It to happen at some point, you gotta figure that the more we talk about gays in the frum community the more services there will be for them. We are Jews after all and when there’s business’s and money to be made off a new idea we might as well do it right? Maybe after this frum gay singles shabbaton, they can have a frum bestiality lover shabbaton because that’s where they are headed…
I myself have been waiting for frumster or Saw You At Sinai to make gay spinoffs of their sites, but they have yet to do this. A friend of mine recently went to one of those modern orthodox singles weekends and he told me there were quite a number of openly gay men, I have heard that some gay guys would go to singles shabbatons just to test out their gaydar, but isn’t it a little misleading to go to a straight singles shabbaton if you aren’t straight? Kind of like that time I was going to hit up a big shabbaton while in a relationship, just so I could write about it, I decided not to go – my conscience got the best of me.
Eshel welcomes gay and lesbian traditional Jews to join us for this first-ever shabbaton, being held January 21-23 at the Isabella Freedman Retreat Center, two hours from New York City. The Shabbaton will bring together Orthodox gay Jews of all kinds (including the ex-Orthodox and ‘Ortho-curious’) to an event aimed to create a community of support, learning, growth and leadership.
The shabbaton will include shiurim, zmiros, sessions on relevant to our lives as gay and lesbian frum (or formerly frum) Jews, wonderful ‘inspiring davening, delicious healthy kosher food, and plenty of time scheduled to just hang out, sit by the fireplace on Saturday night, and get to know all the members of this growing community. This will be an informative, fun, and spiritually inspiring weekend.
The program for the shabbaton is being created by the Eshel board, which includes many leaders from the gay Orthodox world, including Rabbi Steve Greenberg, Mordechai Levovitz (JQYouth), Chasiah Haberman (Tirtzah), Miryam Kabakov (Keep Your Wives Away from Them), Erez Harari (JQYouth) and others.
All food will be strictly kosher, the retreat will be shomer shabbos, and the davening will include traditional, mechitza davening. (On the registration form, you’ll be asked what kind of davening you’d like to participate in during the weekend.) We will offer a variety of learning options, from traditional text study to workshops on a wide variety of subject. Sunday, we will also offer special skills-building sessions for developing speaking skills, how to come out to friends and family, dating and safer sex, and ways to engage with the Orthodox community about the issues that matter most to us. See below for the schedule.
Ofc ourse the food will be strictly kosher, isn’t this a “frum” event? If everyone is gay why do they need a mechitza, I wonder if Rav Moshe has a teshuva for that one? So during speaking skills, are they teaching the yeshivish lisp? Hold the truck up, safer sex, the only reason the frum community is even acknowledging the gay issue is because they are convinced they will not act on it…