I’ve been marching in Satisfaction parades since 1995, however I gained’t be marching this yr in New York, the place I reside.
Satisfaction Month has at all times been a couple of political and progressive embrace of our rainbow of decisions. However these days I discover myself feeling alienated by loud voices amongst activists within the L.G.B.T.Q.+ neighborhood on all sides of the Israel-Gaza struggle. They’re illiberal of nuance, complexity and opposing views.
I’m an Israeli American queer religion chief and social justice activist. Together with my brother and cousins I signify the thirty ninth consecutive era of rabbis in our household, based on our household historical past, and I’m additionally the primary brazenly queer rabbi in our lineage. Lengthy earlier than Oct. 7, 2023, Jewish progressives like me protested the Israeli occupation and preached a simply two-state answer. I’ve helped to pioneer faith-led Satisfaction packages which might be grounded in Jewish values, combating for freedom and liberation for all.
So it’s painful to confess that I don’t really feel welcome as my full self in lots of queer public locations that after felt like residence.
Many queer activists who’re mobilizing for the plight of Palestinians are satisfied this struggle constitutes genocide and depart no room for different interpretations. In the meantime, from the opposite aspect, many pro-Israel queer activists are conflating opposition to this brutal struggle with help for Islamic fundamentalism and take into account all criticism a betrayal. As activists on both finish of the spectrum demand full allegiance, they’re squeezing out these of us who don’t fall in line.
We’re being instructed to decide on a aspect and to sentence the opposite as represented by bigots and apologists for homicide. There’s a a lot larger and extra advanced image of Israel and Gaza that defies the fact of Instagram reels and catchy slogans.
I see too many progressive allies failing to sentence antisemitism when it arises in our midst. In January I joined a pro-Palestinian protest in New York Metropolis’s Union Sq., the place a couple of dozen protesters, clad in rainbow flags, shifted their chants from blaming Israel to “Kill the Jews.” Some within the crowd shrugged, some objected, but it surely took time earlier than the mantra modified. Fearing for my bodily security, I didn’t stick round to see what occurred subsequent.
I like and sympathize with the passionate rage with which many in my progressive communities demand justice and a right away finish to the tragic actuality in Gaza and Israel. However the antisemitism incident, like many others on screens and in streets, unintentionally strengthens these on the appropriate, a few of whom are illiberal of individuals within the queer neighborhood. On the identical time, the rainbow flag, an emblem of liberation and inclusion, has been co-opted by Israelis combating the struggle. Israeli homosexual activists and official Israeli media channels have posted images of Israel Protection Forces troopers waving the flag among the many rubble in Gaza.
This all looks like a betrayal of what Satisfaction means. If the queer neighborhood can’t deal with nuance, who can? I concern for what which means in each of my homelands and for all of us.
Satisfaction has by no means been about unity of perception. At Satisfaction marches, the company floats with gleaming logos don’t precisely align with the extra anti-capitalist radicals. Satisfaction began as a riot and have become a public protest and celebration, and for me it has at all times been a spot of complexity, disagreement and radical inclusion.
At some Satisfaction parades I’ve drummed in drag with activists. At others I’ve marched with my children and our queer household. I’ve additionally led multifaith rallies and rituals as a rabbi, wrapped in a prayer scarf. Satisfaction weekend is, for many people, each a vacation and a holy day.
However I’ve felt discomfort at Satisfaction marches earlier than. Through the N.Y.C. Satisfaction March in 2015, I paraded down Fifth Avenue with my household and in some unspecified time in the future my then 5-year-old noticed a small Israeli flag on the road, picked it up and began waving it with pleasure. Then some cheers from the sidewalk have been changed by boos and expletives and a jeer of, “You don’t belong right here!” We have been shocked, however we marched on.
That summer time, I marched in Jerusalem Satisfaction in Israel, and though the overwhelming response was constructive and enthusiastic, some counterprotesters from the ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhood hurled insults and threw soiled diapers at us.
Public satisfaction nonetheless issues as hatred and discrimination proceed to threaten our rights and lives, however parades aren’t the one strategy to have fun and advocate progress. From my queer elders, I realized the clever methods of one thing referred to as a coronary heart circle, the place we sit and hear to at least one one other with respect and endurance, eye to eye, coronary heart to coronary heart. Irrespective of our hurts, we decide to our shared therapeutic.
And from my Jewish elders I inherited the knowledge of the Passover Seder, with its fraught conversations and debates across the desk, recharging after which recommitting to pursuing liberation for all.
So this yr, with respect and gratitude to these organizing marches and exhibiting as much as struggle for freedom, I’ll be gathering a coronary heart circle as a substitute. We are going to break bread collectively as queer companions with completely different political views to mourn the insufferable losses, to have fun Satisfaction, to course of our ideas and emotions regardless of the deep, principled divides that exist, to listen to and to heal someplace within the messy center, as loving, sincere and loud and proud as we could be. Maybe subsequent yr we’ll march for peace and satisfaction, collectively once more.
Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie is the non secular chief and a co-founder of Lab/Shul, an everybody-friendly, God-optional congregation in New York Metropolis. He’s the topic of the documentary “Sabbath Queen,” which premiered on the Tribeca Pageant.
The Occasions is dedicated to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to listen to what you concentrate on this or any of our articles. Listed here are some tips. And right here’s our e mail: letters@nytimes.com.
Observe the New York Occasions Opinion part on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp, X and Threads.