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- Stepping Out of 3 Closets (Fall 2002)
- By Dick Stein
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- Besides the class of gay males and persons who stutter, I belong to
at least one more minority group--Jews. And besides it being just one more
minority identity, I am beginning to see other ways in which being Jewish
might parallel being gay and a stutterer.
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- For one thing, it might be one more closet. Being Jewish can be something
that we do not talk about, do not call attention to. (Sound familiar?)
In America today, many Jews are very assimilated and acculturated. Many
Jews have truncated or otherwise altered their surnames to make them "less
Jewish." When we don't wear a yarmulke (the skull cap worn by Orthodox
Jewish males), don't take off work for Jewish holidays, don't leave work
early on Friday to be home for the Sabbath--no one need ever know that
we are Jewish. And maybe many of us enjoy it that way.
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- Am I in this closet, am I a closet Jew? (It sounds too much like the
crypto-Jews in Spain who, when the Inquisition ordered them to convert
or face death, pretended to convert to Christianity but secretly practiced
their religion.) I might start with where I have been in my life and where
I am now.
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- It would be nice if I could wholeheartedly assert that I am proud of
my Jewish identity, and have never been anything but. I believe I have
very, very slowly been coming to a point where this is true. I get very
upset when people try to convert me. I watch TV programs and read books
about the Holocaust. I have even been known to get my blood pressure up
a bit when some of these issues come up in the lunchtime discussions at
work. I relate some of these things to a duty I now feel to the survivors
of the Holocaust. When I think of those who endured so much, and gave up
their lives, simply because they were Jewish, I tend to feel a duty to
not desert my Jewishness.
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- However, just as--in the past, at least--many of us who are gay and
lesbian internalized society's disapproval and became self-hating--bitchy
to one another and hating of ourselves--my early experiences as a Jew had
a very similar effect on me.
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- America was a very different country in the 1940s, when I was a very
young child. Compared to today, America then was less tolerant of diversity.
My family experienced several episodes of anti-Semitic harassment. I don't
know how, or whether, this overt prejudice was explained to me by my parents;
but, however they may have explained it to me, I responded with the logic
of the very young mind: I got the idea that being Jewish was something
bad.
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- Even when I was a little older, my family lived near a Catholic school,
and the bigger boys on their way home from the parochial school would bully
me, call me "little Jew boy"--plus pick on me for being a sissy.
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- To make the story very short, I internalized this anti-Semitism, just
as gay men historically internalized society's homophobia. I have not wanted
to be Jewish. I abandoned all observance of the religion, and pretty much
also turned away from the culture, from anything that would be a part of
a Jewish identity.
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- I have had many years to come to grips with being Jewish and, very
slowly, I have done so--to a degree. I will never become an observant Jew,
following the customs and praying in a synagogue. Perhaps unfortunately,
I have no religious faith at all. So I could no more start attending synagogue
than I could start attending church and immersing myself in the majority
belief.
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- At one point I became aware of having become more comfortable with
a Jewish identity, and I began to look for ways in which I could feel Jewish
while being completely secular and non-religious. I discovered a group
called Humanistic Judaism, but quickly realized this was not for me. Similarly,
but even more disillusioning, I discovered a group called Chicagoland Secular
Humanist Jews. At first I was very excited to find this group; but in the
end (and for reasons I won't go into), I sadly concluded this was not the
answer to my quest. I decided I needed to give up my search for any answers
to my question of how it might be possible to be Jewish in a way that was
acceptable to me. At least no group held the answer, and I could only go
on in my own individual way, with my own feelings, perspectives, and values.
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- So, I suppose I recognize an ongoing battle. Every day I stand at the
door of one closet or another--the gay closet, the stuttering closet, the
Jewish closet--and step out a little bit, when I feel like it--tentatively,
cautiously, and in my own way. Insofar as I am now more comfortable with
being Jewish, and even proud (sound familiar?), I am thinking of getting
a Jewish star to wear around my neck. Now, that would be coming out of
the closet, wouldn't it?
- Passing Twice Index