Found Tribe. This item is unavailable.Found Tribe

Found Tribe is a collection of intimate essays by and about gay Jewish men on the experience of coming out as gay within a Jewish context or as Jewish within a gay context. No longer necessarily lost or excluded, today’s gay Jews tell their courageous, powerful stories of finding and embracing their religious and sexual identities that enrich both the Jewish and gay experience. Written with honesty, humor, and insight, Found Tribe explores the joys and oys of coming out to family, lovers, rabbis, and others--and an Orthodox gay rabbi writes about Gayness and God. Found Tribe gives voice to the inextinguishable longing for community and acceptance in a religious identity that is defined by family and lineage, and serves as a beacon to isolated gay Jews that dignity and welcome await at the end of this rainbow. Found Tribe is intended as a gift and a resource for Jewish families with a gay son or sibling, and for gay Jews and all who love them. Found Tribe is the companion volume to the award winning volume, Kosher Meat.

As one author in this anthology notes, both gays and Jews are minority groups, so this collection of memoir-essays from gay Jewish men depicts a small, singular set of uphill personal experiences. No one has found the path easy, but there is testimony to the rewards of being faithful to one's identity and the heritage that helps shape that identity. Naturally, the men's experiences have a good deal in common: shocked families with moms laying guilt trips about not having grandchildren; unsatisfying attempts at heterosexuality. Despite major commonalities, differences in experience intrigue: a writer who is also an Orthodox rabbi struggles with the dictates of halacha, or law; another cheerfully admits he is the kind of Jew that the prophets rail against. Interestingly, three of the writers are also religious converts. The quality of the writing is uneven. At worst, the tone can be pedestrian ("Sigh: My Mom and Dad: They were just so... Jewish"), but at best the essays present hard-won truths poured out with deliberation, pride and/or humor. (" `I'm dying, I'm dying!' " my father was bellowing into the phone at 9:30, not exactly the middle of the night but my folks are in their 70s and go to sleep at eight.") Rabbi Steve Greenberg's especially compelling essay was originally published anonymously. In four years' time, attitudes among Orthodox Jews have changed to the point where Greenberg and other Orthodox gays can emerge from the closet. These brave voices deserve to be heard.
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