DUIN: A prayer book for gay Jews

[Shana A]

DUIN: A prayer book for gay Jews

By Julia Duin

http://washingtontimes.com/news/2010/feb/11/a-prayer-book-for-gay-jews/

Not long ago, "Siddur B'chol L'vavcha," a prayer book (siddur) for gay Jews, arrived at my office. The blue cloth volume had its start in 1981 as a collection of typewritten pages with Hebrew lettering cut and pasted between the English text. It grew out of the life of Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, an 800-member gay synagogue near Manhattan's Chelsea district.

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In this paradigm, even gender is not a given. God is referred to as both male and female, and verses from the Song of Songs (the Bible's one erotic book) are cited with the "understanding not only that sexual orientation may shift over the course of one's lifetime but also that the gender identity of one's partner or one's own gender identity might shift."