Queer Jews (Paperback)

by David Shneer (Editor), Caryn Aviv (Editor) "WHO KNEW THAT King David and Jonathon were lovers?..." (more)
Key Phrases: queer curriculum, transgender man, gay synagogue, New York, United States, San Francisco (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
Queer Jews is so exuberantly queer that it changes the old adage, 'When you're in love, the whole world is Jewish' to 'When you're in heat, the whole world is.' This collection from women and men is chock full of shtemme,' soul. -- Lambda Book Report
Queer Jews welcomes us into the worlds and the lives of Jews who identify as queer: lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. These twenty-one essays-by Hebrew school teachers, principals, rabbis, Jews in the pews, and those who define themselves as secular-challenge readers to wrestle not only with sexual diversity, but also with gender identity...The contributors to this bold collection write with clarity, a healthy measure of chutzpah, and hope that their words will establish a permanent place of recognition and honor for the thousands of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning Jews who gather at family and communal tables across our Jewish world. -- LILITH
We've been long overdue for the book that shows where queerJewish thought has been over the last few years-and more importantly-where it's headed. Queer Jews addresses just about every aspect of queer Jewish experience, and does so with insight, humor, and a whole lot of chutzpah. This book has vitally important things to teach anyone and everyone who picks it up. -- Danya Ruttenberg, editor of Yentl's Revenge: The Next Wave of Jewish Feminism
Shneer and Aviv have assembled a first-rate collection of essays that will permanently alter all perceptions about Queer Jews. These vivid, cutting edge tales of the lives of transgender, bisexual, gay and lesbian Jews delight and challenge. If this book reflects the state of queer thinking in Jewish life, we may indeed count our blessings. -- Rebecca Alpert, author of Like Bread on the Seder Plate: Jewish Lesbians and the Transformation of Tradition
A youthful vision of the dynamic intersection of what it means to be Jewish and gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered. Bravo/a to the editors for compiling such a wide-ranging spectrum of thinking on the topic. -- Rabbi Denise L. Eger, Congregation Kol Ami, West Hollywood's Reform Synagogue
Fresh, original, and provocative essays will challenge readers of Queer Jews to think more deeply about being Jewish, gendered, and sexed. A rare book, with new and exciting ideas. -- Susannah Heschel, co-editor of On Being a Jewish Feminist
In the best prophetic tradition, Queer Jews pushes the envelope of possibilities for what Jewish community and identity can be. -- Rabbi Yoel H. Kahn, scholar-in-residence, Congregation Sherith Israel in San Francisco
Queer Jews is a fun book which delicately balances politics and humor, GBLT and Jewish identity and humanity with spirituality...[The authors'] voices, and the stories they told, made me laugh, made me cry, and made me think. Don't forget to buy a few copies for your parents, rabbis, friends and lovers. -- The Empty Closet
The book should appeal to a wide readership. The first-person story of Steve Greenberg, an openly gay Orthodox rabbi, is as inspiring as the confession-style tribulations of anonymous, closeted rabbinical students are painful. Eve Sicular plumbs the academic depths of Yiddish cinema, finding queer contexts from the 1930's in films like Yidl Mitn Fidl. Meanwhile Sandi Simcha Dubowski's free-form diary charts the progress of his truly ground-breaking film, Trembling Before G-d, as he took it to film festivals across the globe, offering proof that there are queers who are also quite frum (religiously observant) despite the real threat of excommunications from their congregations. -- Gay City News
The collection has taken important strides in redefining the boundaries of Jewish America, as well as the Queer community, by insisting that the voices of Queer Jews be heard--and accounted for. -- Gender Agenda

Queer Jews is so exuberantly queer that it changes the old adage, When youre in love, the whole world is Jewish to When youre in heat, the whole world is. This collection from women and men is chock full of shtemme, soul. -- Lambda Book Report
Queer Jews welcomes us into the worlds and the lives of Jews who identify as queer: lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. These twenty-one essays-by Hebrew school teachers, principals, rabbis, Jews in the pews, and those who define themselves as secular-challenge readers to wrestle not only with sexual diversity, but also with gender identity...The contributors to this bold collection write with clarity, a healthy measure of chutzpah, and hope that their words will establish a permanent place of recognition and honor for the thousands of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning Jews who gather at family and communal tables across our Jewish world. -- LILITH
Weve been long overdue for the book that shows where queer Jewish thought has been over the last few years-and more importantly-where its headed. Queer Jews addresses just about every aspect of queer Jewish experience, and does so with insight, humor, and a whole lot of chutzpah. This book has vitally important things to teach anyone and everyone who picks it up. -- Danya Ruttenberg, editor of Yentls Revenge: The Next Wave of Jewish Feminism
Shneer and Aviv have assembled a first-rate collection of essays that will permanently alter all perceptions about Queer Jews. These vivid, cutting edge tales of the lives of transgender, bisexual, gay and lesbian Jews delight and challenge. If this book reflects the state of queer thinking in Jewish life, we may indeed count our blessings. -- Rebecca Alpert, author of Like Bread on the Seder Plate: Jewish Lesbians and the Transformation of Tradition
A youthful vision of the dynamic intersection of what it means to be Jewish and gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered. Bravo/a to the editors for compiling such a wide-ranging spectrum of thinking on the topic. -- Rabbi Denise L. Eger, Congregation Kol Ami, West Hollywoods Reform Synagogue
Fresh, original, and provocative essays will challenge readers of Queer Jews to think more deeply about being Jewish, gendered, and sexed. A rare book, with new and exciting ideas. -- Susannah Heschel, co-editor of On Being a Jewish Feminist
In the best prophetic tradition, Queer Jews pushes the envelope of possibilities for what Jewish community and identity can be. -- Rabbi Yoel H. Kahn, scholar-in-residence, Congregation Sherith Israel in San Francisco
Queer Jews is a fun book which delicately balances politics and humor, GBLT and Jewish identity and humanity with spirituality...[The authors] voices, and the stories they told, made me laugh, made me cry, and made me think. Dont forget to buy a few copies for your parents, rabbis, friends and lovers. -- The Empty Closet
The book should appeal to a wide readership. The first-person story of Steve Greenberg, an openly gay Orthodox rabbi, is as inspiring as the confession-style tribulations of anonymous, closeted rabbinical students are painful. Eve Sicular plumbs the academic depths of Yiddish cinema, finding queer contexts from the 1930s in films like Yidl Mitn Fidl. Meanwhile Sandi Simcha Dubowskis free-form diary charts the progress of his truly ground-breaking film, Trembling Before G-d, as he took it to film festivals across the globe, offering proof that there are queers who are also quite frum (religiously observant) despite the real threat of excommunications from their congregations. -- Gay City News
The collection has taken important strides in redefining the boundaries of Jewish America, as well as the Queer community, by insisting that the voices of Queer Jews be heard--and accounted for. -- Gender Agenda

Product Description
Of all the major religions, Judaism is arguably the most welcoming of gays and lesbians. The contributors to Queer Jews offer a pioneering anthology of probing, insightful, humorous and soul-searching essays that explore the joys and the conflicts of being both Jewish and queer. Combining memoir, pop culture analysis, and stories from the front lines, Queer Jews introduces a new generation of post-Stonewall writers and scholars, who, together with well-known voices, present a dynamic vision of change, progress, and the future.

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Routledge (June 28, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415931673
• ISBN-13: 978-0415931670
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #762,417 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Welcome Addition, August 26, 2002

By	G. Kessler (Gainesville, FL United States) - See all my reviews

"Queer Jews" deserves its place among the previous Lesbian and Lesbigay Jewish Anthologies, Evelyn Torton-Beck's Nice Jewish Girls (1982, reprint and expanded 1989) and Christi Balka and Andy Rose's Twice Blessed: On Being Lesbian or Gay and Jewish (1989). It not only pays homage to its predecessors (see the Introduction and Balka and Rose's own contribution), it honors them by reflecting some of the changes that have occurred in the past 20 years.

This is immediately intimated by the title's use of the word `queer' and further carried through with essays by transgender or non-traditionally gendered Jews. Although `queer,' is used throughout the book mainly as an umbrella term "to include lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgendered people" (14) when one delves more deeply into a number of the individual contributions, one senses the mobilization of the term queer as something that "marks a suspension of identity as something fixed, coherent, and natural"(Jagose, Queer Theory, p. 98). Queerness and Jewishness are thus both expanded--or stretched--within this book's pages. Thus Queer Jews not only calls into question conventional understandings of sexual identity by deconstructing the categories, oppositions and equations that sustain them, it similarly calls into question (many) conventional understandings of `Jewish identity'. This is a good thing.

And so it that an essay about a traditional Jewish lesbian wedding is bound together with a cogent questioning of the Reform Movement's recent decision to recognize (sanction?) `same-sex' marriage. And the stories of a non-traditionally gendered Reform Hebrew School teacher, a gay Orthodox rabbi, a closeted Conservative rabbinical student, and a secular `liberationist fem' are similarly bound together in this book. One is also invited--or swept--on the road with the creator (`mother') of the groundbreaking film "Trembling Before G-d", further carried into the Yiddish Film Archives for queer subtexts, and finally (finely) guided through queer viewings of Angels in America and The Producers. Added to this, Queer Jews tra(ns)verses geographical boundaries, including essays about queer Jews in the U.S., Israel, and Canada (the latter of which cites two articles by Jewish lesbians in Australia).

Sprinkled throughout the book are essays specifically about activism (though all of the essays, let's be clear, are activism)--in schools, on the streets, at Seders taken to the streets, and at the Kotel (Western Wall). One essay deftly delivers us into the tangled web of anti-semitism, homophobia, classicism, and racism all present in queer Jewish adoptions.

And there's history here too--history in the making as well as glimpses of the range of GLBTQ Jewish history over the past decades. Could one ask for more?
Emphatically yes. Queer Jews earns its place in the expanding canon--let's just call it torah--of GLBTQ Jews. Among its greatest triumphs may just well be its power to spark more queer Jews to tell their (our) stories. Is there a Queer Jews Too in the works? This reader certainly hopes so. And please, let's not wait another 10 years.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Inspirational, December 23, 2002

By	The Cowboy "cowboy" (London UK) - See all my reviews

Shneer & Aviv's Queer Jews presents a striking collection of academic thought, personal experience and political views expressed by an interesting and diverse group of contributors who have much to offer on the issues affecting people who identify as a minority group within a minority group - both queer and Jewish.

This informed volume bravely assesses where queer & Jewish people currently are in the progression towards acceptance by both their own culture as well as the wider society, whilst providing important pointers for future work that must yet be done.

As a non-Jew, I have found this milestone work to be a useful and fascinating insight into understanding the experiences and issues dealt with by friends who are both queer and Jewish. As a gay man, I have been personally challenged and inspired by the strength of character and determination to be accepted as part of a community, as demonstrated throughout the essays in Queer Jews.

From out and proud Reformist Rabbis and closeted Orthodox Rabbis to a personal dilemma of whether to pray on the male or female side of the Western Wall; from queer Jewish education to queer Jewish students' first public protest; from the challenges of queer Jewish weddings to queer Jewish parenting and adoption, Queer Jews is a significant positive step in the right direction for inclusiveness, acceptance and unity - a book that should be read by anyone connected with queer and/or Jewish culture. You can't help but be impressed with the great strides that queer Jewish people have made in their communities, whilst also recognising that there are still difficulties ahead to face.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What an insightful, engaging, frustrating read!, August 20, 2002

By	"sf_gregg70" (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews

I thank Shneer and Aviv for this wonderful, thought-provoking anthology. As I read the collection I found myself becoming more and more engaged with the essays, the authors themselves, and the sometimes conflicting worlds they described. I learned something from all of the contributors, even those whose politics, understanding of Judaism, or presentation of themselves as "queer" rankled or frustrated me. (Actually, I think I learned the most from the authors who frustrated me!)

The editors and all the book's contributors have done an excellent job of capturing the diversity of a new generation of queer Jews and the impact they are having on both the Jewish and queer communities. This book has made me re-examine what being a gay man and a Jew means to me. Bravo to Shneer and Aviv for putting together such a timely and insightful book!