Community Views

Reporter's Notebook

Of Families, Love
Isolation And Acceptance

Elegy For
The Shuk

JOE KORT SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

JULIE WIENER STAFF REPORTER

Of all the rela-
tionships that we
will encounter in
our lifetime, our
family ties are
usually the most
intense, tightly
organized and
consist of the
strongest loyal-
ties. We want to stay connected to
our families and so we nurture and
protect these relationships.
There is comfort and a feeling
of safety in having a history with
these people and seeing the simi-
larities we have with one another.
So imagine what it is like to tell
your family that you are lesbian
or gay. That you are a minority in
your own family.
Imagine your fear of
introducing something so
different and sometimes
despised. Imagine fearing
that not only will you lose
the support and respect of
society but also the respect
and love of your own fam-
ily. It is chilling.
My father likes to proud-
ly shout "Gansa Mish-
pachah!" when he knows
the "whole family" is corn-
ing together. He loves it.
But there was a time when
that shout was not as
proudly declared and hav-
ing "Gansa Mishpachah"
meant tension.
I told my parents I was gay in
1981 when I was 18. It was one of
the most frightening things I ever
did. I felt I could have lost every-
thing. There were no role models,
nothing to give me direction in how
to proceed with this. I was alone.
I had nothing at the time other
than therapists and literature
telling me and my parents that I
was gay because of how I was
raised. So, you can imagine the
pain, guilt and devastation when
I told them.
I tried to tell my mother origi-
nally at age 15, in 1978, during the
Chanukah season. I was driving
with my driver's permit and we
were on the expressway. My tim-
ing was not great. I started crying,
telling her I had something awful
to tell her.
I started by telling her I was dif-
ferent. I could not go on. She lov-
ingly touched my shoulder and
told me that everything would be
fine, and she gave me some
Chanukah money. She then got
me in therapy.
Although the first therapist I
had pathologized my gayness, he
at least provided me with a safe
forum to talk about it at length,
which totally desensitized me. I
needed this. But I needed more.
What did I need as a gay teen-

Joe Kort is a psychotherapist in
Royal Oak.

alter? I needed to be applauded for
the courage to talk about it at all.
I needed to explore my sexuality
without someone telling me that
being straight was a better way to
be. I needed to be told that my
mother did a good thing by taking
me to therapy.
I really believe that. Later she
would tell me that she had some
idea that I was gay but did not
know what to do about it. She felt
that when you do not know what
to do, you ask for help. And, know-
ing she had limitations on what to
do with this subject, she did get
me help.
When I finally came out to my
family, I needed the therapist to
address the safety, honesty and
integrity of me and my family.

me that if I told this one or that
one, it would "kill" them; that
"they may decide to be gay them-
selves."
I have never heard of a death
certificate which cites cause of
death as "relative told him he was
gay." Nor have I heard of a med-
ical diagnosis classifying homo-
sexuality as a contagious disease.
This is just ignorance and mis-
information. We needed to know
this. My family needed to know
that 30 percent of adolescent sui-
cides are related to sexuality is-
sues. They needed to hear that it
is OK to disagree with me and
have a difference of opinion about
my gayness and to talk to me
openly about it.
It is acceptable to have differ-
ences in the family. It is
when there is no communi-
cation and everyone stops
talking about it that the
risks and problems arise.
Not talking leads to aban-
donment and total rejection.
My family would have
been relieved for me to stay
quiet about this part of my
life at first. But I would
have been miserable. And
we would not have had the
closeness we have now be-
cause they would not have
been a part of my personal
life that I have developed
with my life partner.
Gays and lesbians want to tell
I am always moved to tears
their families, but they are scared. when I hear one particular father
There has to be a strong commit- talk about learning his son was
ment to staying connected to the gay. He says he had the Bible in
family in order to tell. The family one hand and his gay child in the
has to have instilled a sense of other, and he did not want to get
safety for gay or lesbian children rid of either. So he worked hard at
to tell something so deep and core finding a way to keep both, stay-
about themselves.
ing loyal and true to himself and
My parents needed to know to what he believed. And he was
that. They needed to know they able to have both.
did a good job in raising a child
He is a PFLAG member (Par-
who took such a risk and valued ents, Friends and Family of Les-
the parent-child relationship that bians and Gays). PFLAG has
much.
numerous chapters across the
My family needed to be told that country. Karen Fenwick, the
when a gay or lesbian child comes mother of a gay son, is the presi-
out of the closet, the family goes in dent of the Detroit chapter. (The
the closet. The experience of say- PFLAG Detroit Hotline is (248)
ing you have a gay or lesbian child 656-2875.) Karen is Jewish.
will parallel the experience of a
There is a song written by a
gay person "coming out" to vari- man named Fred Small called
ous people. My parents needed to "Everything Possible." I think the
know that they did not make me song applies to us all. Some of the
gay.
words go like this:
As a psychotherapist, I have
You can be anybody that you
had the luxury of meeting many want to be.
different kinds of people over the
You can love whomever you will.
last 12 years. I have treated many
You can travel any country
heterosexual men with the exact where your heart leads.
same backgrounds and childhoods
And know I will love you still.
as mine, and they do not have a
And the only measure of your
gay bone in their bodies. This sup- words and your deeds will be the
ports my belief that how one is love you leave behind when you're
raised has little or nothing to do gone.
with sexual orientation.
I wish someone would have
My family needed to know that sung that song to me. I now sing
being gay and telling others can- that song to myself. And I will sing
not kill someone and is not con- it to my new nephew Jacob. We all
tagious. I recall relatives warning need to hear these words. 0

trWWW.,.

I heard about
it on NPR
Wednesday
morning during
my daily com-
mute from Ann
Arbor to South-
field. Suicide
bombers in "a
fruit and veg-
etable market in West
Jerusalem," they said. And I
knew they meant Machane
Yehuda, the shuk.
Before me lay the flat, open
road of M-14, the mix of farm
land and subdivisions, but as the
NPR announcer rattled off the
details in an even-toned, impar-
tial voice, I saw a very different
landscape, the cluttered land-
scape of the shuk.
Since my junior year of college,
when I spent a semester at Tel
Aviv University, I have been in
love with the shuk. That year,
it was Tel Aviv's Shuk Ha
Carmel (the Carmel Market), off
Sheinkin. and Allenby.
There were two clean Ameri-
can-style supermarkets right
around the corner from our dorm,
but every week my roommate
and I traveled 40 minutes each
way on the bus for the bargain
prices on tomatoes, cucumbers
and pita, stuffing as much as we
could into our L.L. Bean book
bags.
I was addicted to the shuk, less
for the prices (although I am a
compulsive bargain seeker) than
for the lively excitement and dis-
order to be found there. With the
noise, the crowds, the pushing,
the pushiness, the ever present
aroma of frying falafel, the color-
ful abundance of florescent Bart
Simpson toys lying side by side
with mountains of dark crimson
eggplants and piles of yarmulkes,
the shuk was a microcosm of
what I love about Israel.
I was studying in an ulpan,
but the shuk is where I really
learned Hebrew, negotiating
shekels and kilos of fruits and
vegetables with friendly but im-
patient vendors eager to unload
their overflowing tables of goods
and my American wallet.
Two years later, when I re-
turned to Israel for a year, I
transferred my allegiance to
Jerusalem's Machane Yehuda
which — with its seemingly end-
less maze of partially covered cor-
ridors and outdoor alleys—is the
mother of all shuks. Every Fri-
day morning, I boarded the No.
18 bus — packed with other
shoppers — and rode the bumpy
route up Emek Refaim, past the
Old City, the King David Hotel,
the center of the city, up narrow
Jaffa Road to Machane Yehuda..
Friday morning is the most
hectic time at the shuk; everyone
is doing his or her Shabbat shop-

ping, filling carts, canvas bags,
plastic baskets with unbelievable
quantities of produce, olives, shal-
lot, pareve rugelach and candies.
As soon as you enter the shuk,
you get swept along the stone
floor; there is a constant rush of
bodies. Yet despite the crowds, it
does not have the anonymity of
a place like Manhattan. Vendors
— Mostly young and middle-aged
Mizrachi men (Jews of Middle
Eastern origin) — call out to you,
determined to convince you why
their olives, their pastries, their
Bulgarian cheese is the best. And
after a few weeks they recognize
you, start asking,"You want the
half kilo of Greek feta, right?"
At the shuk, no one needs to
ask permission to sample the
wares; savvy shoppers sport dis-
interested looks while squeezing
the fruit or reaching into the plas-
tic container for an olive, spitting
the pits on the litter-strewn
ground. Shoppers stick their
hands into the barrel of nuts or
dried fruit, pluck grapes from the
bunch, pop them into their
mouths.
Sanitation is not a big concern
at the shuk, where no one wants
to be a freier (loosely translated,
this means sucker) purchasing
inferior goods.
It sickens me to imagine the
bombs exploding, the stunned si-
lence followed quickly by scream-
ing and sirens, the deathly still
in the hours afterward. My shuk,
desecrated. I wonder if I would
recognize any of the faces of the
shoppers, the vendors there. Was
the man I always bought scal-
lions and basil -from working last
Wednesday? Did the man who
sold the steaming hot Druze pita
get hit by shrapnel? What about
the family, with the kids that
helped out? Were they selling
their olives and humus and egg-
plant salads that day? The old
ladies who sat across from me on
the bus — are they still alive?
This is not some kind of end of
innocence, not my first encounter
with terrorism. In the year I lived
in Jerusalem, terrorists blew up
countless buses around the coun-
try, kidnapped and murdered an
18-year-old soldier and fired on
a crowd of civilians at a pedes-
trian mall downtown. Almost
every site of terror was a place I
had been at least once, usually
several times.
In fact, the attacks became
eerily routine: the receptionist
announcing them when I walked
into my office in the morning, the
depressing discussions with col-
leagues, the drone of Israel Ra-
dio broadcast at low volume
throughout the day, the phone
calls to the United States to say
I was OK, the haunting shouts
of "Death to Arabs!" and "Down

ELEGY page 33