. Although my Hebrew birthday—the eighth of Adar—was actually six days prior to Purim, the holiday became the time that, according to Jewish tradition, I entered adulthood.

Back then, I read the megillah primarily as a coming-of-age story. Esther went from being a shy, sheltered child to a brave and courageous woman in a matter of chapters. I understood her hesitation when she invited King Ahasuerus and Haman to a banquet, but decided at the last minute to push off her revelation to a second banquet. Esther’s reticence echoed my fears about assuming the role and responsibilities of an adult man in Jewish ritual life. Here was I, a kid of thirteen, trying to take off the mask of childhood and become a fully-fledged member of the Jewish people. My own family was firmly modern Orthodox, but I was raised in an ultra-Orthodox community. Would I ever be able to live up to the expectations set out for me by those far to my family’s religious right?

Three years later, Purim was the holiday during which I came out to my best friends. Since middle school, I had worked to keep my true identity hidden from my peers. I refused to do or say anything that might be even remotely been seen as stereotypical and lead people to the (correct) assumption that I was queer. I refused to listen to any music that was seen as “gay” or to wear skinny jeans or brightly-colored clothing. I was sheepishly quiet, lest I slip up and say the wrong thing to the wrong person.

When I came out, the pretense finally began to fall away, though it happened gradually. Around a few friends, I began to open up and leave both the closet and the personal cocoon that I had set up to protect myself. As I came out to my parents (who were probably just as surprised to find out that I was queer as Ahasuerus was to find out that someone was planning to eradicate his queen’s nation) and to more of my friends, I began to feel more comfortable with who I was. I began listening to music that I genuinely enjoyed, stereotypes be damned. I fully embraced the phenomenon of brightly-colored skinny jeans, which were already popular at my Jewish prep school.

Coming out also led me to see a new dimension in the Purim story. It was not only Esther’s fear of taking responsibility that scared her: it was the peeling away of the false identity she had created to conceal her Judaism. As a child, I had read rabbinic stories of how Esther would light Shabbat candles and practice Judaism in secret, with only Mordechai and a few of her maids aware of her real identity. After hiding for so long, she feared the response to her true self. Would she be rejected by her husband, the king, who had approved Haman’s plan to exterminate her people? What if she couldn’t save her people? And what if the king decided that she, despite being queen, would not be spared?

Like I did when I was coming out, Esther shed her false identity in stages. Initially she does not mention her Jewishness, only that a nation is about to be exterminated. Later, she reveals her affiliation with Mordechai and the greater Jewish community. Ahasuerus  becomes angered not at the fact that the Jews are in danger, but that a single minority is in danger. In executing Haman, Ahasuerus sent the message that intolerance of any kind was unacceptable in his kingdom, which was known for its diversity (the beginning of the megillah tells us that the Persian empire included no fewer than 127 distinct nations). Megillat Esther is story about—and a call for—social justice, as much as it is about shedding the false identities we create so as to not be rejected.

Interpreting the story of Purim as a story of social justice has helped me identify my goal as an aspiring advocate for LGBT Jews. I should not only be fighting for the inclusion of those who feel excluded because they are queer. My goal is to create a community that encourages and celebrates diversity, a community that not only accepts LGBT people, but also other disenfranchised Jews. For me, the final goal is the creation of a stronger, more inclusive Jewish community: it is not only I, as a queer person, who benefits from this, but the Jewish people as a whole, which benefits from becoming more diverse.

Amram Altzman is a first-year student in a joint program with the Jewish Theological Seminary and Columbia University. He is also a blogger for New Voices, a website for Jewish college students. You can find him on Twitter @thesubwaypoet.

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