Plight of Rohingya Muslims is Call to Action to End Religious Persecution
Looking Back, Looking Forward: Reflections on Pride Month
This month, we celebrate LGBT Pride, which occurs every year in June. This month is my fifth year celebrating Pride Month as an out gay man, and this year I have a lot to be proud of.
Looking Back, Looking Forward: Reflections on Pride Month
Reform CA Leadership Letter to Assembly Appropriations - AB 953
More than Pride: Raising a Voice of Faith Against LGBT Discrimination
Yesterday, we reflected on the pride our Reform Jewish community should have for the great advocacy work we have done on behalf of LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender) rights over the past
Interfaith Community Expresses Support for LGBT Student Non-Discrimination Protections
Contact: Max Rosenblum or Jordan Dashow
202.387.2800 | news@rac.org
Faith Organizations Urge Lawmakers to Take a Stand on LGBT Discrimination
Coming Out in a Jewish Community: How Our Congregation Embraces LGBTQ Teenagers
On the bimah during his confirmation, twelfth grader Sean Cooper recounted his coming out experience:
When I came out as a homosexual, I posted a picture to Facebook with my father, with the caption “….”. While some may have previously inferred my sexual orientation, that post was my first official public coming out. The next day, I came to my temple, Congregation Or Ami in Calabasas, CA, for a meeting of our youth group. I was greeted at the door by Cantor Doug Cotler, the man I have known my whole life, with a warm hug and friendly “I’m proud of you,” and by Rabbi Julia Weisz with a smile and great warmth. Rabbi Paul Kipnes was even more accepting than anyone. His kind and heartfelt acceptance expressed not only his embracing personal views, but also the wide-open arms of the Jewish community.
Passion and Fanaticism
This Shabbat's Torah portion, Parashat Pinchas, begins by referring to an event that occurred at the end of the prior one, when Pinchas, Aaron's grandson, killed Zimri, a scion of the Simeonite ancestral house, and Cozbi, daughter of a Midianite chieftain.
Strange Fruit
After seeing the infamous 1930 photograph by Lawrence Beitler, which depicts the mob lynching of two young black men, a Jewish high school teacher named Abel Meeropol wrote a haunting poem titled "Strange Fruit." The poem was first published in 1936 in The New York Teacher, a union magaz