Gay Night Life in Tel-Aviv...I have tried my best to live a frum life for many years but there is always something that pulls me back to the throes of goyim styles - boys, Saturday SEC football, the soap I rub on my body, Tequilla, Guinness beer, groceries, etc. But the essence lies in the journey.
I recently got introduced to the Jewish Havura movement (meaning in elementary terms, welcomes all souls from both a Reconstructionist to Orthodox view - very liberal to uber-conservative) which eventually brought me full circle back to Israel National Radio's Thanksgiving evening broadcast, "Yishai & Friends". He interviewed the Director General of Israeli Ministry of Tourism Shaul Zemach and the discussion was centered around Israel's recent attempts to bring more visitors to that country...they see themselves in direct competition with Egypt (but all good Yehudim know that of all places they are not to look back on Egypt), Turkey, Cyprus, and Lebanon and the idea of making Jerusalem the focus of that campaign and not the forged capital Tel-Aviv.
The discussions main focus was a lively diatribe on the differences between Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem which led to a recurring joke about Jerusalem competing with Tel-Aviv's gay night life and one of the callers was a frum - observant - Jew who moved there a couple years ago...
So I spent Friday day cooking chicken soup, making pizza dough (whole wheat), and goat cheese...all Kashrut mind you, and straightened up my "cookware" further according to the standards of maintaining them in a Kosher manner - all meat and dairy items separated. I spent Friday evening and Saturday reading and thinking. I read Zalman Shachter, Albert Camus, New York Times, the Oxford American and thought, thought, thought...
...the gay Jew who made Aliyah to Israel a few years ago that called in to the show wished to offer his support in making Jerusalem the focal point of the tourist focus but took it another step by stating that the gay night life of Tel-Aviv was not what motivated his souls yearning but it was the "old walls" of Jerusalem, to him it was the "place" where his heart's synergy was plugged into and too many of his gay friends saw it the other way...their energy came from and was centered around being feygele in Tel-Aviv.
I recently had a friend that I had nothing in common with yet a lot. We both came from disheveled and dysfunctional spiritual backgrounds, were "mama's boys", well educated, wondering minds and souls...but I was the socialist proletariat and he the capitalist bourgeois. Discussions ran from Krishna to the Lubavitch Rebbe and met their climax in early summer when it was discussed that no physical relationship would evolve. Months later the friendship was "divorced" by my friend because of his infatuation with me...I assume sexually, physically, carnally, "Tel-Avivy". To me there was a lost sense of reality...what was he in love with? The idea of that had been discussed and I thought put to rest much earlier.
My last "ex" and I agreed to go our separate ways in March, a little over two years into the relationship, and I moved out from his place in May. I have had sex with three people in the last three years and since my separation that communion has happened twice...maybe it is crossing into the forties decade or maybe it is realizing that my Yerushalayim Shel Zahov (Jerusalem of Gold) is my own heart and not tied to purse strings at the end of some race track.
Being gay and observant actually go together very well, as the caller said. We bring both worlds in the flesh together as the Torah does, in not discerning between male or female souls, there are no separating words, they are one...so when a man lies with a man it is not an abomination but a procreation. We lose sight and connection when it is done with "being in love with the idea of being in love"....
...the caller to the Abramowitz show adjured all gays to "L'shanah haba'ah biyerushalayim -- Next Year In Jerusalem"...at least in our hearts!
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