Exclusive Rites?
Miller, Judea
EXCLUSIVE MRS? One community wrestles with the problem of sharing Holocaust memories and grief. JUDEA MILLER When I was President of our community's Board of Rabbis, the leader of...
...The Holocaust Commission, in any case, deferred to the decision of the Board of Rabbis...
...Six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis...
...There were, however, at least two fundamental differences...
...After all, the monument was really like a matzeivah, a personal, family tombstone, for them...
...Others, like the Russians at Babi Yar in Kiev, have tried to so universalize the Holocaust that all elements of Jewish pain and tragedy have been eliminated...
...as a Day of Remembrance of lesbian and gay persons who have been victimized, persecuted or murdered for their affectional or sexual orientation through the centuries, especially during the Holocaust . . . [We would like to be allowed to hold] a memorial service involving the Christian and Jewish communities, both gay and non-gay...
...JUDEA MILLER When I was President of our community's Board of Rabbis, the leader of Dignity/Integrity, the local chapter of a national gay rights organization, sent me this request: "In the summer of 1981 at the 5th Biennial Convention of Dignity in Philadelphia, a resolution was unanimously passed to recognize the first Sunday after All Soul's Day...
...There were certain obvious difficulties, problems that the Dignity/Integrity members could not have anticipated...
...The Holocaust Memorial belonged to our entire Jewish community and was not under the supervision of the Board of Rabbis alone...
...Was our response correct...
...Would anyone have advised a different response...
...After the meeting, I sent them this letter: "Thank you for your understanding of the matter about the use of the Holocaust Memorial Monument for the service...
...Most important, will there ever come a time when we Jews will be able to share our own grief for the Jewish victims of the Holocaust with grief for other Holocaust victims as well...
...In April, our Jewish community had dedicated a memorial to the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust...
...Instead, many of the rabbis on the Board responded with amazement at the idea that they and the organized Jewish community would do anything that might appear to condone what Jewish tradition holds to be a sexual abomination...
...Now, in May, we were being asked to make the site available to the local gay community...
...Also, there has been a trend perceived by the Jewish community to try to diminish the Jewish element of the Holocaust...
...Would any of us be ready to share our family tombstone with strangers...
...Some anti-Semites like Professor Butz of Northwestern University and neo-Nazi groups have tried to deny that the Holocaust happened...
...rabbinical colleagues were virtually unanimous in rejecting the request...
...Now I raise the questions with my fellow Jews...
...Many of my rabbinical colleagues were opposed, on halachic grounds, to any sort of ecumenical or interfaith prayer service...
...But I was surprised that the initial reasons for rejection had little to do with the halachic concerns I had anticipated...
...It was this last matter that they found most difficult to understand, but when 1 made the analogy to a personal, family tombstone, most seemed to accept the idea...
...Rather it was a memorial, a lamentation, for people who were made victims by the Nazis...
...And all became victims of Hitler's Final Solution...
...But, one colleague pointed out, the request was simply to hold a memorial service for people who were also victims of the Holocaust...
...For example, just as Jews were required by the Nazis to wear a yellow Star of David, known homosexuals and lesbians were required to wear a pink triangle...
...and third, that the site was the Jewish community's recently dedicated monument to Jewish Holocaust victims...
...Granting it would imply no hechsher, no condoning of homosexuality or lesbianism...
...Perhaps that reason alone should have been sufficient for a board of rabbis that represents a wide spectrum of the religious Jewish community...
...And there were tremendous differences in numbers...
...This is some of the background that may make the negative response of the Holocaust Commission at least understandable...
...It was dedicated only a month ago...
...second, that it was scheduled according to the Church calendar...
...After much thoughtful discussion, we sent the letter on to the local Holocaust Commission...
...estimates of the number of overt homosexuals and lesbians killed are somewhere in the thousands...
...I arranged a meeting with the leaders of Dignity/Integrity at which I presented, in precise detail, the difficulties the rabbis had with the request, based on its three components: first, that it was to be an interfaith memorial prayer service...
...Nor need it be reasonably interpreted as an assault on the traditional Jewish value of the purity of the family...
...And our decision: No...
...The tenor of the conversation among the rabbis changed quickly...
...I was not at all surprised that my Judea Miller is rabbi of Temple B'rith Kodesh in Rochester, New York...
...Facts were brought out that some of us did not know...
...And, the date selected for the memorial service, the Sunday following All Soul's Day, was a Christian liturgical occasion...
...As a community, we could not participate in a non-Jewish worship service, nor could we permit such a service at a site belonging to the organized Jewish community...
...Surely we Jews could understand better than most the deep psychological and communal needs underlying Dignity/Integrity's request...
...But the request, though uninformed about Jewish religious requirements and sensibilities, was serious and sincere...
...their lives ended in the death camps...
...So it is belated in coming and still fresh...
...And so it was placed on the agenda at the next meeting of the Board of Rabbis, for discussion and for formulation of a response...
...An appropriate location for this service might be the Holocaust Memorial site at the Jewish Community Center...
...This Holocaust Monument has taken 37 years to establish...
...Most homosexuals and lesbians were able to hide their sexual identity, whereas Jews were pursued no matter what they did to change or to hide...
Vol. 8 • December 1982 • No. 1
