Equal rights for everyone, please!?

Hey World,

So thursday was an interesting day. First we had this great lecture by Rabbi Marmur, who is an awesome speaker. I don't know how he does it, but I want to learn. He didn't even use notes and it was totally organized and didn't go on tangents and was interesting. He spoke about the different Jewish responses to modernity.

One line he said, which I like (I think he was quoting someone else when he said this but I forget his name, sorry) was in regards to change and how now there are many movements very against change and wanting to stick to the tradition. You have to realize though this tradition, while some of it is very old, certain things done in Judaism are not. For Example wearing a kippah was probably not an established thing until the geonic period in around the 600s. So yeah it's old but it still represents a change. So anyways what he said, quoting someone else was "Change is the most traditional thing a Jew can do." Think about it. I thought it was cool, of course I do think there are limits to this change and they need to be made with respect to the tradition, but Judaism is a religion that has developed and been modified over the course of the 1000s of years it has been around.

So after all the class stuff we did today, I went with a bunch of people to the Jerusalem pride parade. Woo future rabbis for equal rights! The parade was more of a march, everyone marched about 1.5 miles to the knesset (the congress building) to protest for equal rights. This march was held on the 1 year anniversary of an attack on an LGBT youth center in tel aviv which killed two people. The march was relatively somber. I was ready for there to be a lot of protesters and even potential violence at the parade, but it wasn't too bad. First of all there was a huge police presence so that probably helped keep people away. There were some protestors we came into contact with, but later I found out there were other protests they just were in different areas of town so we didn't run into them.

Some of the protestors I saw had ridiculous signs, to the point where they were almost funny. One sign had "homeland not homoland" I dunno, it just sounds so ridiculous. Then there was another that said: "go 'strait' for family's sake." What does that even mean? If all gay people turned strait I think we should have some flooding issues or something. Also if they did mean "straight" well umm they are wrong: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/college-inc/2010/07/study_lesbian_gay_couples_thri.html

Oh and I almost forgot to mention my highlight of the parade. My friend and HUC classmate Ari, made friends with a guy who had bag pipes and the guy let him play them. It was awesome!! Here is a video (also I look like an idiot in the background, I know): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2t--fkUmI-U

Anyways it's Friday and I have lots to do before shabbat. Ahhh.

shabbat shalom

Becca