Transforming Beitecha Conference Workshop Descriptions and Presenter Biographies

Session I: 10:50am - 12:05pm

 A. Queering Your Community

 It’s easy to talk about queer values, and a bit harder to walk the walk. This interactive session will help you think through how to integrate a commitment to inclusivity and of all genders, sexualities and families into the daily work of leading a community whether it is a shul, a Hillel, a school, or a community organization. Leave with clarity on your commitments, concrete ideas, and tools for action.

Rabbi Alissa Wise  (RRC ’09) is the Program Director at Ma'yan, a non-profit think tank focused on the cultural challenges and identity issues that Jewish teen girls face. Rabbi Wise graduated from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in June 2009. Before training for the rabbinate, Alissa worked as a tenant organizer with the Fifth Avenue Committee in Brooklyn and was a participant in AVODAH: The Jewish Service Corps. As a rabbinical student she worked as a chaplain at Planned Parenthood, authored a pastoral counseling curriculum on queer reproductive rights and loss, and was the Education Director at both String of Pearls Hebrew School in Princeton, New Jersey, and Jews for Racial & Economic Justice (JFREJ) in New York City. Alissa is currently also the Coordinator of Mussar and Social Justice with the Mussar Leadership Program in Philadelphia.

B. Leviticus 18:22 - It Ain’t Necessarily So…

The things that you’re liable to read in the Bible, it ain’t necessarily so. Those nice Jewish boys, the Gershwins, had it right; there is more than one way to look at a piece of biblical text. Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, often interpreted to forbid same-sex intimacy, can be seen and interpreted in other ways. Join us in this text study as we look at what to do with these challenging verses, and explore the tools in our “halachic toolbox” for dealing with and reinterpreting difficult biblical verses. Together we will explore how to answer “that Leviticus question” from several interesting and diverse viewpoints.
 
Cecelia Beyer  is a senior rabbinical student at the Jewish Theological Seminary, and is pursuing a concentration in sacred music. She currently serves as the cantor at Shomrei Emunah in Montclair, NJ, as well as the Social Justice Rabbinical Intern at Congregation Beit Simchat Torah. Last year Cecelia served as a Cooperberg-Rittmaster Rabbinical Intern at CBST. She has served as a gabbai in the Women’s League Seminary Synagogue at JTS and has worked with the JTS Office of Student Life, programming events such as Israel Day, the Tu Bishvat seder, and countless Purim shpiels. She also served as co-coordinator for the JTS Women’s center, and is an active member of Keshet JTS. Cecelia is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the George Washington University Law School. Cecelia lives in Manhattan with her husband Gabe and their two black cats, Willow and Sabrina, spends her summers at Camp Ramah in the Berkshires, and participates in competitive Irish step dancing when she isn’t struggling with challenging Jewish texts.

 C. “Behold, you are made holy to me…”

In this workshop we will map out the ritual and liturgical elements of weddings – both traditional and liberal. We will explore halakhic, liturgical, and ritual concerns for those officiating at LGBT weddings, and we will look at liturgical and ritual innovations developed within and beyond LGBT communities. The overall goal of the workshop is to provide participants with the tools they need to find resources and create solutions as they address halakhic, liturgical, and ritual questions related to weddings.
 
Rabbi Jo Hirschmann  was ordained by Hebrew Union College in 2009. Currently, she is a chaplain resident at Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, NY. She and her family are active members of Congregation Beit Simchat Torah.

Session II: 12:50pm - 2:05pm

A. LGBTQI 101

New to the alphabet soup of LGBTQI words and worlds? Need a refresher? We’ll go over important language and terms for working with queer and trans communities, as well as an understanding of how systems of power and privilege have an impact on our Jewish communities and on our lives.
 
Alex Weissman  is the Social Justice Coordinator at CBST where he works with members on congregational-based community organizing to develop and run campaigns. His work also includes transforming Judaism and Jewish institutions to recognize, affirm, and celebrate trans and queer Jewish individuals and communities.

B. New Liturgies and Rituals for LGBTQ Communities

How do we create authentic rituals and liturgy for the lives of the LGBTQ community? We will discuss the new CBST siddur and how we develop rituals and liturgies including naming rituals for transgender people, coming out, gitten for dissolution of LGBTQ kiddushin, etc
 
Rabbi Ayelet S. Cohen  serves as a Rabbi of Congregation Beit Simchat Torah (CBST), the world’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender synagogue serving people of all sexual orientations and gender identities. Prior to her ordination by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (’02), Rabbi Cohen served communities in France, England, and her native Montreal. Rabbi Cohen worked as a translator for Dr. Yossi Beilin when he served as Israel’s Minister of Justice and in his office in the Knesset. Passionately committed to progressive and feminist Judaism, she is an activist and an advocate for full inclusion and celebration of LGBT Jews in the Conservative movement and the larger Jewish world and an advocate for LGBT civil rights. Rabbi Cohen has been profiled in the New York Times and was named one of the “Heeb Hundred,” Heeb Magazine’s “hundred people you need to know about.” She was honored at the 2005 Ma’yan Seder as a leading young Jewish feminist activist.

C. Pastoral Care with LGBTQ Seniors

We will look at three case studies and work on how to do spiritual assessment with sensitivity to people's LGBTQ identity, work on life review, and end of life decision making.
 
Rabbi Sara Paasche-Orlow  (Cooperberg-Rittmaster Rabbincal Intern 1995-96, JTS '96) serves as the Director of Religious and Chaplaincy Services at Hebrew SeniorLife in Boston. In this position she established the first ACPE accredited Jewish geriatric CPE program and also helped launch a palliative care team serving Hebrew Rehabilitation Center, a 750 bed chronic care and acute care hospital.

Session III: 2:30pm - 3:45pm

A. Heather Has Two Mommies, Chaim Has a Daddy and an Abba, and Sarah Lives with her Adoptive Ima: Creating Jewish Learning Spaces and Lesson Plans that Reflect Family Diversity

 Wondering how to educate for diverse Jewish families? Feeling like the popular Jewish books and resources don't reflect the faces in your classroom? Hoping to create a safe space for children of a LGBTQ parent or for children who might one day come out as LGBTQ? Join us as we share resources and learn together!
 
Melissa Simon  is the Cooperberg-Rittmaster Rabbinical Intern, The Director of Children’s Education, and a Social Justice Rabbinic Intern at CBST. Melissa is in her last months of Rabbinical school at HUC-JIR in New York City where she received her Masters in Jewish Education (2008) and a Masters in Hebrew Literature (2009). Melissa served as the Student Rabbi at Denison University in Granville, Ohio and at Temple Beth Sholom in Ishpeming, Michigan and as a Chaplain at New York Presbyterian Hospital in New York City. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, MA, she is a passionate advocate for social justice, particularly concerning Israel, AIDS education, Queer rights and Women's rights. Melissa lives in New York City with her partner, Molly.

B. Ethical Issues in Pastoral Care for LGBTQ Communities

Many complex ethical issues are raised by the sometimes complex family/social/political situations that your LGBTQ congregants/residents/students are facing. We will look at a couple of case studies based on real situations we have faced at CBST and discuss how, as Jewish clergy, we should respond.
 
Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum  (RRC ’90) , spiritual leader of Congregation Beit Simchat Torah since 1992, has been ranked by Newsweek as among the top 50 rabbis in America for the last three years. She has worked, organized, protested, lectured and published widely and received numerous awards for her leadership. Rabbi Kleinbaum served on the board of GMHC and was a pioneer in pastoral work with PWAs. She was the National Co-Chair of Rabbis for Human Rights – North America and International Co- Chair for World Pride in Jerusalem. Rabbi Kleinbaum has introduced the widely acclaimed music program at CBST, and led the transformation of liturgy resulting in CBST's recent trans-inclusive, LGBT-positive and even straight-friendly Prayer Book. Rabbi Kleinbaum also started the program for children at CBST, and a collection of her sermons has been published. Rabbi Kleinbaum now sits on Mayor Bloomberg’s Commission for LGBTQ Runaway and Homeless Youth and is on the New York City Police Department’s LGBT Advisory Committee. As an advocate for people of color, women, gays and lesbians, immigrants and Palestinians, she has been jailed, arrested, vilified, and lauded, all with equal aplomb.
 
Rabbi Ayelet S. Cohen (JTS ’02) serves as a Rabbi of Congregation Beit Simchat Torah (CBST), the world’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender synagogue serving people of all sexual orientations and gender identities. Prior to her ordination by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Rabbi Cohen served communities in France, England, and her native Montreal. Rabbi Cohen worked as a translator for Dr. Yossi Beilin when he served as Israel’s Minister of Justice and in his office in the Knesset. Passionately committed to progressive and feminist Judaism, she is an activist and an advocate for full inclusion and celebration of LGBT Jews in the Conservative movement and the larger Jewish world and an advocate for LGBT civil rights. Rabbi Cohen has been profiled in the New York Times and was named one of the “Heeb Hundred,” Heeb Magazine’s “hundred people you need to know about.” She was honored at the 2005 Ma’yan Seder as a leading young Jewish feminist activist.

C. Psalms: Transformation as a Jewish Spiritual Path

Trans Jews often feel estranged from traditional Jewish texts, which don’t reflect or acknowledge us or our experiences. However, many Biblical Psalms describe the search for and presence of God in terms of radical transformation of fundamental categories. Mountains leap like rams, rocks flow like water, triumph tumbles into despair and despair somersaults into triumph. Those of us who live between or beyond traditional gender identities are familiar with such transformations from the inside out; for many of us, and for many of those around us, our transformation of gender identity seems to shake the foundations of existence. In this workshop, we will use such trans experiences to read the Psalms’ poetry of transformation in a new light – and use the Psalms’ insistence that the slipping and sliding of fundamental categories is a sign of God’s presence to illuminate our own experiences of transformation.
 
Joy Ladin  is David and Ruth Gottesman Professor English at Stern College for Women of Yeshiva University, and (as far as she knows) the first openly transgendered employee of a modern Orthodox Jewish institution. Her collection of original psalms has just been published by Wipf & Stock; her other books of poetry include Transmigration, The Book of Anna and Alternatives to History.