ABSTRACT
who are we and where are we headed as twenty-first century queer Jews? I am anything but certain. In this fragmentary political memoir, I wish to explore this uncertainty and demonstrate the importance of working with our memories of alienation and remembering our experiences of estrangement. I hope this work might somehow reflect and inform diverse efforts to integrate queer and Jewish identities, to work creatively with personal and political history, and to build enduring, warm, vibrant, and viable communities and relationships. In particular, I’d like to raise some disquieting questions and practical/political concerns posed by endorsing same-sex unions (as affirmed by the CCAR, the Central Conference of American Rabbis) as a contemporary model for queer Jewish community development and identity integration. I argue against exclusively assimilationist or isolationist strategies in advocating diverse queer participation and ongoing struggle in mainstream Jewish life.
