New Effort to Welcome Gay and Lesbian Jews at Local Hillels
“I’ve never felt comfortable at Hillel,” says Rachel matter-of-factly. “I feel like the people there judge me. I feel like there’s a part of myself I have to keep hidden.”
Rachel, who asked that her real name not be used, is a student at the University of Texas at Austin and is bisexual. She went to the UT Hillel off and on for about a year, but doesn’t go any longer.
“I mean, it’s an organization trying to promote Jewish identity,” she says, shrugging. “Which means trying to [encourage] Jews to hook up with each other, which tends to be very heterosexual. So when I’m there, I feel pushed to do things that are more heterosexual, like flirting with guys.” She pauses, touching her hair as if to say, kind of like this.
“The staff there is great, and no one’s ever said anything nasty to me, but no one’s made it clear that I’m welcome, either.”
That may soon change, following the December 2007 publication by Hillel’s international headquarters of the Hillel LGBTQ Resource Guide, a small but comprehensive primer designed to help Hillel professionals understand and reach out to Jewish LGBTQ [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer] students in their communities. The guide progresses step by step from a discussion of LGBTQ language, history, and culture, through essays on such topics as “Coming Out on Campus” and “Being an Ally,” to a section on ideas and resources for LGBTQ friendly programming. This last segment comprises the bulk of the guide.
The resource guide is the brainchild of D’ror Chankin-Gould, the openly gay Jewish Campus Service Corps (JCSC) fellow at the Columbia/Barnard Hillel who was also its editor.
“You have to understand,” he told me in a phone interview. “I went to school at Pitzer College in Claremont, California, and I had the awesome experience of working with the openly lesbian rabbi there. And the growth I did in that community, a community so open and so progressive and so warm, was absolutely incredible. That’s growth both as a Jewish man and as a gay man. I wanted to help build places where other people to benefit as I benefited.”
So, at the Hillel International Professional Staff Conference in December 2006, Chankin-Gould and Rachel Singer, the JCSC fellow at the University of Chicago, convened a meeting to plan the production of a guide that would help Hillel professionals to be more sensitive to the LGBTQ community’s needs. The problem, Chankin-Gould told me, was not that professionals at the local Hillels were intolerant or homophobic. Far from it. But most are not queer, and thus don’t know how to reach out to queer students.
“The point was not just to be able to say, ‘Do a better job,'” Chankin-Gould said. “It was to be able to say, ‘Here’s how.’ To teach people trying to reach out how to do it in a more effective and compassionate way.”
“This is something we had been trying to do for a while,” said Danielle Freni, Senior Communications Associate at Hillel’s International Center. Freni said that Hillel has long seen itself as a leader within the Jewish community in its openness to gay and lesbian Jews.
Both Freni and Jeff Rubin, Hillel’s Associate Vice President for Communications, noted that this particular effort to welcome LGBTQ Jews into the fray coincides with Hillel’s 2006 Five Year Strategic Plan, which calls for doubling the number of Jews involved in Hillel programming. “Reaching out to include the LGBTQ community helps us to realize that goal,” Rubin said.
For his part, Chankin-Gould doesn’t think a resource guide like his could have been realized before now. “This has been a dream for a long time,” he said, “but there’s no way it could happen until you had a significant cadre of out Hillel professionals willing to take on this project. Until you had some people willing not just to talk about it but actually get it done.”
At the end of my interview with Chankin-Gould, I mentioned Rachel’s concerns about not feeling welcome at Hillel.
“It’s a problem,” he said. “As queer people, I think we often distrust anything that smells of religion. [It’s] something we struggle with as a community. Often the assumption among queer people is that a religious organization…will not be welcoming. I say to Hillel professionals, if you don’t let people know that you’re welcoming the LGBTQ students, they will assume that you’re not.”
