Pride & Joy in the Face of Backlash
June 16 at 8:00 pm – 9:15 pm EDT
A Moving Traditions Raising Up Teens Webinar, co-sponsored by Keshet
Pride Month is a time of celebration. At the same time, Jewish LGBTQ+ youth and families, are facing new challenges. Challenges to basic rights, discrimination in schools, and challenges to participating as their full selves in both Jewish and queer communities.
How do we show up for the queer teens in our lives with honesty, love, and hope? How do we create spaces for the fullness and range of Jewish queer identities?
Join Moving Traditions for a special Pride Month conversation with Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum — one of America’s most celebrated LGBTQ+ Jewish leaders — as we explore what it means to embrace queer and Jewish identity in full, even when the world makes that hard.
Rabbi Kleinbaum will reflect on finding joy and meaning as a queer Jewish person across decades of change; how Jewish values call us to embrace and protect LGBTQ+ youth; and what it looks like to hold celebration and protest, pride and grief, all at once.
As Jews, we are inheritors of a tradition of strength and resilience. As parents and caring adults, we know that our LGBTQ+ teens need us to see them, celebrate them, and stand with them — especially now.
We will also hear from teens in Moving Traditions’ programs who will share what they need from the adults in their lives this Pride Month and beyond.
This free webinar, moderated by Rabbi Daniel Brenner, who works to model allyship as a Jewish parent and educator, will include practical takeaways and resources to help you support the queer Jewish teens in your life.
Featured Speakers
Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum served for 32 years as Senior Rabbi of Congregation Beit Simchat Torah in New York City, the largest LGBTQ+ synagogue in the world — for people of all sexual identities and genders — where she is now Senior Rabbi Emerita. Rabbi Kleinbaum was installed as CBST’s first rabbi in 1992, arriving at the height of the AIDS crisis when the synagogue was in desperate need of pastoral care and spiritual leadership.
Rabbi Kleinbaum guided the CBST congregation through loss and change while addressing social issues and building a strong and deeply spiritual community. Under her leadership, CBST became a powerful voice in the movement for equality and justice for people of all sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions, and a significant force challenging the radical right’s dominance over religious and political life in the United States and around the world.
For many years, Rabbi Kleinbaum has been ranked by Newsweek among the 50 most influential rabbis in America. The BBC also named her one of its 100 Women of 2024. She has long been involved in the fight for human rights for all people. Rabbi Kleinbaum was appointed by President Biden as a Commissioner to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. She is a Commissioner on New York City’s Commission on Human Rights, and served on Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Faith Based Advisory Council. Rabbi Kleinbaum is also a member of the Executive Committee of Governor Hochul’s Office of Faith and Non-Profit Development Services.
Rabbi Daniel Brenner serves as the Vice President of Education (he/him/his), where he weaves together ancient wisdom, developmental psychology, social pedagogy, embodied practice, and pop culture to help a diverse network of rabbis, educators, and volunteer leaders who mentor teens. Prior to joining Moving Traditions in 2011, Daniel led educational programs for CLAL-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, Auburn Theological Seminary, and the Birthright Israel Foundation. Brenner is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College; he furthered his studies with Rabbi Yitz Greenberg and Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (z’l), and for the last five years he has been obsessed with studying and teaching shtetl dance. He lives with his beloved, Dr. Lisa Brenner, in Montclair, New Jersey and they are the proud parents of three young adults.
Rabbi Tamara Cohen, Chief of Program & Strategy (she/her/hers), guides and supports Moving Traditions’ strategy, program development and partnership work in collaboration with her fabulous colleagues. Tamara, a recipient of a 2023 Covenant Award for exceptional Jewish educators, is especially proud to have initiated Tzelem, a collaboration with Keshet to serve LGBTQ+ Jewish teens, Kol Koleinu, our fellowship for Jewish feminist teens and Kumi, our Jewish justice focused retreats. Tamara is a trained facilitator of Resetting the Table’s Speaking Across Difference Program. Tamara is a past participant in the Selah Leadership Program, Gen Now Fellowship and Rabbis without Borders and a former Barbara Bick Fellow at The Shalom Center. Her liturgy can be found in the Lev Shalem Siddur and on ritualwell.org. Tamara was ordained at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and earned an MA in Women’s History from Sarah Lawrence College and a BA in Women’s Studies and English summa cum laude from Barnard College. When Tamara isn’t moving traditions and the Jewish community, she can be found reading and writing poetry, organizing community ritual, walking in the woods, or having fun with her partner and their two children (preferably off screen but also, often, on).