The tribute I gave in honour of the late Rabbi Lionel Blue, Z”L, at the Erev Pride Erev Shabbat service held at the Liberal Jewish Synagogue, London.
This evening, at our erev Pride Erev Shabbat service, I have been invited to pay tribute to Rabbi Lionel Blue, zichrono livrachah, may his memory be for blessing, who died on December 19, 2016. Lionel often attended this annual service, and was for us all, in particular, for the members of the Jewish Lesbian and Gay Group, the father-figure for Rainbow Jews.
I have been asked to speak about Lionel this evening because I knew him for over thirty years. I first met Lionel towards the end of 1983, when I was thinking about applying for the rabbinic programme at the Leo Baeck College. At that time Lionel, who was ordained in 1958, nine years before homosexuality ceased to be illegal in Britain, was not just the first gay Rabbi in Britain, he was the only gay Rabbi. Perhaps there were others, who hadn’t spoken publicly about being gay. Lionel had – at least in the context of his interfaith work. In 1981, he gave a lecture about being ‘Godly and Gay’ to the Gay Christian Movement.[1]
As it happens, in a sense I only met Lionel by accident. A meeting with another teacher at the college, concluded with the words: ‘I think it might be an idea for you to go and see my colleague, Lionel Blue; he’s quite good at detecting hidden talent.’ And so, I did – and we hit it off immediately. Having both been Marxists in our student days – he at Balliol College, Oxford, me at LSE – we discussed our journeys since that time, and as we spoke together, it became clear that he had been an outsider who had become an insider, and that was something I wanted, too.
So, that meeting turned out to be momentous. In particular, in view of the fact that I wasn’t the only lesbian feminist to decide to apply to the Leo Baeck College rabbinic programme. At the week of interviews in February 1984, the college was confronted by two lesbian feminists: Sheila Shulman and me. Sadly, Sheila, Zichronah livrachah, died on 25 October 2014, shortly after we celebrated the 25th anniversary of our ordinations. Back in 1984, the progressive movements that sponsor the college were sceptical about the acceptability of lesbians as rabbis, so, when we embarked on our rabbinic studies in October, we were both put on five-year probation – that is, we were told that we could be asked to leave at any point during the five-year long period of rabbinic training.
Lionel became my tutor. But he wasn’t the kind of tutor, who arranged formal appointments with you in his office – which happened to be at the Reform Beit Din, which he served as Convenor. And so, towards the end of my first term, Lionel informed me that in January he was going to take me to a weekend retreat for Catholic novice nuns at Spode, a Dominican Priory, where he wanted me to lead Erev Shabbat at the dinner table.
It was a lot to get my head around. I knew, of course, that Lionel was deeply involved in interfaith dialogue, but I didn’t quite understand the connection between a retreat for young novice nuns and making Shabbat. The thought of it all gave me a headache: what could I, a lesbian feminist, aged 29, whose journey into the rabbinate was as much political as spiritual, have to say to 18-year-olds, so certain of their faith that they were prepared to make a lifelong commitment, involving vows of chastity, poverty and obedience? But that wasn’t my only problem. My experience of Erev Shabbat was limited to lighting the candles. I did not know any of the other blessings. Fortunately, Rabbi Barbara Borts, who had supported my application to the College, made me a tape, and I spent part of the winter break, learning to sing them all.
The retreat experience turned out to be just as unnerving as I had anticipated, with the young women gazing at me in bewilderment with their clear eyes. Their ardent fervour made me think – which is exactly what Lionel hoped it would do. But that wasn’t all that gave me pause for thought. Virtually teetotal, I was rather taken aback by the amount of alcohol consumed by the monks in the Priory bar each evening, as they joked and chatted together. And I’ll never forget how Lionel inducted me into my first experience of Christian prayer within a religious community. Before we went into our first service, he said to me: ‘Now, it’s completely up to you how much you join in with. I love a good hymn.’ As Lionel put it on several occasions, ‘Judaism is my religious home, not my religious prison.’
Lionel continued to challenge me during those five years. I also challenged him. Having experienced being gay during the long, difficult years before the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 ensured that sex between two adult men in private was no longer a crime, he couldn’t quite understand why I insisted on being so open about my sexuality. He felt that everything would be so much easier for me, if I didn’t ‘make such an issue of it’. Nevertheless, although Lionel didn’t quite know how to handle an outspoken radical feminist lesbian, he supported me steadfastly throughout my training, and when I asked him to ordain me, he beamed and said, yes.
In addition to being my tutor, Lionel also took the second-year rabbinic students for a weekly session on ‘prayer’, which proved to be an eclectic introduction to the teachings of a number of key influences on his thinking, including, in particular, Simone Weil, a French philosopher and political activist, who died in 1943, aged 34. Born Jewish, Simone Weil later converted to Catholicism and became a mystic, practising a fierce asceticism.[2] We read excerpts from a collection of her writings, Gateway to God. Two short quotations – one from a publication of her First and Last Notebooks,[3] the other from her book, Gravity and Grace[4] – sum-up what Lionel was trying to teach the rather worldly rabbinic students, who sat around him: ‘Attention is the rarest and purist form of generosity’; and: ‘Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.’ Lionel wrote some beautiful prayers, which adorn the prayer books of Reform Judaism,[5] but more important, he was able to pray with all of who he was – emotionally and bodily as well as spiritually.
Why am I telling you about Lionel the teacher of prayer, who found inspiration as much in Christian spirituality as in Jewish teaching, this evening at this celebration of LGBTQ Jewish life? Because I think that if we are going to really understand Lionel’s contribution, it’s important for us to acknowledge that he wasn’t just a gay icon to us, as he wasn’t just the gentle voice of wisdom to the millions who listened to his Radio 4 ‘Thought for the Day’ on Monday mornings, as they faced the week ahead. Lionel reached into the depths – the depths of his own heart; the depths of the hearts of others. He embraced his sexuality and he also embraced his spirituality. He revelled in the joys of the flesh and loved nothing better than to be in his kitchen conjuring up a delicious spread, and he was also able to inhabit utter stillness. In the 1990s when I was Director of Programmes for Reform Judaism, I organised with Lionel and another colleague, Rabbi Howard Cooper, a series of three annual weekend retreats. During these retreats, we spent a full hour each day, just sitting in silence with one another. Most people found it incredibly challenging, but Lionel was just simply in his element.
Lionel taught us to be all of who we are. That is his chief legacy. And to see our sexuality as a gift for ourselves and for the world. In his 1981 lecture, ‘Godly and Gay’, Lionel spoke of a ‘gay vocation’. Let me quote from this section of his address:[6]
If gay people examine their lives, they can thank God for many things which they can use for the growth of goodness within them, and for the well-being of others.
Through gay people God heals some of the divisions of the world. The difficulties and rejections which gays experience transcend the division of race, religion, colour and class, as any gay gathering can show. In this country, where class is so entrenched, this is truly a wonder. I’ve seen Arabs and Jews brought together, Germans and Poles, conservatives and communists. It was attraction, not ideology, which provided the occasion and brought some understanding and the seed of love. Authoritarians do not care for gays. They do not like their straying habits.
God can also use gays to heal some of the scars of a sexist society. It is natural to hate being persecuted, it is supernatural to hate being the persecutor even more. We should thank God, that though straights have burnt gays in the past, and still threaten stoning and occasionally practice it, gays have no desire to retaliate in kind. In my own experience, many hurt heteros turn to gays, for they bring no threat, only healing. So God’s work is done through them. Gays can build a bridge of understanding and sympathy between the sexes if they’re allowed to, and if they are willing to come out of their own ghetto.
During the past thirty-six years since Lionel spoke these words, the vocabulary of sexuality and gender has expanded beyond ‘gay’ to encompass lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex. Moreover, Rainbow Jews, at least, have come out of the ghetto. 20% of the combined progressive rabbinate in Britain is now LGBTQ+,[7] and alongside Civil Marriage equality, LGBTQ+ Jewish couples can now marry under a chuppah in Liberal and Reform synagogues – and those in mixed relationships can have blessing ceremonies in Liberal shuls. More recently, through Liberal Judaism supported projects such as Twilight People,[8] we have begun to acknowledge the experience of transgender people. But, importantly, when Lionel spoke to that Gay Christian Movement gathering in 1981, he wasn’t just making a plea for equality and inclusion, he understood that the experience of being LGBTQ+ was a special gift we can offer to the wider society.
Lionel always spoke from his heart, his soul and his gut; from his experience as a gay man, as a Jew, and as a human being who connected with other human beings wherever they were. A person with the capacity to reach out the hand of friendship to others, in particular, to the wounded and the broken, Lionel didn’t just do this in his public work. He was incredibly hospitable. Wayfarers and friends were always welcome to the home he shared with his beloved, Jim, Zichrono livrachah, who sadly died in June 2014, shortly before the erev Pride Service that year. Completely unpretentious, Lionel was honest and real. He was also full of humour, and would have chuckled at the thought that his obituaries in the print editions of The Times and The Guardian, would appear directly after those devoted to Zsa Zsa Gabor, who died the day before he did, with whom he shared a birthday – and who, like him, had had a formidable Jewish mother.[9]
As we remember Lionel today and feel sad that he is no longer amongst us, let us also take a moment to smile and laugh and give thanks for his wisdom, his example, and for the many gifts of himself that Lionel shared with us and with others. Zichrono livrachah – May his memory be a source of abundant blessing for all our lives. And let us say: Amen.
Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah
Erev Pride Erev Shabbat Service
Liberal Jewish Synagogue
7th July 2017 – 14th Tammuz 5777
- Rabbi Lionel Blue, Godly and Gay. The Fourth Michael Harding Memorial Address, Gay Christian Movement, London, 1981. ↑
- 3 February 1909 – 24 August 1943. See Haaretz, 24 August 2015: This Day in Jewish History, 1943 ‘God Isn’t Dead, He’s Silent’: Simone Weil Dies, Very Young. http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/this-day-in-jewish-history/1.672507 See also: Susan Sontag’s review of Selected Essays by Simone Weil (translated by Richard Rees, Oxford University Press) in The New York Review of Books, 1 February 1963. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1963/02/01/simone-weil/ ↑
- Translated by Richard Rees (Oxford University Press, 1970). ↑
- A ‘Routledge Classic’. First published in 1952. ↑
- See, in particular, Forms of Prayer for Jewish Worship, Vol. 1, Shabbat and Daily Prayerbook (RSGB, London, 1977) and Vol. 3, Days of Awe (RSGB, London, 1985). ↑
- Rabbi Lionel Blue, Godly and Gay, 1981, pp. 6-7. ↑
- As of 2017, 17 LGBTQ+ rabbis have been ordained under Leo Baeck College auspices: Lionel Blue (1958), Sheila Shulman, Z”L (1989), Elli Tikvah Sarah (1989), Indigo Jonah Raphael [Melinda Michelson Carr] (1996), Alex Dukhovny (1999), Erlene Wahlhaus, Z”L (1999), Michael Pertz (2000), James Baaden (2001), Irit Shillor (2002), Shulamit Ambalu (2004), Judith Levitt (2009), David Mitchell (2009). Judith Rosen-Berry (2009) Anna Gerrard (2011) Rene Pfertzel (2014) Emily Jurman (2015), and Daniel Lichman (2017). A further 4 LGBTQ+ rabbis, ordained elsewhere, have served/serve the British Jewish community: Mark Solomon, Roderick Young, Ariel Friedlander, and Hillel Athias-Robles, who is now in New York. ↑
- http://www.twilightpeople.com/ ↑
- Zsa Zsa Gabor: 6 February 1917 – 18 December 2016; Lionel Blue: 6 February 1930 – 19 December 2016. ↑
This evening, at our erev Pride Erev Shabbat service, I have been invited to pay tribute to Rabbi Lionel Blue, zichrono livrachah, may his memory be for blessing, who died on December 19, 2016. Lionel often attended this annual service, and was for us all, in particular, for the members of the Jewish Lesbian and Gay Group, the father-figure for Rainbow Jews.
I have been asked to speak about Lionel this evening because I knew him for over thirty years. I first met Lionel towards the end of 1983, when I was thinking about applying for the rabbinic programme at the Leo Baeck College. At that time Lionel, who was ordained in 1958, nine years before homosexuality ceased to be illegal in Britain, was not just the first gay Rabbi in Britain, he was the only gay Rabbi. Perhaps there were others, who hadn’t spoken publicly about being gay. Lionel had – at least in the context of his interfaith work. In 1981, he gave a lecture about being ‘Godly and Gay’ to the Gay Christian Movement.[1]
As it happens, in a sense I only met Lionel by accident. A meeting with another teacher at the college, concluded with the words: ‘I think it might be an idea for you to go and see my colleague, Lionel Blue; he’s quite good at detecting hidden talent.’ And so, I did – and we hit it off immediately. Having both been Marxists in our student days – he at Balliol College, Oxford, me at LSE – we discussed our journeys since that time, and as we spoke together, it became clear that he had been an outsider who had become an insider, and that was something I wanted, too.
So, that meeting turned out to be momentous. In particular, in view of the fact that I wasn’t the only lesbian feminist to decide to apply to the Leo Baeck College rabbinic programme. At the week of interviews in February 1984, the college was confronted by two lesbian feminists: Sheila Shulman and me. Sadly, Sheila, Zichronah livrachah, died on 25 October 2014, shortly after we celebrated the 25th anniversary of our ordinations. Back in 1984, the progressive movements that sponsor the college were sceptical about the acceptability of lesbians as rabbis, so, when we embarked on our rabbinic studies in October, we were both put on five-year probation – that is, we were told that we could be asked to leave at any point during the five-year long period of rabbinic training.
Lionel became my tutor. But he wasn’t the kind of tutor, who arranged formal appointments with you in his office – which happened to be at the Reform Beit Din, which he served as Convenor. And so, towards the end of my first term, Lionel informed me that in January he was going to take me to a weekend retreat for Catholic novice nuns at Spode, a Dominican Priory, where he wanted me to lead Erev Shabbat at the dinner table.
It was a lot to get my head around. I knew, of course, that Lionel was deeply involved in interfaith dialogue, but I didn’t quite understand the connection between a retreat for young novice nuns and making Shabbat. The thought of it all gave me a headache: what could I, a lesbian feminist, aged 29, whose journey into the rabbinate was as much political as spiritual, have to say to 18-year-olds, so certain of their faith that they were prepared to make a lifelong commitment, involving vows of chastity, poverty and obedience? But that wasn’t my only problem. My experience of Erev Shabbat was limited to lighting the candles. I did not know any of the other blessings. Fortunately, Rabbi Barbara Borts, who had supported my application to the College, made me a tape, and I spent part of the winter break, learning to sing them all.
The retreat experience turned out to be just as unnerving as I had anticipated, with the young women gazing at me in bewilderment with their clear eyes. Their ardent fervour made me think – which is exactly what Lionel hoped it would do. But that wasn’t all that gave me pause for thought. Virtually teetotal, I was rather taken aback by the amount of alcohol consumed by the monks in the Priory bar each evening, as they joked and chatted together. And I’ll never forget how Lionel inducted me into my first experience of Christian prayer within a religious community. Before we went into our first service, he said to me: ‘Now, it’s completely up to you how much you join in with. I love a good hymn.’ As Lionel put it on several occasions, ‘Judaism is my religious home, not my religious prison.’
Lionel continued to challenge me during those five years. I also challenged him. Having experienced being gay during the long, difficult years before the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 ensured that sex between two adult men in private was no longer a crime, he couldn’t quite understand why I insisted on being so open about my sexuality. He felt that everything would be so much easier for me, if I didn’t ‘make such an issue of it’. Nevertheless, although Lionel didn’t quite know how to handle an outspoken radical feminist lesbian, he supported me steadfastly throughout my training, and when I asked him to ordain me, he beamed and said, yes.
In addition to being my tutor, Lionel also took the second-year rabbinic students for a weekly session on ‘prayer’, which proved to be an eclectic introduction to the teachings of a number of key influences on his thinking, including, in particular, Simone Weil, a French philosopher and political activist, who died in 1943, aged 34. Born Jewish, Simone Weil later converted to Catholicism and became a mystic, practising a fierce asceticism.[2] We read excerpts from a collection of her writings, Gateway to God. Two short quotations – one from a publication of her First and Last Notebooks,[3] the other from her book, Gravity and Grace[4] – sum-up what Lionel was trying to teach the rather worldly rabbinic students, who sat around him: ‘Attention is the rarest and purist form of generosity’; and: ‘Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.’ Lionel wrote some beautiful prayers, which adorn the prayer books of Reform Judaism,[5] but more important, he was able to pray with all of who he was – emotionally and bodily as well as spiritually.
Why am I telling you about Lionel the teacher of prayer, who found inspiration as much in Christian spirituality as in Jewish teaching, this evening at this celebration of LGBTQ Jewish life? Because I think that if we are going to really understand Lionel’s contribution, it’s important for us to acknowledge that he wasn’t just a gay icon to us, as he wasn’t just the gentle voice of wisdom to the millions who listened to his Radio 4 ‘Thought for the Day’ on Monday mornings, as they faced the week ahead. Lionel reached into the depths – the depths of his own heart; the depths of the hearts of others. He embraced his sexuality and he also embraced his spirituality. He revelled in the joys of the flesh and loved nothing better than to be in his kitchen conjuring up a delicious spread, and he was also able to inhabit utter stillness. In the 1990s when I was Director of Programmes for Reform Judaism, I organised with Lionel and another colleague, Rabbi Howard Cooper, a series of three annual weekend retreats. During these retreats, we spent a full hour each day, just sitting in silence with one another. Most people found it incredibly challenging, but Lionel was just simply in his element.
Lionel taught us to be all of who we are. That is his chief legacy. And to see our sexuality as a gift for ourselves and for the world. In his 1981 lecture, ‘Godly and Gay’, Lionel spoke of a ‘gay vocation’. Let me quote from this section of his address:[6]
If gay people examine their lives, they can thank God for many things which they can use for the growth of goodness within them, and for the well-being of others.
Through gay people God heals some of the divisions of the world. The difficulties and rejections which gays experience transcend the division of race, religion, colour and class, as any gay gathering can show. In this country, where class is so entrenched, this is truly a wonder. I’ve seen Arabs and Jews brought together, Germans and Poles, conservatives and communists. It was attraction, not ideology, which provided the occasion and brought some understanding and the seed of love. Authoritarians do not care for gays. They do not like their straying habits.
God can also use gays to heal some of the scars of a sexist society. It is natural to hate being persecuted, it is supernatural to hate being the persecutor even more. We should thank God, that though straights have burnt gays in the past, and still threaten stoning and occasionally practice it, gays have no desire to retaliate in kind. In my own experience, many hurt heteros turn to gays, for they bring no threat, only healing. So God’s work is done through them. Gays can build a bridge of understanding and sympathy between the sexes if they’re allowed to, and if they are willing to come out of their own ghetto.
During the past thirty-six years since Lionel spoke these words, the vocabulary of sexuality and gender has expanded beyond ‘gay’ to encompass lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex. Moreover, Rainbow Jews, at least, have come out of the ghetto. 20% of the combined progressive rabbinate in Britain is now LGBTQ+,[7] and alongside Civil Marriage equality, LGBTQ+ Jewish couples can now marry under a chuppah in Liberal and Reform synagogues – and those in mixed relationships can have blessing ceremonies in Liberal shuls. More recently, through Liberal Judaism supported projects such as Twilight People,[8] we have begun to acknowledge the experience of transgender people. But, importantly, when Lionel spoke to that Gay Christian Movement gathering in 1981, he wasn’t just making a plea for equality and inclusion, he understood that the experience of being LGBTQ+ was a special gift we can offer to the wider society.
Lionel always spoke from his heart, his soul and his gut; from his experience as a gay man, as a Jew, and as a human being who connected with other human beings wherever they were. A person with the capacity to reach out the hand of friendship to others, in particular, to the wounded and the broken, Lionel didn’t just do this in his public work. He was incredibly hospitable. Wayfarers and friends were always welcome to the home he shared with his beloved, Jim, Zichrono livrachah, who sadly died in June 2014, shortly before the erev Pride Service that year. Completely unpretentious, Lionel was honest and real. He was also full of humour, and would have chuckled at the thought that his obituaries in the print editions of The Times and The Guardian, would appear directly after those devoted to Zsa Zsa Gabor, who died the day before he did, with whom he shared a birthday – and who, like him, had had a formidable Jewish mother.[9]
As we remember Lionel today and feel sad that he is no longer amongst us, let us also take a moment to smile and laugh and give thanks for his wisdom, his example, and for the many gifts of himself that Lionel shared with us and with others. Zichrono livrachah – May his memory be a source of abundant blessing for all our lives. And let us say: Amen.
Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah
Erev Pride Erev Shabbat Service
Liberal Jewish Synagogue
7th July 2017 – 14th Tammuz 5777
- Rabbi Lionel Blue, Godly and Gay. The Fourth Michael Harding Memorial Address, Gay Christian Movement, London, 1981. ↑
- 3 February 1909 – 24 August 1943. See Haaretz, 24 August 2015: This Day in Jewish History, 1943 ‘God Isn’t Dead, He’s Silent’: Simone Weil Dies, Very Young. http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/this-day-in-jewish-history/1.672507 See also: Susan Sontag’s review of Selected Essays by Simone Weil (translated by Richard Rees, Oxford University Press) in The New York Review of Books, 1 February 1963. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1963/02/01/simone-weil/ ↑
- Translated by Richard Rees (Oxford University Press, 1970). ↑
- A ‘Routledge Classic’. First published in 1952. ↑
- See, in particular, Forms of Prayer for Jewish Worship, Vol. 1, Shabbat and Daily Prayerbook (RSGB, London, 1977) and Vol. 3, Days of Awe (RSGB, London, 1985). ↑
- Rabbi Lionel Blue, Godly and Gay, 1981, pp. 6-7. ↑
- As of 2017, 17 LGBTQ+ rabbis have been ordained under Leo Baeck College auspices: Lionel Blue (1958), Sheila Shulman, Z”L (1989), Elli Tikvah Sarah (1989), Indigo Jonah Raphael [Melinda Michelson Carr] (1996), Alex Dukhovny (1999), Erlene Wahlhaus, Z”L (1999), Michael Pertz (2000), James Baaden (2001), Irit Shillor (2002), Shulamit Ambalu (2004), Judith Levitt (2009), David Mitchell (2009). Judith Rosen-Berry (2009) Anna Gerrard (2011) Rene Pfertzel (2014) Emily Jurman (2015), and Daniel Lichman (2017). A further 4 LGBTQ+ rabbis, ordained elsewhere, have served/serve the British Jewish community: Mark Solomon, Roderick Young, Ariel Friedlander, and Hillel Athias-Robles, who is now in New York. ↑
- http://www.twilightpeople.com/ ↑
- Zsa Zsa Gabor: 6 February 1917 – 18 December 2016; Lionel Blue: 6 February 1930 – 19 December 2016. ↑
This evening, at our erev Pride Erev Shabbat service, I have been invited to pay tribute to Rabbi Lionel Blue, zichrono livrachah, may his memory be for blessing, who died on December 19, 2016. Lionel often attended this annual service, and was for us all, in particular, for the members of the Jewish Lesbian and Gay Group, the father-figure for Rainbow Jews.
I have been asked to speak about Lionel this evening because I knew him for over thirty years. I first met Lionel towards the end of 1983, when I was thinking about applying for the rabbinic programme at the Leo Baeck College. At that time Lionel, who was ordained in 1958, nine years before homosexuality ceased to be illegal in Britain, was not just the first gay Rabbi in Britain, he was the only gay Rabbi. Perhaps there were others, who hadn’t spoken publicly about being gay. Lionel had – at least in the context of his interfaith work. In 1981, he gave a lecture about being ‘Godly and Gay’ to the Gay Christian Movement.[1]
As it happens, in a sense I only met Lionel by accident. A meeting with another teacher at the college, concluded with the words: ‘I think it might be an idea for you to go and see my colleague, Lionel Blue; he’s quite good at detecting hidden talent.’ And so, I did – and we hit it off immediately. Having both been Marxists in our student days – he at Balliol College, Oxford, me at LSE – we discussed our journeys since that time, and as we spoke together, it became clear that he had been an outsider who had become an insider, and that was something I wanted, too.
So, that meeting turned out to be momentous. In particular, in view of the fact that I wasn’t the only lesbian feminist to decide to apply to the Leo Baeck College rabbinic programme. At the week of interviews in February 1984, the college was confronted by two lesbian feminists: Sheila Shulman and me. Sadly, Sheila, Zichronah livrachah, died on 25 October 2014, shortly after we celebrated the 25th anniversary of our ordinations. Back in 1984, the progressive movements that sponsor the college were sceptical about the acceptability of lesbians as rabbis, so, when we embarked on our rabbinic studies in October, we were both put on five-year probation – that is, we were told that we could be asked to leave at any point during the five-year long period of rabbinic training.
Lionel became my tutor. But he wasn’t the kind of tutor, who arranged formal appointments with you in his office – which happened to be at the Reform Beit Din, which he served as Convenor. And so, towards the end of my first term, Lionel informed me that in January he was going to take me to a weekend retreat for Catholic novice nuns at Spode, a Dominican Priory, where he wanted me to lead Erev Shabbat at the dinner table.
It was a lot to get my head around. I knew, of course, that Lionel was deeply involved in interfaith dialogue, but I didn’t quite understand the connection between a retreat for young novice nuns and making Shabbat. The thought of it all gave me a headache: what could I, a lesbian feminist, aged 29, whose journey into the rabbinate was as much political as spiritual, have to say to 18-year-olds, so certain of their faith that they were prepared to make a lifelong commitment, involving vows of chastity, poverty and obedience? But that wasn’t my only problem. My experience of Erev Shabbat was limited to lighting the candles. I did not know any of the other blessings. Fortunately, Rabbi Barbara Borts, who had supported my application to the College, made me a tape, and I spent part of the winter break, learning to sing them all.
The retreat experience turned out to be just as unnerving as I had anticipated, with the young women gazing at me in bewilderment with their clear eyes. Their ardent fervour made me think – which is exactly what Lionel hoped it would do. But that wasn’t all that gave me pause for thought. Virtually teetotal, I was rather taken aback by the amount of alcohol consumed by the monks in the Priory bar each evening, as they joked and chatted together. And I’ll never forget how Lionel inducted me into my first experience of Christian prayer within a religious community. Before we went into our first service, he said to me: ‘Now, it’s completely up to you how much you join in with. I love a good hymn.’ As Lionel put it on several occasions, ‘Judaism is my religious home, not my religious prison.’
Lionel continued to challenge me during those five years. I also challenged him. Having experienced being gay during the long, difficult years before the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 ensured that sex between two adult men in private was no longer a crime, he couldn’t quite understand why I insisted on being so open about my sexuality. He felt that everything would be so much easier for me, if I didn’t ‘make such an issue of it’. Nevertheless, although Lionel didn’t quite know how to handle an outspoken radical feminist lesbian, he supported me steadfastly throughout my training, and when I asked him to ordain me, he beamed and said, yes.
In addition to being my tutor, Lionel also took the second-year rabbinic students for a weekly session on ‘prayer’, which proved to be an eclectic introduction to the teachings of a number of key influences on his thinking, including, in particular, Simone Weil, a French philosopher and political activist, who died in 1943, aged 34. Born Jewish, Simone Weil later converted to Catholicism and became a mystic, practising a fierce asceticism.[2] We read excerpts from a collection of her writings, Gateway to God. Two short quotations – one from a publication of her First and Last Notebooks,[3] the other from her book, Gravity and Grace[4] – sum-up what Lionel was trying to teach the rather worldly rabbinic students, who sat around him: ‘Attention is the rarest and purist form of generosity’; and: ‘Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.’ Lionel wrote some beautiful prayers, which adorn the prayer books of Reform Judaism,[5] but more important, he was able to pray with all of who he was – emotionally and bodily as well as spiritually.
Why am I telling you about Lionel the teacher of prayer, who found inspiration as much in Christian spirituality as in Jewish teaching, this evening at this celebration of LGBTQ Jewish life? Because I think that if we are going to really understand Lionel’s contribution, it’s important for us to acknowledge that he wasn’t just a gay icon to us, as he wasn’t just the gentle voice of wisdom to the millions who listened to his Radio 4 ‘Thought for the Day’ on Monday mornings, as they faced the week ahead. Lionel reached into the depths – the depths of his own heart; the depths of the hearts of others. He embraced his sexuality and he also embraced his spirituality. He revelled in the joys of the flesh and loved nothing better than to be in his kitchen conjuring up a delicious spread, and he was also able to inhabit utter stillness. In the 1990s when I was Director of Programmes for Reform Judaism, I organised with Lionel and another colleague, Rabbi Howard Cooper, a series of three annual weekend retreats. During these retreats, we spent a full hour each day, just sitting in silence with one another. Most people found it incredibly challenging, but Lionel was just simply in his element.
Lionel taught us to be all of who we are. That is his chief legacy. And to see our sexuality as a gift for ourselves and for the world. In his 1981 lecture, ‘Godly and Gay’, Lionel spoke of a ‘gay vocation’. Let me quote from this section of his address:[6]
If gay people examine their lives, they can thank God for many things which they can use for the growth of goodness within them, and for the well-being of others.
Through gay people God heals some of the divisions of the world. The difficulties and rejections which gays experience transcend the division of race, religion, colour and class, as any gay gathering can show. In this country, where class is so entrenched, this is truly a wonder. I’ve seen Arabs and Jews brought together, Germans and Poles, conservatives and communists. It was attraction, not ideology, which provided the occasion and brought some understanding and the seed of love. Authoritarians do not care for gays. They do not like their straying habits.
God can also use gays to heal some of the scars of a sexist society. It is natural to hate being persecuted, it is supernatural to hate being the persecutor even more. We should thank God, that though straights have burnt gays in the past, and still threaten stoning and occasionally practice it, gays have no desire to retaliate in kind. In my own experience, many hurt heteros turn to gays, for they bring no threat, only healing. So God’s work is done through them. Gays can build a bridge of understanding and sympathy between the sexes if they’re allowed to, and if they are willing to come out of their own ghetto.
During the past thirty-six years since Lionel spoke these words, the vocabulary of sexuality and gender has expanded beyond ‘gay’ to encompass lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex. Moreover, Rainbow Jews, at least, have come out of the ghetto. 20% of the combined progressive rabbinate in Britain is now LGBTQ+,[7] and alongside Civil Marriage equality, LGBTQ+ Jewish couples can now marry under a chuppah in Liberal and Reform synagogues – and those in mixed relationships can have blessing ceremonies in Liberal shuls. More recently, through Liberal Judaism supported projects such as Twilight People,[8] we have begun to acknowledge the experience of transgender people. But, importantly, when Lionel spoke to that Gay Christian Movement gathering in 1981, he wasn’t just making a plea for equality and inclusion, he understood that the experience of being LGBTQ+ was a special gift we can offer to the wider society.
Lionel always spoke from his heart, his soul and his gut; from his experience as a gay man, as a Jew, and as a human being who connected with other human beings wherever they were. A person with the capacity to reach out the hand of friendship to others, in particular, to the wounded and the broken, Lionel didn’t just do this in his public work. He was incredibly hospitable. Wayfarers and friends were always welcome to the home he shared with his beloved, Jim, Zichrono livrachah, who sadly died in June 2014, shortly before the erev Pride Service that year. Completely unpretentious, Lionel was honest and real. He was also full of humour, and would have chuckled at the thought that his obituaries in the print editions of The Times and The Guardian, would appear directly after those devoted to Zsa Zsa Gabor, who died the day before he did, with whom he shared a birthday – and who, like him, had had a formidable Jewish mother.[9]
As we remember Lionel today and feel sad that he is no longer amongst us, let us also take a moment to smile and laugh and give thanks for his wisdom, his example, and for the many gifts of himself that Lionel shared with us and with others. Zichrono livrachah – May his memory be a source of abundant blessing for all our lives. And let us say: Amen.
Rabbi Elli Tikvah Sarah
Erev Pride Erev Shabbat Service
Liberal Jewish Synagogue
7th July 2017 – 14th Tammuz 5777
- Rabbi Lionel Blue, Godly and Gay. The Fourth Michael Harding Memorial Address, Gay Christian Movement, London, 1981. ↑
- 3 February 1909 – 24 August 1943. See Haaretz, 24 August 2015: This Day in Jewish History, 1943 ‘God Isn’t Dead, He’s Silent’: Simone Weil Dies, Very Young. http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/this-day-in-jewish-history/1.672507 See also: Susan Sontag’s review of Selected Essays by Simone Weil (translated by Richard Rees, Oxford University Press) in The New York Review of Books, 1 February 1963. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1963/02/01/simone-weil/ ↑
- Translated by Richard Rees (Oxford University Press, 1970). ↑
- A ‘Routledge Classic’. First published in 1952. ↑
- See, in particular, Forms of Prayer for Jewish Worship, Vol. 1, Shabbat and Daily Prayerbook (RSGB, London, 1977) and Vol. 3, Days of Awe (RSGB, London, 1985). ↑
- Rabbi Lionel Blue, Godly and Gay, 1981, pp. 6-7. ↑
- As of 2017, 17 LGBTQ+ rabbis have been ordained under Leo Baeck College auspices: Lionel Blue (1958), Sheila Shulman, Z”L (1989), Elli Tikvah Sarah (1989), Indigo Jonah Raphael [Melinda Michelson Carr] (1996), Alex Dukhovny (1999), Erlene Wahlhaus, Z”L (1999), Michael Pertz (2000), James Baaden (2001), Irit Shillor (2002), Shulamit Ambalu (2004), Judith Levitt (2009), David Mitchell (2009). Judith Rosen-Berry (2009) Anna Gerrard (2011) Rene Pfertzel (2014) Emily Jurman (2015), and Daniel Lichman (2017). A further 4 LGBTQ+ rabbis, ordained elsewhere, have served/serve the British Jewish community: Mark Solomon, Roderick Young, Ariel Friedlander, and Hillel Athias-Robles, who is now in New York. ↑
- http://www.twilightpeople.com/ ↑
- Zsa Zsa Gabor: 6 February 1917 – 18 December 2016; Lionel Blue: 6 February 1930 – 19 December 2016. ↑