It turns out that for all the hype about parties, beaches and boys, at the heart of LGBT Jewish travel is also a search for history and heritage.
The response has been so positive that Littman is considering more gay-Jewish travel to other destinations, even getting requests for a Poland trip to visit the concentration camps. Hebro, meanwhile, reached capacity in April and had to turn away six participants (directing them to the JCCA). The Jewish National Fund and a Jewish group in Toronto announced LGBT-focused trips months ago but failed to generate the commitments necessary to see them through. “I want people to come back to their home communities and educate other people and help them view Israel in a more positive light,” said Orent.Īs popular as the Hebro and JCCA trips proved to be, planning an LGBT trip to Israel is not a sure thing. The JCC also envisions a more active role for its participants post-trip, as befits a community center. “The JCC is definitely more educational,” admitted Littman. Additionally, they’re scheduled to visit an army base and discuss gay rights in the Israeli military, attend screenings at the Tel Aviv LGBT Film Festival and discuss the Holocaust in Israeli consciousness after a visit to Yad Vashem.
The JCCA group, meanwhile, has lined up a series of meetings with LGBT leaders in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, including representatives from the Open House, one of Israel’s largest LGBT organizations, and Havruta, which organizes events for gay orthodox Jews. Iran Pride Day, National Day of Iranian LGBTs, or National Day Of Sexual Minorities is an annual LGBT pride event held on the fourth Friday of July (first Friday of the Iranian month of Mordad) in Iran since 2010. Hebro has a more social bent – its schedule loosens up once the group arrives in Tel Aviv and participants will meet gay Israelis not in formal conversations but rather when smashed up against them on the dance floor or the beach. “Before we enter Pride, people will get a good understanding of the country as a whole,” Littman promised.Īside from a shared commitment to deepening understanding, the two trips differ significantly in their engagement with the Israeli LGBT community. Hebro, too, has employed a guide to provide context. “We’ll have a tour educator with us the whole time,” said Orent. The miracle of Tel Aviv Pride, they point out, is meaningless without understanding the reality it lives in.
In addition to spiritual diversity, both groups insist that their trips will explore the nuances, complexities and even contradictions of Israel. “It’s a matter of knowing my crowd,” Littman said of the religiously eclectic itinerary. All orders are custom made and most ship worldwide within 24 hours. T-shirts, posters, stickers, home decor, and more, designed and sold by independent artists around the world. In Jerusalem, they’ll visit the Dome of the Rock, sacred to Muslims. High quality Iran Gay Pride-inspired gifts and merchandise. The day after arrival, the Hebro group paid a visit to Bethlehem and will soon head to the Galilee where it will hit a few more important Christian sites. “Although it’s a Jewish orientated trip, there’s no hesitation in including people who are not Jewish,” Orent said. Interfaith couples account for a large number of the non-Jews on the JCCA trip as well. The rest of the Hebro crew (all male, with an average age of 36) consists of interfaith couples and even some Birthright alumni who are coming back for more on their own dime (Hebro kept the price low thanks to a grant from the LGBT Israel advocacy group A Wider Bridge). She added that the country is trying to “cleanse” itself of homosexuals, stating, “ would rather carry out mass surgeries than executions because they know the world is watching them.“We just have a random group of non-Jews … who are like, ‘Hey, we want to go to Israel, we want to go for Pride and this is the way to do it,’” said Jayson Littman, the founder of Hebro and organizer of that trip. “We think this is a way to fight the existence of homosexual people because you change their body and you solve the problem.” “The government believes that if you are a gay man your soul is that of a woman and you should change your body,” she said. While the exact numbers are forced surgeries for gay and lesbian Iranians remains unclear, Amin says authorities force people to have these surgeries, subsidized by the government, under the threat of arrest, imprisonment, and possible death. The country now conducts at least 4,000 such surgeries each year, possibly far more. Although Iranian law views homosexuality as an illness punishable by imprisonment, flogging, and death, it has permitted gender-affirming surgeries since the 1980s so that transgender people can enter heterosexual relationships.