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TORAH QUEERIES COMES TO LOS ANGELES IN FEBRUARY!

Dear friends and readers consider this your invitation!  I would like to invite you to join me and the other Los Angeles area contributors to the amazing new book-Torah Queeries for an evening of Q & A on Thursday, night February  11th at 7:30 pm.  Editor Gregg Drinkwater will join us at Congregation Kol Ami (1200 N. La Brea Ave, West Hollywood) for an evening that will bring you new perspectives on the Bible and gay and lesbian life.  The Torah Queeries book will be available for purchase and signing by the contributors! 

Joining Gregg and me will be Rabbi Lisa Edwards of BCC, Rabbi Elliot Dorff of American Jewish University and Rabbi Julie Pelc Adler formerly of the Kalsman Institute of HUC-JIR.  Each will bring his or her expertise to our evening’s discussion.  The Torah Queeries book is a radical and innovative tome of Bible commentary through a LGBT lens.  All too often the Bible (or Torah for us Jews) and LGBT life are only mentioned in one context or through one lens- that of condemnation. But this book posited a different idea–that LGBT experiences and life and the Bible could learn from one another-could inform one another.  The Bible stories could shed light on the LGBT experience of life in a positive way and LGBT life could interpret the Bible in a positive way.  This is what in part makes this book so radical and exciting.  

Jewish tradition has long engaged in Torah study and Torah commentary. We try to dig deeper to get at the meaning and the truth through the words and stories and teaching of the Bible against the reality of our daily experience.  We try to answer the question “What does God want of us?”  We try to answer the question of how to live a life of meaning. 

The Torah Queeries book is part of that amazing and wonderful chain of tradition of Torah commentary and Torah study. 

So I hope you will put this on your calendar.  I know this will be a provocative evening.