elisa_rolle (elisa_rolle) wrote,
elisa_rolle
elisa_rolle

Steven Goldstein & Steven Greenberg

Steven Greenberg (born June 19, 1956) is an American rabbi with a rabbinic ordination from the Orthodox rabbinical seminary of Yeshiva University (RIETS). He is generally described as the first openly gay Orthodox Jewish rabbi, since he publicly disclosed he was gay in an article in the Israeli newspaper Maariv in 1999 and participated in a 2001 documentary film about homosexual men and women raised in the Orthodox Jewish world. Greenberg currently lives in Cincinnati with his partner Steven Goldstein and their daughter, Amalia, born on November 11, 2010.

Rabbi Greenberg graduated from Yeshiva University in New York and received his s'micha from Yeshiva's Elchanan Seminary in 1999. He then moved to Jerusalem. He formally "came out" at the urging of those with whom he was working to establish Jerusalem Open House as the city's center for the LGBT community -- just a week before the much-publicized opening. The Forward broke the DVD cover: Trembling Before G-dstory. It was then that he met his long-time partner Steven Goldstein (they are known as "the Steves") through film maker Sandi Simcha DuBowski.

DuBowski featured Rabbi Greenberg in his award-winning documentary on gays and lesbians in Orthodoxy, Trembling Before G-d (Israel, 2001).

Greenberg is a Senior Teaching Fellow and Director of Diversity Project at CLAL – the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, and the author of the book “Wrestling with God and Men: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition” which received the Koret Jewish Book Award for Philosophy and Thought in 2005.


Steven Greenberg is an American rabbi with a rabbinic ordination from the Orthodox rabbinical seminary of Yeshiva University. He is generally described as the first openly gay Orthodox Jewish rabbi, since he publicly disclosed he was gay in an article in the Israeli newspaper Maariv and participated in a 2001 documentary film about homosexual men and women raised in the Orthodox Jewish world. Greenberg currently lives in Cincinnati with his partner Steven Goldstein and their daughter, Amalia.









He is listed number 44 in the 2012 The Daily Beast and Newsweek list of “America’s Top 50 Rabbis for 2012”.

Greenberg, the son of Conservative Jewish parents, was raised in Columbus, Ohio. When he was about 15, he began studying with an Orthodox rabbi. He attended Yeshiva University in New York as an undergraduate and then as a rabbinical student. When he was 20, he went to study at the Yeshivat Har Etzion, a hesder yeshiva in Gush Etzion near Jerusalem. He received his BA in philosophy from Yeshiva University, and his rabbinic ordination from the rabbinical seminary of Yeshiva University (RIETS) in 1983.

While at Yeshivat Har Etzion, he was attracted to a fellow student and concluded that he was bisexual. He went to consult with rabbi Yosef Sholom Eliashiv, a respected old rabbi in Jerusalem, telling him: “Master, I am attracted to both men and women. What shall I do?” And the rabbi replied according to Greenberg: “My dear one, my friend, then you have twice the power of love. Use it carefully.” Greenberg remembers that he left with the trust that it would all work out. However, he realised that the rabbi wasn't permitting him to have sex with men, but was telling him that his desire was not ugly in and of itself.

Greenberg did not acknowledge he was gay until he was 28, and even afterwards continued to date women for another seven years. In 1993 he wrote the article “Gayness and God”, admitting he was gay, and published it under the pseudonym “Yaakov Levado” (meaning Jacob alone) in Tikkun magazine, but only came out six years later in an article titled “In the name of partnership” published in the Israeli daily newspaper Maariv on March 5, 1999.

Early in his career, Greenberg held an Orthodox pulpit on Roosevelt Island in New York City. Since 1985, he is a Senior Teaching Fellow and Director of Diversity Project at CLAL – the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, an interdenominational Jewish think tank, leadership training institute, and resource center. He is the director of Orthodox programs for Nehirim: GLBT Jewish Culture & Spirituality, an organization which builds community for GLBT Jews, partners, and allies, and serves on the board of Eshel, an organization that works to build community for gays and lesbians in the Orthodox world. From 1996 to 1998 he spent two years in Jerusalem on a fellowship from the Mandel Institute, studying educational policy issues and researching rabbinic attitudes toward homosexuality.

Greenberg participated in the critically acclaimed 2001 documentary film Trembling Before G-d, featured at the Sundance Festival. The film about gay men and women raised in the Orthodox Jewish world helped break the silence around homosexuality in religious Jewish circles, and ignited protests among ultra-Orthodox Jews.

On November 10, 2011, Greenberg officiated at what is believed to be the first same-sex marriage in the United States performed by an ordained Orthodox rabbi, marrying two Jewish men in a legal marriage according to the laws of the District of Columbia at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue in Washington, D.C.

Steven Goldstein is a founding member of the Atlantic Theater Company in New York. He is a professional actor on film, stage and television. Performances with Lincoln Center Theater, The Mark Taper Forum, Center Stage Baltimore among others. Appearances in TV shows Quarterlife, Law & Order and The Guiding Light. Appeared in films including The Untouchables, Signs and Wonders, The Spanish Prisoner, The Night We Never Met, Homicide, House of Games and Things Change. Professional singer in many performances with the New York City Opera, Seattle Opera, LA Opera, Vancouver Opera, Cleveland Opera, Israeli Opera and Chicago Opera Theater.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Greenberg_(rabbi)

Further Readings:

Wrestling with God: Jewish Theological Responses during and after the Holocaust by Steven T. Katz, Shlomo Biderman and Gershon Greenberg
Paperback: 704 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (January 4, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0195300157
ISBN-13: 978-0195300154
Amazon: Wrestling with God: Jewish Theological Responses during and after the Holocaust
Amazon Kindle: Wrestling with God: Jewish Theological Responses during and after the Holocaust

This volume presents a wide-ranging selection of Jewish theological responses to the Holocaust. It will be the most complete anthology of its sort, bringing together for the first time: (1) a large sample of ultra-orthodox writings, translated from the Hebrew and Yiddish; (2) a substantial selection of essays by Israeli authors, also translated from the Hebrew; (3) a broad sampling of works written in English by American and European authors. These diverse selections represent virtually every significant theological position that has been articulated by a Jewish thinker in response to the Holocaust. Included are rarely studied responses that were written while the Holocaust was happening.

More LGBT Couples at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, My Ramblings/Real Life Romance

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