The word “intersectional” was first used in 1989 by scholar Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw to explore the point where racial and feminist ideologies converged within a single individual. Crenshaw appreciated what far too many had taken for granted, that it was possible to hold two equally significant identities simultaneously, creating a unique experience of the world that only those who shared that overlap would truly understand.
Jews around the world were well acquainted with this idea long before it ever got a name. Throughout the past 350 years, as Jewish emancipation and equal opportunities became more prevalent throughout the Western World, Jews were subject to harsh questions about their “dual loyalties.” Would a French Jew prioritize their national identity over their faith community if the need arose? Jews in Germany were subject to this kind of question, a path that eventually led to such scapegoating and persecution that the Nazis were able to rise to power. Jews have been subject to the forced realities of intersectionality, even when we haven’t been able to choose how we live out those multiple identities actively.
During this year’s celebration of Pride month, many Jews have once again been forced to struggle with the Venn diagram of their Jewish ideology and their sexual identity. Many “classically progressive” spaces have made it clear that any support or nuance around Israel is not acceptable, thus judging all Jews with a far-too-broad stroke. An event originally intended to celebrate humanity’s free expression of self and love for all, instead, turned out to feel like yet another space where far too many felt cast off, ignored, or downright despised.
I’m going to say the quiet part out loud: nobody wants to hear a rant about Pride from a cisgender, heterosexual, white man. There are countless voices more valuable than mine on topics of gender and sex identity, and I encourage you to find some of them here, here, and here (although that is just the tip of the iceberg).
Instead, I want to point out the profound beauty that listening can offer us during such moments. After all, Pride Month has, in the past several years, encouraged many to do far more listening than we have in the past, lifting voices that would otherwise be overlooked at best, and silenced at worst. This is why so many find the corporate attempts to participate in Pride unsatisfying, even distasteful. Because a brand can’t listen. Creating rainbow-branded products doesn’t actually contribute anything meaningful to the conversation about the experience of being a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, and thus is far more about making the socially accepted kind of noise.
The same is true for so many of the straw-man arguments against Pride celebrations. “Why don’t we have a straight month?” is the kind of thing a person says when they aren’t willing to do the hard, uncomfortable work of listening to those whose experience might be very different from our own and thus might have something powerful to offer if we are willing to sit quietly with that discomfort.
Our people have historically been experts at marking time. Our calendar is an intricate tapestry of memorials and rituals, of commemorations and celebrations. And even though we do much the same thing every year, the arrival of each holiday or season allows us not only to reflect on the traditions that got us here but also to see how we are different from year to year, how we intersect and interconnect with this year’s version of the moment.
I know that I encountered Pride this year differently than I have in the past; I hope that I am a better ally, a better listener than I have been in the past, and that I will continue to learn how to be a better advocate, partner, and friend to those in my community in the future. But as we confront the sadness that comes from a rejection of the nuanced intersectionality that was present this year during our Pride conversations, I invite everyone in the conversation to ask themselves: how can we listen better? How can I try to understand and show love to those who see the world differently from the way I do? How can this time and this season be about finding those rare moments for a parade rather than a protest, for compassion rather than condemnation?
Pride taught me how to listen in a way I hadn’t known how. Now, it seems, it might be time for the organizers of Pride to take a note from their own playbook and listen to what it is like to be a queer Jew. Because now, as much as ever, we need to be there for one another in love and solidarity.
Austin Zoot is the Rabbi Educator at the Valley Temple in Wyoming, Ohio.
