In many ways, the three couples who spoke during Friday-night services at Congregation Beth Am fit the typical Jewish American stereotype. High achieving, professionally successful, close-knit.
There was a law professor and a family therapist with two children; a clinical psychologist and a Jewish-school headmaster with one son; and a full-time mother and a prominent Silicon Valley business leader who have two daughters.
Yet despite their trappings of success, these families face unique obstacles, even in Jewish life, because they are headed by same-sex couples.
The three families shared some compelling stories with those who filled the sanctuary last month at the Los Altos Hills congregation. It was part of Kulanu (Hebrew for “all of us”), an outreach program of the Reform congregation that strives to bring gay and lesbian Jews into the fold.
And in fact, the sanctuary was packed for the evening’s program, called “Opening the Doors to the House of the People: Welcoming Jewish Gay and Lesbian Couples and their Families to Congregation Beth Am.”
Rabbi Janet Marder, who has been with Beth Am for six months, said in her sermon that despite condemnation of homosexuality in the Torah, the greater values prescribed by Jewish ideology demand acceptance.
“Jews are commanded to love and protect the stranger, the one who is vulnerable, the one who is different. Jews are commanded to seek justice and pursue peace and heal the world’s wounds,” Marder said.
Following regular Shabbat services, the evening’s speakers gave testimony — both comparing anti-gay sentiment to anti-Semitism and bemoaning the lack of easy acceptance of homosexuals by the greater Jewish community.
Kathy Levinson, the president and chief operational officer of E*Trade — a pioneering Internet stock trading house — said that despite material wealth and prominence in the business community, she has found raising children in a same-sex union to be a daily challenge.
After services, Levinson illustrated her struggle with a simple example. When she brought her daughter to the Albert L. Schultz Jewish Community Center for orientation last September, following the summer’s shooting attack at a Los Angeles-area JCC, parents at the Palo Alto center were worried, she recalled.
Parents wondered: “Should we put up a fence all around? Was there going to be a guard? Should we remove the name JCC?” They were clearly very frightened, said Levinson.
“On the one hand, I really understand that — I had a child there too. But on the other hand, I live that every day. If I walk down the street holding my partner’s hand, after 20 years of being together, I still run a risk of being physically harmed, verbally harmed, emotionally harmed.”
Levinson is a major player in the political fight against Prop. 22, also known as the Knight Initiative. The controversial California ballot measure seeks to reserve the term “marriage” exclusively for heterosexual unions.
Aaron Cooper, a San Francisco clinical psychologist, spoke emphatically about “coming out” to his parents in 1978, and of being invited to his sister’s wedding — with the express exclusion of his longtime partner, Eric Keitel. Also, neither Keitel nor the couple’s adopted son was invited to the bar mitzvah of the son of his other sister, a Lubavitcher.
Now, while glad to be embraced by the larger Jewish community, Cooper is still concerned, especially for single homosexuals.
“What worries me today…is the fear that I’ve become acceptable in many Jewish circles because I am a father,” Cooper said. “I worry that in the Jewish rush to embrace parenting, my homosexuality is quietly escorted out.”
Keitel is headmaster of the Mid-Peninsula Jewish Community Day School in Palo Alto. His first student-teaching position was with a San Francisco Jewish day school. After six months, an opening for a full-time teacher became available, and Keitel was asked to give a model lesson, which he felt was unusual for a proven teacher.
“When the principal came into the room — and the assistant principal — and the president of the board of directors — and five other board members came into the room to see the model lesson, [I thought] perhaps it might have something to do with the fact that they were going to look at hiring an openly homosexual man,” Keitel said.
Lynn Grotsky and Lisa Brodoff, partners of 19 years, and their children, ages 9 and 13, flew in from Olympia, Wash., for the event. Brodoff, a clinical law professor in Seattle, and Grotsky, a child and family therapist who works with abused children, endured a two-year court battle when Grotsky sought to adopt Brodoff’s daughter, Evan. It was one of the first such cases in the country.
“One of the major pieces of evidence in our trial, as to why we would be great parents, was that Lynn and I are the co-champions of the Thurston County Bagel Bake-off,” Brodoff said. “The judge was impressed with our Jewish community, and the support we got from our rabbi and other community members, who are our family. So, your support is critical to our families, and we thank you for that.”
Their daughter, Evan, spoke about growing up in a loving family, while dealing with prejudices on two fronts — anti-Jewish and anti-gay.
“If it wasn’t for my two Jewish mothers,” she said, “I wouldn’t be as open and accepting as I am now.”
Her openness, and that of the other speakers, helped make the evening remarkable, Marder said.
“I don’t think this was an evening where people picked up new facts,” the rabbi said. “I think it was the power of the personal encounter. Just to meet these families was a very important experience for a lot of people here. To hear from those children…
“It’s the personal encounter that’s the most important education you can get.”