Donald Goor’s CV not only indicates his role as a rabbi; it also provides a good sense of who he is beyond the bimah: native Californian, son of a rabbi; Berkeley alum, interfaith activist, advocate for the homeless.
You even discover he’s a former financial analyst for a San Francisco bank.
But despite its comprehensiveness, you wouldn’t be able to ascertain, say, that he’s gay. So it’s not surprising that the senior rabbi at Temple Judea in Southern California believes the quality of a spiritual leader has everything to do with a “deep commitment of Jewish values” and little to do with his or her sexuality.
To this end, he wishes not to subordinate the fact of his orientation. Rather, Goor chooses to take the stance that it simply doesn’t interfere with synagogue life: “The greatest joy for me is it’s not an issue at all.”
Nonetheless, Goor grabbed headlines — not by his own volition — when he officially came out to the largest Reform congregation in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley roughly six years ago.
He will discuss his personal experience at Los Altos Hills’ Congregation Beth Am on Friday, Nov. 2, as part of its Kulanu Shabbat program. Kulanu, Hebrew for “all of us,” is a synagogue committee formed four years ago by family and friends of Jewish gay men and lesbians to promote inclusiveness and diversity within the larger community.
Goor contends he’s not nervous about publicly speaking for the first time on his rabbinical coming-out. “Once it was in the New York Times, I figured there’s nothing I can’t say about it,” he quips, adding that he does feel both “excited and challenged” to tell his story.
Scarred by a negative experience he had after disclosing his identity to the hiring committee of another Los Angeles-area shul, Goor says he felt “leery” about offering the information while interviewing for Temple Judea’s associate rabbi position following his smicha in 1987. That was three years before the Reform movement’s Central Conference of American Rabbis passed its resolution approving gay and lesbian ordinations.
So he didn’t, and this time, Goor got the job.
Calling the Tarzana shul “a creative place to be,” he was fulfilled religiously and professionally. By the time the senior rabbi was preparing to retire in the mid-1990s, Goor became the likely candidate to take the helm.
But as the obligatory national search began, Goor felt it was imperative to share something about himself that otherwise seemed irrelevant to his spiritual leadership. The former San Diegan knew that while he had not concealed his sexual orientation from the congregants per se — and that some in fact knew — many more were oblivious.
“I never lied about it,” he explains, distinguishing his conduct from a much younger and closeted “schizophrenia” phase that homophobia tends to spark, such as the compulsion to drop or switch pronouns when speaking about a same-sex partner. “It was important to maintain integrity.”
Still, the task of individually divulging his homosexuality at committee meetings and congregant focus groups presented an “awkward” situation.
“People who are straight don’t have to come out,” Goor points out. “It’s a very personal disclosure that shouldn’t have to be.”
The response, by and large, was that the matter was a “concern but not a problem,” an admission that the rabbi praises as honest and brave. But the demographic breakdown was even more illuminating.
Apparently, a group of younger members said it was OK by them — but expressed the belief that it would be an issue for the more conservative older generation.
The elders, meanwhile, said they were fine — but that Goor could run into a problem with the 20- and 30-somethings just beginning to start families.
And although the rabbi was opposed to his gayness becoming news, “the media was very positive,” sans the views of Jewish radio personality Dennis Prager, who castigated Goor as amoral and unfit to be a spiritual leader.
He knows of one or possibly two members who left Temple Judea after his promotion, acknowledging that there may be more, but “it’s not PC to say that’s why” they left.
But even if the number is low-balled because of lack of certainty, Goor is encouraged by proliferating chavurot and shul committees like Kulanu that are bringing gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender topics to the Jewish table.
“This has become such a mainstream issue,” Goor says. “It’s no longer a discussion of which radical Reform rabbi” is pushing his or her agenda.
In fact, the San Fernando Valley held its first queer pride festival this year, in which Temple Judea, along with several other Reform and Conservative synagogues of the suburban L.A. region, jointly shared an outreach booth (despite the preponderance of heterosexuality among their memberships).
While Goor says he “never dreamed we would reach this place so quickly — and with such meaning, with such acceptance” –he doesn’t care to “whitewash [the experience] and say it’s all easy.”
Occasionally concern is raised on behalf of children, like the one recent bat mitzvah whose peers at a nearby religious summer camp taunted her, saying she would catch AIDS. Sometimes adult congregants knock on the rabbi’s study door to express their own discomfort. And there are moments when Goor himself grapples with the text he loves to teach and learn so dearly.
“I wrestle with it as well…[but] I’m able to bring other views to it. I’m able to see the historical context of Leviticus: the who, where and what.”
Goor is quick to note that “text is a very important part of my rabbinate,” but he’s even quicker to assert that strict “halachah doesn’t understand the reality of today — which is why I’m a Reform rabbi.”
Without adding his own commentary, the Talmud, he says, “couldn’t understand a loving, same-gender relationship,” like his 15-year partnership with Evan Kent, a cantor at Temple Isaiah in West L.A., whom he met at Hebrew Union College in New York.
Goor’s bottom line is that “every person is created in God’s image,” and so he accepted the invitation to speak from his friend and colleague, Beth Am’s Rabbi Janet Marder. The special Shabbat panel includes San Francisco Emanu-El’s openly lesbian associate rabbi, Sydney Mintz.
And when he returns to Southern California, in addition to his leadership at Temple Judea, the rabbi will continue to focus on what his CV highlights: teaching rabbinical students at Hebrew Union College, serving as advisory chairman for the Kalsman Institute on Judaism and Health, and studying at the Hartmann Institute and Yakar in Jerusalem.