The appalling behavior of the organizers at the Chicago Dyke March, who expelled three Jewish women for bearing Jewish Pride flags, is still fresh on everyone’s minds, as is the earlier confrontation of Jewish Queer Youth by JVP (Jewish Voice for Peace) at the Israel Day Parade, but these are only part of a larger trend of ignoring the presence of Jews in queer spaces at best, and discriminating against them at worst.

Carolina Jews for Justice (CJJ), a North Carolina non-profit focusing on Jewish issues, liberal policy issues, and advocacy, released a lengthy statement on June 26, noting that the annual Pride Fest was scheduled on Yom Kippur.

Yom Kippur falls on September 30th this year, which also happens to be the last Saturday in September. Normally, many Jewish groups participate in the march, but putting it on Yom Kippur puts the kibosh on that for many, and to that end, CJJ encouraged their readership to email NC Pride Fest about the conflict this date caused.

Since then, CJJ has not released a further action plan, nor has NC Pride Fest responded either to their public appeal, or to email inquiries. However, Anna Grant of the CJJ confirmed over email that John Short, the director of NC Pride Fest, said that “it’s always been last Saturday of September,” likely to maximize potential student participation and collaboration with the nearby University. No one’s crunched the numbers, but Grant says according to Short, for the past 17 years he’s chaired the event, it hasn’t fallen on a Hebrew holiday. Grant did not respond to email inquiries to confirm.

It seems that in this case, the exclusion is a result of casual ignorance or lack of care, rather than deliberate malevolence or targeting of Jewish people. However, CJJ noted both in their Facebook post and in emails to Jewcy that NC Pride has a history of dropping the ball when it comes to intersectionality. On their Facebook post, CJJ talked about the rise of Christian chauvinism, noting how it affected their Muslim neighbors too.

“As we were running around yesterday trying to figure out what to do about this scheduling SNAFU, our Muslim friends, colleagues and neighbors were celebrating Eid — and our country’s president broke with a 20-year tradition of hosting an Eid al-Fitr feast at the White House. During end-of-year testing in our schools, some Muslim students were fasting as families were universally instructed to make sure their children came to school well-fed on testing day.”

Over email, Anna Grant directed me to a news article that reported how just two years ago, Black Lives Matter activists were physically assaulted and shut down at NC Pride. The argument is that lack of intersectionality harms the community along multiple axis — and this time, the blow fell on the Jewish community.

“The Pride march has had controversy in the past, and certainly needs to be more inclusive to other communities outside of this one-year issue that affects the Jewish community: the trans community, people of color, and other more marginalized communities than gay cisgender white men, who are also the primary ones organizing NC Pride and the queer community at large,” wrote Grant.

It’s a powerful argument, that calls for inclusion, acceptance, and actively working to broaden community accessibility, and it comes at a troubling time. The American Jewish community is seeing troubling events aimed at excluding Jews from public events, and it is usually justified using this very rhetoric, the language of intersectionality, the same rhetoric CJJ uses here to call for inclusion of many marginalized groups, Jews included. And some of these cases are very blatantly anti-Semitic, even as the language of intersectionality calls for inclusion. It seems that intersectionality means different things to different people — and so do the Jews.

CJJ’s post says it best:

“No group of people, Jewish or otherwise, should have to choose between our LGBTQ identities and the other identities that are important to us and shape our lives.”

We’ll see who makes queer Jews choose next.

Image via Wikimedia

The post Does Pride have a Jewish Problem? appeared first on Jewcy.

Happy Pride Month! Would you like to push your subversive queer agenda whilst enjoying traditional Jewish foods? Here are a few rainbow colored suggestions, but of course we didn’t include rainbow bagels because those are an abomination!

Rainbow challah is not an abomination (experiments tend to come from within the Jewish community, and not mess with the core concept), and is an increasingly popular Jewish treat, either for pride or not. But do you have any idea how many different pride flags there are? A whole lot, and you can try to make an appropriate challah for any of them. We recently published some pretty detailed instructions on how to make a challah resembling the trans pride flag, for example. And what about flags that have specific shapes or symbols? Consider our instructions on how to make poppy seed stencils (and tweet us your photos, of course!).

Rainbow cookies/cake (same food, different names) is not actually clear in its origins; it seems to be about as Jewish as it is Italian (though of course you can be both), a product of the overlapping immigrant communities in America. Regardless, it’s a kiddush staple, and the perfect treat to pass around as you discuss intersectionality in the Jewish community and how it can be more accommodating to queer folks.

Fruit slices may be a Passover treat, but there’s no reason you can’t eat them in June. Besides, you can be political all year, noshing on this dessert at your next seder as you politely explain that the orange on the seder plate actually originally referred to lesbians and gay men specifically, and not women as a whole.

Heck, it’s not rainbow, but eat an orange. Let’s reclaim it.

Rainbow latkes are another holiday dish good year round— and we have the recipe! Chew on the nuanced historical implications of eating these— a queer meaning juxtaposed with the a fun aesthetic twist on a traditional Chanukah food. But said food only dates back a few hundred years since potatoes are a New World food that through colonization became the central to many Ashkenazi communities’ diets— the original latke was actually fried cheese, and Italian.

Plus, Chanukah is a complicated celebration to begin with since it’s originally a military holiday for an arguably just rebellion that ultimately established a corrupt theocratic monarchy, only to have religious authorities later superimpose an ahistorical theology on it. Then, of course, ultimately to the whole thing was converted into a commercialized Christmas stand-in for American Jews, with all the various problematic aspects of capitalism coming into play.

That’s all a very queer thing to think about.

Finally, a shout out to my Facebook friends, who had some amazing responses to my question of what a “Jewish queer food” is, providing this bonus list:

“Ladies, just put two bagels on the same plate for a yonic delight. Make them Everything bagels to be sure you have pansexual representation.”

“Bacon wrapped shrimp because the best part of being queer is breaking taboos.”

“Kosher wine makes great sangria, which is pretty gay.”

“I feel like anything out of The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book would do.”

“Vodka. Just vodka.”

Challah photo by Hannah Simpson. Rainbow cake photo via Wikimedia. Fruit slices photo by Tim Sackton, via Flickr.

The post Queer Jewish Foods for Pride appeared first on Jewcy.

Here’s how to make some amazing #trans challah (as well as non-binary, intersex, and rainbow) this #PRIDE month, and any month.

1. Start with your favorite challah recipe, but the interwebs have countless recipes suit any dietary need like whole grain, vegan, or gluten freedom. There’s a challah out there for everyone, the way there’s a gender identity for everyone, even if it isn’t one you’ve ever encountered before.

2. For bold and solid rainbow colors, split your dough up while mixing into separate bowls and add food coloring into each mixture. For lighter, softer, marbled colors, which works great specifically for the trans flag, mix the dough fully. Only add in a drop or two of color at a time and keep kneading it, until the color appears consistently throughout. It’s kind of like hormone replacement therapy; a little goes a long way. Add drops of red and purple to make pink, and use blue very sparingly to keep it light.

Note to divide your challah up in the correct proportions: Trans flags have five stripes, so the one bowl that stays white should have half as much dough as the other two that will get pink and blue. For the pride rainbow, six equal portions can be used.

3a. (For sweet Challah) Transgender challah, like the people it represents, should be extra sweet on the inside, under that crispy shell the world gives us. As you form your strands to braid, roll in dried cranberries, raisins, or why not both? Add as many as you like to each strand until the rolls are smooth again. They should be secure within the dough strands, not clinging to the outside. Make a dusting of cinnamon sugar along the table, and roll your strands in that next.

3b. You can also make a savory transgender challah swapping out the cinnamon-sugar and raisins for garlic powder, sesame seeds, and lots of onion flakes. Pride, like challah, is best when it embraces all of our senses and tastes. It is Jewish tradition to place two challahs on every Shabbat table, to commemorate the extra portions God sustained us with over the sabbath, so one you can make one the main course and another for dessert.

4. Braiding of any 5 stranded challah requires a little thinking, as compared to a three or six strand, but the basic pattern is three strands over then two back and repeat. If you make a mistake, it will still look and taste awesome. When you are done, fold each of the ends under and place it either onto a flat plan or a bread-loaf tray.

5. A special part of consecrating kosher challah is to set aside a small piece of dough from each batch to burn. For transgender challah, and any pride challah, we intentionally take from both the uncolored and colored dough, to remind us that the queer community both visibly and remaining in closets.

6. (It’s part of the recipe, so you have to do it!) Share with friends and family, celebrating whomever they love and however they identify! Spread the light of Shabbat unto our world by affirming that as Jews, queers, and allies, that asserting our own and ensuring others’ freedom of expression, is the greatest expression of freedom there is. Shabbat Shalom!

Photos courtesy of the author.

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