Jewish and Queer
I didn’t always know I was queer; but I did always know I was Jewish.
I was a bagel on a plate of onion rolls--Babs against the world, a delicacy in the starched sea.
“So you don’t believe in God?”
Tea is still bitter if you let it burn your tongue. It’s often more important for sanity and self-preservation’s sake to ignore ignorance.
“We’d love to have you at the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.”
At 11, I thought I was never going to have sex, that it wasn’t for me. I was never going to get married. A cat, an apartment, and a laptop. I could be busy and fulfilled, even if never in love.
“God says it’s okay to have sex if we both want to. Do you want to? It is a
mitzvah.”
Baruch Hashem, when I was 12 I had my first sex dream, and when I was 14, I had my first crush on a girl. Did you know how sweet their hair smells and how their smiles are never malicious? Their eyes glint on carousels and their hands sweat into your couch palms.
“Are you sure you aren’t bi?”
For a lot of people, coming out at 15 is a mistake. And for me it was. But it’s not supposed to be.
“Bisexuality isn’t real.”
He’d put my hand over his junk and expect me to be interested. What should I have expected from teenage boys? Maybe it’s my fault. A lot of my life is wrapped up in something I think is trauma. My therapist would rather I believe I’m overreacting.
“Dirty k*ke.”
When my mom grew up, you were shit out of luck for being gay. When she was in college, the gay population was cut at the knees. The government didn’t care about a viral gay Holocaust because it was a better American ImageTM to end a sentence before a stone wall.
“Palestine doesn’t belong to the Jews. End Jewish colonization!”
Nuclear families buy 1950s new constructions in Fair Lawn, not shabby Castro houses with their dead wife’s toddler. It’s my fault the land of Israel was founded in 1948 and doesn’t give Palestinians citizenship. I should have more control.
“You’re not allowed to tell your grandparents you’re gay.”
Goodbye to peaches and aquariums. As quickly as the sticky residue dried to my fingertips and along my mouth, my grandparents became bones that couldn’t climb stairs or remember their birthdays. A person’s as good as a ghost if you only see half of them.
“Why do we even need to come out anymore?”
I needed Israel like I needed to get out of shithole Olney. I needed zatar in my hummus like I needed free bussing. I needed to go to Pride and I needed to go to Hillel. Some of us need homes because we’re homeless without the shelter of rainbow blankets and rainbow heads. Without a shul, where will I go to ritually stand up and sit down when the rabbi reminds us it’s the holiest day of the year? I wake up in the morning and I walk down the street and you know I’m queer because I make sure to tell you, and you know I’m Jewish because I’ve got something to be proud of. My people haven’t been fighting for a place to live without fear of death—abroad and in their own countries, to be reduced to a ritual reflective of our lives and times. 6 million / 22 million.
None of us is a secret. I wear a Hamsa on one hand and two women embracing on the other. Who am I if I’m not Jewish and queer? We can’t be anything without identity, without community.
Next year in Jerusalem and next year at Pride.
