Bo 2010

When I was a teenager, I did not want anyone to know that I was Jewish. I kept that information private, and it wasn’t hard to do. I don’t look Jewish. My name isn’t very Jewish. I could ‘pass’ without doing much more than misleading people.

Why did I feel this way? I suppose that, like many teens, I did not want to feel different from those around me. I suppose I felt that being Jewish was something to be embarrassed about. I thought that girls who were not Jewish would not want to date me.

In my lifetime, I have been called names because I am Jewish. But I was never denied a job, entry to school, or entry to a club or organization because of my Judaism. As far as I know, no woman has ever refused to date me because of my religion. They had plenty of other reasons. And yet, I did not want anyone to know I was Jewish.

We all know that until the 1950s, it was common for Jews to be denied jobs, memberships, even hotel rooms, because of their Judaism. My own father was denied a job because he is Jewish, and he felt obligated to change his name to Steve Gardner, from the Jewish sounding ‘Maurice Z. Rosenburg,’ when he was an actor. Once, in the 1930s, my father filled out a job application which required the applicants to note their religion. He told me he put down the Yiddish word ‘eppes,’ which means ‘something,’ in hopes that someone would think it was an abbreviation for ‘episcopalian.’ But why, in the 1970s and 80s, would I still want to keep my Judaism hidden?

The answer, I think, lies in the reason why Jews were not allowed in certain hotels, why Jews were not allowed to join certain country clubs. You pay a lot of money to join a country club. Part of what you get for your money is the feeling of living in a very high class society. A society of people who are cultured, who are elegant. A society that does not include Jews. Because Jews are not elegant, goes this reasoning. They are loud, and they argue. They are interested in money, and they eat greasy foods. This idea, that Jews are just not as good as other people, becomes internalized, and leads to what has been called ‘self-hating Jews.’ Groucho Marx was funny, but perhaps not so funny, when he stated that he would never want to belong to a club that would have someone like him for a member.

While I had never experienced actual anti-semitism, I had partly internalized this idea of Jews, and I did not want to be associated with them. It would take years, and a little bit of courage, for me to go outside with a kippah.

Of course, Jews are not the only minority that internalizes the majority viewpoint that they are inferior. I remember reading a study in which dolls, identical except for color, were given to little girls, who were then asked which was the most beautiful. Almost all of the girls, black, white, hispanic, thought that the blond, blue-eyed doll was the prettiest. The 1960’s slogan ‘Black is Beautiful’ was meant to stop African Americans from trying to lighten their skin and straighten their hair.

I bring up all of this because last week someone asked me what I thought of same-sex marriages. I believe that we cannot be against same-sex marriages without communicating to gay and lesbian people that they are not as good as we are. That our love is legitimate, and their love is illegitimate. That when we choose a partner and decide to cleave to him or her, forsaking all others, it is to be celebrated. And when they do the same, we turn away in disgust. And therefore, I believe that Jews must be in favor of same sex marriages. Whatever your opinion of homosexuality, whatever your understanding of the purpose of marriage, you must support same sex marriage.

Why?

Because we Jews know what happens when there is institutional discrimination. Institutional discrimination convinces people to doubt their own value as a human being, as a child of Gd. Because you cannot tell a person, בצלם אלוקים, over and over again that he or she is not normal, is not acceptable, is not quite human, without that person starting to believe it.

And why should we care, as Jews, if gay and lesbian people have a sense of self worth? If they are more likely to commit suicide? If they are more likely to be unhappy?

Look in this week’s Torah portion. You shall be kind to the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. 

The Egypt of the Exodus is not a place. It is a condition. You can train a slave to carry his Egypt with him. But we were freed from our Egypt, by Gd’s mighty hand. We are instructed never to forget. We relive every year our bondage and our freedom, so we will know what it is to be slaves, and we will know what it is to be freed from slavery.

Our brother and sister slaves, whether they are Jewish or not, are still in Egypt. Society is still trying to get them to internalize the idea that they are not as good as other people. Will denying them the right to marry make them straight? Will it keep more straight couples together? 

The only purpose it serves is to make them unhappy, to tell them that they are not as good as the rest of us. We were in that Egypt. I was, when I was a teenager. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

Gd brought us out of Egypt with signs and wonders. But no one is completely free until everyone is free. We cannot fully enter the promised land until everyone has left the metaphorical Egypt, until the Egypt of institutional discrimination that leads to self-hatred is destroyed utterly.