GET THE LATEST AT FORWARD.COM 1 GET THE LATEST AT FORWARD.COM 2 Israel’s baseball team heads to Olympics with made-in-America talent By Louis Keene News In 2017, a ragtag bunch of Jewish minor leaguers, retired pros and semi-pros competing as Team Israel made a miracle run at the World Baseball Classic, winning its first six games and ultimately finishing in sixth place. They’ll be in Tokyo next month to prove it wasn’t a fluke — with a former all-star supplying reinforcement. The team competing for the Blue and White in this summer’s Olympic Games won’t have any household names, and because of the Major League Baseball rule barring active players from competing, the first-ever Israeli draft pick won’t play, either. They enter as a steep underdog playing against the best non- MLB players in the world. Asked why people should take Team Israel seriously, head coach Eric Holtz said with a laugh: “They shouldn’t.” “I’d rather they don’t,” said Holtz. “The same way they didn’t two years ago. I’d rather no one take us seriously and I’d rather no one give us a shot, and we’ll see where the chips fall.” Still, Team Israel’s chances of medaling in the tournament are pretty good for one big reason: only six teams are competing for three medals. And getting this far already indicates some prowess. Israel’s roster features a handful of Israeli natives but is mostly made up of American-born Jews who gained Israeli citizenship in the last two years while the team barnstormed through the Olympic qualifying rounds. Zack Raab, a Team Israel superfan who has attended all of the team’s games since its inauguration in 2012 — including exhibitions — says there’s another reason to like their odds. “What’s special about this team is they have built-up team chemistry that I don’t know if any other team will be able to match,” said Raab, who also runs the team store. “As soon as they get in the dugout, there’s already that innate chemistry that doesn’t click with the other countries.” That is partly due to roster continuity, Raab says, but also because of a Jewish connection that transcends national boundaries. Because of Olympic eligibility rules, the connection now extends to national identity as well. To play for Team Israel in the World Baseball Classic, a player only had to be eligible to become a citizen in that country. This was a recruiting strategy for the tournament — which is co-run by MLB — among whose goals was to build a baseball audience in new markets like the Netherlands, Australia, and Italy. (In other words, it would have been difficult to field a competitive baseball team from Italy without extending eligibility to non- citizens.) But the Olympics have rigid eligibility requirements: passport- holders only. Thus, every player on the team who was not already an Israeli citizen — that is, most of them — had to become one. Many of them, like former Cincinnati Reds left-handed pitcher Jon Moscot, stayed on their aliyah trip to tour the land, too. In the case of the team’s most decorated player, securing Olympic eligibility almost didn’t happen. Ian Kinsler, a 14-year pro who retired in 2019 with four all-star appearances, two Gold Gloves and 1,999 career hits to his name, was on one of the last flights out of Israel just before the pandemic hit. “We had to pull some strings, and it came down to the last minute,” said Frankie Sachs, Team Israel’s director of PR and social media. Kinsler and the former MLB journeyman who recruited him, Danny Valencia, will form the heart of the Team Israel lineup. It was Team Israel’s run at the 2017 World Baseball Classic, which included wins over South Korea, Cuba and the Netherlands, that got the group to buy in for the Olympics, Holtz said. A bid was far from guaranteed, but they made it look easy. Israel clinched a spot in the Games all the way back in September of 2019 — it became the first non-host team to qualify when it tore up its 12-team group in the Europe and Africa preliminaries in Germany. And by the time Team Israel suits up for the first of eight exhibition games next month, it will have been nearly two years since its last game. In the meantime, the team has been meeting regularly on Zoom throughout the pandemic to talk baseball or just catch up, Sachs said. Players have deepened their connections to each other and to their own Jewish identity by learning each other’s family histories. Even in a small pool, competition at the Games figures to be Israel’s baseball team heads to Olympics with made-in-America talent GET THE LATEST AT FORWARD.COM 3 fierce. The teams ranked first, second and third in the world — that’s Japan, the United States and South Korea, respectively — are in, as is fifth-ranked Mexico. Israel is 18th. Because MLB is prohibiting players on teams’ 40-man rosters from competing, ballyhooed Baltimore Orioles pitching prospect Dean Kremer won’t be making the trip to Tokyo. The rule will substantially weaken the American team, which Israel will face first in the tournament’s group stage. On the other hand, the Korean Baseball Organization and Japan’s Nippon Professional League — the top leagues in those countries — are both suspending their seasons during the Olympics to let stars suit up. “Some people don’t believe that chemistry matters in baseball,” Sachs said. “But there really is a spirit with these guys that you don’t see with every team. I do believe that makes them better.” Baseball in Israel is still in relative infancy, and training and playing facilities are far from ubiquitous — though they’ve certainly increased in number since the team’s Cinderella run — or do we call it an Esther run? — in 2017. But the team has never lacked belief, which can perhaps be described as borderline religious. (They donned yarmulkes for Hatikvah at the World Baseball Classic.) And while its mascot, the Mensch on the Bench, will not be making the trip to Tokyo — the player who brought the costume to the World Baseball Classic is not on the Olympic roster — representing the Jewish people on an international stage by qualifying for the tournament is a victory in itself, Sachs said. “There are guys who feel that they’re fighting a Jewish stereotype of the weak Jew, of the unathletic Jew,” said Sachs. “They want to show that Jews can be athletes and stars. And they’re fighting each one of them by being decent human beings.” Perhaps down the road, more of the players will be Israeli natives. For now, Team Israel will have to settle for just a couple of sabras garnishing a roster of yankees, and a head coach, Eric Holtz, who had his Bar Mitzvah at the Western Wall. Before Team Israel heads to Tokyo, it will be playing a round of exhibition games along the Eastern Seaboard, starting with a July 11 matchup with the FDNY team in Coney Island. Team Israel opens Olympic play on July 29. – Louis Keene is a staff reporter at the Forward. He can be reached at keene@forward.com or on Twitter @thislouis. How are Jewish summer camps talking about Israel? It’s complicated. By Rachel Hale News The Chalutzim program at Wisconsin’s Olin-Sang-Ruby Union Institute, the Reform summer camp known as OSRUI, is famous for its Israeli counselors, two hours of daily Hebrew class, and a “British Haganah” reenactment of emigrating to the land of Israel. This summer, Chalutzim will do Israeli dancing on Friday nights as always, but other aspects of the program, for 10th and 11th graders, will be adjusted to include more room for Arab-Israeli and Palestinian narratives. Counselors will use a variety of maps and resources from Americans for Peace Now, which tracks Israeli settlements in the West Bank. A new program called “Hearing Palestinian Voices” will feature texts and music from the rapper Tamer Nafar. Other sessions will shift outward from the Ashkenazi experience to hear more from Jews around the world, such as the Beta Israel community of Ethiopian Jews. “My goal is for the conversation around Israel and Zionism to have more nuance,” explained Alli Torf, a recent graduate of the University of Illinois who has headed the program’s makeover. “I think it’s super important to talk about Israel in a really wonderful light but in a really realistic light. If camp doesn’t mean you must be pro-Israel at all times, then it’s a safer space for everyone there.” This month, the Reform movement’s Eisner Camp alumni caused a stir by sharing a petition signed by more than 300 people urging for “more realistic” conversation. It called on staff to include “a full spectrum of voices that accurately represent and delve into the diversity of the region” and to “avoid glorification of the Israeli Defense Force and state- sanctioned violence in Israel-centered programming and conversation.” “I think these people feel that they weren’t presented with both sides of what’s happening in Israel, and that as a Reform Jew you don’t have to be 100% pro-Israel in order to be a good Jew,” said Marlene Lewis, an Eisner alum and parent. “I think they feel that a place like Eisner, which is typically a very open and liberal place, on this subject is teaching things from one side.” Camp is one of the main places that American Jews develop ideas about and relationships to Israel. A 2011 study found that Jews who went to camp were 55% more likely to Israel’s baseball team heads to Olympics with made-in-America talent GET THE LATEST AT FORWARD.COM 4 “feel very emotionally attached to Israel” than those who did not. And the Foundation for Jewish Camp says enrollment in overnight camp has risen in recent years: 80,718 kids attended in 2019, up more than 20% from 66,847 campers in 2009. But there is also a growing generational divide over how American Jews think about Israel. The 2021 Pew Research survey of American Jews found younger adults were less attached to Israel, with 71% of Jews ages 18-29 saying that caring about Israel is important to their Judaism on some level, compared to the 89% of Jews over 65 who felt it important. Yonah Lieberman, co-founder of the group IfNotNow, which was started out of a backlash against what members see as Jewish institutions’ one-sided education about Israel, said that camps are a key part of the problem. “Camps are really failing another generation of American Jews by not telling them the truth about what Israel is doing to the Palestinian people,” said Lieberman, who attended a Zionist camp, Habonin Dror, growing up. “The people who are running the camps, the directors and the staff and the boards, are of one generation, and the people who are the counselors and the campers are of another generation,” he added. “The folks who are making final decisions have a pretty outdated view about what is legitimate education and information to include in Israel education.” Israel education remains unchanged at some camps Camp Young Judaea in Amherst, N.H., is the oldest Zionist camp in the country. Founded in 1939 to encourage aliyah, the camp raised money for what was then known as Palestine, and gun parts were even buried on camp grounds to be shipped to Israel. Hundreds of Israeli scouts have spent summers at Young Judaea, including Yonatan Netanyahu, the war-hero older brother of former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “The original logo at the camp said ‘Americanism, Zionism, Judaism,’’ Marcy Kornreich, the camp director, said in an interview. “You can’t unintertwine our relationship in terms of the Zionist movement with the history of the camp. Our commitment to Israel is really central and core to everything we believe in.” Unlike OSRUI, Camp Young Judaea is not aligned with a denomination of Judaism, making Israel the camp’s core unifying factor among Jews of different backgrounds. (It is also not connected to the national youth movement and other camps with the same name.) Israel programming includes dancing, cooking, history lessons and entertainment. And they don’t plan on changing anything this summer. “It’s everything from getting familiar with Israeli culture to some Israeli history to using Hebrew in our program — we really want to build a sense of ahavat yisrael ,” said Ben Einsidler, the camp’s Judaica director, using the Hebrew term for love of Israel. “There are kids at CYJ that run the gamut in terms of their religious observance, so we want to engender a love of Israel that is personal to everyone on that spectrum.” Chabad-Lubavitch’s network of 500 Camp Gan Israel programs in North America, meanwhile, works to foster a connection to Israel based in the Torah. Gan Israel is mainly a day-camp program, but last year started a short sleep-away session in Florida, and aims to have 10 overnight camps by 2030; like other Chabad initiatives, the camps are run by Orthodox Jews but serve mostly unaffiliated ones. Along with typical activities like archery and painting, campers make “salt paintings” of historical sites like the Kotel, learn about the seven species of the land of Israel mentioned in the Torah via a “Master Chef”-style competition and write letters of support to Israeli soldiers. “We believe in teaching the children about the historical and traditional connection the Jewish people have to the land of Israel,” Rabbi Mendy Kotlarsky of Chabad said in an interview. “It’s about teaching them that this is the land of our ancestors, a holy land that is tied to the spirit of the Jewish people.” Kotlarsky said many of the Chabad campers are “kids who feel alone in public schools” as Jews, and that “camp experiences really empower them” to push back when they are picked on. “The more unpopular it becomes to stand up for Israel,” he added, “the more we dig our heels in and back it up.” There’s a generational divide over how to talk about Israel The discussions about Israel occurring within cabins and camp- directors’ Courtesy of Eliana Fishman How are Jewish summer camps talking about Israel? It’s complicated. GET THE LATEST AT FORWARD.COM 5 offices mirror those happening in Jewish spaces across the country: during the May flareup between Israel and Hamas, discourse in synagogues, Jewish organizations, the halls of Congress and, most profoundly, on social-media showed a significant shift since the summer-long Israel-Gaza war in 2014. Rabbi Josh Weinberg of the Union for Reform Judaism said he has noticed, in recent years, an increase in younger campers asking thoughtful questions about Israel. “I think that we have to be able to engineer a conversation that has varying levels of sophistication, based on who the audience is,” Weinberg said. “We want to instill a love and a connection to Israel and to Jewish peoplehood. And that means that it’s OK to have a disco party and rock out to Israeli techno music and do Israeli dancing without also mentioning the occupation in one breath. “What I want,” he added, “is for kids to be inspired and then to, whenever it comes up in their summer or in their life, go to Israel and spend significant time there.” Kornreich and Einsidler, of the staunchly Zionist Camp Young Judaea, also acknowledged that older campers and staff have asked harder questions about Israel and the occupation in recent years, and emphasized the importance of allowing for complex conversations. They hope to use the summer to discuss this spring’s tension in Gaza and to break down the recent election to explain the Israeli Knesset and ins and outs of the nation’s political system. “Obviously, when it’s the elephant in the room, we should talk about it,” Einsidler said. “But the important part when talking about it is presenting truthful unbiased information as best we can. And if that includes naming some uncomfortable things around what Israel does as far as it treats Palestinians, or some of the realities of the conflict over the last several months, I think there’s no reason to shy away from that if we’re doing it in an age-appropriate manner as best we can.” Camp alumni have shaken up the conversation The March 2018 meeting of Ramah alumni and directors offers a window into the complexity. Some alumni left the meeting, which followed protests outside Ramah offices by IfNotNow, under the impression that the camps would talk about the occupation that summer. But afterward, individual camps like Ramah Wisconsin posted messages on their Facebook pages declaring that they had “made no changes in our approaches to Israel education” and Ramah’s national director, Rabbi Mitchell Cohen, released a statement rejecting any suggestion that IfNotNow and Ramah were working together. “Ramah will not partner with any organization that is not unequivocally pro-Israel,” Rabbi Cohen said in an email to supporters and Jewish communal leaders. “Zionism is one of our core educational pillars, and always will be.” Three years later, as he prepares for this summer’s campers, Cohen said Ramah’s stance remained unchanged. With 10,000 young people enrolled at 15 Ramah camps across the United States, Canada and Israel, he said one of the organization’s goals is to help campers understand and actively fight against a surge of anti-Israel and antisemitic threats. “When it comes to governmental policy toward Arab neighbors, or toward Palestinian rights and coexistence, or religious pluralism, or many other potentially divisive topics, our community is learning about history and current events from a variety of perspectives,” Cohen said in an email interview. “One of the wonderful aspects of a Ramah summer is that teen campers and young adult staff members can disagree respectfully and learn from others, keeping an open mind on controversial issues,” he added. “One method of Israel education employed by most of our camps is simulation activities, where campers are assigned roles and are taught different perspectives. Another method is active debate, where all questions are valued and encouraged.” But Eliana Fishman, one of the alumni at the 2018 meeting with Cohen, said that her 10 summers at Ramah camps in Nyack, N.Y., and the Berkshires did not provide room for such active debate, instead describing the experience as indoctrination to Zionism. “There was no discussion about the occupation; it was very heavy handed hasbara ,” she said, using a Hebrew word for propaganda. “There were certainly no Palestinian voices included, and really minimal left-leaning voices at all.” Fishman, who now works in progressive data and lobbies for change with IfNotNow, said “there’s real harm that camps like Ramah do,” by encouraging campers to make aliyah, and join the Israel Defense Forces, without really understanding “who they were fighting against or about some of the values that Zionism upholds that are actually problematic.” At OSRUI, millennial alumni affiliated with IfNotNow were also involved in pushing for change. Rachel Brustein, a camper and counselor at OSRUI from 2008 to 2014, is part of the alumni group calling for more nuanced programming. The demands outlined by the OSRUI anti-occupation alumni group include to “teach about the occupation, eliminate programming that glorifies military violence and celebrate the complexity of Jewish identity and heritage, beyond just the U.S. and Israel.” Brustein said she is under no illusion that “teaching about the How are Jewish summer camps talking about Israel? It’s complicated. GET THE LATEST AT FORWARD.COM 6 occupation in Jewish summer camp is directly going to end the occupation,” but thinks that it can “create a culture of humanizing Palestinians in the Jewish community, which is extremely critical.” “I think a lot of Jewish kids who grow up in summer camps and Zionist Jewish institutions get to college and don’t have the language to talk about it,” Brustein said.“Not giving the whole story is a major disservice and contributes to this framing that anti- or non-Zionism equals antisemitism, which just isn’t true.” Pearl Steinhouse, who is 16 and will be in OSRUI’s Chalutzim program this summer, said she is looking forward to open discussion about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at camp after weeks of toxic, one-sided posts on Instagram and TikTok. “On social media I feel like I’ve kind of stayed out of the conversation because I feel like I don’t really know enough of both sides to know where I stand, and it’s been a bit overwhelming,” Steinhouse said. “I think being honest and being transparent about what you know and what you maybe don’t know is important in a place like camp where people can fill in those gaps for you and help you help you learn without there being that judgment.” – Rachel Hale is a news intern at the Forward. Email her at hale@forward.com or follow her on Twitter @Rachelhale32 . We’re here, we’re queer, we’re Yiddish: LGBTQ stories, and silences, in the Forward archives By Chana Pollack Culture It’s traditional for the gay community to gather for brunch before a Pride march during Pride month, or nachas khoydesh in Yiddish. Today, we propose instead a forshpayz , an appetizer-sized portion of queer archival Forverts history — rare treasures celebrating LGBTQ dignity, visibility and equality: our first archival Pride march back in time. For me, it’s a march that’s deeply meaningful — and also fraught. As a young Jewish lesbian, I came out in the 1980s to the beat of the second National March on DC for LGBTQ rights, and the massive NAMES project quilt celebrating the lives of those lost to the AIDS pandemic. I lived on San Francisco’s gayest Castro Street, in a communal apartment above the Castro Street Station, one of many popular gay bars that were community gathering spots, especially on Friday nights. I fell asleep to the bar’s throbbing disco beat below my futon, my head beneath a Jewish poster about AIDS that spoke of vast complicit silences and histories lost to shame. “Who will say kaddish for me?” it asked, referring to those dying of AIDS who were refused Jewish pastoral care on even the most basic level. It also spoke to those of us who couldn’t hope to ever bring our whole gay selves, let alone our partners, home to the mishpokhe As a Jewish feminist lesbian from a Modern Orthodox background, I completely identified. In my two decades as the Forward’s archivist, I’ve gone searching for historical coverage of the LGBTQ community. Despite the paper’s reputation as the “address of the Jewish people,” and rumors that one of the Sunday illustrated issue’s editors himself was gay, queer Jewish lives were only infrequently featured on our pages. They’re not likely to be found chronicled in any of our sepia-toned images or our captions about shtetl life, and they’re officially missing from photos and stories of family circle get-togethers and obituaries. To donate online visit Forward.com/donate To donate by phone, call Call 212-453-9454 The Forward is the most significant Jewish voice in American journalism. Our outstanding reporting on cultural, social, and political issues inspires readers of all ages and animates conversation across generations. Your support enables our critical work and contributes to a vibrant, connected global Jewish community. The Forward is a nonprofit association and is supported by the contributions of its readers. Create a Future for Courageous Jewish Journalism How are Jewish summer camps talking about Israel? It’s complicated. GET THE LATEST AT FORWARD.COM 7 If they’re mentioned at all in the Forward’s century of serialized fiction, news reporting, beloved Bintel Brief advice column and proud social justice and labor updates, it’s likely deeply coded to the heteronormative public eye. But while the Forward wasn’t in the habit of hyping queer Yiddish nachas on our pages, there were moments when it broke through. Perusing the Forward’s front page over half a century ago, for instance, you’d have met the Westons, a trans man and his new cisgender wife featured on our front page on their happy wedding day back in 1936. The rest of the Forward’s front page that day detailed a summer of hate, dominated by the fascists of Berlin’s Olympics and Spain’s civil war. A unique, upbeat article about British “lady athlete” Mark Weston’s gender confirmation surgery was counterintuitive. But right in the center of that front page, we reported that Weston’s surgeon certified his male gender so he could legally wed Alberta Brey, his longtime cis-gender female companion. Mazels ! The Forward’s archive reminds me, a queer Yiddish archivist, of poet Marge Piercy’s description of poems as being made of sounds and silences. Our archives echo with vanished histories. The presence of a story like Weston’s highlights the absence of so many others. One hopes that for every archival silence, there are images like those of popular Yiddish entertainer Pepi Littmann to make up for the silences. Back in 2003, I discovered her charming, ballsy, gender non- conforming drag king outfits. It was a find that helped grease the wheels of queer Yiddish discoveries to come in the creaky archival Forward photo file drawers. Littmann’s butch glamour is a critical chapter in the story of queer liberation in the archives — and on the streets. Archival images of her dandified early 20th-century archival outfits show her adopting characters like “the innocent bachelor,” in a three-piece suit, or “the yeshiva boy,” in which she appears bashful in a traditional Hasidic long silk frock and black velvet cap. Now, she’s catalogued in our archive using inclusive search terms, so future researchers of queer Yiddish culture can uncover her — and her impeccably tailored suits. And her modern revival in the public eye has proved popular enough Forward archivist Chana Pollack. Courtesy of Forward Association We’re here, we’re queer, we’re Yiddish: LGBTQ stories, and silences, in the Forward archives Mark Weston, a transgender athlete, and his new wife Alberta Brey appeared on the Forward’s front page in 1936. Courtesy of Forward Association. GET THE LATEST AT FORWARD.COM 8 that her story will soon be featured in a motion picture — who could resist the too-long untold story of a bawdy Yiddish entertainer and drag king? Yet the living of a closeted queer life is a solitary act. That holds true even for those queer Jews who, like Jerome Robbins, were fully in the public eye. Robbins was hauled before the 1953 House Un-American Affairs Committee years before queer folks protested for our rights at the Cooper Do-Nut Cafe uprising in Los Angeles, and a decade prior to the famous Stonewall riot, both of which cracked the public door open to the range of queer identities. While the HUAC hearings with Robbins at the center made our front page, it was years before we presented Jerome Robbins to the public as Jewish and queer — let alone began to tell the story of how the threat of being publicly outed led him to name names, an act that overshadowed the rest of his career. It was in his most public moment that he was, perhaps, most alone. LGBTQ archival research can mirror that solitariness. It’s a lonely task, searching out those who were made to be invisible. But while I’m considered a “lone arranger” in the Forward’s archives, a solitary comrade, I’ve been greatly helped over the years by several volunteers committed to inclusionary archival practices. Just as historically queer folks drew hope from the musical theatre anthem popularized by our queen Barbra Streisand, “You’ll never walk alone,” It’s been a mazel in my work to have had Arlene Bronstein and Rivke Lela Reid, two longtime archive volunteers, join me. Together we uncovered many of those who were hidden in plain sight, all the while surrounded by the historic happiness, relationships, joys, nachas and the fully disclosed lives of others. Those untold stories remind us that poet Emma Lazarus’s words on liberty, heard at many Pride rallies, still ring true: “Until we are all free, we are none of us free.” Freedom was clearly on founding editor Abe Cahan’s mind one June morning in 1882, when he made notes about his chosen city New York. Several years before the Statue of Liberty even entered our harbor, and a mere few years after he escaped political arrest in Europe, he wrote in his memoirs of his joy at observing the town’s diversity. He noted the Irish, Italian, German, French and Jewish workers jostling for work, and the cafes open for business at various street corners on the Lower East Side. “New York,” he concluded, “was always changing.“ A little over a decade later, in 1897, his Forward was first published — coming out, you could say, into that continually transitioning metropolis. Decades later, as he returned from Mandatory Palestine in 1925, he appointed his secretary, confirmed bachelor and Yiddish poet Morris “Winnie” Winograd, as editor of the paper’s illustrated Sunday edition, the historic source of our archival images. Winograd, an elder colleague once told me, lived alone in a midtown hotel and frequently accompanied Anna Cahan, the boss’s wife, to the theatre. He was, that colleague believed, most likely gay. When Winograd died in 1973, I.B. Singer, the Forward’s Nobel Prize winning writer, eulogized him, noting, among other things, his psychic abilities; Singer later dedicated his collection of short stories “Crown of Feathers” to Winograd, We’re here, we’re queer, we’re Yiddish: LGBTQ stories, and silences, in the Forward archives Yiddish entertainer and drag king Pepi Littman (left). A Forward front page recounts Jerome Robbins’ testimony in from of HUAC (center). Morris Winograd, a onetime editor of the Forward (right). Courtesy of Forward Association. GET THE LATEST AT FORWARD.COM 9 himself the author of one published book of Yiddish poetry, “Dance, Song and Pain.” He left his gold watch to Cahan’s last secretary, Winograd’s best friend,Vera Hannenberg. The idea of the stories he was never able to tell — especially not in the pages of the Forverts — is haunting. The freylekhe folk , Jewish queers, in our archival files predate the existence of Pride. They brim with secretive knowledge about feygelekh and butchniks . They sometimes occupied transparent closets that those around them saw into — just as my colleague suspected Winograd’s carefully hidden life — but nobody celebrated those closet doors opening. And despite the rights gained since Winograd’s days, these types of stories still circulate in Yiddishland today, speaking to ongoing secrets and hidden lives. There’s the one about the beloved Yiddish teacher whose lover remained invisible, their relationship unacknowledged, and who died an assumed bachelor in part because he could not bring himself to come out to his Yiddish community. Or the one about the beloved Yiddish lesbian activist publisher whose death some queer Yiddishists grieved in whispers, never publicly mourning, nor comforting her life-long partner. And there’s the one about the first out queer leader of a Yiddish youth organization, who suggested the group’s pamphlet should include outreach to LGBTQ folks for the group’s annual summer retreat, a suggestion that was quickly put down. Or the warm Yiddish editor who thought it was clever to analogize the first Pride march in Jerusalem to celebrating garbage spilling out onto the city’s streets. It’s in returning to moments like those I recall that 12-step recovery phrase: “We shall not regret the past, but neither shall we shut the door on it.” Without ongoing real commitments to inclusion, without a queer eye on our Yiddish archives, those stories and those lives are likely to remain unseen or, worse, be yanked back into everpresent closets. Whatever has been achieved can be clawed back. So: join me in reclaiming the archival nachas that is Jewish lesbian and athletic treasure Helen Hull Jacobs, world champion tennis star and 10-time grand slam title winner. Jacobs defined pride decades ago by defying Wimbeldon’s sexist clothing rules requiring women athletes to appear only in their approved tennis skirts. As early as 1933, when being openly queer was life-threatening, Jacobs filled in the silence merely by expressing her true butch Jewish lesbian self on the courts of Wimbledon. Reader: she wore short pants, tailored for men! She went on to become a Navy commander during World War II, one of only five female Navy commanders at the time. Retired and relatively uncloseted for her time, Helen retired to East Hampton, where she authored several novels and tennis books. The beautiful, fearless life of Jewish butch lesbian Helen Hull Jacobs, has the capacity to make you feel, in the words of gay icon Sylvester, “mighty real.” Shehecheyanu! And thank goodness for the stories we have from the stunning Yiddish theatre star David Carey, son of Leyke Post, a famous Yiddish actress who had the nachas of mothering not one, but two queer Yiddishists. Thanks to Carey’s sibling Henry “Henech” Carrey’s big heart and his family archive, we’ve learned of Carey’s struggles with his queer Jewish identity, his lovers, the various synagogues he joined and then unjoined, his side gigs at the Workers Circle’s summer retreats, his time running his partner Tsiyon’s kosher Morrocan restaurant on Bleecker Street, and even his unbearably tight jeans — in short, his gorgeous, full life. Until, that is, his tragic death in 1985 at the age of 43 from AIDS. Only a few years after Carey’s loss, in 1989, Yiddishist queers began marching to the beat of the openly queer Yiddishist musicians The Klezmatics, who translated the activist group Act Up’s logo “Silence=Death” into the Yiddish “ Shvaygn=Toyt .” Powered by so much loss and so few rights, Yiddishist queers sought each other out and marched under our own banner at Pride. We began to bring our stories proudly into the open. But there are still silences to be filled in, stories to complete and justice to be achieved in the Yiddish archives. Reader,we’re here, we’re queer, and we’ve always been Yiddish. – Chana Pollack is the Forward's archivist. Courtesy of Forward Association We’re here, we’re queer, we’re Yiddish: LGBTQ stories, and silences, in the Forward archives Helen Hull Jacobs, a 10-time grand slan title-winning tennis player. Courtesy of Forward Association. GET THE LATEST AT FORWARD.COM 10 A requiem for the backyard minyan By Louis Keene Culture On the other side of the old wood fence in the rear of my parents’ Los Angeles backyard I could hear a young man reading from the Torah, and people reciting kaddish, and everything else that distinguished an authentic prayer service from the solitary ritual I’d grown accustomed to since the stores ran out of paper towels. I had never met the neighbors, I realized, as my father and I ducked under an apple tree to get within earshot with our prayer books. But for a Shabbat afternoon service on that waning summer day, we were congregants of their pandemic synagogue — a minyan in their backyard. Shortly after the novel coronavirus made landfall in American Jewish communities in March 2020, synagogues across the country closed, first as a precaution and then under state and federal mandates. This posed a nigh-existential crisis for Orthodox Jews: without a quorum of 10 men, many of the prayer services’ defining features, the Torah reading and kaddish among them, cannot be performed. The desperate scramble for a 10th Jewish male — a common sight outside shuls in early evening, but also on flights to Israel or during Jewish community night at the ballpark — had become a community- wide state of mind. “Have you ever gone for a sleepover at a friend’s house, and forgotten your toothbrush?” asked the neighbor, Nir Yacoby, who invited me into his home Sunday, a year or so later. (Neither of us were wearing masks.) “For us to not have a minyan is to have to go to sleep without brushing our teeth. It feels yucky.” So with houses of worship closed indefinitely, people took to the outdoors, first forming impromptu sidewalk prayer groups that were organized via word of mouth, in defiance of county health regulations and rabbinic instruction. (At first, most rabbis were forbidding even outdoor prayer gatherings, so as not to create an appearance of skirting the law.) But when the limits on group gatherings were loosened to 10 or more, synagogues began organizing services in their members’ backyards. There, for about nine months spanning from last summer until this spring, were countless sanctuaries under the sun. Emerging in the face of a pandemic that has claimed the lives of at least 1,800 Jewish people around the world, the outdoor minyan became a symbol of Jewish resourcefulness and resilience, a holdover from easier times adapted to our tenuous new reality. All Yacoby had to do to make his yard minyan-ready was drill a small hole in the roof of his garage so that he could hang a blue tarp overhead for shade. Other hosts went to greater lengths. Joe Stoltz, a member of Fairfax-area congregation Kehilas Yaakov, rented tents for his shul-affiliated backyard High Holiday services, which he said cost about $1,000. Michael Borkow, who hosted a minyan in Beverlywood for members of Knesset Israel, built a short wall to function as a mechitza. Then there was the matter of how to seat as many people as possible with sufficient space between them. A backyard Rosh Hashana service I attended at the home of Rich and Wendy Kellner was situated around a swimming pool. (No one fell in.)“It was a math problem trying to set it up,” said Borkow, whose yard was able to accommodate up to 25, though he didn’t always get that many. “It made me feel as if my backyard was bigger than I thought it was.” Even with a minyan, services were but a quirky, abridged approximation of the old ritual. There was no singing, no sermon, and no kiddush. No women (or almost none). No chatter. The Torah reading was a one-man marathon: instead of eight men called one at a time to bless the Torah, at most backyard services the ba’al korei (the person reading) would recite each blessing — and do the ceremonial lifting and wrapping of the scroll afterward. Still, the important things were there: not just Torah reading and kaddish, but common purpose and a sense of community. For the lay congregants who found themselves thrust into the role of the shamash — the trusty caretaker who turns on the lights in the mornings and locks up in the evening — there were perks to the gig. A few said hosting the Sefer Torah around the clock was a high honor. For the Yacoby family, it felt like divine protection, too. When riots briefly swept Los Angeles last summer in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests, Adrian Yacoby, Nir’s wife, found By Eyal Leghaie A requiem for the backyard minyan GET THE LATEST AT FORWARD.COM 11 herself ducking into their garage to draw spiritual comfort from the Torah scroll. “That was the biggest reassurance of my life,” she said. On the matter of spiritual connection, the backyard could be a double-edged sword. Some liked being in nature (in Los Angeles, nature is a 10-foot hedge). But it could be hard to hear, especially over the occasional leaf blower next door. And even in a typically dry, sunny year, the elements posed a challenge on one or two occasions. Everyone I spoke to recalled the “one week it was really windy,” sometime in February. Jeff Marcus, a member of Young Israel of Century City — “I couldn’t say no to my rabbi,” he said with a laugh — had about 15 popup tents in his backyard. (His biggest crowd was 54.) “One of the tents flipped over in the middle of davening,” Marcus said. “You look around and everyone is hugging a pole and davening. I’m like, this is what you do. So we literally stood there holding the tents and we got through davening.” People also noticed a heightened resolve, an urgency to keep alive a tradition they had long taken for granted. Synagogues with membership in the hundreds were scraping to make 10 on some nights. But they almost always managed. Said Hugo Rose, who hosted a minyan partly so he could say kaddish for a late parent, “People felt more ownership. Everyone