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Gay and Once Divorced, a Rabbi’s Experiences Help Her Broaden Judaism’s Tent

EntertainmentGay and Once Divorced, a Rabbi’s Experiences Help Her Broaden Judaism’s Tent

MONTREAL — When Rabbi Lisa Grushcow, the first openly gay rabbi of a large synagogue in Canada, was preparing to begin rabbinical school, she faced a daunting choice: love or serving God.

Her world was suddenly turned upside down in the late 1990s while she was studying religion at Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship, and fell in love with a woman she met at a conference. This posed a problem: The Conservative rabbinical school she planned to attend did not ordain openly gay rabbis.

Rather than abandoning her vocation, she opted instead to join the Jewish Reform movement — a liberal progressive denomination that accepts gay rabbis and gay marriage. “Coming out,” she added, “brought me closer to God.”

“It was the first time in my life when being good at something and working hard weren’t enough to open the door,” said the bookish 44-year-old rabbi, who speaks with the soothing voice of someone used to softening life’s upheavals. “By following my calling and being true to myself, I was embracing both essential parts of my identity.”

“She exemplifies how a community can both embrace tradition and also adapt to who we are as a people and community today,” Rabbi Person said.

Nevertheless, overcoming prejudices can be an occupational hazard for a gay, female rabbi.

Stephen Yaffe, a former president of her temple, who was on the search committee that hired Rabbi Grushcow in 2012, recalled that some congregants initially expressed concern that she could prove polarizing.

“For some people, the fact that she is gay and female was a big deal, and some said, ‘This is not who we are,’” he recalled. But he said Rabbi Grushcow had quickly convinced the doubters with her empathy, intellect and ability to connect with people. Before long, the temple’s benches were overflowing with young people.

Having the comic timing of a borscht belt comedian also helped.

The rabbi recalled that a stranger recently made an appointment to ask her to adjudicate a family inheritance dispute. When the bemused rabbi asked, “Why me?” the woman replied, “Rabbis are free, and I didn’t want to pay a therapist or a lawyer.”

Her success at expanding Judaism’s tent was evident at a recent gala evening at the synagogue honoring her seven years’ service. Mark Fishman, a rabbi in the Orthodox tradition, which historically does not sanction gay relationships, observed that when it came to his own spiritual health, “Rabbi Grushcow is my rabbi.”

It was a decidedly New York experience. In addition to officiating at hundreds of bar mitzvahs and weddings, she led a study group for Jewish therapists turning to Jewish teachings to counsel about addiction, death and sexual identity. After the 2008 financial crisis, she comforted investment bankers who had lost everything.

Judaism, she stressed, was far more accepting than many people realized. “Genesis is the best book ever on dysfunctional families,” she said. “Abraham almost sacrificed his son Isaac on a mountain — Sarah, his wife, must not have been happy with that.”

And while some Orthodox scholars argue that transgender identity is incompatible with Judaism since “God doesn’t make mistakes,” she countered that the Talmud, an ancient Jewish text, did not limit gender to male or female. “In the Jewish tradition, we aren’t born who we become,” she said.

Her time in liberal New York, she said, emboldened her with a strong sense of acceptance. “You can’t go 10 city blocks in New York without running into a lesbian rabbi,” she said.

A year after she moved to Montreal in 2012, her first marriage fell apart — a painful process, she said, that nevertheless taught her many lessons.

She says she better understood that divorce has its own “stages of grief,” and experienced the insensitivity of a society that assumes everyone has a spouse. Dating also proved challenging. “As a rabbinic gay divorcée, no one was coming to me with matches,” she added.

“I had a feeling of failure because I felt, as a rabbi, I am supposed to be an example,” she recalled. “One couple said to me: ‘How are we supposed to feel about marriage if even our rabbi is divorced?’”

Soon she found herself juggling being a rabbi and being the primary caregiver to two young daughters, now 9 and 15. “I can give a sermon on Yom Kippur to a thousand people,” she said. “Then I go home and my kids don’t listen to me at all.”

She met her second wife, Shelley, online — “on Match.com — not Jdate!” she said with a laugh, referring to the Jewish dating site. Shelley was the first person on the site she messaged, and the two soon discovered a common love of used bookstores and ballroom dancing. They were married last year.

Shelley Grushcow observed that being a rabbi’s wife meant that family outings could be interrupted by funerals or hospital visits. But, she added, “sometimes the community needs her more than we do.”

Rabbi Grushcow’s inclusive approach was apparent on a recent day when she went to offer condolences to a family in mourning. There were not enough people to say kaddish, the prayer for the dead, so the rabbi rang doorbells in the apartment building, looking for worshipers to join them.

According to Orthodox Jewish tradition, 10 men — known as a minyan — are needed to say the mourner’s prayer, and several older women apologized that their husbands weren’t home. When the rabbi invited the women to join the minyan, she recalled, several had tears in their eyes.

“They felt for the first time that they counted,” she said.

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