Jerusalem Pride -- June 21, 2007

When we were in line at JFK to board the plane, I was talking to a guy who, after learning that I was traveling to Israel with my wife, told me that Jerusalem Pride was that Thursday. We arrived at Ben Gurion late afternoon on Tuesday 6/19, and the following day we went to HUC to pick up our cell phones. The administrators were telling the few of us who had arrived early that the parade was the following day. We were told that due to intense protests and death threats made by the ultra-religious community the parade was canceled the previous year and that the parade could be a bit on the dangerous side this year. We of course became curious. On the day of the parade Rachel noticed a lot of police in our neighborhood, and the folks at her ulpan noticed this as well, but no one really knew why they were there. The parade participants were gathered on King David, right in front of HUC, which is a 10-15 walk from our apartment, so we were surprised when we were walking to King David and realized the police all the way by our apartment were there because of the parade. There were police everywhere, as well as all of the buses that brought them in to Jerusalem and all of their vehicles. We walked like we new what we were doing and belonged there and never got stopped. The very sad and unfortunate thing is that if a person looked religious (man or woman), they were stopped, questioned, sometimes strip searched and almost always turned away, and threatened to be arrested if they did not leave immediately. So we knew some Orthodox people our age who are very progressive who had to dress differently, wear a baseball hat instead of a kippah and tuck their tzit tzit in to their pants. What the gathering needs more than anything is for their to be obvious religious people among everyone else to show that just because one is Orthodox does not mean they are not progressive. One of Rachel's Wexner colleagues is "Flexadox" and has lived in Jerusalem for 8 years and will be attending the Modern Orthodox seminary in New York this fall. As he put it, often it's simply about being a human being. This was no New York, San Francisco or even WDC pride parade. We only walked about 4 blocks and then police quickly ordered the streets to be cleared. We were told that the gathering would start at 3:30 and the parade would begin at 5:00. We were not actually able to get there until 5:30, and the parade had not started yet. There was a lot of negotiation with police apparently taking place for several hours. There was some rainbow balloon things, lots of posters and a lot of rainbow stickers with "love" written in English, Hebrew and Arabic. Everyone looked very average, and only a few people were dressed slightly eccentric or flamboyant. There were no leather clad men with whips or go-go boys or dykes on bikes. It was quite simply modest and humble, brave and proud and undoubtedly the pride parade that I am most proud to have been a part of. The newspaper the following day said there were approximately 2000 parade participants and 6000 police. I find that to be mind boggling. I will say that there was no violence or threats and the protestors, mostly black hats, were kept far away from King David so they could not be seen or heard by the parade participants. Last year was canceled, this year was small and hopefully "next year in Jerusalem" the bravery and pride from this year's parade will elicit more participants and less protestors as people come together to celebrate humanity. Be sure to check out the photos. http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=uhv86xw.z592hok&x=0&y=g8jvkg