MetroWeekly: “I’m not going to go on record as saying Moses was gay.”
Rabbi Gil Steinlauf says this with a laugh — he laughs often and warmly, it turns out — but he’s also quite serious in response to a reporter’s offhand remark that Moses could be viewed as history’s first gay activist.
“But the story of Moses is a kind of coming out story,” Steinlauf says. “He grew up as a Prince of Egypt in the house of Pharaoh, completely in the center of power. Yet, he was nursed by his Israelite mother, so he knew that he had this secret identity. He lived in inner-conflict over those two worlds, those two identities of himself, until he finally came to a head when he killed an Egyptian who was oppressing an Israelite, and ran away. He tried to hide until God called him back. And then he spoke on behalf of his people.
“So I always make the argument that Moses has a kind of queer coming-out parallel in his life story, and that’s a fundamental motivational factor for his ability to recognize the suffering of his people and to stand up to Pharaoh, because of his ability to overcome his own limitations and insecurities and his shame of who he was.”
The same could be said for Rabbi Steinlauf who, in an act of courage last October, sent an email to his congregation of more than 1,500 families at Adas Israel, the storied Conservative synagogue that presides over the Cleveland Park neighborhood of Washington, D.C., and includes Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elana Kagan among its worshipers. In the email, Steinlauf informed his congregation that he, in fact, was gay and that he and his wife of 20 years, Batya, with whom he has three teenage children, would be divorcing.
