Being a Better Jew Helps Me Become a Better Queer Helps Me Become a Better Jew
[From the Gay Pride issue of Alef: The NEXT Conversation]
by Jake Goodman

ברוך אתה יי אלהינו מלך העןלם

אשר נתן לשכוי בינה להבחין בין יום ובין לילה
Praised be the Eternal One
Who gave my heart understanding to distinguish between day and night

I don’t know any great Truths
But
Sometimes
There is Right and there is Wrong
And I can understand the difference

ברוך אתה יי אלהינו מלך העןלם
שעשני ישראל
Praised be the Eternal One
Who has made me Yisrael

My instinct is to run away
To send everything I love down the river
To hide alone in the darkness
But I’ve struggled with my shame
And I won
I’m here to take what is mine
Even if I have to take it back
From you

ברוך אתה יי אלהינו מלך העןלם
שעשני בן חורין
Praised be the Eternal One
Who has made me to be free

Life has many closets
And my life’s work
Is to destroy every one of them

ברוך אתה יי אלהינו מלך העןלם
פוקח עורים
Praised be the Eternal One
Who helps the blind to see

• “As many as 40% of the homeless youth in the United States are LGBT.” (Source: Ali Forney Center)
• “There is no federal law that consistently protects LGBT individuals from employment discrimination; it remains legal in 29 states to discriminate based on sexual orientation, and in 38 states to do so based on gender identity or expression.” (Source: Human Rights Campaign)
• 1,138 rights and responsibilities are bestowed upon married couples. Additional rights and responsibilities come from state governments with a marriage license – 1,324 in New York State, to give one example. (Source: Empire State Pride Agenda)
• Since its implementation in 1994, more than 13,500 service members have been fired under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, a law that mandates the discharge of openly gay, lesbian and bisexual service members. (Source: Servicemembers Legal Defense Network)

ברוך אתה יי אלהינו מלך העןלם

מלביש ערמים
Praised be the Eternal One
Who clothes the naked

Lies!
Enabling delusion!
If not me, who?

ברוך אתה יי אלהינו מלך העןלם
מתיר אסורים
Praised be the Eternal One
Who releases the bound

I am Somebody
I deserve full equality
Right here
Right now
I am Somebody

ברוך אתה יי אלהינו מלך העןלם
זוקף כפופים

Praised be the Eternal One
Who straightens the bent

• Queer Rising’s National Freedom to Marry Protest, February 12th, 2010
• Get EQUAL’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Rally, May 2nd, 2010
• Queer Rising Confronts NY State Senator Joe Addabbo, who took hundreds of thousand of LGBT campaign donations, and then voted against marriage equality

ברוך אתה יי אלהינו מלך העןלם
שעשני לי כל צרכי
Praised be the Eternal One
Who has provided me every need

I have the time, the resources, the energy
To help those who do not have every need
I must step outside my own privilege

ברוך אתה יי אלהינו מלך העןלם
המכין מצעדי-גבר
Praised be the Eternal One
Who makes firm our footsteps

Now is the time for bold steps
I must step outside my own privilege

ברוך אתה יי אלהינו מלך העןלם
עוזר ישראל בגבורה
Praised be the Eternal One
Who girds Israel with strength

There was a time when we were weak
There was a time when we were the victims
There was a time when it took all our strength just to survive
For some, it is still that time
I must step outside my own privilege

ברוך אתה יי אלהינו מלך העןלם
עוטר ישראל בתפארה

Praised be the Eternal One
Who crowns Israel with splendor

We are powerful
We are subjects to no one
We are fabulous!
We are queens!
We must step outside our own privilege

ברוך אתה יי אלהינו מלך העןלם
הנותן ליעף כח
Praised be the Eternal One
Who gives strength to the weary

The odds against us are not too great
Full equality is not an idealistic impossibility
It is an inevitability
This is not a spectator sport
If I do not try to see and act outside of my own privilege
I will be on the wrong side of history

Rock n' Rod - Final Storahsteps Show @ the 14th Street Y

Dearest Storahtelling family,

It was my pleasure, for the final time this season, to get that thrilling feeling of friends working together to make something magical happen.

On Saturday, June 12th, we presented the final Storahtelling show of our season here at the 14th Street Y. ‘Rock n’ Rod’ uses the songs of Elvis to help tell one of the stories of Chukat—when the Hebrews demanded water in the desert, and Moses got it for them by hitting a rock with his staff, twice. A joyous, thirst-quenching moment for b’nai Yisrael, and one that Moses lives to regret…

We open on two young Elvis fans: Justin (Wedes) —a great musician but a bit of a whiner; and Shawn (Shafner)—who likes to dance and play air-guitar, but is a bit of a bully. When Mom (Emily Warshaw) catches them fighting, she casts Shawn as Moses, Justin and the audience as b’nai Yisrael, and sets them on their journey through the desert with Gabe (Miner) reading the trusty Torah. Justin and the Israelites’ complaints of thirst get on Moses’ nerves, and he asks God how to find water in the desert. Justin explains to the tune of Jailhouse Rock:

Moses and the Hebrews were a sorry crew

Walking through the desert they were thirsty Jews

God gave them a signal in the form of a rock

And said to Moses, "Baby just talk, talk, talk!"

Let's rock! Everybody let's rock!

Everybody gotta talk, talk, talk...

Everybody talk to that rock!

Moses tries to follow God’s instructions, but as the Hebrews demands get louder, he loses his patience altogether and hits the rock with his staff, twice. Looking back on it, Shawn (as Moses) explains:

Well, my hands were shaky and my knees were weak
Couldn’t seem to stand on my own two feet
Aaron said I was mad as a bug

I'm (angry noise)
I'm all shook up.
Uh huh ohh yeah, yeah!

I’m all shook up!

Mom helps Shawn understand that it’s important for us to use our words, and they brainstorm, together with the audience some ways to deal with angry feelings: “take a breath!” “take a walk!” or “play the piano!”

For disobeying God’s orders in front of everyone, Moses is punished (Aaron as well), and learns that he will not reach the Promised Land. Outraged at this news, Moses/Shawn—this time—uses his words to express his anger, and to ask b’nai Yisrael for their help and empathy. Mom helps Justin to see that, though we should use our words, sometimes we have to act—like comforting somebody with a hug.

The audience sang and danced, and made their way to the community room, where 14th Street Y educator Laura Chillemi had transformed the space to make it wondrous and magical. After reading a story about a watering hole, and looking into our own, reflective pool, families dyed a white cloth (which had represented the rock during the show) by placing tissue paper over it, and then wetting it with a paint brush so the color would bleed—a multi-colored waterfall.

As one parent said to me, “I know the kids loved it, but I thought it was great, too. The themes spoke to me as a parent as much as they did to my children.” I suppose that’s just the mark of a good story. But for those of you who missed it, the closing succinctly explained:

SHAWN: What we say and do is important! Words can get water, hitting can hurt, and hugs can help.

MOM: So, the next time you want to express how you feel…

JUSTIN: Think before you speak…

SHAWN: And think before you act.

MOM: I think we’ve all learned a valuable lesson today. Now let’s rock out!

I'm very proud of ‘Rock n’ Rod,’ and of all the work Storahtelling presented this inaugural season at the 14th Street Y. Thank you to everyone who has worked with me, cried with me, suffered me, and celebrated alongside me. We’re ending with a bang--well, the sound of a staff hitting a rock, twice.

Gushing,

Shawn

Production Coordinator (2009-2010)

Nichemya Chet Inspires Storahtelling in HUC
By Sarah Robinson, senior at Maimonides School in Brookline, MA

Excerpt from paper for Shivat Tziyon Navi class

I attended the Synagogue Council of Massachusetts’ Unity Mission from November 15-16,2009. The Mission is an intensive two-day program, for about 35 Jews of all different religious backgrounds, designed to spark personal interaction and increased understanding among Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist participants. The group visited each denomination’s theological seminary or Mecca-equivalent (the UM visited YU, HIR, JTS, HUC, and SAJ). While there, they met world-renown scholars and denominational leaders and became involved in unbelievably deep and intense debates amongst each other and with the scholars. Sometime during each visit, the UM group davened with the respective denomination’s congregation.

When the group visited HUC on Monday mid-morning, I was in for a bit of a surprise: a Torah reading called Storahtelling, a possible spin-off of Nichemya Chet. Storahtelling is literally story-telling using the weekly Torah portion as the foundation of the narrative; the ba’al korei reads a pasuk, and a narrator and actor depict all of the actions, thoughts, and emotions portrayed in that pasuk in a captivating and audience-interactive performance. In this case, the Storahtelling Troupe depicted a few psukim describing the Yaakov-Esav rivalry.

The performance knocked my socks off. For one, the acting was unbelievable; by the end, we felt moved for everyone suddenly understood and personally identified with Yaakov’s situation (so yes, the actors were well trained and had practiced well). Additionally, the entire congregation now viewed Yaakov in a much deeper light now that they finally comprehended his true character. But most importantly, Storahtelling made Yaakov’s ancient story accessible for this 21st century generation, thus launching this ancient story amongst those participants who would have otherwise kept their Chumash shut.

A few months later when I learned Nechemya Chet in Shivat Tziyon class, my first thoughts sprang to Storahtelling . In Nechemya Chet, Ezra HaSofer read a section of Torah and the Liviyim restated the Torah in simpler words so that the congregation could understand the psukim. While this system was very practical for the unlearned group in Ezra’s time, the core differences between Nechemya Chet and Storahtelling are: 1. The Storahtellers are not Liviyim or other Jewish leaders; they are actors acting out the story instead of restating the story in simpler terms, thus promoting a unique type of understanding which the audience attains, and 2. The Storahtellers are performing whereas the Liviyim translated as part of a ritualalistic reading.

Although I wish my Orthodox kehillah would bring Storahtelling to my school, I doubt that the administration would include include Storahtelling or a Levi-equivalent to explain the psukim in shul is because Orthodoxy expects everyone to have a preliminary understanding of the Chumash; it is understood that Orthodox Jews should not need an interpreter to tell them the meaning of a pasuk for they should already have a general understanding the psukim.

However, I bet is that if you personally ask any Orthodox Jew during Kriyat HaTorah what the Chumash is talking about, most of them will shrug their shoulders. No, not because they cannot hear the chazzan chanting; they simply do not understand. They are on a similar level of understanding that the Jews in Nechemya Chet were on – both do not understand Kriyat HaTorah without the aid of an interpreter. Because Liviyim do not interpret today, Orthodox leaders clearly hold that the Liviyim only explained the chumash in the Nichemya Chet as a “bidieved” circumstance. But it is clear that we are still in that “bidieved” position. Perhaps, we need to let the Liviyim and Storahtellers to aid our understanding of today’s aliyot.

"Meet the Maven" presentation with Amichai Lau-Lavie

Storahtelling Founder, Amichai Lau-Lavie explains the history of the role of the Maven. This lecture is broken up into three parts.

Click on:

Part I
Part II
Part III

If you would like the accompanying slides that Amichai uses in this "Meet the Maven" presentation, click on:

Part I of 3

Mile High Mavens @ Limmud Colorado
By Rabbi Eliot Baskin
June 7, 2010

Psst! Do we have something juicy to tell you about the Limmud Colorado at University of Colorado at Colorado Srpings, 2010 shabbat performance, Parashat Behaalotcha, entitled "Jewcy Gossip". Caryn Aviv, portrayed Miriam, as a celebrity blogger trash talking about Mose's new wife, and Eliot Baskin debuted as the lead maven. Brian Field leined Torah brilliantly and Cherie Karo Schwartz acted as our maven mentor giving us theatrical pointers to provide polish. We enlisted the support of the Mile High maven troupe at the pitichta where they spread rumors throughout the congregation and asked them to pass it on in an engaging broken telephone manner. Our second aliyah stretch explored Miriams motivation, feelings and actions to overcome her scaly skin senario. A Rebetzin in the audience suggested deep teshuvah work to overcome her feelings of jealousy and to speak directly to her brother, Moses. After Miram sat with her own scales, she and the audience came back rejewvenated from this healing Storah cheshbon hanefesh about the dynamics of gossip.

We're Raising the Bar!

click here to watch the Raising the Bar experience!

click here to learn more about Raising the Bar



A New Act For The Old Bar Mitzvah
Storahtelling’s Amichai Lau-Lavie is out to revolutionize the ceremony in emerging partnership with families, synagogues.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Julie Wiener
Associate Editor

Storahtelling ceremonies aim to be creative
and engaging, with humor, music, drama and
costumes. Photo by Lisa Kimmell
Arguably one of the most memorable scenes in last year’s Oscar-nominated “A Serious Man” is the bar mitzvah, when Danny Gopnik does his Torah and Haftorah portions while visibly stoned, having smoked prodigious amounts of pot in the Hebrew school bathroom.

So accustomed are they to tuning out the foreign chanting from the bima that his parents and the other congregants in the soulless 1960s Midwestern temple don’t even seem to notice anything amiss.

If only Danny had been able to study with Amichai Lau-Lavie and his avant-garde Storahtelling troupe of actors/teachers/musicians, however, the scene might have looked quite different. The whole Gopnik family, instead of being estranged from each other, would have spent months studying Torah together. The ceremony would have been creative and engaging, with humor, music, drama, costumes — and, presumably, no need for mind-altering drugs.

Since 1999, Lau-Lavie’s Storahtelling, which calls itself a “radical fusion of storytelling, Torah, contemporary performance art and traditional ritual theater,” has been revamping the standard seven-aliyah, all-in-Hebrew leyning Torah service, bringing in live music, video and a unique blend of both respect and irreverence.

It’s not for die-hard traditionalists or those who adhere to Shabbat restrictions on musical instruments or technology use.

But the Orthodox-raised Lau-Lavie, the nephew of Israel’s former Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, says the model is grounded in authentic tradition, inspired by the ancient practice of having a “meturgeman,” someone to translate the Torah for the lay public. He began experimenting with the approach in the late 1990s, out of a feeling that the typical synagogue Torah service “was a disservice.”

“Tons of money is poured into getting Jews to study Torah” but during the Saturday morning Torah reading “when you have a full house,” the opportunity for engagement and education is often squandered, he said.

“Instead of boring rote, the ritual should be an opportunity for conversation,” he said.

Over the years Storahtelling, now based out of the 14th Street Y, has grown dramatically, performing all over the world. But Lau-Lavie, an Israeli expat, began to worry the focus was too much on theater and performance, rather than education.

“People said this is great, but then the next week it’s the same old service,” he said. “We want to make Storahtelling a methodology, a training institute.”

Toward that end, the group is training clergy and educators from all over the country on how to incorporate what Lau-Lavie calls the “Maven” approach into their services. It is also working to adapt the approach for early childhood programs. But its biggest, and potentially most revolutionary project is to reinvent the bar/bat mitzvah.

With a new project called Raising The Bar, Storahtelling seeks to make what is all too often a tedious memorization chore into an inspiring, creative coming-of-age ceremony.

And the charismatic Lau-Lavie is not afraid to slaughter some sacred cows of American bar/bat mitzvah tradition in the process, like the prevailing assumption that a bar mitzvah must learn trope, must chant Haftorah and must give a speech.

“This should be a journey, a pride-filled event from which you walk out wanting more,” Lau-Lavie says. “Is Hebrew an absolute must? I’m not sure.”

Initially viewing Storahtelling as a theater company, not a Hebrew school, Lau-Lavie was at first hesitant to go into the bar/bat mitzvah business. He rebuffed early requests from parents — some synagogue members, some not — that approached him.

But the requests kept coming, and there have now been almost 40 Storahtelling bar/bat mitzvahs, in New York, Los Angeles, London and Jerusalem. Now, Lau-Lavie is working to expand and formalize the process, having families participate in cohorts rather than individually, and partnering with synagogues.

While Storahtelling is already in discussions with Manhattan’s Congregation Habonim and Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, as well as some other congregations, how the synagogue world greets the project — a potential threat to its longtime control over the bar/bat mitzvah process as well as established traditions/norms about what the ceremony should entail — remains to be seen. For many synagogues, the carrot of a bar/bat mitzvah ceremony has long been the only way to maintain enrollment in Hebrew schools and attract a steady stream of dues-paying members.

However, Storahtelling is hardly the only potential competitor synagogues face for the bar/bat mitzvah market. In recent years, growing numbers of families have begun bypassing synagogues, opting instead to hire private tutors and hold customized ceremonies in alternative venues. Many Chabad congregations also facilitate bar/bat mitzvah ceremonies for families that do not wish to join a synagogue.

Upon learning about Raising the Bar, Evie Rotstein, project director of the Leadership Institute for Congregational School Educators, a joint project of the Conservative and Reform seminaries funded by UJA-Federation of New York, told The Jewish Week she thought many congregations would welcome it.

“I think there’s an openness to experimenting and trying different things that maybe [the Jewish community] didn’t have 10 years ago,” she said.

“Institutions are willing to experiment and change the way we experience life-cycle events to really deepen the experience and make it more meaningful.”
What exactly does a Storahtelling bar/bat mitzvah look like?

For some children, working with a Storahtelling tutor has been their only Jewish education, whereas others are day school students or have years of Hebrew school under their belts. The venues have varied as well: everything from restaurants to Jewish community centers to a space in the Abraham Joshua Heschel High School to the B’nai Jeshurun sanctuary. Some kids have leyned Torah and Haftorah in typical bar/bat mitzvah fashion; others have dispensed with the Hebrew altogether. One girl is writing and performing a song about Miriam as part of her ceremony.

What all the processes have shared, however, are a minimum of several months of text study, in which the bar/bat mitzvah child and family, guided by a Storahtelling tutor, have read multiple translations and commentaries on the Torah portion, discussed how to make the messages and ideas relevant to their own lives and brainstormed creative, engaging ways of presenting the material.

Liz Stern said that during her daughter Josie’s Storahtelling bat mitzvah this winter, which involved family members enacting The Burning Bush, guests “were literally rushing to come up and be participants” in the ceremony.

“It wasn’t just about the process for me and Josie and our family, but it became a process for everybody who was able to be there that evening,”

Stern said of the bat mitzvah, held at B’nai Jeshurun, where she is a member, just before Havdalah.

Storahtelling bar/bat mitzvahs, said longtime company member and bat mitzvah tutor Sarah Sokolic, are not about outsiders “coming in as performers.”

“What you really want is the families to get engaged with it,” she said. “It’s about the process not the product, even though in 90 percent of the cases the product’s phenomenal.”

“This works,” Lau-Lavie said, of his group’s emerging bar/bat mitzvah process, noting that without any advertising or recruitment, Storahtelling gets “five to 15 calls per week asking for a private bar/bat mitzvah.”

“What began as a moonlighting gig can help restructure the map of how the Jewish community deals not only with coming of age, but the entire Jewish education,” he says.

By launching Raising the Bar, Lau-Lavie hopes to bring the Storahtelling bar/bat mitzvah approach to large numbers of families — and synagogues.

Two Raising the Bar cohorts — one in L.A., one in New York —have formed for this fall, each with 12 children, a mix of unaffiliated Jews and synagogue members. In addition, Habonim and B’nai Jeshurun are sending staff members to a national Storahtelling training session in Denver this summer, and the hope is they will become pilot projects/models of how Storahtelling might be incorporated into religious school and bar/bat mitzvah prep.

“We want to make sure that when we work with a family cohort that we also work with a synagogue in the neighborhood,” Lau-Lavie said.

Rabbi Laurie Phillips, director of education at Habonim, which has approximately 10 to 15 bar/bat mitzvah ceremonies a year, said she is eager to work with Storahtelling, describing its programs as “interactive, meaningful, engaging and substantive.”

Judaism “has to be desirable to people and not necessarily in the way it was for my grandparents,” she said.

Storahtelling, whose High Holy Day services in Soho attract approximately 500 people each year, has a relatively high-profile following. Among the parents enrolling children in the new Raising the Bar cohorts, which cost $5,000 per child for a year of preparation and follow-up plus approximately $2,500 for the actual ceremony, are City Winery owner/Downtown Seder organizer (and Jewish Week board member) Michael Dorf in Manhattan and Showtime’s “Weeds” creator/executive producer Jenji Kohan in Los Angeles.

A few months ago, Jill Soloway, the co-executive producer of HBO’s “Six Feet Under” celebrated her son Isaac’s Storahtelling bar mitzvah in Los Angeles.

In it, Isaac, aided by Lau-Lavie and several relatives wearing camel costumes for the occasion, alternately chanted, discussed and performed his Torah portion, about Abraham’s servant choosing Rebecca to be the wife of the biblical Isaac (played by his bar mitzvah boy namesake).

At the beginning of the ceremony, held in an intimate courtyard adorned with plants, Lau-Lavie described the Torah as “the world’s longest running rerun.”

Soloway said that after the ceremony many guests told her it was “the first bar mitzvah where they actually knew what was going on!”

“I like how Amichai’s so joyful, so about making it kind of a party,” Soloway said, noting that “while I certainly appreciate the importance of sacred moments,” many Jews tend to make the bar/bat mitzvah process needlessly unpleasant, almost like a “hazing.”

“I was at a dinner party talking to some moms in New Jersey who were complaining about their kids hating to go to Hebrew school, hating practicing for the bar mitzvah, and I said it doesn’t have to be like that, you can do it yourself,” she said, adding “You don’t have to even chant a portion. The portion is material you’re given: make a puppet show, play, slide show — just tell the story.”

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