One 5-year-old girl was overheard telling the classmate with two moms: “I promised my mother I’d marry a man.”
A parent complained to a head of school that his child’s teacher came out in the classroom.
A student told a teacher she didn’t want to go to recess because she knew she’d be teased for having two moms.
And one head of school defended his decision to hire the best man for the job — who happened to be gay — when two sets of parents complained. “Maybe this isn’t the place for your children, then,” he told them, and the parents backed down.
This last incident was especially remarkable because “day schools will often want to avoid controversy because they are so reliant on tuition,” said Vicky Kelman, director of Family Education at the Bureau for Jewish Education.
All these incidents occurred in Bay Area Jewish day schools and surfaced in a discussion titled “Confronting Homophobia in Jewish Day Schools.” The session took place at a daylong conference called “Yom Keshet” (Rainbow Day) on Sunday, Oct. 10 at San Francisco’s Jewish Community High School of the Bay. It was put on by the Denver-based group Mosaic: The National Jewish Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity, and was attended by 97 educators and parents.
The discussion on confronting homophobia — attended by about 15 teachers, administrators and lesbian parents of kids at Jewish day schools — indicated that these institutions could be more friendly both to LGBT staff and kids of LGBT parents.
The workshop was moderated by Caryn Aviv, a Mosaic co-director, and Isobel Scher, a school counselor at Gideon Hausner Jewish Day School in Palo Alto.
By way of introduction, Scher, who hails from South Africa, called herself a “recovering racist.” Comparing the similarities and differences of racism and homophobia, she said that just as the law supported the apartheid system in South Africa, the Bible dictates that homosexuality is a sin.
“The dominant narrative of racism tricked me because it was legal,” she said, noting that the Bible’s injunction against homosexuality can have the same effect for more-religious Jews.
Some of the more-Orthodox day schools may shy away from the topic completely, because “there’s a fear of the social order being disrupted,” said Scher. But not talking about the issue creates more silence, she said.
Kelman suggested that the best way to discuss the Torah’s injunction against homosexuality is to explain that “we follow interpretations of the Torah, and that even the most religious people don’t follow everything.”
A large part of the discussion took place not about sexuality but of gender roles, in a hypothetical scenario in which a boy gets teased by his classmates for wearing pink nail polish to school.
Kathy Levinson, the lesbian parent of two children at Hausner, said that while she believed it was among the more progressive of the day schools, she was tired of seeing forms that required a signature from a mother and father.
“We need to start addressing it in kindergarten,” she said, “talking about different kinds of families.”
Aviv, the co-moderator, discussed the concept of pikuach nefesh — the mitzvah of saving of life — and how it relates to LGBT issues, including how these issues are addressed in the classroom.
Noting that LGBT teenagers are much likelier to commit suicide than their straight counterparts, she said, “The reason of pikuach nefesh should be so compelling to even the biggest homophobic naysayer. What’s more important than saving a life?”