Pride shabbat

[liv]

I'm generally quite liturgically conservative and mostly disapprove of made-up modern festivals. I mean, I can cope with Chanuka but that's 2000-2300 years old and even then I am a bit grumpy about it. I've also never been hugely into Pride, I'm too cowardly for protests or riots, and I don't really care about expensive music festivals with a lot of gay men looking for hookups or parades with a lot of corporate sponsored rainbow floats.

But somehow, over the last few years, Jewish communities started holding special Pride services during Pride weekend / week / month. And then it became a recurring tradition of 'Pride Shabbat'. And people started reciting Hallel, the set of Psalms that belong to festivals, and people composed liturgy, and now people say 'Chag Pride Sameach' as if it were a real festival. It would be totally easy for curmudgeons like me to avoid, indeed my own home community completely ignore it because they're of the mindset that it doesn't make any difference what sexual orientation or gender identity you might have. But somehow, being able to go to a service that celebrates being LGBTQ+ rather than just tolerating or accepting a minority within the community is meaningful to me.

And this year there is a pandemic and we can't attend services at all for any reason. So the Progressive movement Pride Shabbat happened on Zoom. And in line with a lot of things that are weirdly more accessible now, I was able to attend without needing to arrange complicated travel to north London. Progressive Pride Shabbat is usually hosted by one of their larger synagogues rather than having lots of separate tiny services that are statistically likely to be run by mostly straight people, and this year it was Finchley. And, well, they had visitors from all over, including Scotland and Scandinavia so it was unexpectedly a bit of a reunion. 200 people, all ages and gender presentations, and it did me so much good to scroll through that Zoom grid.

Also the service was really beautiful. There was some gorgeous singing by one of our most musical rabbis (an older gay man) and one of the professional cantors, a bit of a mix of styles, but really lovely. We used R' Zellman's Twilight people prayer, not just as a reading or commentary, but actually as part of the Shema where the blessing for literal twilight usually belongs. And a variant of the prayer that usually belongs to the other made-up festival, Chanukah, for the miracle of Queer survival. The tech was well-handled, they managed things like having lots of different people read parts of the service most directly relevant to them, and interacting via the chat channel when giving traditional responses would have been infeasible in a large video call. And people put their pronouns in their screen names and dropped into Yiddish sometimes. They made a big effort to include all the letters of the rainbow, and certainly I didn't feel out of place as a fairly gender conforming bi woman attending the service with a (non-Jewish) male partner.

I want to go back to in person services (yes, it's technically legal from next week, but for various reasons it's probably not going to happen yet within my bit of the community). And my home is in a community that's rather more traditional than Finchley Progressive, and I've never been particularly 'scene', but yeah. I'm glad there is Pride Shabbat now, and I'm glad I was able to take part.

Comments

[cjwatson]

Thank you for inviting me to go along with you!

As relatively improvised liturgies go, it struck me as particularly coherent and well-integrated. I've often found that recently-invented liturgies can feel clunky (since naturally enough they haven't had the benefit of decades or centuries of polish), but in this case the bespoke sections were particularly moving.

[liv]

You've put your finger on exactly what Liberal Judaism is best at: liturgy that is both spontaneous and meaningful, and coherent and polished. R' Birk and R' Solomon are particularly good at composing and adapting new liturgy, but it's characteristic of the Progressive movement in general. It's also why (as a generalization) their leadership tends to be more professionalized than ours; you can make up something novel for each weekly service if that's your full-time job that you're trained for, but if you're a random lay congregant whose turn it is this week the standard is hard to attain.

[silveradept]

That sounds like it would be a wonderful thing for people who are looking for their community in their community.

[liv]

Yes. I'm one of those people and it really is wonderful.

[naath]

That sounds really lovely.

[yalovetz]

Wow, we have Pride Shabbatot here (though in January/March, when Melbourne/Sydney have their respective Midsumma/Mardi Gras Pride festivities), but I've never heard of anyone reciting Hallel or wishing anyone Chag Pride Sameach for the occasion (Happy Midsumma/Mardi Gras is the general greeting).

I do love the Twilight People prayer, it speaks to me for a variety of reasons. My old shul used to include it as a reading as part of the Mardi Gras Shabbat just before the hama'ariv aravim bracha, and I was the reader more than once.

[liv]

It obviously makes sense for Pride Shabbat to belong with actual local Pride. I've seen it celebrated in lots of ways, but making it an actual Chag, with the trappings, is the approach I've found most affirming. A lot of LGBTQ+ positive work is justice work, right, it's campaigning against homophobic systems, institutions, behaviour, it's welcoming and healing people who have been rejected and traumatized. But making Pride Shabbat a Chag, a Hallel occasion, is not that, it's pure celebration, it's thanking God for making us Queer, and I love that so much. (The justice work should still be central, of course, but I need the rejoicing.)

And yes, Twilight people is really beautiful. There are a lot of people who feel in-between, not exactly fitting categories, and it's mainly about gender but it works for so many different situations. And it's obviously a commentary on and response to ma'ariv aravim, but I'd never seen it used literally as a version of that blessing, directly connected to the Shema.

[ephemera]

I'm so glad you were able to participate, and found it so affirming! I'd not seen the Twilight People prayer before - so beautiful!

[liv]

It is amazing, it's one of my best counter-examples to people who think all modern, inclusive liturgy is clunky and rubbish. Though I suppose some people who are starting from there are not really open to new examples.