Los Angeles
Open Your Hearts and Hold Out Your Hands
to LGBT Family Members - December 16, 2009 / 7:30 p.m.
- Rabbi Lisa Edwards of Temple Beth Chayim Chadashim
Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays
In the book of Leviticus, which is so often used to bash LGBT persons, Rabbi Lisa Edwards finds injunctions that support and protect them. No stranger to homophobia disguised as religion she has made Temple Beth Chayim Chadashim a place of hope, inclusion, and celebration.
Rabbi Edwards is the leader of the world’s first gay and lesbian synagogue. She has seen the harm done to LGBT individuals when discrimination is preached by religious authorities and practiced by families and communities of faith.
In a commentary on a Torah portion in the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, she reminds us all of that LGBT individuals, particularly children, are often the needy among us. “LGBT youth, and those questioning their orientations, may not be accustomed to very much [support].” How can we help? “Parents who talk to their children, who ask their children about themselves, who lovingly inquire who their children are..., and who accept — even embrace — their children, no matter the answers to their questions, could go a long way toward offering their children an open hand and an open heart.”
Ordained by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) in 1994, Rabbi Edwards brings a profound love of study and a passion for the written word to her sermons and the Torah commentary that she write as a guest columnist in the Jewish Journal, the second-largest circulation Jewish publication in the U.S. Most of all, she is known as a Rabbi who knows the struggles of her congregation and speaks to their hearts.
Rabbi Edwards has an impressive resumé. She has taught on an adjunct basis at HUC in the rabbinical school, and at USC in the Jewish Studies program. Her writing appears in a half-dozen books, including Kulanu : All of Us (a URJ handbook for congregational inclusion of gay and lesbian Jews); The Women’s Torah Commentary: New Insights from Women Rabbis on the 54 Weekly Torah Portions; Lesbian Rabbis: The First Generation; and Mentsh: On Being Queer and Jewish (edited by Angela Brown), where she wrote the foreword. Additionally Rabbi Edwards is a co-editor of the revised editions (1999) of the Reform Movement textbook, Introduction to Judaism: a Sourcebook, and its companion Instructor’s Guide and Curriculum. She is the “Spiritual Role Model” in the book Outspoken by Michael Thomas Ford, a book of interviews of GLBT people intended for a youth audience.
A couple since 1985, Rabbi Edwards and Tracy Moore were married under chuppah in 1995, and under California law in 2008 by Assembly Member Karen Bass and Rabbi Laura Geller. Tracy is the editor of Lesbiot: Israeli Lesbians Talk about Sexuality, Feminism, Judaism and Their Lives.
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