Road Opener

Pride in Tel Aviv

Something shifted on the Tel Aviv boardwalk.

I have traveled up and down it since I was in a stroller battling dust where pavements were yet to be built; the stretch from Old Jaffa to the northern Port. The innocence of my childhood, secure with a parent on either side of me. The crickets chirping in the balmy night. Later, the thrill of youth; shots of Arak and lemonade on the beach, a first whiff of hash amid the orange sunset.

After October 7, the boardwalk became a solo meditation for me. A training ground by dawn, pounding the pavement to run off the trauma as the sun rose again each day; a reminder that time was moving despite the devastation. A place to cry watching ocean waves lap alone in the wee hours, when I couldn’t sleep after days in the war, throwing myself at danger as a primary source of moving history. Every evening became a dark night of the soul, between belonging in Israel, and an unstoppable sense of abandonment by the West. My heart kept breaking with each passing hour, pulling me further towards a frightening purpose that my history, my dreams thus far, my personal diaspora could not hold. How could I be both a Jew in a free land, and a wanderer in exile?

That boardwalk contains a montage of my life from cradle to grave, and I hope one day I will watch a sunset from it with a family of my own.

But this last Shabbat, something shifted on the boardwalk. I was there for Pride – on a foreign ministry delegation. The Tel Aviv parade was the climax to a week-long trip visiting LGBT centers around the country; Pride Houses, Trans Centers, gay bars, lesbian-owned restaurants, parks that were historically for cruising. (Reader: I am still laughing at the notion of an Israeli tour guide showing us where gay men used to fuck in the 1970s in a country that holds UNESCO world heritage sites such as Masada and the Via Dolorosa). We visited Jerusalem, Be’er Sheva, Ramat Gan and beyond. Delegates from Cameroon, Rwanda, Mumbai, Chile, Miami, the Philippines, and Thailand joined us. A gay man from Cameroon told me he couldn’t understand why anyone would believe that Israel “pink-washes” (ie, exaggerates) its stellar LGBT rights successes, because back home he would be imprisoned for thinking about entertaining his deepest desires.

Seeing the festivities through these men’s eyes was a reminder that Israel is a leader in LGBT advocacy. I learned in Ramat Gan that Israel was the first country in the world to legalize surrogacy, and is pioneering education among kindergarten children about diverse families to defeat stigma and prejudice. I couldn’t think of another country in the West where rainbow families and Orthodox families come together in recognition of each other’s challenges when I heard how these educational programs are as comforting for post-divorce religious parents as they are for same-sex parents, or single mothers and fathers who decided to go the IVF/donor route alone. In a country that prioritizes having children, the focus is on possibility, not prevention. Life. Chai.

Come Friday, however, emotions were running high - and pregame muscle pumping sessions getting desperate. Israel has not been able to celebrate Pride for several years. The war. The hostage crisis. The relentless tyranny of the Islamic Regime and last June’s 12 day war. For me, however, coming from a Diaspora that has all but banned every Jew from attending any Pride celebration in any city worthy of note while pushing us from LGBTQ+ circles day in day out, Pride in Tel Aviv was a homecoming of multitudes. In the West, Pride “celebrates” Palestinianism, conflating the worst Jihadist theocracies on Earth with degrading displays of fetish and BDSM in broad daylight, while plastering every corporation onto every poster, awning and float. Pride has been captured by obsession and fixation with a homophobic cause that nobody comprehends. It’s embarrassing. It’s psychotic. It’s dark. It’s angry. The Prides of the West have suicide-d themselves at the altar of Islamism. I have come to hate it so much I feel sick when I see a Pride flag anywhere West of Haifa.

Israel, by contrast, could not be farther from it. There, Pride is bright, vibrant, uplifting, fun for the whole family, and connected to its purpose. Pride’s existence is a middle finger to the Islamic Regime that threatens to eviscerate it with missiles every year. It is the only Pride in the Middle East, and one of the biggest globally. 100,000 people took the streets. And the streets – the ancient streets – were ours.

You can feel its importance in your sandles. It is so much more important than the corporate virtue-signal of London, or the out-of-control sex-capades of West Hollywood. When everything around you contains more than one story of historical significance, the celebration has a holiness and an epic cultural victory that defies skepticism. The roads are completely shut down throughout the city, as the march makes its way from central Tel Aviv, culminating on the boardwalk, where floats and parties burst the seams of the ocean front. Hayarkon Park boasts a huge outdoor festival with multiple stages for performers.

The streets were sweating exceptionalism. Yes gay. Yes lesbian. Yes bisexual. Yes transsexual. But more than that. I see Israeli, I see Arab, I see Jew, I see Christian, I see Muslim, I see Coptic, I see Druze, I see Armenian, I see European, I see Black, I see Brown, I see Asian, I see young and old, I see two men with a stroller, and two women with a stroller. I see hot policemen and policewomen safeguarding the fun. I am surrounded by people who have served and would die for their country, for their liberty; the only liberty anyone has to do exactly this in the Middle East. It is exhilarating, and it is electrifying. And nobody there is thinking about anyone who hates us for doing it. We were having far too much fun.

And as the remnants of the day kept the buzz going well into the next morning, I stole a moment for myself on the boardwalk. Again, something shifted.

I reflected on this last decade of ostracization. I thought about all the moments I said no. I thought about a queer girl who still writes songs about Israel and the “genocide” with her queer band. The one who called me once from a parking lot to explain to me what she felt Zionism meant. The one who texted me to tell me she didn’t approve of what I say and how I say it but that I still had a choice to stop and be part of whatever the fuck delusion she and her friends prescribe to. The one who played with my heart like it was a squeeze toy she picked up every time she felt overwhelmed by her privileged and wonderful life in America.

I thought about how I almost abandoned my advocacy several times because I felt it was too much of a burden for people I love, because it cost too much being associated with me. I thought about the queer European losers who manipulatively pushed me out of my own circles by refusing to be in a room with me. Maybe I should just shut up. No more social media, I’d say. But I didn’t stop. I never stopped being who I am. Even when the pressure piled up, when the lies about me mounted, when the doors closed, when I was betrayed, dismissed and dehumanized, when I lost the people I never thought I’d ever lose, I held true to me; to the human they once adored. I kept the flame burning bright.

Just a day before I had walked up and down the boardwalk, taking in the sounds and colors with my best friend Ben; Israel’s newest oleh. He made aliyah the night of the last missile attack. We spent the following morning talking and laughing at a bustling cafe by his new apartment; in the streets where the Jewish intelligentsia of past decades met, discussed, and actualized since 1948. We pondered the words of our friend Dr Einat Wilf, who we had the pleasure of listening to a few nights prior. We played around with new ideas. We contemplated the next chapter of our lives. The road open, at long last. And by evening we had made it all the way to Jaffa, to the sunset that buries itself in a horizon that legend says Medusa’s myth unfolded, to the ancient cobblestones of a peaceful courtyard where nothing but birdsong accompanied the chinking of our glasses. Our friends joined us for dinner. No ordinary people. There are no ordinary people in Israel. Everyone is a builder, a warrior, a survivor, a patch in the tapestry of living, breathing Judaism.

Everyone is a hero of am yisrael.

But in that earlier moment alone on the boardwalk, I felt a freedom I couldn’t find words for. Finally: I am on my own side. Nobody’s side but mine. Finally, finally, I don’t say “I’m enough”. I know I am. I am myself alone and choosing to be. I’m here. I’m walking forward. For me, Pride in Tel Aviv wasn’t about my sexual freedom. It wasn’t even about my own safety. It was about not thinking. It was about a moment of joy. It was about opening a can of Goldstar, and smiling. It was about pressing reset. It was about the blessing of surviving the most painful years of my life. 2023. 2024. 2025. Years in which I thought I had died. L’hitraot. So long to you, my purgatory, my darkness. The worst happened but I’m laughing. The worst happened but I’m sweating my arse off and the sand is in my face. The worst happened and my heart’s a mess but it’s still beating. The worst happened and it doesn’t matter because this beer is quenching my thirst. So cheerio to the answers I will never receive. And shalom to the things I knew all along.

There’s nothing more to understand other than that I built something while I was worried I was destroying something else. All those cheesy mantras make sense now. Damn you. I look around the boardwalk and there’s nothing but life. There’s nothing but light. Beauty — the most gorgeous faces I have ever seen. Precious children with the bravest parents. The most brilliant minds. Minds so brilliant you can see them bursting with originality. And they’re looking into my eyes. They’re listening to my words. Holding my gaze. Arms around my shoulders. Cherishing my presence. Exactly who I am. They believe me. They believe in me.

And as soon as I arrived at that present reality, the oddest thing happened. I felt everything and everyone I lost standing right there next to me.

Last week a special episode I recorded for HonestReporting about Pride and the abandonment of Jews by the LGBTQ+ community of the West was released. You can watch it in full here. Thank you to Ben Chertoff for an exceptional interview:

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