LGBT Conference in the state religious schools
About 50 yeshiva and ulpana principals from the State-Religious school system attend a conference that deals with issues related to the gay community.
In the event, which was held in Tel Aviv, the attendees listened to personal stories, experiences with the difficulties of sexual identity and held an "open conversation from the heart of the debate."
The conference was attended by some 50 principals of yeshivas and ulpanot from the State-Religious schools in the Jerusalem district. The seminar dealt with sexual identity under the title: The other is also a creation of the same Creator.
The meeting was supposed to take place at the Gay Center in Meir Park, but was eventually moved to a neutral location. "You have to know what to fight for," said a source in the gay community.
Rabbi Avraham Lifshitz, director of the State-Religious Department, told Ynet: "The State-Religious education system aims to teach values, Torah, and Zionism. Alongside these values, we are also working to strengthen public religious education, and in doing so, to provide a response to its populations. In issues of identity as well, it is important to us that the educators of the State-Religious schools learn and recognize the reality in which we live, listen attentively and know how to provide the right educational solutions that are suitable for our students."
Tel Aviv city councilor member Itay Pinkas Arad, who serves as chairman of the gay center in Tel Aviv, opened the event: "The unique conference held today was of the highest level of professionalism I have encountered. The very existence of this status—under state sponsorship —attests to the great distance that the national-religious sector is undergoing in relation to the LGBT community…
"Clearly, we do not agree on everything, but the very ability to conduct a dialogue in a respectful and sensitive manner is to the credit of the organizers and the participants. I hold quite a few lectures and meetings pertaining to the community, I admit that the meeting today was probably the most touching for me personally, since it specifically encapsulates the saying that every person was created in His image."
After praying Mincha (Jewish afternoon prayer service) and having lunch, the participants met with LGBT youth, graduates of the state religious school system, and heard their stories, including speaking about the concept of 'conversion treatments' and the dangers involved in it.
Adir Ben Tovim, the director of Here—Israeli Information Workshop project and one of the organizers of the meeting, who studied at the hesder yeshiva in Maalot (a yeshiva that combines advanced Talmudic studies with military service in the IDF) and came out of the closet, said excitedly: "It was just crazy. Fifty rabbis, principals of institutions from the State-Religious system, congregated for a seminar on issues of sexual identity. They called us to talk to them and the main message I conveyed to them is that educators have to be careful not to make human sacrifices while maintaining their ideology."
Ben Tovim noted that he met a principal who admitted that he had a student who "cuts his veins out of frustration on the subject, and he himself is in a dilemma about what to say and how to guide him on the right path." Galit Yitzhaki-Dreizan, an organizer of the meeting, said at the end: "It was an important event, it was very exciting."
(Translated and edited by N. Elias)
