Ahh June!
Summer fun, pride month, vacations and Jewish seders!
For me summer usually conjures up images of beaches, longer days, flip flops and shorts, the taste of iced coffee (light cream with liquid sugar please), and the smell of wet pavement and the feel of the hot sun on my back not Jewish holidays or rituals.
Growing up my family celebrated the major Jewish holidays which meant that summer was a reprieve from the many holidays since the last biggie for our family was Passover (usually in March or April) complete with two ritual Seders.
So what's all this about about a Seder in June?
To kick-off Pride-Week in NYC
CongregationB’nai Jeshurun (BJ) is sponsoring the ritualistic dinner as a way to "celebrate and sanctify" the "role of the queer community in Jewish tradition and "the contemporary struggle for equality and justice."
All people, LGBT or straight and of any faith, are invited to the
Stonewall Seder, a ritual dinner celebrating LGBT pride, sponsored by the Marriage Equality Hevra of Congregation B’nai Jeshurun. Special guest will be playwright Lisa Kron. A Kosher dinner will be served. Sunday, June 17 at 5:00pm at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, 257 West 88th Street, NYC.
Purchase tickets for the Stonewall Sedar.
Register by Thursday, June 14.
Questions & Answers about the Stonewall Seder (provided by Congregation B’nai Jeshurun (BJ)
Celebrating LGBT Pride and Sacred Activism for Same-Sex Marriage
Why hold a seder commemorating Stonewall and the struggle for LGBT rights?
First held at B’nai Jeshurun in 1996, the Stonewall Seder is an expression of faith and social justice. This Seder is a way to celebrate and sanctify the role of the LGBT community in the Jewish tradition and in the contemporary struggle for equality and justice.
Jews are a people of stories. However, for lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender Jews, their stories have been edited out of the traditional Jewish narrative. The Stonewall Seder gives voice to these other stories and makes them sacred.
And, in order to fulfill the mitzvah found in the Book of Amos, which says “Tell your children of it,” we tell these untold stories, from the start of the modern gay rights movement in Berlin in 1898 through the story of the Stonewall riots all the way to the current story of the struggle for economic and civil rights provided by civil marriage.
The Stonewall Seder is an extension of our tradition, a new mitzvah in fact. It is what Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, first chief rabbi of Palestine, described as “L’chadesh et ha-yashan u’l’kadesh et ha-chadash” – the task of renewing the old and sanctifying the new. With this seder, the LGBT community affirms its connection to the Creator and to the Jewish community in a way that is profoundly Jewish – and at the same time, it is also very queer.
What is a seder? Isn’t the only seder a Passover seder?
The Hebrew word “seder” means order, and refers to the order followed in a ritual. The ritual meal held every Shabbat is also a seder, with a particular order. There are other seders in the Jewish tradition, most notably the Tu Bishevat seder. The order of the Stonewall Seder reflects the order underlying these other seders, while at the same time it examines and sometimes very consciously changes this order.
What is the history of the Stonewall Seder?
The Stonewall Seder was first conducted for seven years annually at B’nai Jeshurun, beginning in 1996. It was the brainchild of BJ member Mark Horn, who was inspired to write the haggadah after finding the Pride Seder of the Berkeley Queer Minyan. The Stonewall Seder draws on this as well as many other Jewish and secular sources. It has been adapted by other synagogues around the country and is slowly spreading and changing. This year, the Seder has been rewritten to reflect some of these changes, so that it has become a living ritual that grows over time.
This year, [the] guest is the award-winning playwright and actor, Lisa Kron. Previous guests of honor included Congressman Barney Frank, film director Sandi DuBowski (“Trembling Before God”), and Joan Nestle, who is the founder of The Lesbian Herstory Archive.
What are symbols for the Stonewall Seder?
We are celebrating the ongoing process of a liberation that is yet to be fully realized for Jews who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender. Therefore, this seder is different from—and yet reminiscent of—other seders in the Jewish tradition. The Stonewall Seder echoes the weekly Shabbat seder as well as the Passover and Tu Bishevat seders.
On every table is a seder plate. The foods and objects represent both the hardships and joys of LGBT Jewish life. They include:
The Pink Triangle: Under the Nazis, homosexuals wore a pink triangle in the work camps, as Jews wore the yellow star. Today, LGBT people wear this as a symbol of a commitment to justice for all.
A Variety of Exotic Fruit: This is because the LGBT community is sometimes called Fruit people. While it is meant as an insult, the Stonewall Seder makes it a blessing in disguise. This is also recognition of the breadth of God’s creation.
Bricks and Stones: This is symbolic of the bricks of resistance thrown at the police the night of the Stonewall riot. It also relates to the line from Psalm 118: “The stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.” These objects also hearken to the Western Wall, which has stood throughout centuries of triumph and tears. Participants are asked to consider: what walls must we build anew, what walls must we tear down, and how might this relate to the fight for marriage equality.
The Bundle of Sticks / The Faggot: This object reminds us of the men who were bound together and burned at the stake for their love, and to remind us of the burning of women, called witches, because they chose to live their lives outside the realm of patriarchy.
Colored Ribbons: A symbol of the full spectrum of the Jewish community, from Orthodox to Reconstructionist, from Ethiopian Jews to Burmese Jews. Also, it is a reminder of the red and pink ribbons worn in hopes of finding cures for AIDS and breast cancer. They evoke visions of the Names Project quilt; tzitzit, the fringes of a Jewish prayer shawl; the covenant of the rainbow God made with Noah; and the common threads that bind us all together. Lastly, they are a celebration of the queer love of flash and color.
Two Challot: The uncovered challot remind us of the sensuous and sacredness of our bodies: that the physical world, which includes our bodies, is holy and nothing to be ashamed of. We acknowledge the deep spiritual nourishment of physical contact. And while the custom on Shabbat is to keep the loaves of challah covered before we say Kiddush, at the Stonewall Seder, the loaves are left uncovered as a symbol that we reveal ourselves without shame or embarrassment, without comparison or criticism.
An Empty Cup: The empty cup recalls those who did not live to see this moment, and those who are unable to celebrate openly their identity and connections to God. We are angry with the spiritual emptiness that the overwhelming majority of Jewish institutions offer to Queer Jews. We reflect that our liberation is still incomplete—and know that we are part of a chain of generations, who, while we will not complete the work, are still obligated to continue it for the generation of Queer Jews to come.
The Broken Ring: In recognition that our deepest loving relationships have been condemned. Thus, the ring is broken to acknowledge that these sacred relationships, by their exclusion from the full community of our people keeps all people from being a whole and holy community.
