Tag Archives: Congregation Beth El Binah

Beth El Binah landscapes Legacy

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Members of Congregation Beth El Binah and the Jewish Federation at Legacy Founders Cottage (photo by Barbara Rosenberg)

On Sunday,  Oct. 30, members of Congregation Beth El Binah participated in Mitzvah Day to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Jewish Federation of Dallas. About a dozen members spent the afternoon working at Legacy Founders Cottage. While the men planted flowers, the women did cement work on the garden path to prevent wheelchairs from getting stuck in the cracks between the paving stones.

Legacy Founders Cottage is part of Legacy Counseling Center and is a residential hospice in Oak Cliff for people with AIDS.

Other Beth El Binah members worked on the Dallas Holocaust Museum‘s memorial garden in downtown Dallas located behind the Sixth Floor Museum. Another group did pumpkin carving at Chai House, a residence for adults with cognitive disabilities.

Dozens of projects were planned throughout the city to celebrate the anniversary. Beth El Binah member Sandy Horwitz, who served on the federation’s planning committee, said that the group that worked at Legacy planned to make the project an annual event.

—  David Taffet

Gay exhibit installed at Dallas Holocaust Museum

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From one of the crates

Last night, the exhibit Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals 1933-1945 arrived from the U.S. Holocaust Museum in 13 crates each weighing 300 pounds. The exhibit opens at the Dallas Holocaust Museum on Friday — in time for LGBT Pride Month.

A group of about 10 volunteers from exhibit sponsors Texas Instruments and Congregation Beth El Binah unloaded the exhibit along with museum staff and moved it from the loading area into the museum’s temporary exhibition area.

The exhibit documents the approximately 100,000 gay men and several thousand lesbians who were arrested in Nazi Germany under Paragraph 175. That was the law dating from the 1880s making homosexuality illegal. The punishment was two years in prison.

But under the Nazi regime, those in prison were transferred to concentration camps. Thousands more were arrested and sent to brutal work camps to die. Few survived.

After the war, when others were released from concentration camps, those gays who did survive were sent to prison to complete their sentences. Homosexuality was still considered a crime. Time served in a concentration camp was not considered toward prison time.

Paragraph 175 wasn’t rescinded until 1994 and those who served sentences under the law were not pardoned until 2002.

Dallas Voice is the media sponsor of the exhibit.

The exhibit opens Friday, June 3 at Dallas Holocaust Museum, 211 N. Record St. at West End Station in Downtown Dallas. Mon.-Fri. 9:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Sat.-Sun, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. through Sept. 5. Admission $8 includes audio guide to the permanent exhibit.

—  David Taffet

LGBT community loses an ally

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Rabbi Jake

When I hear about religious people being put on trial, as in the case of Rev. Jane Spahr, or religious schools rejecting children because their parents are gay or lesbian, it makes the death last week of Rabbi Lawrence Jackofsky so much sadder because we need religious allies.

Rabbi Jake was the director of the Southwest Council of the Union for Reform Judaism. His office was in Dallas and he was always on the side of the LGBT community.

Rabbi Jake helped Congregation Beth El Binah become a member of the Union for Reform Judaism. His only change in the temple’s bylaws was wording of a sentence that called the group a gay and lesbian synagogue. He said synagogues don’t have a sexual orientation and other synagogues weren’t straight synagogues.

But at the time other synagogues weren’t welcoming the LGBT community. His goal was to have a synagogue with outreach to the LGBT community in every city in his district.

In San Antonio, that meant a new small temple. Beth El Binah now has a torah on long-term loan to that synagogue. In Houston, it meant connecting LGBT leaders from that city and Dallas. There, the larger synagogues established programs to welcome the LGBT community. In New Orleans and Austin, it meant bringing speakers from Beth El Binah to help open their temples to LGBT members where they are now important parts of their synagogues.

When the AIDS crisis hit Congregation Beth El Binah hard in the early 90s, Rabbi Jake spent quite a bit of time visiting members in hospitals and at home. In June, Rabbi Jake was diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. He died on Aug. 23 and is survived by his wife, Ellen, and son Daniel.

—  David Taffet

A day of tolerance begins at the Holocaust Museum and ends at the Resource Center

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Fred Phelps

The Dallas Holocaust Museum has asked Dallas Holocaust survivors to stay home for the day on Friday, July 9. But the museum will open its doors free beginning at 1 p.m.

The Fred Phelps clan of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., is scheduled to picket the museum at 2:15 p.m. WBC’s picket schedule also includes a number of other stops around Dallas this weekend targeting the Jewish community.

Laura Martin, the Dallas Police Department’s liaison to the LGBT community, asked people not to engage the Phelps clan. They make their money suing anyone and everyone — including the police, she said.

Holocaust Museum President Alice Murray agreed.

“We do not want to legitimatize the hatred of a small number of people who comprise this group by inadvertently providing fodder for media coverage,” she said.

The museum will be open with docents promoting its mission of tolerance and be selling its “upstander” T-shirts.

Rafael McDonnell of Resource Center Dallas said donations have been pouring in for “Hell Freezes Over,” the counterprotest fundraiser to replace the Center’s ice maker. He expects the new Westboro Baptist Church Memorial Ice Maker to be fully funded by Friday evening.

The Phelps gang is expected to gather near the Center at 6:15 p.m. The parking lots will be blocked off so McDonnell recommends street parking.

McDonnell said someone will have a stop watch and a horn. After one minute, he said, the horn will blow and people will throw money into a Pride flag. Each minute Phelps protests, more money will be raised.

“Bring lots of singles,” he said.

Bottled water and Fig Newtons will be served. “Figs” refers to a biblical quote Phelps used to denounce Dallas’ Jewish community.

The target of the evening Phelps protest is Congregation Beth El Binah, a Reform synagogue that meets at the Resource Center. (Full disclosure: I am a member of Congregation Beth El Binah and received the original fax from the Phelps gang about their impending visit).

Beth El Binah’s services will be held on a normal schedule. Everyone is welcome. Rabbi Jeffrey Leynor conducts services that last about an hour beginning at 7:30 p.m.

—  David Taffet

Newsweek’s list of 50 top rabbis includes gays, Dallasites

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Rabbi Steve Gutow
Rabbi Steve Gutow

Newsweek released its list of the 50 most influential rabbis in America for 2010 with some interesting characters on the list. A surprising number of gay and lesbian rabbis make the list, and a couple of the rabbis are from Dallas.

Rabbi Steve Gutow is listed at No. 20 for a second year. Gutow, originally a Dallas attorney, worked in Gov. Ann Richards’ administration and went to rabbinical school after she left office. Since then, he has conducted services at Dallas LGBTA Congregation Beth El Binah a number of times and is currently president and CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs.

No. 47 on the list is Rabbi David Stern, the head rabbi at Temple Emanu-el on Northwest Highway in Dallas who has come under criticism by some members of his congregation for one particular position.

Stern will not do interfaith weddings and is clear about that position, but members of his congregation often ask him to perform them anyway. A same-sex wedding he performed at the temple in the early 1990s is often thrown in his face when he refuses to do interfaith opposite-sex marriages.

“But you married those two damn lesbians,” people tell him.

“Yes, and they were both Jewish,” he tells them.

Stern is straight.

Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum takes the No. 25 position. Her New York City congregation, Beit Simchat Torah, is the largest LGBTA synagogue. For High Holidays, they rent out the Jacob Javitz Convention Center in Manhattan to hold services.

Rabbi Elliot Dorff is No. 43. He contributed to the book “Torah Queeries,” which provides an LGBT perspective on the first five books of the Bible and has written on medical ethics for gays and lesbians. He made the list because he chairs the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards for Conservative Judaism, which has become much more liberal under his guidance.

—  David Taffet

Westboro Baptist Church to picket Dallas' gay Jewish congregation, Beth El Binah, in July

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Rabbi Jeffrey Leynor
Rabbi Jeffrey Leynor

Westboro Baptist Church will be in North Texas for a few days beginning Friday, July 9, according to their picketing schedule. Among their stops that day will be Congregation Beth El Binah, a Reform synagogue that meets at the John Thomas Gay and Lesbian Community Center.

Other stops listed are the Dallas Holocaust Museum on Record Street in the West End; the Jewish Community Center off Royal Lane and Central Expressway; the Texas Jewish Post, which is the local Jewish newspaper whose office is in a building on Beltline Road; and Yahneh Academy, a co-ed modern Orthodox high school in North Dallas.

“Oh, we’ll prepare something special for that evening,” said Beth El Binah Rabbi Jeffrey Leynor.

Continue reading “Westboro Baptist Church to picket Dallas' gay Jewish congregation, Beth El Binah, in July” »

—  David Taffet

Jewish groups urge Congress to repeal DADT

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A coalition of 10 Jewish groups sent a letter to members of Congress supporting repeal of “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” Among the groups are three of the four major branches of Judaism in the United States — Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist.

Dallas’ LGBT synagogue, Congregation Beth El Binah, is a member of the Reform movement.

The support is not at all surprising. Israel used to allow military deferments for gays, lesbians and transgenders. But in 1993, as the U.S. debated “don’t ask don’t tell,” Israel watched the debate closely, realized the arguments were stupid and did away with military exemption for their LGBT citizens.

What is surprising about the list, however, is that additional Jewish groups did not sign the letter. For example, the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods began welcoming openly lesbian members in the 1960s.

Text of the full Jewish community letter to Members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives appears after the jump:

Continue reading “Jewish groups urge Congress to repeal DADT” »

—  David Taffet

'God hates Jews' is the new theme for 'America's most hated family'

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God Hates Jews

Has God Hates Fags run its course? Fred Phelps seems to have a new target. Or maybe just an additional target.

This week Congregation Beth El Binah, Dallas’ LGBT Jewish congregation, received a package labeled “Obama Hates Israel.” The return address was simply “WBC” with a Topeka, Kan., address. “WBC” is Westboro Baptist Church.

The DVD inside the package is labeled “Jews Killed Jesus.”

Continue reading “'God hates Jews' is the new theme for 'America's most hated family'” »

—  David Taffet