LGBT Jews from the across the country gathered at AU last weekend for a conference on navigating the challenges of being both Jewish and gay.
The National Union of LGBT Jewish Students organized the three-day conference “Advocating our Identity.”
NUJLS is a relatively new organization, and AU students wanted to bring the 15th annual conference to AU after going to a similar conference in Boston last year, AU Hillel Associate Director Mindy Hirsch said.
The conference was primarily sponsored by AU Hillel, AU’s GLBTA Resource Center, the Embassy of Israel, the Human Rights Campaign and national Jewish and LGBT advocacy organizations.
A number of dignitaries, including AU President Neil Kerwin, Hillel International President Wayne Firestone and gay rights advocates from across D.C. spoke at the conference.
“For a community that has known what it feels like to be marginalized by institutions, by community leadership, to see the leaders of these very important institutions here ... I think it’s a really important message,” AU Hillel Director Jason Benkendorf said.
AU made a great home for the 87 attendees given its commitment to inclusion of minorities, including members of the Jewish and LGBT community.
“This brings together two communities of enormous importance of both the current activities of this University and to its history,” Kerwin said at the keynote brunch Feb. 19.
AU’s location in D.C. also allowed conference organizers to bring mostly local speakers that could speak about advocacy, Hirsch said.
Gay Jews are typically a minority when it comes to both their sexual identity and their religion, said Steven Philp, a conference attendee and graduate student at the University of Chicago.
“It’s strange being a minority community yet always being the minority within that minority community,” Philp said.
One of the major goals of the conference was to provide queer Jews the opportunity to express themselves as both gay and Jewish.
Students from across the country came to D.C. for the conference. University of Southern California’s Jewish Alliance of GLBTs and Straights even gave four of their students a free trip to the conference, USC freshman Justin Elliot said.
Other students were only a Metro ride away, like Richard Dweck, a junior at George Washington University who is involved in both Hillel and the LGBT resource center at GW.
“It’s nice to have people you have commonalities with,” Dweck said.
Philp recognized the value of an event like this, where students would be able to meet people with whom they could share an identity.
“There’s a part of me that was always really curious: What would it be like to be the majority?” Philp said. “That’s the interesting thing about walking into this room.”
