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“Moral Courage” shares Jewish ideas and conversations — inspired by the works of Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis — that make Jewish wisdom more accessible, inclusive and relevant to today’s complicated world. Rabbi Schulweis was a longtime pulpit rabbi at Valley Beth Shalom in Encino, California, from 1970 until his passing in 2014, who made Judaism approachable and accessible. He believed that humanity could do divine work in the world, trying to make it a better place. He was a cofounder of the anti-genocide program Jewish World Watch, and said that Jews have a moral responsibility to help those who are suffering, wherever they are. He was also the founding Chair of the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, recognizing Christians who saved Jews from the Holocaust. His is a voice that we need now—to give us direction and hope, in an otherwise troubled time. Executive Produced by Sad Clown Productions and Mayim Bialik. Hosted by Rabbi Ari Averbach.
Ari Averbach (00:02.932)
another episode of the Moral Courage podcast where we talk about the life and times and theology and some of the struggles of Rabbi Harold Shulweiss. And we are so supremely lucky today to have one of the giants of Judaism, of the rabbinate, of moral courage of this generation, Rabbi Denise Egger. I am so happy that you are here, that we get to spend time together. So thank you for carving out the time today.
to be part of our show.
Rabbi Denise Eger (00:34.764)
It's wonderful to be here and to be with you.
Ari Averbach (00:37.588)
I want to hear about how you became a rabbi, but I'm also like far more curious as to how you became the leader that you became and how you turned your rabbinate into what you did. So I don't know which story to start with, but I just to say in reviewing your bio a few weeks ago, because we've been trying to get this on the books for a while, you have won every possible award.
citywide in Los Angeles, rabbinically, nationally, Jewishly, magazines. Like, it's it's incredible to read what you, what your rabbinate is. And it's one thing that I'm struggling with as a rabbi is going, what do want my, to be as a rabbi? Who do want to be in my community, in my synagogue, beyond in the community at large? And you did and are continuing to do everything.
And so wherever you want to start with that of either how you became a rabbi or how you took your rabbinate and turned it into one of the most courageous and beautiful and embracing rabbinets that I've ever gotten to know about, would love to hear your story.
Rabbi Denise Eger (01:47.374)
Well, I'm just going to hire you as my PR person. Listen, here's what I want to say to you. After I just observed the 38th anniversary of my ordination this past week, so it's been a very tender time to think back to my classmates and to think back of the struggle that rabbinic school was. I was ordained at a time when
Ari Averbach (01:49.62)
Hahaha
Rabbi Denise Eger (02:15.434)
LGBTQ people could not be openly gay or lesbian and be ordained by Hebrew Union College. And it was not an easy time. was the eighties, AIDS was emerging and decimating the community. And, you know, some of us carried a deep dark secret over which we could be booted out of rabbinic school for. And
you know, as a rabbi and as wanting to be a rabbi, you want to have integrity. I mean, there are basic, there are basic character traits that we hope that our rabbis embody, which is honesty, humility, a dedication to learning and integrity being one of those. And, you know, to have to carry something that was seen as shameful as
by some people, psychotic, criminal. Inside, while you know that you're called, and I know I use that's a language that we don't use in the Jewish community so much that our Christian colleagues use about calling, but I felt like I was called to be a rabbi, to be a Jewish professional. And my involvement in...
Ari Averbach (03:29.875)
Great.
Rabbi Denise Eger (03:38.146)
BBYO in Nifty as a song leader growing up in URJ summer camp in the deep south in Mississippi, where there were clubs in high school you still couldn't belong to because you were Jewish. In public school, it was like there were things that were just said. I I grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, where King was assassinated, which continues to hang heavy over the city.
Ari Averbach (03:54.225)
Wow.
Rabbi Denise Eger (04:06.958)
you know, this is a part of my legacy. And even during rabbinical school, I was already organizing other LGBT students to have secret quiet meetings, simply so we had support from each other.
Ari Averbach (04:22.963)
Did you have, how did you tell other people that, like, what was your whisper? What was the sign? What was the thing?
Rabbi Denise Eger (04:30.2)
There's the whisper, the whispers that, well, everybody jokes in the LGBT community about gaydar, right? Radar, gaydar, you can tell, you know. And, you know, we, people were friends. And so, but there were other students of multiple years that might not have been in your rabbinicals class that you were off in Israel with and different in the reform movement. We go off to rabbinical school in our first year, as opposed to conservative rabbinical students who go off in what used to be their third or fourth year to Israel.
Ari Averbach (04:36.391)
Right.
Rabbi Denise Eger (04:59.138)
So there's a bonding that happens in that thing. And I was in Israel during the first Lebanon war. So that was extra bonding to be there in a war stance, right? Right, yes, exactly. creates a different sense of urgency and protection and support that you need from your classmates, I believe. And I think...
Ari Averbach (05:09.415)
I'd mind the same, strangely, but.
Rabbi Denise Eger (05:25.004)
I think one of the differences here for us was like, you know, we took some risks. We furtively put up signs in the elevator. You know, we took risks, those same elevators that professors traveled in. We took risks. We met offside. yes.
Ari Averbach (05:42.813)
Because if somebody found out, like if they're wrong, if your radar went off on the wrong person and you go, hey, we're having a meeting, look for the rainbow flag on the third floor and they go, ha ha, I caught you, I'm gonna turn you in.
Rabbi Denise Eger (05:48.672)
yes, yes, yes. Yeah, yes. Well, but that was always the risk. That was always the risk. That was always the risk. Less from students who were more accepting and didn't matter already by the mid-80s to faculty and to administrators who were very on the record in the reform movement about that. And we had a number at the New York campus of Hebrew Unions.
where I finished my rabbinical training because both in those years at Zeigler, American Jewish University, and at Hebrew Union College, you could not finish in Los Angeles in those years. We all had to go pick somewhere else to be ordained. So I started in Los Angeles at the campus, and then we had to go to either Cincinnati or New York. And no self-respecting gay person was going to go to Cincinnati. That was really the deep dark hole in New York.
Ari Averbach (06:30.494)
to New York, Cincinnati.
Rabbi Denise Eger (06:47.446)
at least you could have some of the anonymity. And so like my first position, I didn't get a job for ordination. Everybody else was ordained, had a position by the time of ordination. And then it was kind of a little bit more of an open secret that I was gay, I to call it the plexiglass closet. Hamei vina vina, those who know it will know it.
So I kind of played a very interesting kind of game, if you will, at that stage. The CCR was deep in debates about homosexuality and Judaism in the mid-80s and whether they could be members of CCAR, whether we could be, whether the HUC should change its policy. There was already these debates happening. The first openly gay rabbi, Rabbi Alan Bennett in San Francisco had serving Sha'ar Zahav, which was a
LGBT congregation had come out during what was then in California, the Briggs Initiative to basically remove any gay teachers from public teaching. He was Harvey Milk's rabbi and he came out as part of that process to give a face and a name. So I was hardly the first, although I was one of the first in the reform movement. That being said is I came back to Los Angeles after ordination to become the first
LGBT Rabbi of Beth Chaim Kharashim, which is Los Angeles's first LGBT synagogue and the world's first LGBT synagogue at the height of the AIDS crisis. So I want to say I'm framing this history for you because all of these awards, all of these things is not because I sought them. It's not because because I've been doing I mean, they came because of doing the work. And when you're ordained in 1988 in the height of the AIDS crisis, serving
and then you're called to serve in an LGBT congregation because it's the only place that would hire you because nobody wanted a lesbian rabbi on their staff, even though that was never my call to arms. I didn't come to be a rabbi, to be an activist. I never did. I came because I cared deeply about Judaism, about our history, our tradition, about the future of the Jewish people. That was why, because I am and was a Zionist.
Rabbi Denise Eger (09:10.51)
I this is why I became a rabbi, because Jewish music was important to me and moved me spiritually, not because I'm an activist.
Ari Averbach (09:18.452)
you've opened like 10 doors and I want to see if we can get to some of them. But you, I'm trying to even picture an LGBT synagogue like the one like Beth Chaim Harashim in Los Angeles where I've been there, I've davened there and also Shari Zahav which is like one of the best named synagogues, means Golden Gate. I love the ones that there's also like in
Rabbi Denise Eger (09:24.236)
Yeah
Rabbi Denise Eger (09:35.726)
Thank
Rabbi Denise Eger (09:43.192)
Isn't it the best? It's the best.
Ari Averbach (09:47.069)
the desert, there's Midbar Kodesh, and in Hawaii there's Sofam A'Rav, like all these names that are like referencing where they are in beautiful Jewish ways. But so at these synagogues, these are openly LGBT synagogues. What does it mean to have an openly, if I can say queer synagogue that isn't allowed to have a gay rabbi?
Rabbi Denise Eger (09:48.856)
Yeah.
Rabbi Denise Eger (09:54.072)
Yes.
Rabbi Denise Eger (10:03.597)
Whoop.
Right, well, that's the, that was, there just weren't, there weren't, right? There weren't, there weren't, but I, was, no, not, not in, not in the, not at the Haim Harashim in those days, but everywhere else. I didn't apply to be the rabbi there. I, I applied like my classmates to a million other rabbi educator jobs, Hillel job, whatever. But it turned out with timing and whatever, the only job available to me was there. And I had been an intern there during my,
Ari Averbach (10:10.58)
But was everybody there kind of like, we know, we know, like.
Ari Averbach (10:25.273)
sure.
Rabbi Denise Eger (10:36.344)
Binnick years in Los Angeles. And so I took the only job that was open to me. And it was 1988. And it was the height of the AIDS crisis before there were any medicines to help people with AIDS. And so people would get diagnosed and they would die five weeks later, four weeks later, six weeks later. So all I did was pastor and bury people. I was a hobby. mean,
Ari Averbach (10:49.812)
Right. Sure.
Rabbi Denise Eger (11:02.956)
My rabbi was basically schlepping from hospital to hospital across LA County from down to Long Beach to County to Sherman Oaks. In those years, it was like the COVID years when we didn't know and everybody had a mask up and do all of those things, gown up. And at Cedar signing, we had a terrible problem at the Jewish hospital because the head chaplain at the time was an Orthodox rabbi who basically said this was at God's punishment for.
Ari Averbach (11:10.174)
putting on all of the garb.
Ari Averbach (11:16.52)
Right.
Rabbi Denise Eger (11:31.803)
sexual behavior and the many of the nurses didn't know the food would be left outside and people would go unbathed and unfed. They couldn't feed themselves and myself and the one other gay minister, Reverend Troy Perry, who has an interesting Jewish side story. It, you know, would actually go into the hospital rooms, bring the food trays that were left outside and feed the boys.
hold their hands when we were told not to because nobody, I what does it mean to be starved of just human, touch, holding hands with a patient? How many times have you had to do that, Rabbi, when you've gone to visit somebody in the hospital to say a prayer, to say a Mishab E'erak, to say, right, like, or just to listen or just to sit there. So.
Ari Averbach (12:16.404)
To think who you would have been had you been serving Temple Emanuel of Chattanooga. Like, you would have not, your rabbit would have been much more straight down.
Rabbi Denise Eger (12:22.018)
Great, it would have been, my family would have been very different. And so what do rabbis do is they advocate for their communities and they care for their communities. And in the community I was serving in was a community that had many sick people. And I had to educate Jewish community at large. I had to educate funeral homes and funeral directors and Jewish family service.
and had to educate other rabbis whose congregants would come to me because they didn't want them to know that their kid was sick with AIDS and rabbi could I go visit them and I did the funerals because their rabbis would refuse. And this was a very different time than we're living in now. This is a time when gay people weren't members of mainstream synagogues or if they were, they were so closeted and hidden. It was a different time. could be fired for being gay.
even in California.
Ari Averbach (13:20.19)
What, do we know what got the CCAR or HUC, the reform institutions to change course? Sure, I figured you'd
Rabbi Denise Eger (13:27.374)
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, this, it was by design. so in 1988, I became the rabbi at BCC, height of the AIDS crisis. And we were already fighting within the CCR to try and force Hebrew Union College to change its policy to admit openly LGBT students. in the spring and in 1990, there was a resolution going to come to the floor of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, which is
the North American Worldwide Rabbinical Association of Reform Movement was gonna be in Seattle on the West Coast to basically force Hebrew Union College to change its administrative policy. Even though there are separate institutions, at that time, almost every member of the central conference was an alumni of Hebrew Union College. It's a little different today. And so in advance of that conference, in the...
spring of 1990, late summer, June, June-ish. The conference was then in the end of June. John Dart, who was then the religion reporter for the Los Angeles Times, did an interview with me and it hit the press. And I made a strategic decision that the only way that something was going to help change is because we had to put real faces and names to who were the people affected.
by such a decision. And so my coming out story in the LA Times hit as we were disbaiting this resolution. the resolution, there was all kinds of things that happened in 1990 because of that resolution, the official policy of Hebrew Union College changed to say that sexual orientation would no longer be an automatic bar to admissions, which was huge. It was a big first step.
And so from there, fast forward to early 2000, we were continuing to debate marriage equality began in the 94, 95, 96 to become an issue. In 96, we were able, a group of us to pass a resolution at the CCR saying that the Central Conference of American Rabbis supports civil marriage for LGBTQ people. We formed the LGBTQ
Rabbi Denise Eger (15:51.075)
rabbinic network, which was a subset of the central conference. I was one of the chairs and we created basically a resolution and a plan to pass at the CCAR resolutions level that rabbis could officiate at the sacred marriage, at like a Kiddushin level, which we did in 2000 in Greensboro, North Carolina, a place of history, if you know your civil rights, African-American civil rights movement.
of some of the first sit-ins at drug store counters. And with this resolution also enabled this, gave permission to CCR to develop materials to help rabbis with marital counseling for LGBT people. That was specific for liturgy for LGBT people for their weddings and commitment ceremonies. Remember we didn't have marriage equality yet in 2000.
Ari Averbach (16:44.52)
Right.
Rabbi Denise Eger (16:44.726)
It was not legal. There was no state. They had some places had civil unions like California, but there was no state that had civil marriage yet. So we were, we were part of the head of the time on this. And then I chaired that and the headlines out of that convention, my picture was all over the New York times and around the world, reform rabbis approve marriage for gay people. That's how you make change. Political organizing even within our.
Ari Averbach (17:15.558)
Right. And this seems like a decent time to segue into, like, one of the purposes of the podcast, but they're not the main one, is somewhere in here you met Rabbi Harold Shulweiss.
Rabbi Denise Eger (17:21.55)
Yes.
Rabbi Denise Eger (17:28.743)
Well, in many places in here, not only as a rabbinical student, because Rabbi Shul Weiss and Malka would host both the Hebrew Union College students and the then University of Judaism's, what is now Ziegler School students, and together in their home for many a session studying at his feet, as it were. So I met him as a rabbinical student. But already as a rabbi, I had met.
Herald, Board of Rabbis and other things, but also this was, I was the Rabbi in the, I was the Rabbi at Beth Chaim Harashim when Rabbi Shulweis gave his momentous sermon about his change in his own position. And I want to share it because Rabbi Shulweis certainly didn't always believe that.
And he's documented that in his sermons that LGBT people, Jewish people should be granted a place of dignity in the Jewish communal table. But Rabbi Shuloy has talked about his process and he came to Beth-Heim Haneshim and he sat with me and we learned and he sat in the back of the shul and came to services. He did not just make a theoretical, theological change.
He did his homework. And this is part of his moral courage to learn in an area. And the truth is one of the, I left Beth Chaym Chumashim after five years. started a new congregation in West Hollywood where I'm the Rabbi Emerita, Congregation Kol Ami. And I served there the rest of my career, 32, 33 years, whatever.
And I will say.
Rabbi Denise Eger (19:26.796)
that one of the founders of my congregation in West Hollywood was a woman who had been a member of Rabbi Shulweis's congregation, raised her children there, and she came out probably in the mid to late 70s when her children were still young. And Rabbi Shulweis was not good with her. She went to Rabbi Shulweis to try and talk to him. And he basically sided with her then husband.
to have her children taken away from
He was a product of his era. And so his own learning about what was happening with the AIDS crisis really, and he saw what was happening to people with AIDS and the stigmatization and learning about how there were no support for people and learning more and coming into contact more with LGBT people. He could see his dramatic change of his thinking and his own humanity.
coming in contact with gay people's humanity.
Ari Averbach (20:34.787)
I mean, look, the reform movement, later the conservative movement, in some parts of the modern Orthodox movement, I it takes a while because for most of history, right, you mentioned that this is what's called the DSM. Like, this was considered a disease. The surface level Judaism has, like, essentially one line in Torah that seems to be on the most popular reading to be anti-gay and pretty
Rabbi Denise Eger (21:01.486)
it says a man shouldn't lie with a man as he lies with a woman. It is a to eva. We can say whether that's about homosexuality or sexual behaviors or what, or Levitical practices. There's a whole debate about that. as Rabbi Shulway says in his sermon in 1992, it's read on Yom Kippur afternoon in traditional shuls, right? Every year.
Ari Averbach (21:13.555)
Right.
Ari Averbach (21:22.707)
In addition to who else you can't lie with. this is, some people have formed their idea of religion based on this one line. And I've actually used this line when I teach classes sometimes, especially to high school kids, to go like, what does the Torah mean? And so I write that line in Hebrew and I write it English too. I go, let's look at the English. Do not lie with a man as you lie with a woman. How would you read that? Like you could read that as,
anti-homosexual. You could read it as anti-orgy. Don't lie with a man as you're lying with a woman. What else is a towe va? What else is an abomination in the Torah? And can we look at all of these things that are listed as towe vot, as abominations, go, okay, so which of these things do we now as a society feel fine with? Why are some people forming their entire idea of religion and God and how God punishes people, which is also ridiculous, around this one line of Torah?
Rabbi Denise Eger (22:20.334)
Well, mean, part of this, as you know, is a reaction against Roman life. Jews keep ourselves separate from how Rome and Greek did things and homosexuality was common in the ancient world. And as it is in every generation, the truth is. But the Romans were our adulterers. They're the ones that destroyed our temple.
you know, by the third century, Philo comes along, it comes along to reinterpret Sodom and Gomorrah from the sin of not being hospitable. That was really the sin of Sodom. That's what being a Sodomite is, is being inhospitable to strangers, to foreigners, to aliens, to immigrants, but reinterprets it to make it about homosexuality.
Ari Averbach (22:59.195)
Right. Right?
Ari Averbach (23:04.923)
It re-
Rabbi Denise Eger (23:12.93)
So like that is the basis for all of this right wing, particularly evangelical and in our Orthodox brethren's efforts to have conversion therapy, which is heinous, cruel tactic to try and make people change constitutionally who they are wired to be in their DNA and brain. It doesn't, it never works, it never works.
Ari Averbach (23:33.076)
Sure. And how does that work? I know. But also, mean, and we've talked about this before, is the fact that somebody like Rabbi Shulweiss, who was a Gadol, who could have rested on his laurels by the 1970s and said, this is me, this is my rabbi, and I'm writing books and poetry and theology. am the...
Jewish advisor to Hollywood and could have left it at that and went as a, I don't know if he ever knew the word cis, but as a cis, straight, Ashkenormative male to actually take my rabbet and go, wait, what are they saying at Beth Chayim Chadashi? What are they saying? then call on me. What are they, what's really going on? And if I have a congregant who's hurting and part of it's because of what I said, because my theology is based on
Rabbi Denise Eger (24:22.296)
Yes.
Ari Averbach (24:30.373)
a misinterpretation of two lines of Torah, to have the moral courage, the audacity to go, I think that even though I am the Gadol of this generation, I have a lot more to learn.
Rabbi Denise Eger (24:44.022)
Right. And that was an incredible gift that he gave to all of us to continue to grow as a human being, to learn, do that struggling of our ancestors, to wrestle with what it means to be a Jew in the world today.
Ari Averbach (25:06.491)
Yeah. Yeah. And somehow, I mean not somehow, you now live in Texas. I mean you, like, by the way, it's Austin, right? Okay, which like, you know, is the ca—
Rabbi Denise Eger (25:13.079)
I do.
I live in Austin, yes. A great place to be if you have to be in Texas. I love it here. We do love it here. do love it here. There's an amazing Jewish community. My wife is the senior rabbi of Temple Be' Shalom, which is the largest reform congregation. It's on this magnificent campus of Jewish life with the Del JCC campus, the JCC. Shalom Austin is our federation and JFS.
Ari Averbach (25:20.627)
Right, and I have I some friends over there and it's Right, right your wife is a rabbi over there
Ari Averbach (25:39.292)
or the DEL-
Rabbi Denise Eger (25:45.612)
Judea schools there and the conservative schools across the parking lot and the small modern Orthodox school is also there. And it's a thriving, amazing place. I like it.
Ari Averbach (25:55.868)
And first of all, thanks for saying that because now all of them have to listen to this to get the shout out of how incredible it is. Hello, Michael Dell. But also, what does it mean? How do people get along there knowing that on the same campus you have orthodoxy, modern orthodoxy, but orthodoxy, and you also have a lesbian rabbi? are people going like, that's fine. When we have meetings, of course, Rabbi Steinman's allowed at the table. Or are they going,
Rabbi Denise Eger (26:02.606)
you
Rabbi Denise Eger (26:13.762)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yeah?
Ari Averbach (26:25.971)
I mean, and this is also a battle you fought in Los Angeles.
Rabbi Denise Eger (26:26.77)
No, yes, here this has been a very welcoming, welcoming community. We've not had one moment of issue here in the Jewish community or in the larger community. Austin's a progressive community and we've been welcomed here with open arms, which has been great. It's a
Ari Averbach (26:51.613)
Wonderful.
Rabbi Denise Eger (26:54.83)
And, but my wife has a large congregation and there are a couple other LGBT congregations with LGBT rabbis in them, none as large as hers, that is the senior rabbi.
Ari Averbach (27:12.819)
I mean, the synagogue where I used to be, which was in the suburbs of Chicago, when I was leaving, I was the assistant rabbi. was a, it's 1200 families or whatever. And as I was leaving, they were looking for a replacement, an assistant rabbi, and they had four final candidates. And one was a woman, one was a Jew by choice, one was a single man, and one was a gay man. And people were like,
Rabbi Denise Eger (27:21.014)
Mm-hmm.
Rabbi Denise Eger (27:32.738)
Mm-hmm.
Ari Averbach (27:36.88)
up in arms. This is Chicago. This is the suburbs of Chicago. This is a blue city in a blue state. Not that everybody votes that way. Everything's purple. like, it's, you know, and people came up to me, this is one of my favorite things, is was on Purim. And I'm holding my son, who's at that time two years old. And this woman comes up to me and says, can you make sure that our next rabbi is traditional? And I know what she's saying, especially knowing the candidates who have come in. And as I'm,
Rabbi Denise Eger (27:40.162)
Yes.
Rabbi Denise Eger (27:45.707)
Everything's purple.
Rabbi Denise Eger (28:03.212)
Yes.
Ari Averbach (28:05.583)
As she's saying this to me, my two-year-old son sees a guy walking by in a dinosaur costume. It's Purim. And she goes, Abba, my son, goes, Abba, look at the dinosaur. And all I could think is like this juxtaposition of like, who's the dinosaur? It's this woman who thinks that a rabbi has to be a straight white male. And now that synagogue, as it's unfolded, their two rabbis are both, are both gay. And how, and like, and the synagogue is,
Rabbi Denise Eger (28:18.712)
Who's the dinosaur, right?
Rabbi Denise Eger (28:30.669)
right.
Ari Averbach (28:34.161)
doing okay, it hasn't turned into a gay synagogue. I think, whatever. But I think so much of that is the work of you and Benet Lapie and other leaders of the community who have fought for the fact, mean, also just a few years before you, when women started becoming ordained, the first, not across the board, but a lot of them had to start by teaching feminist Torah. That way the next generation could just teach
Rabbi Denise Eger (28:36.517)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's the tip.
Mm-hmm.
Rabbi Denise Eger (29:01.106)
Listen, when I became the Rabbi of Beth Chayim Chadashim, in the city of Los Angeles, there was only, like in Glendale, there was one other woman rabbi who headed their own congregation. Every other female rabbi in Los Angeles in the late 80s worked in either day school or Hillel.
Ari Averbach (29:03.626)
And so you like
Rabbi Denise Eger (29:30.432)
or organizational life or was an assistant rabbi. There were no women senior rabbis or there were only two of us that were solo rabbis. So when you say, as a woman, there were many places I walked in where I was the only woman rabbi they had ever seen in 1988. And for many years and for many years and still to this day, I don't know women can be rabbis.
Ari Averbach (29:51.269)
Right, but...
Ari Averbach (29:56.829)
Bye.
Rabbi Denise Eger (29:56.993)
And you know, it's more than, in the reform movement, it's more than 50 years since Sally Priesom was ordained in 72 and in, you know, in the eighties in in the conservative movement. Yes.
Ari Averbach (30:05.939)
conservative vote, right? We just hit 42 years, I think. But right, the fact that now a large suburban synagogue there or, what's great is it's like not even news. When this happened, there were no reporters going, oh, synagogue has, because people have built the roads.
Rabbi Denise Eger (30:16.035)
Well.
Rabbi Denise Eger (30:22.37)
Right.
Well, because we've had to do education and we've had to make political change. Now you asked me earlier about moral courage and how to do this, but I saw my ravenet as caring for LGBTQ people and caring for the Jewish community. And these changes were part of making that caring.
And I like as here's what I would always say and what like I would share with Rabbi Shulweiss, one of the things I shared with him was that we don't have Jews to waste in the face of the Holocaust, where our numbers today are still not what they were pre World War II.
Even within Israel, we don't have Jewish people to waste. How are we going to open the tent to ensure that all the Jewish people have a place and that we have to make the conditions for equality and for liberty and for Jewish expressions at all kinds of levels? It's kiruv, it's outreach. And kiruv doesn't just mean to bringing in those who want to be Jewish, just
Jews by choice. K'eruv is often to our own people who were born Jewish, who have Jewish heritage, who might not be learned, who might not know, who might not have been exposed, who don't feel at home for whatever reason. What is their place within the Jewish people? that, I mean, here we are at Shavuot when we're recording this right before Shavuot. You know, it's all of us stood at Sinai, not just some of us.
Ari Averbach (32:08.775)
Right. I think it was Rabbi Shulweiss who taught me, I mean this is when I was in school maybe, and he said, K'eruv isn't outreach, K'eruv is in reach. How do you find the people who are already in your community, who are not feeling it, not knowledgeable, couldn't tell you what Talmud or Rambam or Rashi couldn't identify, how do you bring them in and teach them that there's a lot in Judaism that could speak to their life?
Rabbi Denise Eger (32:19.224)
Thank you.
Rabbi Denise Eger (32:35.352)
But this is what exactly Rabbi Shois and I talked about at that era. And the fact that people didn't feel safe coming to him to do their child's funeral was shocking to him.
Ari Averbach (32:40.104)
Yeah.
Ari Averbach (32:53.201)
Yeah, I'm just so grateful that he had the ability to see the error. That he could wake up. Like, don't, and I think that's something that we're always stuck in, and we need people who are in the middle and are the big strong ones. For people on the side to make, to take a stand isn't going to do as much as to have somebody who is where he is, who people would come and learn at his feet and say, actually, I've been wrong.
Rabbi Denise Eger (33:00.768)
And I want to speak quick.
Rabbi Denise Eger (33:19.724)
Yes.
Ari Averbach (33:22.183)
We need to readdress this issue and find humanity.
Rabbi Denise Eger (33:22.614)
Right. That's moral courage to say I've been wrong and I've changed my mind because I learned more. And we live in an era now where people are in their silos and where people who change their mind are called flip-floppers as if they don't have backbone. And that is the antithesis of a Jewish value. Jewish value is to be a learner.
We talk about Talmud Torah, K'neged Kulam. We talk about studying Torah beyond anything and to keep learning. And what do you keep learning for? Just to learn? No. You can learn to grow to be a better human being and to do God's work in the world. And that is not being a flip-flopper. That is being a Chacham.
Ari Averbach (34:15.793)
Yeah. There's a great story. can't, I get Kaplan and Heschel confused, especially with who they were in, like, as professors. I think it was Kaplan, but was teaching homiletics, and he would tear apart each kid's sermon every day, just find every hole in it, every theological problem, and then that was one day a week, and the other day a week is he would give a sermon, like, to show, like, how it's done. And he gave this sermon, and one of the kids had the audacity to record the sermon.
Rabbi Denise Eger (34:17.099)
a sage.
Rabbi Denise Eger (34:37.816)
Yeah.
Ari Averbach (34:45.043)
and then memorize it. And then two days later, he went in and gave the same sermon that his professor gave him. The professor tore it apart and found every theological hole in it and every problem with it. And the student, who's now like 95, but the student said, but this was your sermon. You're tearing apart your own words. And I think it was Kaplan, said, that was two days ago and I've learned since then and you haven't.
And I just love this, the fact that we have the ability to continue to grow and see how we were wrong and try to make Judaism relevant today, not two days ago, but today.
Rabbi Denise Eger (35:29.452)
Right.
Ari Averbach (35:33.659)
Any other things that, like, you have so many other parts of your story we can't do like your whole bio here. Any other things that stand out that you go, we gotta talk about either an interaction with Rabbi Shul Weiss or just a place that you had to take a...
Rabbi Denise Eger (35:37.359)
Well, I think, I mean, one of the things that I think in terms of moral courage, and I think the conversation today is a little, is a little different about what it takes to be moral courage because of cancel culture. And I think we should say a word or two about that because
As I said to you earlier today, people get so have to stick by their talking points and stay in their camp and yell past each other or the social media experience rather than encountering people, panima panima, face to face, and actually hearing and listening to different voices and
I think for me, in this hour of moral courage is really about standing strong for the Jewish people at large. And I guess what I've learned in part
for standing for the humanity and liberty and equality for LGBTQ people than in this era of virulent antisemitism. I don't want to hear anybody say rising antisemitism. It is just virulent from the left and from the right. And a time of virulent hatred of anybody who's somehow not a norm, whatever that is, because everybody has it. Everybody has a closet, my friend.
of some sort. Some are more plexiglass than others, but every human being has a story and has a closet. So for me, I think in this time, the moral courage is to try and have people encounter the humanity of the Jewish people and for us to stand strong with one another across the boards. Not so easy to do. And the fractures within our own Jewish people are deep right now.
Ari Averbach (37:13.625)
are more plexiglass than others.
Rabbi Denise Eger (37:41.525)
We have to try and rise beyond that. And that's going to take leaders, both ordained rabbis and cantors and lay leaders also to work together. Because it's not clear that the Jewish people are going to ease through this time.
Ari Averbach (38:03.633)
Yeah. It's frightening. I feel like, you know, and sometimes you hear the news and you go, wait, is this from a week ago or is this from today? Like, this, cause it just seems to...
Rabbi Denise Eger (38:13.164)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Ari Averbach (38:17.169)
It keeps going. Yeah. I was talking to one of my teachers, Rabbi Elliott Dorff, and like the author of half the books behind me. And he goes, you know, I said to him, this isn't the rabbi that I signed up for. He goes, this isn't the rabbi that I signed up for. He goes, I've been a rabbi for 60 years, whatever the number is. He goes, I didn't think I'd be dealing with this.
Rabbi Denise Eger (38:29.614)
you
Rabbi Denise Eger (38:33.932)
Right. Right.
Correct. None of us have, none of us thought about it this way. And, you know, I used to laugh every year at the Board of Rabbis. You know, I was the first woman president of the Los Angeles Board of Rabbis. Talk about first. Not just that I was the first gay person, I was the first woman in 75 years at that time in 2009. So, and that, you know, in Los Angeles, it's Orthodox conservative reformer constructionists across the board. And so that wasn't a...
Ari Averbach (38:55.763)
Shh. Right.
Rabbi Denise Eger (39:09.302)
wasn't a given. what makes it, let me just say this parenthetically, what makes it historical is that when I founded Kolahmi in 93, the Jewish journal at the time called me the lesbian, the president of the board of rabbis was an orthodox rabbi at the time and called me the lesbian pig rabbi. So it was pretty amazing that I became the president of the board of rabbis. So like, I just want to parenthetically.
say that, and the Jewish journal printed it at the time. that's, know, think about that. That when I founded Kola Mi, you know, again, still at the height of the AIDS crisis, the drugs to help people with HIV stay healthy were just coming to out at that time. You know, I never thought that that would be my rabbinet.
It was a circumstance, a place and time. And yet, when we're called into a space to care, care pastorally for a community as a rabbi, I didn't feel like I could, I had to step forward to do the actual work of being a rabbi.
And when I would go to the board of rabbis, I would hear people every year at the high holy day sermon seminar when we get together to learn from a teacher to help spark our thinking for sermons, there'd be some alticocker old guy that would get up and talk about anti-Semitism in the 30s and 40s. And I used to say to myself, well, I don't luckily I'll never why am I giving an anti-Semitism sermon? That's ridiculous. And now. And now.
Ari Averbach (40:51.421)
Right. What year is this? Right.
Rabbi Denise Eger (40:54.754)
that this is our rabbinance when we're having to educate and teach about anti-Semitism, what it is, how do we help our kids in high school combat it, our kids in junior high that are being called dirty Jew in the streets. It's like my father from 1920s and 30s who would get beat up in school. This is what's happening with our youth. So strengthening the Jewish people is still the work of a rabbi.
Ari Averbach (41:06.855)
Yeah.
Rabbi Denise Eger (41:22.738)
why I really believe part of our moral courage at this time has to be helping strengthen the Jewish people across the board and doing that kiruv both that in reach as well as out of reach that you talked about.
Ari Averbach (41:38.471)
Yeah, I mean, I am part of the issue for me right now is it's amorphous where they're getting it from where these middle school kids are getting it from is from TikTok or I mean sound like an old person. It's you know, what I feel like.
Rabbi Denise Eger (41:50.639)
Well, and it's from Twitch. mean, go on, be a gamer. Go in the gaming universe. Here in Texas, a few weeks ago, the big reform congregation, historic oldest congregation, Beth Israel in Houston, had a credible threat. They have a huge, huge day school at the reform synagogue at Beth Israel. And at 6.30 in the morning, the Houston police and the FBI called the senior rabbi, Rabbi David Lyon.
You have to close the building. have to close school. We have a credible threat of somebody going to drive a car like they did at Temple Israel Michigan with bombs. They shut down the school. People arrested. Where were those people caught? They were people that met online in the gaming universe. One in North Carolina, one in New Mexico, one in Houston, and they put a plot. Same thing that happened in San Diego, just with the mosque. These people met online. They didn't even know each other.
Ari Averbach (42:26.939)
Gosh.
Rabbi Denise Eger (42:47.682)
to students that caused so much damage and murdered three people. So it's a serious issue. That's what's happening. And that's what's happening to our junior high kids. And how do we protect our elementary school kids and what's being taught to them and maps with Israel not on them because the school district accepted money from the Cutter Foundation to pay for that curriculum. I mean, these are serious issues that we have to contend with together as the whole Jewish community.
Ari Averbach (43:12.177)
Yeah, yeah. So with that, of like what this next generation of morality is gonna look like, what the next generation of standing up for what's right is gonna look like, wanted to see from you, if you have something that you're loving, a book, a sugya, a prayer, something that you are grappling with or embracing right now. yes.
Rabbi Denise Eger (43:36.623)
Well, I want to say something to you. is June across, pretty much across the globe, in most places, not everywhere, is LGBTQ Pride Month. And why is that important? You know, it commemorates the rebellion at the Stonewall Inn in 1969 when a bar was raided by the NYPD and people were there to mourn.
Judy Garland's death frankly and and and and they were just tired of being harassed for like just gathering and what people do But Pride Month is really about celebrating LGBTQ people and their lives It's been taken away from many people across states and Tennessee the governor signed a bill
Ari Averbach (43:59.858)
Julie, Yeah.
Rabbi Denise Eger (44:21.442)
outlying Pride month and it's now natural family month, whatever that means, what are natural families? My family's a natural family. I have a son and I have a grandson and a wife and a daughter-in-law. I mean, that's pretty natural. I don't know what's not natural about that. I've been married a long time, as long as you could be legally married. I've been married 10 years. you know, like, I that was, anyways. So I want to share with you from my book, Mishkan Ga'ava, Where Pride Dwells. It's a book of
Ari Averbach (44:35.272)
Right.
Ari Averbach (44:48.659)
There we go.
Rabbi Denise Eger (44:49.998)
prayers and liturgy that celebrates LGBTQ Jewish life and ritual, promised by CCR Press. And I want to share with you a prayer by Rabbi Dave Yadid. was a rabbinical student. He's a conservative rabbi. That is my favorite prayer in the book, even though I have many of my own that are in there. And the reason that I love this particular prayer and I think about it a lot, particularly before Pride Month,
comes is our own Jewish tradition of Zahor, of remembrance. And the only way, why do we remember so much? Why do we remember our ancestors? Why do we light Yartzei candles in memory? Because we want to take the best qualities of our ancestors, the merits of our ancestors, and hopefully shape our lives. And we're doing that today by recalling the courage, the moral courage of Rabbi Shulweiss.
and from his teachings. And this is a prayer that Dave Yadid wrote is a kind of a take on a vote in Imahot. It's called a blessing for my LGBTQ ancestors. You who fought to love, you who prayed to the same God I do, you who insisted on your dignity even when the world said you had none, you who died of AIDS while fighting for a cure so that people like me might live, you who were shot in a massacre on the dance floor.
You who could not come out and held your secret until your dying day. You who were insulted, shamed, beaten and brutalized yet kept walking. You who contributed to your fierceness, your originality, your art and your voice to this world. I walk in your memory. I walk this path smooth and charted by your sacrifice towards justice, towards holiness, towards freedom. Baruch atah Adonai ma gein Avraham ve Ezra Tzera.
Blessed are you, Adonai, Sarah's helper and Abraham's shield. I'm thinking about all of those courageous people who marched and danced and laughed and lived their lives with dignity as Jews, as queer people, even when the world said we had none. And that took courage and took moral courage. And that is what we're talking about.
Rabbi Denise Eger (47:09.026)
that Rabbi Shulweiss showed in 1992 when he gave his sermons of inclusion that really shifted a conversation for a lot of the Jewish world. The Reform Movement had begun its shift long before, but it would be till 2006 until the conservative movement went on record with the law and practices committee. he showed Rabbi Shulweiss' moral courage helped change worlds too.
We can't stop changing the world and we have to remember our ancestors who helped us do it.
Ari Averbach (47:43.485)
I mean, it's a beautiful, beautiful prayer. Thank you and thank you for being here, for sharing so much of your story and yourself with us today. Rabbi Denise Eggert, before I was a rabbinical student, you were already a legend and people were, I mean, it's amazing to get this chance to talk to you. So thank you for being you and thanks for being here today.
Rabbi Denise Eger (48:04.366)
Thank you for having me and wish you all the very best.
Eric Weisser (48:11.935)
was absolutely fantastic. I really, I mean that wasn't for you, that was Rabbi Egger, but really absolutely wonderful. Really, that was fantastic to listen to and I appreciate being here to listen to it, so thank you.
Ari Averbach (48:12.019)
All right. Thank you. That was...
Rabbi Denise Eger (48:22.936)
Good.
Ari Averbach (48:27.496)
Yeah. Great.