April 2015 Volume 3, Issue 4

BOARD OF DIRECTORS INTERVIEW WITH SHARON KLEINBAUM

Keith Fox SENIOR RABBI AT CONGREGATION BEIT SIMCHAT TORAH CHAIRMAN Tell us a little bit about your Christopher Tepper involvement in the early days of CO­FOUNDER the AIDS epidemic.

Paul Kelterborn CO­FOUNDER It's impossible to overstate the role of AIDS in the early life of CBST, John Tantillo when the disease claimed 25% of TREASURER the men in our congregation. I arrived on August 1, 1992 as Richard Burns Guillermo Chacón CBST's first rabbi, and a month Eric Cruzen later I led the funeral service for Patricia Evert the immediate past president of Ethan Geto the congregation, Mel Rosen, who Debra Fraser­Howze was the first executive director of Paul Kawata GMHC. AIDS was one of the most Fraser D. Mooney important factors leading CBST to Susan Rodriguez hire a rabbi. Someone needed to Eric Sawyer handle the spiritual crisis exacerbated by the constant drumbeat of Andrew Shackett illness, death and bereavement. I was doing more funerals than Kendall Thomas other life cycle events, burying people my own age, while trying to Janet Weinberg create a community of people not completely diminished by this burden. Jewish funeral homes wouldn't handle with dignity someone SUPPORTING ORGANIZATIONS who died of AIDS. I had to fight the funeral homes to get respectful Jewish funerals for our congregants. There were often two different ACT UP African Services Committee memorial services, one arranged by the family that did not mention AIDS Community Research the words "gay" or "AIDS" and then ours, where we could Initiative of America acknowledge him in his wholeness. AIDS Service Center NYC The Alpha Workshops amfAR Architectural Record Architizer Bailey House BOOM!HEALTH Broadway Cares/ Equity Fights AIDS The Center for HIV Law & Policy The Church of St. Luke in the Fields Circle of Voices Congregation Beit Simchat Torah DIFFA Empire State Pride Agenda Friends In Deed Gay Men's Health Crisis Greenwich House ­Chelsea Chamber of Commerce Heritage of Pride Hetrick­Martin Institute Housing Works Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club Lambda Independent Democrats of Brooklyn Latino Commission on AIDS Lenox Hill Hospital The LGBT Community Center Love Heals ­ the Alison Gertz Foundation for AIDS Education Lower 5th Street Block Association National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS NYC & Company NYC up & OUT Parity Point Foundation PRIDE Democrats Queer History Alliance A meeting flyer from 1982 Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation SAGE Did AIDS find its way into the liturgical life of the congregation? SMART Stonewall Community Foundation Stonewall Democratic Club of Yes. While the epidemic was transformational for our congregation, eventually the deaths abated. I stopped looking out into the STONEWALL Veterans' congregation to see who looked sick, who was missing. The Association Upper West 13th Street Block constant funerals stopped. We made several quilts, one for the Association NAMES Project, and two others we still display at our services. VillageCare Each year on the Friday closest to World AIDS Day, we have a Visual AIDS special shabbat service that features prominent speakers from the HIV world, including from an international perspective. We also added special HIV­related readings to our siddur, our prayer book ­ remembrances from congregants, as well as poems and literary and dramatic excerpts by writers such as Tony Kushner, William Finn and Thom Gunn ­ which we read together at services throughout the year. At the service, we ask members to share their remembrances of congregants who died of AIDS. Together, we take on the sacred responsibility of remembering our dead.

How is the congregation dealing with the epidemic today?

People with HIV in our congregation still need support, spiritual and otherwise, and congregants need to know how to protect themselves from contracting the virus, especially younger people who did not live through those terrible times. Our Director of Social Justice Programming, Rabbi David Bauer, has taken on this role and is creating some novel programs, including the first ever Jewish safer sex campaign, funded by UJA. How the times have changed. Part of this program is condom distribution. Unbeknownst to her parents, our Associate Rabbi's four­year­old daughter took a handful of condoms to her pre­school in Park Slope and distributed them to her friends. When the principal called CBST to speak to her parent, she said the young girl had said she was giving the condoms out to "help keep grown­ups safe and healthy."

T H A N K Y O U T O O U R S P O N S O R S

Philip Aarons & Shelley Fox Aarons · Arcus Foundation · David Bohnett Bruce Bozzi & Bryan Lourd · Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS Calamus Foundation · Donald Capoccia & Tommie Pegues · Andy Cohen The Consuelos Family · Anderson Cooper · Todd DeGarmo & Bill Sales Keith Fox & Tom Keyes · Gilead Sciences · Richard J. Grossman & Adam Sheffer Keith Haring Foundation · John Heist & Michael Neumann · Kevin Huvane Janssen Therapeutics · Elton John AIDS Foundation Lenox Hill Hospital/North Shore Medical · The MAC AIDS Fund Office of Borough President · Joe Mantello · Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation McGraw­Hill · Fraser D. Mooney · New York City Council · OraSure Technologies Alfredo Paredes & Brad Goldfarb · Mickey Rolfe & Bruce Tracy Seth Rosen & Jacob Goertz · Jordan Roth & Richie Jackson · Eric & Wendy Schmidt Bill Schwinghammer · Frank Selvaggi & Bill Shea · Hamilton South & Manuel Bellod Joan H. Tisch · Joy Tomchin · Diane von Furstenberg & Barry Diller

For more information about the NYC AIDS Memorial- and how to get involved - please visit us at: nycaidsmemorial.org

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