THE FORWARD
by Anthony Weiss
October 13, 2014
Sea Change Toward Accepting LGBT People in Movement
Gil Steinlauf, a nationally prominent Conservative rabbi, made headlines this month when he announced to his large Washington, D.C., synagogue that he is gay, and that he and his wife of 20 years would divorce. As surprised as his congregants at Adas Israel may have been by the news, it was Steinlauf, the congregation’s senior rabbi, who found himself stunned by the response to it.
“There’s been so much positive energy from the congregation, and I’m getting a constant flood of emails, calls, texts and Facebook expressing every positive sentiment you could imagine,” Steinlauf told JTA. In fact, Steinlauf and some of his congregants said the response within the congregation has been exclusively positive, including a supportive letter from the synagogue’s president, Arnie Podgorsky.
Posts on Steinlauf’s Facebook page have come from as far as Israel and South Africa, and have included posts from Conservative movement officials. “Overnight you have also become a role model to LGBT Jews everywhere, in particular within the Conservative Movement,” wrote Aimee Close, the transformation specialist for the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the movement’s congregational arm…..
ArchitectGuy on Israel 