Keshet
Keshet is a national organization that works for LGBTQ equality in Jewish life. The organization equips Jewish leaders with tools to build LGBTQ-affirming communities, creates spaces for queer Jewish teens to feel valued and develop their own leadership skills, and mobilizes the Jewish community to fight for LGBTQ justice. Keshet’s blog spotlights this work, as well as the voices of LGBTQ Jews, our families, and allies.
Why is This Night Different From All Other Nights?
This year, I will be spending most of Pesach (Passover) in a small town in southwestern Missouri. I will be ...
Our Love Party: Inviting Community When Family Won’t Come
My Orthodox Jewish self, my fear and shame, my internalized homophobia could not fathom a way of bringing my relationship with my religion and my understanding of what God wants for me into marriage with a woman. It has taken me years of being out and going through heartbreak and growth to be in the place that I believe that God wants to be involved in my marriage to Mary. In order to be married in an authentic way, I need both my religious self and my queer self to be there.
Sitting Down with Emma: A 15-Year-Old Social Media Maven
Keshet recently sat down with Emma Canter, a 15 year-old from Chicago. Emma runs the Instagram account f.em.inist and recently ...
Emerging from Narrow Places: Passover and the Stories of LGBTQ Jews
Passover is also a time for us to reflect on the mitzrayim we face today: what are the narrow places from which we must emerge? What are the ways in which we must move toward freedom from transphobia and heterosexism in our families, our workplaces, our Jewish communities? What steps do we need to take to bring us farther along on this journey?
Passover: Festival of Binaries
Leavened versus unleavened; inside versus outside; Jew versus non-Jew; life versus death. Passover is a festival of absolute binary distinctions that we ritually link together in order to affirm our identity as the people God brought out of Egypt and to pass that identity on to our children. This is the Torah's equivalent of “Jewish Identity for Dummies.”
Making it Personal: How the JCRC Advocates for Trans Inclusion
Embedded in our communal and organizational DNA is the belief that all people come before the government with an equal ...
Celebratory Sacrifices: Coming Out
In the times of the ancient Israelites, we were supposed to make sacrifices to God on many different occasions. When ...
Take a Stand: Don’t Let Religion Become a Weapon
In Pirkei Avot 2:10 we are taught that Rabbi Eliezer said, יהי כבוד חברך חביב עליך כשלך “Let your neighbor’s dignity be precious ...
Q&A with Raffi Freedman-Gurspan, the White House’s Primary LGBT Liaison
Keshet recently spoke with Raffi Freedman-Gurspan. Raffi, a Jewish woman, is the first openly transgender member of staff at the White House. ...
Remembering Liz Swados
Lesbian and Jewish theater icon Elizabeth Swados died in January at the age of 64. Swados was an American writer, composer, musician ...