How you can support teens on October 20

By Lisa Finkelstein, Director of the LGBT Alliance

Last fall, a young person named Brittany McMillan wanted to do something about the LGBT teens who were taking their own lives.  So she put a call out via a social network for people to wear purple on October 20th in support of LGBT teens and called it Spirit Day. She thought that only a few hundred at most would wear purple. She never imagined that thousands upon thousands of people across the nation would respond to her social media request by wearing purple.

On October 20, 2010 Brittany’s idea officially became a viral marketing success. The cast of the very popular TV show Glee dressed up in purple as well as a few of the hosts on the day-time talk show, The View. Celebrities from Anderson Cooper to Dr. Phil also got in the purple spirit of spirit day. It was inspiring to see a young person have so much impact.

This year, Brittany is asking the world again to dress in purple on October 20. She hopes that the LGBT teens who walk into their classrooms on this day will see their teachers and classmates wearing purple. She simply wants to make sure that these teens receive a feeling of hope in a place that so often can be filled with bullying.

Again, this year I’m joining Brittany on spirit day by wearing purple. It is an easy way to not only bring hope to young people but provide a visual reminder of the advocates that are on their side.

It is easy to wear purple on October 20. Find a purple scarf, pin, t-shirt or kippah to show LGBT teens who their allies are in this community. To help remind you, you can pledge to go purple on facebook and then put a call out to your synagogue, school, organization or company to ask the leaders to send out a email asking everyone to observe Spirit Day as well.

Do me a favor? Email me at work or tag me on facebook with pictures of you or your friends dressed in purple. I will continue to collect these photos to create a poster of how our local San Francisco Bay Area Jewish community dresses up to support LGBT causes.

Together, we can show LGBT teens that they are supported by everyone in this community.

During a gathering at the San Francisco Contemporary Jewish Museum (CJM) LGBT Advocate, Jessica Trubowitch, of Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) speaks with another proud LGBT San Francisco Jewish leader, Rebecca Prozan!

Me with another proud 2010 Spirit Day supporter, LGBT Jewish leader, Jamie Wolfe at the San Francisco Contemporary Jewish Museum wearing purple.

Take a close look at Honorable Mark Leno's purple stripped tie.

Another Jewish leader took Spirit Day to heart! Pamela Rosin was spotted walking in the Castro on October 20, 2010 wearing purple head to toe in support of LGBT young people.

Do you want more information about Spirit Day, Coming Out Day or ideas on how can you celebrate LGBT Teens in your Jewish community? Learn more.

Walking together to fight AIDS

By Lisa Finkelstein, Director of the LGBT Alliance

This summer marks thirty years of the global HIV/AIDS epidemic. According to the SF Chronicle, more than 28,840 San Franciscans have been diagnosed with AIDS, while more than 19,000 have died.

Although our local community is strong and learning how to thrive and live within this epidemic we still need to walk to raise awareness, walk to celebrate those who live with the disease, walk to remember those whom we have lost, and walk to find a cure.

We helped organize a local  Jewish Community AIDS Walk Team this summer to create an additional avenue to participate Jewishly. We were one of the nearly 1,000 teams that helped raise over $3 million for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation.

Together our Jewish Community team was able to raise over $3,000.

Mazel Tov, to each of our walkers and donors for making an impact this year, as well as a special shout-out to our top Jewish Community team walker, Avidan! Avidan and his family raised over $1,000 as part of his Congregation Sha’ar Zahav Bar Mitzvah project!

Our collective donation will be dispersed by the San Francisco AIDS Foundation as grants to strengthen HIV prevention efforts as well as for advocacy, medical care, housing and social services programs for people living with or at risk for HIV/AIDS.

Thank you to those who were able to walk this year and spend a wonderful day in the sun for a good cause! We are committed to help organize our Jewish community to walk together again in 2012 so save the date to join us again.

In the meantime, take a look at more of our photos!

Stars of Pride 2011

With over a million visitors from around the globe attending Pride festivities in June, we had the distinct pleasure of chatting with thousands of people while displaying the voluminous avenues into Jewish life. Here’s a look at a few of the new friends we met:

As you can see, over two-days our Outreach booth proved to be quite a hub for hanging out. A special thanks goes out to all the volunteers and LGBT Jewish professional organizations that make up the professional LGBT Jewish collective: Kol Tzedek (A Wider Bridge, Keshet, Nehirim, Congregation Sha’ar Zahav & NUJLS), the Contemporary Jewish Museum (CJM),  San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) and Be’chol Lashon.

Each Pride Month the Jewish Community Federation is proud of the multiple opportunities to celebrate the richness and diversity of the greater San Francisco Bay Area. This year we are particularly proud that we were able to share the experience with such an incredible and valued team of volunteers and partner agencies.

Multiple Bay Area Jewish organizations and Congregations celebrate Pride each year and you can learn about them and find lots of resources on our website.

If you or your organization would like to join us in the future during Pride or at other times of the year please connect with us lgbt@sfjcf.org!

Top ways to celebrate Pride month!

By Lisa Finkelstein, LGBT Director for the Jewish Community Federation

The Jewish Community Federation is proud to celebrate the richness and diversity of the greater San Francisco Bay Area by commemorating Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Month! Each June our LGBT Alliance collects and presents a number of ways our community can participate Jewishly in the festivities of Pride. Here is our list of not-to-be-missed-events this Pride month:

1. Live Performance!Outrageously popular, artistically outstanding and always delicious, The Fresh Meat Festival is the nation’s premiere transgender and queer performance festival. This year, Fresh Meat celebrates its 10th anniversary with an all-star lineup.
2. International Film! Frameline is the oldest and largest GLBT Film Festival in the world. 80,000 people annually attend the 200+ films shown during the last two weeks of San Francisco’s Pride month each June. We are proud to present on Saturday Israeli filmmaker Tomer Heymann’s The Queen Has No Crown
   
3. Learn Local History! 45 years-ago on a hot summer’s night in 1966 at Turk and Taylor in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco a group of people who identified as gay, trans and/or gender nonconforming fought back against police harassment at Gene Compton’s Cafeteria. This public act of resistance helped define the history of a human rights struggle that is still relevant in our lives today.
   
4. Wander!San Francisco Pride held over “Pride weekend” June 24 to 26, 2011 throughout the Mission, Tenderloin & Castro neighborhoods is said to be “one of the last remaining pride events that can truly be called a rite of passage. With 500 Pride flags waving throughout the city take the time to wander the neighborhoods!
   
   
5. Volunteer!The LGBT Alliance has a booth this year at Grove and Larkin Streets amongst the festivities. We will be providing information about our Bay Area Jewish community alongside our Pride partners this year Be’chol Lashon and the Contemporary Jewish Museum. Visit our booth during Pride Weekend this year for a chance to win a $250 Amazon.com Gift Card! We still always love volunteers to join us so please sign up for both Saturday and Sunday!
   
6. March!Interested in marching? Camp Newman, Contemporary Jewish Museum, Congregation Temple Sinai, A Wider Bridge and Congregation Sha’ar Zahav will all have a presence in the SF Pride Parade. Invite your friends and family and go march on Pride Sunday.
   
7. Dance! Dancing in the streets with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence on Pink Saturday is a San Francisco favorite for thousands of party-goers! This year, Pink Saturday has gone dry but there are plenty of official options for those who want to relax in an alcohol free atmosphere during the Pink Saturday street party too. In the Castro, visit the Metropolitan Community Church to sing, eat and “Measure your life in love” at a RENTmovie sing-along.
8. Pray! At Congregation Sha’ar Zahav during our Annual LGBT Alliance sponsored Kabbalat Shabbat Pride Service thousands of participants from the Trans March will hoot and holler as they walk by on Dolores Street. It is the quintessential Jewish San Francisco experience to be able to wave hello to the thousands of marchers while you daven with the first LGBT Reform-Liturgy-based Prayer Book, Siddur Sha’ar Zahav.
   
9. Observe Stein! This summer has quickly become thought of as a Spectacular Summer of Stein. Exhibitions on Gertrude Stein and her partner Alice B. Toklas are on view throughout the Yerba Buena Arts District until Sept. 6. Take a look at how these two Jewish Lesbian women raised in the Bay Area became extraordinarily influential Americans of the 20th century! We have LGBT Jewish programs and family activities listed on our events calendar.
   
   

Northern California Yom HaShoah Commemoration to Remember Gay Survivors of World War II

One of the rare films that depict homosexual deportation during World War II is 2005 Un amour à taire (A Love to Hide). The film is loosely based on the Pierre Seel story.

To remember the Holocaust and its lessons for society including the Nazi persecution of those understood to be gay or lesbian identified Jewish Community Federation & Foundation of the Greater East Bay’s Riva Gambert (riva@jfed.org) has organized a free Yom HaShoah commemoration at Temple Isaiah (3800 Mt. Diablo Boulevard Lafayette, CA) on May 1.

Paragraph 175 includes the story of Pierre Seel

Underwritten by the Tillie and Rene Molho Fund for Holocaust Remembrance this program will present the story of one French gay survivor, Pierre Seel z”l told via a performance by Nick Lane, Kevin Copps and directed by Andrew Nance. Pierre Seel who passed away at the age of 82 in 2005 was arrested for homosexuality at 17 by the Gestapo in 1941 after German forces overran France.

It is our collective responsibility to retell these stories so they do not happen again.

Moi, Pierre Seel, déporté homosexuel

A few books, plays and films over the years has presented the lives and experiences of homosexuals during the Holocaust. The most prominent came out of the genius of two San Francisco Bay Area based Gay identified Jewish leaders, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. Their 2000 documentary film Paragraph 175 titled after the sodomy provision of the German penal code that led to the arrest of 100,000 men between 1933 and 1945. Only 4,000 of those arrested because of this penal code survived the imprisonment and concentration camps and this film interviews 5 of the 10 known survivors in the year 2000 including Pierre Seel. Another film that is loosely based on Pierre Seel’s story is 2005′s Un amour à taire (A Love to Hide) which depicts homosexual deportation during World War II and of course, Bent, the 1979 play that presents a story during and after the Night of the Long Knives.

Riva Gambert wants the community-at-large to attend this program to collectively look at our shared histories and our contemporary lives together. To read about the history of the Gay and Lesbian experience during World War II please take a look at a few of these selected links:

• Telling Pictures Outreach Project  including a Paragraph 175 Teachers Guide
• Pink Triangle
• San Francisco’s Pink Triangle
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals Exhibition at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum
• German Memorial to Homosexuals
• The Holocaust Center of Northern California at Jewish Family and Children’s Services of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties

For more resources on how to honor LGBT and Jewish holidays please take a look at the Federations’ LGBT Alliance pages. Posted by Lisa Finkelstein, Jewish Community Federation’s LGBT Director.

The Sounds of Silence

A few weeks ago Rabbi Jason Klein volunteered his time to lead a powerful conversation with young people participating in the 15th Annual National LGBTQQI Jewish Student Conference (NUJLS) at Brandeis University. He asked the students to talk about a moment in their lives through the voice of someone else that experienced it. Either by default or due to the specific interest of the topics covered at the conference each of the students participating in Rabbi Klein’s conversation this Shabbat evening volunteered to talk about their coming out stories as LGBTQQI.

As you can imagine each of the stories were incredibly moving. One of the students spoke about their experience of participating in The Day of Silence at their Jewish High School the year before. On this particular Day of Silence at this students school other students began to make it safe for this student to feel like they could be themselves outwardly for the first time. How did that happen? Easy: multiple students choose to take some form of a vow of silence to bring attention to anti-LGBT name-calling, bullying and harassment in schools. This student telling us the story of their coming out visually saw advocates surrounding them for the first time. They then mentioned how important support around the Day of Silence was in trying to understand how to navigate their own next steps in coming out.

You can help young people learn about themselves, their friends and their community by being an advocate for this day of action. Here are a few details to share with young people in your life:

• Hey! What is a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA)? Where is my GSA?
• Day of Silence is over. Now what? 
• Discover anti-bullying resources via the Federations’ LGBT Alliance.
• Registered for the Day of Silence? Be Counted.
• Get organized! Get ready! Day of Silence is near!
• Day of Silence: Resources for Educators & Families
• GLSEN’s 2011 Day of Silence on Facebook

Posted via Lisa Finkelstein, Director of Federations’ LGBT Alliance.

Israel goes international

In 1998, after nearly two decades of unsuccessful entries, the Israeli representative won the big prize of the Eurovision Song Contest with the song “Diva.”

The triumph was sensational, not only because of the usual pride we feel with any international Israeli achievement, whether in sports, arts or science. But also because this time, the winner of the first prize of the camp, yet immensely popular pan-European show, was none other than Dana International, the first ever openly transgender artist to have performed in that mainstream primetime show. It’s no wonder Israelis feel excited now that Dana International was chosen to represent Israel in the 2011 Eurovision Song Contest.

Dana International was born in 1972 as Yaron Cohen, the son of a Yemenite family in Tel Aviv. In 1992, already a transgender bearing the stage name “Dana International,” she released her first single. Within a short period of time she gained the status of one of the leading female vocalists in Israel, way beyond her special gender status. Therefore, for the majority of Israelis, voting for her at the pre-Eurovision contest was a natural choice, and her win was a source for delight throughout the country. However, it is needless to say that to the Israeli LGBT community, still in the process of coming out, it brought extra pride! One of the few who did not share the national happiness was the Israeli Minister of Culture at the time, an Orthodox Sephardi politician, who could not approve of the diva’s lifestyle, yet was compelled to praise her. The compromise he found for himself was that he ended up congratulating the winning, rather than the winner…

In 2001, we, here in the Bay Area shared our admiration for Dana International, when she was invited to perform as one of the headliners of San Francisco Gay Pride celebration, the city of San Francisco declared Dana International Day, and the members of Congregation Sha’ar Zahav held a long and hearty conversation with Dana in what was probably her first visit to a synagogue since her Bar Mitzvah as a boy…

Since then Dana International has released several albums, served as one of the more popular judges on “A Star is Born,” the Israeli version of “American Idol,” and on March 8, 2011 Dana participated once again in the Israeli pre-Eurovision contest, and, once again won. This spring she will represent Israel, once again, with a new song, which this time she wrote herself, “Ding Dong.”

- by Donny Inbar, Ph.D.
Associate Director for Arts and Culture, the Israel Center

We’re in the paper!

The Federation has received quite a bit of press this month.  Most of the articles are about our upcoming events.  The dates below are the event dates, not the publication dates.

• A thousand years of rock ‘n’ roll: Israel’s rock prince Berry Sakharof makes music from very old roots (1/29)

• Israeli superstar bringing show to Stanford (1/29)

• World-class adventurer bringing the ‘power’ to JCF event (2/7)

• Queer Shabbaton will add urban vibe to LGBT dialogue (1/28-1/30)

• Displaying queer Jewish writers (Now-2/27)

• Panel to explore burgeoning Israel, Hollywood connection (1/26)

• SF federation to plant trees for Tu B’Shevat (1/20)

Our Jewish Community Teen Foundation also received some press recently in a Marketplace Money feature about youth philanthropy and the increasing number of youth getting involved.

Join us at the Laramie Series

In the wake of so many horrific stories of anti-LGBT hate crimes and bullying, individuals across the country – both LGBT and straight – are energized and ready to embrace a variety of advocacy tools that may help our community heal. We have published a selection of these tools on our website and in the hopes that you take advantage of utilizing or sharing these tools with your community.

Together we are working together to make change in our communities. We see this positive change occurring when we walked into the Jewish Community Federation office to a sea of purple-dressed colleagues in honor of victims of anti-LGBT bullying Wednesday morning. We see this change in an editorial and article in the J. supporting the Do Not Stand Idly By Pledge.

Yet each week brings new examples of meshugana-based-fury and it is up to us as a networked group of LGBT Jewish advocates to take direct action, to teach advocacy, to provide avenues for spiritual care, to heal and to learn.

This week the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco is hosting three nights of the Laramie Series. Thursday evening is a discussion with the creator, Moises Kaufman, Friday is the original Laramie Project performance and Saturday evening is The Laramie Epilogue. Immediately after the performance on Saturday evening the LGBT Alliance is hosting a free gathering to deconstruct what they have experienced and heard with the Laramie Project and about the wave of anti-LGBT hate crimes and bullying over hosted cupcakes and milk at the Swank Cocktail Club (within the Laurel Inn at 444 Presidio Ave, San Francisco, CA 94115). Please feel free to spread the word about this gathering and join us if you can.

As part of the network of LGBT Jewish community professionals and incredible lay leaders and allies we were given a code, LARAMIE50, for 50% off the public price for all three events to share. The code can be used online to order your tickets or through the box office at 415.292.1233. We hope that you join us in conversation, in healing and in pride this week.

In Shalom…
Arthur Slepian, LGBT Alliance Chair
Lisa Finkelstein, LGBT Alliance Director

It’s OK to be gay and Jewish

The j. weekly recently ran both an article and an op-ed covering Keshet and our LGBT Alliance’s Do Not Stand Idly By online pledge.  The pledge asks us to “commit to ending homophobic bullying or harassment of any kind in our synagogues, schools, organizations, and communities.”

Read the articles:

• http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/59587/its-ok-to-be-gay-and-jewish-agencies-endorse-anti-bullying-pledge/
• http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/59558/jewish-lgbt-community-can-count-on-us/

Sign the pledge (we are at 3600+ pledges as of 10/14):

• http://jewishcommunitypledge.org/

Learn more about our LGBT Alliance:

• http://www.jewishfed.org/community/lgbt