LGBTQ Coverage

Lilith is the first place many Jews wrestling with gender identity go to learn about the experiences of those like—and unlike—themselves. The Lilith archives include first-person coming-out stories; memoirs of the “crossroads” experiences of LGBTQ people and their families; reports on evolving Jewish family and communal responses; explorations of what text sources such as the Talmud offer on issues of gender identity; and new rituals, ceremonies, and liturgies keyed to the LGBTQ experience

A Jewish Mother on the Boy Scouts’ Anti-Gay Policy
Winter 2012-2013
by Heidi Gralla
“Many parents opted to continue their involvement, believing that the value of the program outweighed a bad policy. Not me.”

What to Call the Rabbi’s Lesbian Partner?
Fall 2012
by Mel Weiss
“I’d thought once that the issue of what to call myself as a grown-up would be settled once I discovered the word ‘Ms.'”

Happily Queer In Middle School
Winter 2010-2011
by Alissa Wise and Scott Quasha
Why a support group for LGBTQ middle-schoolers is important.

How Twenty-Somethings Mate Now
Spring 2010
by Susan Schnur
Three (very Jewish) rabbis’ daughters, inhabiting a multicultural, radically new world, dish about their non-Jewish partnering.

D-I-Y PARENTHOOD
Summer 2010
Doing it yourself can mean much more than selecting a sperm donor. These women are creating-and raising-wildly unconventional families.

What’s a Nice Jewish Girl Like Me Doing in a Man’s Body? by Joy Ladin
Winter 2009-2010
The complicated story of becoming a woman gives a whole new dimension to Rabbi Hillel’s famous creed, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?”

Jewish Men Now
Fall 2009
Guest Editor Sarah Blustain spotlights men who are incubating some pretty radical thoughts on gender and Judaism: Rabbis Steven Greenberg and Jeremy Kalmanofsky and writers Jay Michaelson and Paul Zakrzewski.

Love Letter: A Comic
by Shira Spector
Spring 2009
A short story, hilarious, poignant and graphic—in every sense—about a middle-school crisis of sexual identity.

Coming Out in the Orthodox World: Our Lesbian Wedding
by Tamar A. Prager
Summer 2006
Here’s how one lesbian couple—wanting the blessings both of their parents and of Jewish tradition—melded Judaism and their gay identity.

Being Out as a Jew in Lesbian Circles
by Melanie Weiss
Summer 2006
In some settings, it’s more acceptable to be gay than to be Jewish. 

Messengers from a New Place
by Elaine Shizgal Cohen
Summer 2005
Elaine Cohen and Steven P. Cohen celebrated the commitment ceremony of their daughter Tamara. Here’s how Elaine toasted the couple.

Gay Rights are a Natural Extension of Jewish Feminism
by Alice Sparberg Alexiou
Spring 2005
“This is the idea that I grew up with: that Judaism should be fully accessible to all of us.”

Why We’re Not Getting Married 
by Martha Ackelsberg and Judith Plaskow
Fall 2004
“We fully believe that gays and lesbians should have the right to marry, and we celebrate the fact that a significant barrier to our full citizenship has fallen. But we’re not getting married. “

Transgender Jews
Spring 2002

Gender in Genesis by Gwynn Kessler
What the Talmud Says about Gender Ambiguity by Alana Suskin
In the Image of God by Danya Ruttenberg
Shul Matters by Micah Bazant
“Today I am a Man” Takes on New Meaning by Danya Ruttenberg

My Perfect Family: Two Moms 
by Daniel Belasco
Summer 1999
The author on his normal childhood in a lesbian household.

Two Lesbian Women and Their Pretty Straight Wedding 
by Susan Sapiro
Winter 1997-1998
What distinguished this ceremony from many other gay and lesbian weddings is that Michelle and Aimee are halachically committed Jews.

Lesbian Wedding
by Rosanne Leipzig and Judy Mable
Fall 1992
The authors were partners for two years before publicly consecrating their relationship under a wedding chuppah. Here is an account not of their actual ceremony, but of the preparation for the wedding—a journey that surprisingly sowed much healing, joy, and empathy all around.

“Coming Out” in the Jewish Family
by Carla Cantor
Summer 1989
As many lesbians discover, being true to oneself has a price… Jewish families have both a harder—and an easier—time accepting gay children.

A Letter to Harvey Milk
a short story by Leslea Newman
Fall 1988

Lilith Interviews Evelyn Torton Beck
by Aviva Cantor
Winter, 1983