By Simone Somekh, Forward, April 25, 2019
During middle school, Yoni Kollin took part in “Shevet,” a Jewish teen group in Los Angeles for boys post-bar mitzvah. The program, facilitated by Moving Traditions, a Jewish organization that provides progressive educational teen programming, offered a parallel program for girls, too, called “Rosh Hodesh.”
Yet for Kollin, neither program was a perfect fit.
Kollin, who is now 18 years old and a senior in a high school on the Westside, identifies as non-binary and goes by the pronoun “they.” After coming out, Kollin thought it would have been great if the organization had an LGBTQ-oriented variation of its programming.
“They had it for guys and for girls,” they said. “What about the LGBT teens?”
Last year in October, Kollin’s wish came true when Moving Traditions partnered with another organization, JQ International, to start a new monthly social and educational program for LGBTQ Jewish teenagers in L.A.