In honor of the California Supreme Court decision on marriage equality, here’s an excerpt from my interview with a Rabbi from the Reconstructionist tradition:
“I guess I haven’t really found an issue that I believe I couldn’t change if I found like minded people and worked with them,” says Rabbi Erin Hirsh, who describes herself as “profoundly optimistic.” She notes that her own relatively small branch of Judaism has had helped to change the norms of Judaism as a whole. “Within the Jewish community, Reconstructionists created the Bat Mitzvah ceremony, and now our girls take it for granted,” she notes . “We ordained the first woman. We allowed gays and lesbians into the seminary from the day it opened, and then we ordained gay and lesbian rabbis. So I think about those generational changes and how the other movements are following. The reform movement certainly has women and has gay and lesbian rabbis. And now you can officiate at commitment ceremonies for gays and lesbians in either movement. And now the conservative movement is moving in the same direction. That’s a very recent, very dramatic development. That kind of change within the Jewish community is monumental to me,” she adds, “I’m pretty young to get to see something so dramatic unfold right through my lifetime.”
I like your ideas about change. I love the way that you don’t just settle for things the way they are. You don’t like them you decide to change them. Then you find a way to do just that. I used to be just like you are now way back in my younger days. I finally got my life back after addiction too so many years from me. I will follow suit when ever necessary to do so. In my Native American community and with my Tribe. I have sat on my laurel’s long enough. It’s far time to do the things that I have wanted to do for sometime now? Thanks for the encourging supportive things I have read that you do. You give me courage to do the same. I will be in touch occasionally my friend, DEBRA Rincon Lopez in Portland, Oregon USA.