Lesbian speaks on her role as a Jew

Rabbi Rebecca Alpert has a lofty goal: to change the role lesbians play in Jewish society. The Bisexual Gay Lesbian Transgender Awareness Days 1998 -- or B-GLAD -- brought the author, activist, teacher and spiritual leader to campus Tuesday night. Alpert, one of the first women to be ordained a rabbi while openly asserting her identity as a lesbian, addressed an audience of 15 people in Houston Hall. A Temple University professor and co-director of the school's women's studies program, Alpert explained that the title of her latest book, Like Bread on the Seder Plate, is a simile for the place of lesbianism in Jewish tradition. "To place bread on a seder plate is like a lesbian coming out in Jewish society," Alpert explained. According to Jewish tradition, only unleavened bread, or matzoh, may be eaten during Passover, the eight-day holiday during which two seders -- or ceremonial dinners -- take place. The seder plate contains several traditional foods, including matzoh, symbolic of the plight of the Jews in Egypt. Alpert said lesbians face a struggle to find their place within Judaism. "Jewish lesbians have work to do to bring themselves back into the Jewish tradition," she said. Albert described the "silence" of Jewish lesbians. Gays and lesbians are lumped together in Jewish society, she said, making lesbians as individual entities invisible. In order to combat this "silence," lesbians must "begin a process to become more visible by putting themselves back into Jewish life," Alpert explained. Lesbians are more accepted among secular Jews than by religious Jews, according to Alpert. "Modern women need to look at how lesbians have been left out of Jewish tradition and start to incorporate lesbian heroes into that tradition," Alpert said. Alpert began her own crusade for reform within the Jewish community in the early 1980s. She graduated from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia in 1976. She became a rabbi before coming out as a lesbian, and used her position as a rabbi to deal with the fact that her attraction to women is not accepted in Jewish tradition. In addition to having published articles on women in religion, Jewish medical and social ethics and gay and lesbian politics, Alpert is co-author of Exploring Judaism: A Reconstructionist Approach and is currently working with two other lesbian rabbis on The First Generation of Lesbian Rabbis. In her role as a rabbi, Alpert said she performs "commitment ceremonies" to join both gays and lesbians, but "will not do any heterosexual marriages until gay and lesbian marriage is legalized." College sophomore Laurie Eichenbaum -- who is active on the B-GLAD committee and is a co-organizer of the Jewish-Bisexual Gay and Lesbian group -- described Alpert as a "wonderful speaker." "I read her book and I am very glad she came," said Eichenbaum, who plans to become a rabbi. Alpert responded enthusiastically when informed of Eichenbaum's career goal. "Don't at all be discouraged," Alpert told her. "You don't have to be like everyone else. Jewish lesbians have lessons to teach about family and friendships, and I encourage young people to take part in ending the silence of lesbians in the Jewish tradition."