Tonight, Demarest co-sponsored its second LGBT Shabbat dinner with Hillel, and this time Kesher (the Reform group within Hillel) and Kol Halayla (the Jewish a cappella group on campus) also got involved. Last year we were ecstatic that about 30 or 40 people showed up, and this year, our attendance doubled. I don’t know if it was because of advertising, because we did a better job of reaching out to various communities on campus, or because the timing was just right (a week after our unified protest against the Westboro Baptist Church), but either way, it was a huge success.

Rachel, on the left, is a high school friend who is active in Hillel and played a big part in organizing the event. Next to her is Kenny, yet another friend from high school, who ran the service. We soon realized that altogether, there were 5 Rutgers Prep alumni in the room at once, spanning across 4 different years (Adam left before the picture was taken). Considering our high school is only a few miles down the road from our campus, this probably doesn’t seem so exceptional, but when you consider the fact that my graduating class consisted of about 80 students, it’s rather impressive.

As Kenny ran the service, he talked about the relationship between his Jewish identity and his gay identity, so there were lots of different ideas thrown out about how to interpret Leviticus, how to approach various laws from the perspective of the Reform movement, and how to rectify one’s sexuality and religion. On one level I understood the idea of wanting to break away from religion because of its intolerance of homosexuality while feeling a longing for the culture and beliefs that we all grew up with, but to some extent I’ve always struggled with the very idea of returning to my “Jewish roots” — mainly because I don’t have any. I was raised Catholic until a couple of years past my first communion, only turning to Judaism out of curiosity and as some bizarre act of rebellion in middle school. (Rebellion is clearly something I failed miserably at — while other girls were piercing their bellybuttons in the bathroom and making out with boys at the municipal grounds, I was enrolling in Hebrew school and becoming a vegetarian. In some of my more daring moves, I stole chocolate and engaged in political debate with my parents.)

So, once my mother converted to Judaism and became more interested in the study of it, that turned me away entirely. It still does, even as I become more interested in Jewish culture, largely because she uses religion to stand in place of her family… by no coincidence did her interest in Judaism coincide with her father’s death — and even more directly, her actual conversion coincided with her ultimate decision that “those people” (meaning her mother and sisters) were not a part of her family. I think that’s why it always upsets me to see her lighting the Shabbat candles alone and saying the prayers by herself, because these are such family-oriented practices that seem completely out of place at our kitchen table. That’s where I’m left unsure of what it means to have Jewish roots, because I’ve always been more interested in the culture and community than anything else, and that’s where conversion becomes an extremely controversial topic within the (ethnically) Jewish community, as it’s not really possible to “convert” to a culture…

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These photos are from this morning, when the Westboro Baptist Church — the hate group known for protesting Matthew Shepard’s funeral and soldiers’ funerals around the country — came to campus to picket outside of Rutgers Hillel. Almost everyone on campus was anticipating their visit, so Hillel has been rounding up different religious organizations, queer organizations, and music groups on campus for the past couple of weeks to help organize a counter-protest in the form of a rally against hate. Despite the rain, it was a huge success — the a capella groups, the unified diversity speeches, and the mass amount of cheering drowned out the WBC completely…

To begin with, there was a lot of debate surrounding the WBC’s visit and how our community should respond. Immediately I thought of Romaine Patterson’s Angel Action and the impact of such a creative and positive response to the WBC… some wanted to merely treat it as a joke, others wanted to throw a dance party noiseout, and still others wanted to completely ignore them, believing that to be our safest bet. Thankfully, Hillel put together a very well thought out program that took attention away from WBC rather than emphasizing their visit, which I hope makes an impact on those who argued against any sort of recognition of their visit. For one thing, it wasn’t practical — regardless of whether or not anyone organizes around the WBC, signs like “God hates fags” and “the Jews killed Jesus” and “thank God for dead soldiers” generally attract a lot of attention. One way or another, a mass of people would have circled around them, and when the WBC has the chance to provoke unprepared and unsuspecting bystanders, they take the opportunity to attack and then sue them for their engagement, alleging verbal and/or physical attacks. The fact that their entire organization is built around verbal and visual displays of violence doesn’t seem to have any bearing on the outcome of these lawsuits, which usually result in funding for the WBC. Thankfully, we didn’t run into any such problems, and all in all, I’d say the event was a complete success — in fact, I only have one photo where the WBC is actually visible, because the 1,200 participating supporters of Hillel completely blocked them out. They gave up fairly early, but our rally continued.

A lot of people, I think, are actually glad that the WBC came to Rutgers. If nothing else, their extremism provides us with a unique opportunity to build alliances between groups of people with a long history of dividedness between them, and I hope that sense of unity will stay with us.

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The other day, after I finished ringing up an elderly woman’s groceries, she handed me a card with John 3:16 typed out on it. On the other side, in script handwriting, it read “Jesus loves you.” On either side of me stood cashiers with crosses around their necks, but of course I was standing at the register this woman happened to go to. And to add to the irony of the situation, I was wearing my gay pride bracelet. Perfect.

This weekend, I received yet another religious customer set on saving my soul. He handed me two cards held together with a rubber band, complete with Bible verses he advised I say to myself before going to sleep each night. Yeah, okay.

The two prayer cards given to me by a customer.

To be honest, I think it’s just plain rude. Even if they hand these cards out blindly, they have to know that there are many people in the world who do not share their beliefs. To assume that those people are naive and impressionable enough to completely change their beliefs and lifestyles around based on one card is pretty offensive. I even know many religious people who would find it offensive, especially because it implies that religion needs advertising in the first place. Religion should be personal and something one finds on their own, not an organization they eventually succumb to after being pressured by messages and advertisements all around them.

That’s why I don’t see the purpose in organized religion — if religion is supposed to be personal, how can one system work for such large groups of people? How can one system work for people who are born into it and know nothing else? People who have had no chance to discover their own beliefs are not making a personal choice, but rather taking a lifestyle that has been set out for them for granted. I do believe that at some point, historically, organized religion did serve a greater social purpose, but I think it’s time our society move beyond that.

Today, we have so many different organized religions to begin with that any social or anthropological purpose they once served can’t possibly still apply. How do such strong clashing opinions–sometimes fanatical ones–help to keep society structured? In ancient times, religion helped to keep societies in peace and transition into what we would now call civilization. That’s not to say it never caused trouble in the past, but it certainly had a more positive social relevance than it does today. Conversely, when we think of how religion impacts our society today, the first things that come to mind include war and discrimination. Anytime religion even comes up in a regular conversation it typically ends in some sort of disagreement, to the point where it’s considered socially inappropriate to even mention religion. Does that sound like a peaceful, structured system to you, or one that socially benefits our society at all? Something that gets people so angry we can’t even talk about it?

These cards were the perfect example of those clashing views we all have — the customers I had probably pass out many more on a daily basis, but I’m sure they elicit very different reactions from people every time. Some might be touched, some offended, some might verbally attack them, and others will just blog about it. In any case, I think this kind of “advertising” has a lot more potential for bad than good, unless, I suppose, you live in a town with very little religious diversity. Either way, I don’t see why some people delude themselves into thinking this will make a positive difference. Some people will already agree with you, and others will continue to disagree with you — and maybe even more strongly.

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