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Chapter 1 - Struggle, Change, and Celebration
Linda Holtzman - My Life as a Lesbian Rabbi
I graduated from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 1979, accepted a position as the sole rabbi of a Conservative congregation, and began my fifteen minutes of fame. Newspapers from around the world ran stories about me, the first woman rabbi serving in such a position. Calls from radio programs, magazines, television programs poured in. Everyone wanted to interview a woman rabbi. While I was overwhelmed by the attention, I also enjoyed it. I had worked hard to reach that point in my life, and it felt good to be celebrated. Sort of . . .
During my fourth year of rabbinical school, while I was in Israel, I had a relationship with a woman and began to explore my identity as a lesbian. This was new and exciting to me. I wanted to share my experience with everyone I knew. Wouldn't everyone who cared about me be as excited as I was, learning that I was exploring a profound aspect of my identity? Needless to say, in 1978 there was little excitement from anyone, except perhaps other lesbians. The Reconstructionist Rabbinical College had been a haven for me in many ways. Within its walls, I was able to question commonly accepted ideas about God and Jewish tradition and know that my questioning would be acceptable. I was able to challenge instructors, and was celebrated for my willingness to honestly express my opinions. I was able to argue with my colleagues about political and social issues, and it was always comfortable. Yet would I be able to return from Israel and be open? I realized early on in my coming-out process that this issue was different.
Having spent a year of rabbinical training in Israel, I returned to the United States in the fall of 1978, ready to begin my final year at RRC. I had barely settled in to the year's routine when a major issue was raised. A graduate student at the Jewish Theological Seminary had spoken to the dean explaining that he was interested in transferring and becoming a Reconstructionist rabbi. He was highly skilled, a brilliant academician, a deeply knowledgeable Jew, and seemed to be the perfect candidate for admission but for one factor. The candidate was gay, and he was interested in applying to RRC only if he could be open with the college community about his life. He wanted to know whether RRC would be comfortable considering an openly gay man for admission. The dean was dumbfounded; the issue had never been raised at RRC so directly before. He brought the question before both the faculty and student bodies before he would respond to the potential applicant.
I was immensely grateful. Here was an opportunity to see the reactions of my colleagues on the question of gay and lesbian rabbis without being open myself. I was still so unsure of my own identity and so uncertain about the direction of my own career that anything that required that I be more self-revelatory would have felt much too unsafe. This event provided the opportunity to safely discuss issues that I needed to explore. I also felt certain that my colleagues would all be accepting and open. How could they not be?
The students began the discussion of this issue with an exploration of traditional Jewish texts on homosexuality. In 1978 there were no contemporary writers doing a serious critique of the traditional texts, and only a few of us cared enough to uncover the layers of homophobia that formed the texts. I watched while a group of well-meaning yet largely uncomfortable students grappled with texts that made assumptions about my life that were unfounded and absurd. Yet I too was a novice at delving into the heart of the texts and unmasking the assumptions at their core. I found the process frustrating and disheartening. The texts themselves were clearly homophobic, but more disturbing to me was the homophobia that some of my colleagues brought to their study of the texts. Any sense I had of trust that my colleagues would be automatically supportive of me evaporated as I watched their ambivalence about admitting an openly gay student.
At the end of our conversations, we communicated our thoughts to the dean. It seemed unlikely we could ever reach a consensus on any one view, so a few of us took the situation into our own hands. We wrote a strong letter saying that after examining the traditional texts and exploring the issues concerning gay and lesbian rabbis, we could not think of any valid reason why someone should be deemed inappropriate for the rabbinate because of his or her sexual orientation. We then shared our letter with the whole student body. Approximately half of the students were prepared to sign the letter. For a variety of reasons, the other half of the student body refused to sign, sending no message of their own to the dean. Needless to say, a letter from merely half of the students was not sufficient, and after a negative faculty vote, the potential student was called and advised not to apply.
I was devastated. If at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, the most progressive rabbinical school on so many important social issues, the student body could not be open to the possibility of ordaining a gay or lesbian rabbi, what hope was there? My dream in life had been to serve as a congregational rabbi. I had long seen myself as leading a congregation, and I was now uncertain that I would ever be able to do so. It meant giving up a dream that I had been working toward for years: the dream of helping shape a community according to the values that were central to my life. It meant giving up the possibility of working with children, with older people, with a whole Jewish community in deep and signifi- cant ways. It meant that I had to choose: between the career that I had long imagined and prepared for and the whole person that I was beginning to see myself to be. I felt alone and torn.
The one person from whom I received support for my conflict was the then dean of students at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, Rabbi Rebecca Alpert. She had had a similar conflict in her life, and was in the process of determining the direction of her life and of her career. She listened to me for hours and really heard the pain in my conflict. Yet even she was not open about her sexual orientation. In 1978 it did not seem as if there was anywhere in the Jewish community where a gay or lesbian rabbi would be tolerated, let alone embraced.
When I graduated from rabbinical school in 1979, I had several major decisions to make. Should I interview for pulpit positions and remain in the closet? Should I try to find a different kind of job, one that would allow me to be out? Were my years of studying for the rabbinate going to come to naught because there were no Jewish institutions that would consider hiring a lesbian rabbi? It was not a difficult decision. When I first entered the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, I did so because of a deep desire to serve the Jewish community as a rabbi. I loved the pulpit: leading services, speaking publicly, teaching, officiating at life cycle events. I desperately wanted to work with people of all ages, to be with them at their most powerful moments, to celebrate their joys and support them through their sorrows. Now that I had the opportunity to reach for my dream, I was not going to give it up.
I had a strong belief in my potential as a rabbi. I knew that I could be successful. Deep down I felt that if I was good enough, I could be a congregational rabbi and be out as a lesbian and make it all work well. Maybe others wouldn't be able to do it, but I could. (I have heard this expressed by many other women through the years. I have come to realize that one's ability is certainly crucial, but that it takes a lot more than ability to enable someone to succeed in a community as an open lesbian rabbi.) I felt as if I was embarking on an extended test. I would certainly not be open at the start of my work in a congregation, but in time, I would be able to be open-even in a small town's conservative/Conservative congregation where being a woman rabbi was considered quite radical; even in a community where the process for hiring a rabbi was extended by months while the congregation debated whether or not they could tolerate a woman rabbi; even in a community where the words "gay" and "lesbian" were never publicly spoken. It might take a little while, I reasoned, but I could do it.