AMERICAN UNIVERSITY

BET MISHPACHAH ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Oral History Interview with

Larry Neff

By Ziona Pelz-Sherman

Washington, D.C.

October 25, 2019

AMERICAN UNIVERSITY: BET MISHPACHAH ORAL HISTORY PROJECT NARRATOR: Larry Neff DATE: October 25, 2019 INTERVIEWER: Ziona Pelz-Sherman PLACE: Home of Larry Neff, Washington, D.C.

NARRATOR’S PERSONAL DATA Spouse: None Occupation: Retired

SUMMARY OF INTERVIEW

Larry Neff, active member of local LGBTQ , Bet Mishpachah, describes the founding and growth of the synagogue, and what it means to be part of a congregation that not only accepts, but welcomes and celebrates positive expressions of or . In addition to touching on the intersection of and sexuality, Neff speaks on his current role as director of religious affairs at Bet Mishpachah, as well as his involvement in the community.

INTERVIEWER'S COMMENTS

There is a background journal entry for this interview.

COPYRIGHT STATUS

Interview contents have been given to the Public Domain through the Humanities Truck Oral History Project at American University.

INDEX TERMS

Washington DC, Larry Neff, Bet Mishpachah, Judaism, synagogue, LGBTQ identity, sexual orientation, gender identity, Washington Jewish Community Center

Bet Mishpachah Oral History Project

Transcription of Interview with Larry Neff on October 25, 2019 at Larry Neff’s home in Washington, DC.

1 ZP: Ziona Pelz-Sherman LN: Larry Neff

ZP: All right, so, some introductory stuff, today is October 25, 2019. We’re here in Larry Neff’s residence in Washington, DC [District of Columbia]. I, Ziona Pelz-Sherman, will be interviewing Larry Neff. Do I have your permission to record this interview?

LN: Yes you do.

ZP: Awesome. So before we get into talking about Bet Mish, which I really want to talk about, can you tell me a little bit about yourself? Like, how long have you lived in DC?

LN: I’m a second generation native Washingtonian. My father grew up a block from here, my grandfather had a dry cleaning store on P Street and they lived upstairs above the store. My parents moved out to Silver Spring three years before I was born in DC but I grew up in Silver Spring. And actually tomorrow night I’m going to my fiftieth high school reunion, Northwood High School, it’s going to be in Rockville, but Northwood was in Silver Spring. So long time resident, I’ve seen many many changes in Washington.

ZP: I bet, yeah. So, getting more specific, I do know that you’re Jewish but have you always been Jewish? Do you have a Jewish heritage?

LN: Yes, my family on both sides are Jewish. My parents joined what was originally called MCJC, Montgomery County Jewish Center in 1948 when they moved to Montgomery County, it was the only Jewish organization. It later became Ohr Kodesh on East West Highway. My brother and I were bar mitzvahed there, my sisters were confirmed, my mother sang in the choir for eighteen years. Although it was not the social center of our lives, we lived about twenty minutes away, it was always sort of that other place, not the center.

ZP: That’s a good lead into my next question, which is what does being Jewish mean to you?

LN: To me it means a heritage, a tradition of study and learning. It means an outlook on the world, and it really means family a lot.

ZP: Would you say your Judaism is central to your identity?

LN: Yes

ZP: Do you think your connection to Judaism has changed from your childhood through your adult life?

2 LN: Yes, it’s changed into a less childlike and more adult like connection to Judaism as I’ve learned and studied and I’m very active in the synagogue and have been for forty years. I currently serve on the board of directors and I’ve done that now and then. And also I’m a lay service leader, so I lead services occasionally for and holidays. And I’ve been on the liturgy committee which helped to compile and edit the new which we published almost two years ago, December 2017. And I recently chaired the search committee, we hired a new rabbi July first and I’m very, very pleased with the results.

ZP: On another side of things, do you identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community?

LN: Very much, I came out in my early twenties, maybe twenty-two or so twenty three, so that’s been my community for all these years. And of course I live in what used to be the center of the neighborhood although the neighborhod is changing now, it’s a little bit less gay than it used to be, there’s still remnants.

ZP: If you don’t mind, would you be able to tell me the story of how you came out?

LN: Sure. I always sort of sensed I was different somehow, when I was younger I couldn’t put a name to it I didn’t really understand what it meant. But when I went away to college I made a vow to myself that I would not sleep with a man until I had slept with a woman. Obviously someone secure in their has no need to make such a vow. And I had a girlfriend in college and actually she was the first person I told that I thought I might be gay, which of course I was, and she ended up joinging the Lubavitchers after me the déluge (laughs) Napoleon. So I got involved in the gay synagogue in 1977, I went in 1976 or early 1977 and they announced a big gay Jewish conference in New York, the first one, which was April 1977 and they had 350 people and I went to that along with my best friend who was also Jewish and gay, and we were just floored to see this huge group of committed Jews who were all gay and at the time, I don’t think anybody talked about bi or trans then, certainly not . And we came back and we decided to get involved in the synagogue and it’s been sort of the center of my social life every since.

ZP: So in the early years of your journey, do you think being Jewish impacted how you felt when you came out?

LN: I think it did. For one thing, Judaism is not anti-sex like Christanity is, I think that made it easier to come out. There’s certainly a lot of pressure to have children, but there’s not that inherint “Sex is bad and you’re gonna burn in hell,” you know, for any sex, much less gay sex. So that was a plus. I also think that being Jewish as a minority in a larger population already gave me the experience of dealing with that, like, being gay in a majority straight society.

3 ZP: Do you think you felt, when you first came out, some acceptance in your Jewish community?

LN: I did, because my Jewish community at the time when I was in college, I was at Carnegie Mellon University, then University of Maryland, then finally George Washington University, and at University of Maryland for two years I was living in an alternate Hillel house, where three students we lived there and we ran a style service every Friday night that we ran ourselves, we had a coffee house every Saturday night, we had drop-in classes and lunches during the week. We got free room and board at the kosher dining club on campus and we were the alternative to Hillel at University of Maryland then was very dominated by Orthodox kids from Baltimore, and we were sort of the hippie alternative to them, which Hillel paid for, because they realized that they were only directing programs toward a part of the community and they wanted to broaden that. So some of my very best friends for life, whom I’m still close with, I met there. And actually, Rabbi Bob Saks, the second year I lived there, was the Hillel director, and years and years and years later he became the rabbi at Bet Mishpachah. I brought him to Bet Mishpachah he was the first rabbi we hired he was with us part time for eighteen years and he is now rabbi emeritus. So there’s a lot of connections there.

ZP: So before I really ask about the beginning of the synagogue, I want to talk broadly about what Bet Mish is about today. What sort of ideas or practices to you really value as a congregation?

LN: We are very participatory, and that goes back to sort of the chavurah style roots, I think, from college. Our services are not some place you go and just sit there and watch. Everybody joins in singing, everybody reads, we are still—at least half our services are lay lead. So people can see other people like themselves up there in leadership roles. I think, In addition to being participatory, Bet Mish has been very, very progressive on liturgy starting way way back thirty years ago, changing liturgy to include women’s voices, changing liturgy to include LGBTQ readings, and that’s been a big part of the congregation. So I would say we sort of meshed those two things together. ZP: You kind of already spoke on this, but what does it really mean to be an LGBTQ oreinted or friendly synagogue?

LN: Well, we were founded by the gay community, for years, for decades we’ve always had some straight members, some bi members, more recently some trans members. So originally we thought of ourselves as a place to integrate and celebrate these aspects of our identities and to have a community where people felt safe and comfortable and free to do that. So I think it was that combination. The Jewish community has made enormous progress, the broader Jewish community, since those early years. You know, the fact that Rabbi Gil Steinlauf, who was the senior rabbi for nine years at Adas Israel, came out about five years ago and kept his job and stayed there for another three years till he decided to leave. You know, back in 1975 when Bet

4 Mishpachah started, no one would ever dream that was possible. No one ever thought about legalizing gay marriage then although fairly early on we did have a lot of religious ceremonies which we called kiddushin, the traditional Aramaic word for weddings, and I led a bunch of those. So our role in the larger community I think really evolved over time.

ZP: That’s great, yeah. Apart from including women’s voices and LGBTQ readings, just to go a little bit deeper, how else do your services differ from that of a more traditional synagogue?

LN: I would say a Friday night service is not that different from if you went to a progressive, Reform synagogue or a Conservative synagogue. We’ve gradually had a lot of Hebrew in our services. Once a month we have a Mizmor Shabbat musical service with a song leader guitarist. Our new rabbi actually sings and plays the guitar so that’s even more often now that we do that. On Saturday morning we’ve made some structural changes to the service, we don’t have a Mussaf traditional service so we don’t repeat the Amidah four times we do it once, we try to eliminate repetition in our service. We only do three aliyot instead of the traditional seven for shabbat. And we call them up as first, second, and third, we don’t use the traditional Kohen Levi Israel breakdown for the first three. So we’ve tried to streamline, simplify, and avoid repetition I would say, and also we have really good new translations that really, I think, are effective in speaking to people today where they are, and it’s language that people can relate to. There’s been a real in-depth look at the meanings and possible meanings of text to try to come up with something that really speaks to people today.

ZP: Awesome, so, the newsletter lists you as “Director of Religious Affairs,” what does that mean? What are your responsibilities within this community?

LN: So I’m responsible for making sure that we have someone to lead services every Friday night and we have services on the second and fourth Saturdays of every month. We actually have a service leader coordinator who does the detailed legwork of that to make sure people are signed up in advance and people know when it’s Rosh Chodesh they have to announce and so forth. I’m involved in hiring the song leader guitarist for the year, we have a year long contract with them, with two different ones, one of them is also our Chazan for high holidays, and in fact he’s a Conservative rabbi who does not want a pulpit, and he just did a beautiful job on high holidays. I also arrange an annual contract with the choir director, which we’ve just had for a couple of years, so that’s been a new thing to work with. We have a wonderful choir that’s been around for a long long time, they do gorgeous gorgeous music, traditional and very modern. They sing at high holidays and a couple of times during the year. I have to make sure that we have an article in the newsletter, which is now every two months, you know, upcoming holidays, say something about Hanukkah, remind people the dates when things are coming, make sure that—we have some holidays where we have a tradition of having holiday services with other groups. For example, we were just a co-sponsor of Simchat Torah at Sixth and I [Street], earlier this summer we had our annual I think this is the fourth or fifth time we’ve had a pride shabbat service at

5 Sixth and I. Several years we had a Shavuot service with Tikkun Leil Shabbat, TLS, which is an offshoot of Jews United for Justice. So we try to make connections in the community. We also, since our home is the Edlavitch Jewish Community Center in Washington, they have a gay and lesbian outreach program called GLOE, so we will invite them to things, occasionally so some joint programing with them, try to have some synergy with their programs and ours. So all of that stuff kind of falls under my view I guess.

ZP: Great, so let’s go back to the beginning. You visited Bet Mish for the first time in 1976, it was founded in 1975, how much do you know about the synagogue’s creation?

LN: What I’m told is that it started on Rosh Hashanah in 1975 and it was, I don’t know, a dozen or a dozen and a half people in Joel Martin’s living room in his apartment on Capitol Hill, in his house on Capitol Hill. And it sort of grew from that. When I first came, the first two times, services were one Friday night a month. There was no dues structure so they did something very un-Jewish which was they passed a plate for donations at services, which everybody hated and we got rid of as soon as we could and a dues structure was put in place. And I remember when the dues went from ten dollars a year to eighteen dollars a year, everyone was afraid we would lose all our members over that which of course did not happen. So the congregation, when I got involved, the first time I came we were still having services at the first location which was at Tenth [Street] and G NW in I think First Congregational Church which also hosted Metropolitan Community Church, which is a nationwide gay organization of gay affirming chrches and that was their DC branch and they helped the congregation get started. So the original name of the congregation was Metropolitan Community Temple dash Mishpocheh, the Yiddish word, and later we hebraicised the word to Bet Mishpachah. Shortly after we moved to Christ United Methodist Church at 4th and I SW and services went to two Friday nights, I started leading services, and before I knew it they were every Friday night, and I led services almost every Friday night for about three and a half years. And the congregation grew and I saw the error of my ways and got some other people involved in leading services and over the years we have had a large cadre of service leaders. So one of the differences of Bet Mishpachah is you’re never quite sure what you’re going to get when you show up, you don't know who’s gonna be leading. Now that—once we hired our part time rabbi the rabbi usually leads two Friday nights and one Saturday morning a month, sometimes solo sometimes with a co-leader. So there’s some variation in our services, which some people like and some people don’t. Plus, also, unlike most other , like if you go into a Reform synagogue or a Conservative synagogue, some large chunk of the membership maybe half I don’t know, grew up in that kind of a synagogue so they’re sort of used to that service they’re used to that prayer book. We have people who come from a wide range of backgrounds, completely secular, humanistic, Reform, reconstructionist, Conservative, Orthodox, Hasidic, so we have to try to make everyone feel comfortable and at home which is sometimes challenging and sometimes very rewarding.

6 ZP: That’s really cool. So we may have already been through this, but how did you first hear about the synagogue back in the seventies?

LN: I occasionally used to go to ______(??), which was sort of an early hippie Jewish group. They met in the building that’s now known as the RAC, the Religious Action Center, at Twenty- first [Street] and Mass[achusetts Avenue], and I had some friends there, and I came out to my friend Ruthie who was also a college friend. I’m still friends with her now, she works at the JCC on the desk as a retiree part time. And our mutual frind Rob Agus, who was the son of a major rabbi in Baltimore, he found out I was gay and he came up to me and he said, “There’s a place for you! I’ll take you there.” And he took me to Bet Mishpachah the first time, and I was not very enamored of it, I said, “Well, not going back there again.” And then my best friend from college and I finally, after three years came out to each other. He was sure when I had my first little apartment downtown and he came down to visit with some other people and he went through my record album and he found an LP of Gloria Gaynor “Never Can Say Goodbye” and he said that’s when he knew for sure. And he had also been once before and so we went together to try it out again, and still did not like it but they announced the conference in New York and so we went to the conference in New York and so that was my original trajectory with the congregation.

ZP: Cool.

LN: The original group was a little apologetic it was not very prideful. It was a, “Oh you know, we don’t have a real torah we have this little children’s torah, we don’t have a real this, we don’t have a real that.” And we didn’t like that, and so we kind of took over and changed it.

ZP: So joining officially in 1977, what really prompted you to become a part of this inclusive space? You mentioned the importance of being prideful rather than apologetic.

LN: I think it was seeing that group in New York, those 350 people at the conference and having just this incredible sense of identity and joy for a whole weekend with people. And feeling that if we were going to have that in Washington we had to make it happen.

ZP: Do you think, right at the beginning, did you face any backlash from the existing Jewish community?

LN: Yes there was a long time when the Jewish Community Relations Council would not admit us as a member. And there was a lot of backchannel work behind the scenes to get them to admit us. And I was in a group of, I don’t know, half a dozen maybe more people and we sat in the back of the room while they discussed us and whether or not they would admit us as a member organization. The background work that had been done with several very supportive local

7 in the community basically assured that the Orthodox community abstained from voting, and that allowed us to be accepted as a member.

ZP: Was that in 1988 you were accepted by the Jewish Community Council?

LN: Yeah.

ZP: Great. Do you think there was any overlap in the broader community, outside the Jewish community, just the community as a whole, overlap between and anti-semitism?

LN: Probably some, you know, anti-semitism can be very widespread on the right and the left, and anti-religious feeling especially on the far left traditionally. A lot of the far right has been very anti-gay for years and years, and still is. So, to me it kind of both comes from the same place of, “We don’t like that other, we want everybody to be like us.” But I think the country has made enormous progress. I never would have dreamed that we would have gay marraige, that synagogues would have openly gay rabbis and cantors and educators, and a lot of them do now. Temple Sinai has an assistant rabbi who’s openly gay, there’s someone in Virginia, there’s probably others around. So it’s just been a huge evolution I think in the Jewish community. I think the Jewish community has evolved faster than some of the other communities and a good example of that is the United Methodist Church, which this summer had a rather dispiriting vote by their governing body, which is one body for all counties they don’t have separate governing bodies for each country I think if it had just been the United States voting they would have supported gay rights, gay marriage, gay ordination, but, you know, there was a long steady process and I would say the women’s movement really broke a lot of ground on that. The movement to have women rabbis, to have women counted in the minyan, to have women’s voices added in, that broke ground for it in the same whay that the civil rights movement broke ground for the gay rights movement.

ZP: Apart from being accepted into the Jewish Community Council, can you think of any other specific difficulties you had to push through to get this synagogue established and respected?

LN: Nothing specific. We used to send our newsletter to all the rabbis in town—all the congregations, so that they would know about it and occasionally a rabbi would have a situation where a congregant came out, sometimes it was a younger person sometimes it was someone who was more mature and perhaps was married and had kids and was . And in one case I know at a large Conservative congregation in Fairfax someone went to the rabbi and said, “Someone’s talking about my husband who’s coming out” and the rabbi said, “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of that person and here’s a place for your husband to go.” And he handed them a copy of our newsletter, and that person ended up becoming a board member of the synagogue. So we used to have a speakers bureau where we would go around and talk to groups at synagogues sometimes classes, confirmation classes for example or bar mitzvah classes or adult education

8 groups and just talk about the synagogue and what we were trying to do and what we were about and why we existed. That kind of fell by the wayside I think and partly because of the increasing acceptance and now we feel a little bit like victims of our own success, because now other congregations say, “Come join us! You can have a gay family menbership, we wlcome you, we accept you.” But I don’t think they offer the same social cohesion that we have. I’m not sure that many people would feel comfortable kissing their partner shabbat shalom at a service at a large mainstream suburban synagogue, but it’s definitely changing.

ZP: So, on the other side apart from, like, struggles and hardships, what was it like finding straight allies that were willing to help you, early on, to get established?

LN: Yeah, there were several that helped us early on, and people would come and occasionally lead a service as a guest rabbi or offer advice to the leadership, to the board, to the president of the congregation. So there was a lot of sort of quiet behind the scenes support in the early years and then it became much more open, and as I said the Jewish community has just done an amazing evolution on this.

ZP: So yeah I do want to ask you about the evolution of the Jewish community but, if you could speak a little bit about the existing Jewish community and queer community at the time when Bet Mish was founded?

LN: Well, for example, we always sent out newsletter in a plain brown paper envelope with no return address, because people did not want people who saw their mail necessarily to know that they were getting a newsletter from a gay synagogue. It was a time when you could still lose your federal job, you could be fired from your job with the military or with a military contractor, you could lose you professional licensing. So we always gave members the option of in the newsletter if they had their name listed did they want their first name, first name only, first name last initial, first name and full last name, or none of the above. And a lot of people took us up on those in the early years before some of those protections were in place. So I think we came from a place of hiding. And it was not by coincidence that the gay bars used to be in neighborhoods that mainstream middle class suburban people never went to, and people went to them late at night when everyone else was asleep. You know, everybody with a regular job and young kinds was asleep at eleven o’clock and none of the bars were busy till eleven o’clock and that was no accident, that was so people would not be seen. So I think we came from that place into gradual more and more openness.

ZP: Do you think there was a feeling of displacement for Jewish people who identified as LGBT and felt not welcome in their Jewish community? Or even on the other side, LBGT folks who felt unwelcome in the Queer community because they were Jewish?

9 LN: I think the first one, definitely. We’ve had a lot of members over the years who, you know, were born into Jewish families, grew up, maybe were bar mitzvahed or bat mitzvahed, and when they came out they thought there was no place for them in Judaism, and they were estranged from Judaism for a decade, two decades. And then when the gay synagogue movement came out, some of them said, “Well I’ll give it another try,” and came back, and some of them we managed to keep and they became active members and sort of were able to reintegrate these different aspects of their lives but there were a lot of people who were very estranged from Judaism. I think the gay community, mostly in the early years, was very accepting of differences so I don’t think there was a lot of anti-semitism in the gay community early on. In more recent years there have been some of the far left wing groups, there’ve been some issues with the whole Israel kind of thing, you know, the creating change marches and things like that, there have been some problems but I think that’s been more recent and coming from a different political place.

ZP: Do you think, and this is more of a general question, do you think it’s more important to integrate LGBT friendly practices into existing synagogues or, rather, to make separate spaces specifically for inclusive people, that specifically welcome and celebrate different identities?

LN: That’s a very good strategic question and I feel like we’re a congregation that’s facing that now. We’re just starting a new strategic planning process, we haven’t updated our strategic plan in fifteen years, so it’s been a while. And around the country a lot of gay synagogues have merged in with so-called mainstream synagogues. Philadelphia's a good example, Bet Haverim, which was founded before Bet Mishpachah and was a separate synagogue, and had their own space for a long time. They merged into Rodeph Shalom, a huge reform temple on N Broad Street, and at first they were two synagogues in one building two congregations, and eventually they just kind of merged in. So that’s one path some congregations have taken. Another path is in Atlanta where Bet Haverim has broadened their outreach to include wider, non-LGBT people, and I think what I’ve heard is that their congregation is now maybe 60-40, 40 percent LGBTQ and majority not. They have a thriving building and a full time rabbi and a large school and they’ve been very successful, and I think there’s a sophisticated urban elite now who might think, gee, it’s kind of cool we belong to a synagogue that was founded by LBGTQ people. And has the kind of vibe that they might be looking for. I think the LGBTQ community was ahead of the broader Jewish community in welcoming interfaith couples. So maybe we’ve helped to create a path for that. Even for example, which, when they joined the Reform movement early on, they had to call themselves a Reform temple with an outreach to the LGBTQ community, they couldn’t define themselves as an LGBTQ congregation. And what’s happened now is that I think as they’re sort of halfway between the Castro and the Mission in San Francisco, they have a wonderful building and a large membership and a large school, but as the neighborhood is changing, the Castro is certainly not the center of gay life in San Francisco anymore it’s just a tourist—like, disney land kind of thing, and no one can afford to live there. And so the congregation now has lots more kids and lots more families with kids and lots more not necessarily LBGTQ families with kids. So there have been several different paths that are

10 taken. I think one of the paths that we’ll be considering for Bet Mishpachah is, there are at least three sets of services in the Logan Circle area, but those services are all in Hebrew except for the sermon. And I kind of think that there’s an unserved population here in this inner city neighborhood of people who would want to have a progressive service but they don’t want it to be all in Hebrew, and I think we might find a niche with them where we would also be Bet Mishpachah with a very progressive, LGBTQ affirming liturgy and founded by the community, but have a broader outreach to the community. I think that’s—if it were my decision, which it is not, I would say that’s the tack we should follow. But I don’t want us to give up the sense of community that we have, because there’s a very strong sense of community. A lot of people met their partners there, we have a lot of couples where the partners have been together for thirty years, thirty-five years. Those kinds of things are very meaningful.

ZP: Kind of on the other side of the coin here, do you think it’s important to integrate Jewish- friendly practices into LGBT spaces?

LN: Yeah, this is hard for a minority within a minority. Sometimes, you know, when things are scheduled on Rosh Hashanah and the Jewish dates, of course, follow the lunar calendar and they move around and other people don’t know when they are and they don’t even think about, “Oh is that gonna be a conflict for our Jewish members?” So that’s always a challenge, even in major metropolitan areas with large Jewish populations it’s still always a challenge when people schedule things and don’t think about that. So I think there’s always a sort of gentle nudging that has to go on there to say, “Oh, don’t forget! Not everybody follows these particular sets of holidays,” and try to be a little sensitive to that.

ZP: So, you have spoken about this, I just wanted to ask you again, broadly, how have you seen the LGBT community or the Jewish community change over the years.

LN: Well, the LBGTQ community of course I lived through the worst decades of the AIDS crisis, that was an enormous change. Just when everything was opening up and everybody was feeling free, then this horrible plague hit us and the focus shifted to taking care of people. And so, just in terms of numbers, we lost a lot of people, a lot of people. A lot of communities were just decimated—so I think that was a real challenge, and one that the community really stepped up at a time then the federal government was doing nothing, or very little on AIDS research, it was raising money privately to start that whole effort. President Regan didn't say the word AIDS for seven years. So that was a real challenge. In a way I think that kind of brought the lesbian and gay communities together because people from both parts of the communities stepped up to help friends they knew who were sick and dying. A lot of organizations like Whitman-Walker Clinic —also, I think there’s been a real change from say thirty, forty years ago especially in Washington which is very much an organizational town, so if you opened the Blade which was, is one of the gay newspapers now it used to be the only one. There used to be over two hundred organizations, gay organizations, listed. You know, softball leagues, theatre groups, religious

11 groups, everything you can imagine. That number is much diminished now, because people live their lives online, because of the internet the number of bars has gone down, people don’t have to go to a bar to meet other gay people anymore they can meet them online. And I think the whole focus, it’s a real challenge for organizations, you know, how do you get people together still when everyone is used to their prime interaction being a phone? So it’s a real challenge, I think, to try to keep organizations going when we lost a lot of them.

ZP: If you could, tell me a little bit more about seeing the community step up like that during times of crisis.

LN: You know, the sort of, providing meals to people sick at home. I mean it was really terrible in the very early years people were scared of gay people because they thought they could catch AIDS, which turns out actually it would be very difficult to transmit, thank God. People—we had a member, it was actually an interracial couple, and his partner died, and they were living together in a house that his partner owned and he went to the funeral and when he came back from the funeral, all his possessions were on the sidewalk, because the family kicked him out and did not recognize their relationship and was not about to have him be in their son’s home anymore. And that was not unusual, there were lots and lots of families that did it, there were lots of families that kicked out their gay children and that’s still an issue today. You know, the number of homeless people on the streets who are young is way way way disproportionately gay. The rate of gay suicide is much much much higher. But then you have things like the It Gets Better book and the videos. My friend Joe, who is about to retire from a thirty-five year career in the foreign service, he did a chapter in that about his own story and what happened, so people are trying to get the message out that you can have a happy successful life, you’re not the only one in the world. Because people still growing up, especially in isolated places, they still feel like, “Oh what’s wrong with me? I’m the only one, why isn’t everybody else like this? I have to pretend.”

ZP: Going back to the growth of the synagogue, and changes over time, does any one moment stick out to you as a low point in the history of the institution?

LN: Yeah, at one point we had two part time rabbis and I think we had grown faster than we could afford, so one of those rabbis—the contract was discontinued and that was very difficult for the congregation. A lot of people didn’t understand why the board made that decision and there was a, “Well if that’s the way you’re gonna be I’m never gonna darken your door again.” A lot of people left at that point, unfortunately, especially women.

ZP: And when was that?

LN: Early, maybe 2003? 4? Something like that? So that I would say is the low point. We had been building building building building building up to that point and then we kind of shot ourselves in the foot. I was not a part of that decision and I was horrified when it happened. I

12 thought it was extremely misguided but it was done. So it took a lot of years to sort of recover from that and build back up again.

ZP: So, as you’ve been saying how the congregation expanded, what’s one moment you can call a victory for the synagogue?

LN: I think moving into the Jewish Community Center building was a real victory. It places us physically in the heart of the DC Jewish community, it gives us lots of opportunities for joint programs. For example, the theatre will have a special Sunday matinee showing and offer us discount tickets as a group, the artistic director of the theatre will come and give a talk about what’s going on, that kind of thing. So there’s been some good synergistic programming there. The first night that we had services there at the Jewish Community Center when we moved in, we had always been in churches before then, rented space in churches, and someone who was leading services said, “I believe that the final vote on whether Bet Mishpachah would be allowed to be a tenant and rent space from them was unanimous.” And then Arna Michael Michelson, who was the executive director of the JCC said, “I just want to correct something,” she said, “every vote that we took on Bet Mishpachah was unanimous.” So that really spoke to a lot of changes, and I think that was certainly a high point for us to be right there in the center, literally.

ZP: Do you think, apart from changes in rabbis, people come and go, was there any drama or controversy surrounding leadership within the community?

LN: No, not so much. You know, some groups on the board are more effective than others, some leaders are more effective than others. Sometimes there seems to be a period of growth and expansion and lots of good new things, I would say this year has been that. We have a new rabbi who started July first who’s just wonderful, really thrilled with him, Rabbi Jake Singer-Beilin. We have a new location this year for our high holiday services at Friends Meeting House of Washington over in Kalorama on Florida Avenue and Decatur Place, and it’s the first time we’ve ever had high holiday services in a room with no iconography, and the building has just been completely redone, the beautiful new two story lobby and elevator, it’s all accessible. Wonderful acoustics in the room, it felt really warm and welcoming so that was definitely a positive and then the Edlavitch Jewish Community Center was closed for the last year for major major major renovations, reconstruction, and they arranged for us to be across the street at Foundry United Methodist Church. September sixth was our first service back in the JCC building, and that also felt, really coming home and a very positive thing, so I think those have been some really positive things this year. And then plus, the publication of the siddur, December 2017, and we had a big dinner dance with a DJ up at Maggiano’s, we had a private room, we raised about forty thousand dollars in donations based on the publication of the siddur. A lot of times prayer books will have in the front, “This book was made possible by the donation of such and such family foundation in memory of their grandparents,” and we did not want the book to belong to one family so we offered everybody a chance to be listed as benefactors, and we had sixty-seven

13 people, some couples, make donations for the siddur so I think that really showed the strength of the community and the commitment people have to the community. And we’re now starting to redo the we did twenty-five years ago, which is now seeming a little dated, and I’m hopeful that we might even have a new machzor to use for next the high holiday. That may be a little ambitious, but I think we’ll probably do another major fundraising when it’s printed.

ZP: I know you’ve mentioned a few people here and there, but who were some people who really inspired you as you were building this community? Rabbis, leaders, people outside of Bet Mish?

LN: I think Rabbi Bob Saks, who was our part time rabbi for eighteen years, was a really wonderful force in the congregation. We’ve had some other people, Rabbi Leila Berner who have done a lot of liturgy, and worked with us on liturgy and her pieces are in many other siddurim as well. She really, I think, helped us move forward, she’s most recently been academic dean for the Aleph, the renewal seminary, so she brought a new perspective, kind of thing. We’ve always been very aware of what’s going on in the other gay synagogues so when Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, CBST in New York, when they bought a space in Chelsea and renovated it and spent twenty-three million dollars on it, we were kind of astonished and that sort of showed that, wow! You really can do things if you really push on it. Of course, the financial situation in New York is different than here, but still, they’ve been an inspiration, they published a siddur in 2008 and we took some ideas from their siddur, for example, we included not just the traditional four matriarchs who have been included for the lastthirty years but actually the two others, Jacob’s two other wives, sometimes refered to as concubines, pehaps the half sisters of Rachel and Leah, but we added their names in and have a little note, a rather long note, about recognizing non-traditional relationships and how important this has been to the gay community and we got that idea from CBST in New York and we credit them with in in the book. So we’ve tried to keep track of what’s been going on in other places and take advantage of their steps and for many many years there were wonderful conferences hosted by different congregations and there’s and umbrella organization called the World Congress of LGBTQ Jews, and Bet Mish has hosted a big national conference in 1987 with Congressman Barney Frank as our keynote speaker before he came out. Mayor Marion Barry came in person to deliver a proclamation, gay Jewish conference days in Washington, which was astonishing in 1987, I’m sure no other mayor in the country would have done it at that time. We held another regional conference but a lot of people attended those conferences and they were just such a shot in the arm, and there’s talk now again about trying to revive them a little bit. The World Congress still has board meetings hosted by various congregations, for example, recently they did that in Washington in conjunction with our annual shabbaton we have a guest rabbi to speak Friday night, Saturday afternoon. They piggy-backed their annual or semi-annual board meeting on that to try to keep that going but those were inspiring, those conferences.

14 ZP: So, your congregation was founded on the importance of bringing equality and inclusivity into a religious space, can you speak on the importance of this intersection of religion and ?

LN: We have a member who is now ninety-one, I think one of the original members, who wrote a prayer back in the early eighties saying he was grateful to the congregation for being a place where he could integrate his religious and sexual identities. And we edited his prayer, the liturgy committee did, which he was not quite so happy about, and we said it was a place where we could celebrate, not just integrate but celebrate those things, and make them both positive together. Positive expressions together of both religious identity and sexual or today gender identity. So I think that was really important to people. We’ve also had a lot of converts, much to my surprise. I would say, a dozen, maybe even two dozen over the years. People who are gay, who find in Judaism something that they’ve been seeking, and so that’s been very interesting and some have become very active leaders in the congregation, serving as president, serving on the board, serving as service leaders, so I think there’s definitely something in that intersection that’s positive and people recognize it.

ZP: I know many people feel that they just cannot reconcile their religious beliefs with their sexual orientation or gender identity. Have you personally struggled with that at any point in your life?

LN: Not really, I feel it’s much easier in Judaism than in some branches of Christianity, for example, or Islam also. So a lot of people quote verses from the Bible, usually out of context. But those two verses in Leviticus about “a man shall not lie with man as with a woman,” I always felt, well, I agree. When two men have sex one of them should not be pretending that the other one is a woman, they should be interacting with each other directly and personally in thatsacred interaction. And by the way the new prayer book some years ago for the San Francisco gay synagogue for Sha'ar Zahav, has a blessing for sexual interactions, even though they might be short term. So I think it’s easier in Judaism than in a lot of other places.

ZP: That’s great, so exactly my next question, which is, do you feel there is room in the Jewish belief system for a range of and sexual orientation? And obviously you have found that, which is really powerful.

LN: I mean, for example, a lot of people don’t know that the Talmud actually recognizes six genders. And I’m no Talmud scholar but the basic structure of the Talmud is people sitting around discussing, “Well what should we do? How should we do this?” And so-and-so says we should do it this way and so-and-so says this way and so-and-so says this way and it’s left unresolved. Because in a way all of those are under the big tent. You can also look at a page of Talmud which has text from the Mishnah earlier and the Gemara later and then Rashi and other

15 commentators down through the years as the first sort of hyperlinks among different people, different times commenting on a similar idea, so it’s sort of like a forerunner for the internet.

ZP: So, since you’ve started or since you’ve joined Bet Mish, you’ve seen so many things change, do you think the Jewish community as a whole is becoming more inclusive?

LN: Very much so, much much much more inclusive. Adas Israel is a prime example but even now if you look on most synagogue’s websites it’ll say, “We welcome LBGTQ people, you can have a family membership, we recognize different kinds of families” you know, family member one, family member two, it doesn’t say husband and wife anymore on the forms. So I think there’s a lot of recognition of that, huge huge very positive evolution over the last ten, twenty years.

ZP: With your connections with other synagogues in the area, do you interact at all with more Orthodox branches? Do you see any really stark differences?

LN: We probably have the least interaction with them, but for example, there are two traditional minyan that meet also in the Jewish Community Center, DC Minyan and Rosh Pina, and when DC Minyan first started, they borrowed I think our ark and our torah scroll, so we kind of helped them at the very beginning before they had their own, and as an expression of gratitude they gave us silver rimonim, the finials that sit on the top of one of our torah scrolls. The others were given my a member of the congregation. So we’ve had some connections with them. I think, ever since the movie Trembling Before God came out, which is now maybe five years ago, I’m not sure exactly, that really opened up the discussion in the Orthodox community about “oh there are gay people, and what do we do with them? And how can we be welcoming to them?” And also the fact that Tel Aviv is just the gayest city. It’s got tons of gay people there, very very out, very outspoken. There’s a whole area in the gay beach where, when the city government redid the whole waterfont along the mditeranian, they provided cabanas for the gay beach with rainbow striped on the tops of the cabanas at city government expense. I think the city government pays for the parade there. So Israel has become this huge mecca for gay people, lots of gay europeans go there, it is by far the only really safe place for gay people in the middle east. So I always sort of hold out hope that that might be some entre in the future for some sort of reconciliation, but that’s probably pie in the sky.

ZP: Well, one of my last questions here is do you have any advice that you would give younger Jewish kids, or even of other religions, that are struggling to reconcile their faith with their sexuality?

LN: I would say that there’s lots of places to go now where things are affirming. The Prespiterians are now very affirming, the Episcopalians are very affirming, Dignity, the gay Cathoic group has been around for at least forty years so there’s lots of places to go where they

16 can find affirmation, where they can see intersectionality at work, in groups and in people’s lives, and that’s a wonderful thing, and for people that grew up before that its still kind of amazing to see that.

ZP: Do you think there’s anything that you could speak about, apart from the community and seeing affirmation from others and from organizations, but rather, more internally? That’s something I’ve seen people struggle with, and if there’s anything you might be able to say to people. LN: I would say that religion often tries to present itself as being the single truth, and that there are many many truths, and that people sort of need to stick their head up and look around a little bit and see that there are other groups out there that are welcoming, other groups that are affirming, other groups that appreciate that celebration of the integration of different aspects of people's lives, and to go where you’re wanted. Don’t stay some place, you know, if you feel that people are not being affirming, if they’re not meeting your needs, if they’re not speaking to what’s important to you, there are other places that are. And to seek them out, and find them, and don’t, don’t just stay in sort of a dead end space, but move.

ZP: Yeah, so what’s next for your congregation? Do you have any big projects or events coming up?

LN: We’re starting already to plan the education committee, I know is meeting soon to start planning our spring shabbaton, which is usually March-April, with a guest speaker. The rabbi has given two of his four fall courses, and we’ll do another four in the spring. I think working on the new machzor, the high holiday prayer book is gonna be a big focus for the liturgy committee and service leaders and then when that’s ready, I think the fundraising for that will again give a sense of community to the congregation. We had this strategic planning process, we’ve hired a local rabbi who has experience, professional experience doing strategic planning for non-profit organizations so we’re just kicking that effort off. We had some cards printed up for high holidays, “Tell us why Bet Mishpachah is important in your life,” that people could write on and mail back in or hand in or fill out online. And then, I think, that will sort of help us direct what we’re going to do over the next five years and in 2024 or 25 we will celebrate our fiftieth anniversary. So we had for the fortieth year, some special guest lectures and we had a big dinner dance, did we have a dinner dance for fortieth? No I think we had a lunch or brunch, but I imagine we’ll have another big dinner dance kind of thing and it’ll be a celebration, so that’s the next big milestone I think and fifty years, not nothing!

ZP: Yeah, so just for anybody who is listening to this, where can people find more information about your services or connections in the community?

LN: So, www.betmish.org is our website. It’s usually fairly up-to-date and it’s got history of the congregation and a description of our services and it’s got information about where we meet,

17 which is at the Edlavitch Jewish Community Center of Washington, DC at Sixteenth and Q Street. We have services every Friday night at 8:00 p.m. and on the second and fourth Saturdays of every month at 10:00 a.m., as well as holiday events, classes, social events, theatre outings, other cultural events throughout the year, congregational dinners. For example, the night we moved back into the JCC, we had a big congressional dinner before services, a very joyous evening, it was also our annual handout awards to volunteers night, and so we tried to combine a bunch of different things at once, and it’s a very welcoming, open, group of people, and it’s a place people can find a home. And I think especially for, there are a lot of people who come to Washington for a career or a career change, or to go to school and sometimes it’s hard to breakthrough and find a community, but people can find a community at Bet Mishpachah.

ZP: That’s wonderful, so are there any questions you feel I should’ve asked?

LN: Unh-uh.

ZP: Or even anything you would like to add on any of the subjects we’ve discussed?

LN: I can’t think of anything off-hand, I feel like I’ve blabbered on long enough. (laughs)

ZP: This has been great, thank you so much for taking the time to sit down with me, this has been really informative, really just awesome, to hear what you have to say. I think this will be really valuable for people hoping to learn more about the community and hoping to, you know, find a balance within themselves, religion, identity, it’s really important.

LN: Could we have a link to this on our website?

ZP: Of course!

LN: Not now, but at some point, yeah if you’ll send me something, we’ll, we’ll do that. Assuming that it comes out okay.

ZP: I’ll end the interview here, yeah.

End of interview

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