Resource authors: Margaret GreenfieldsProject: Ritual Reconstructed: Challenges to Disconnection, Division and Exclusion in the Jewish LGBTQI Community
This film is the second in our sequence of LGBTQI-Jewish ‘ritual year’ documentaries. The film consists of a clips of a memorialisation service and ritual activities, interspersed with short discussions with LGBTQI Jewish activists (including a Gay Rabbi) who participate in a memorialisation event which is explicitly Jewish in format and which was designed to offer an opportunity to mourn, remember our dead and have hope for the future in a specifically Jewish context. One key element of this film consists of the incorporation of the ‘Aids Quilt’ into the ritual process. This beautifully made object was created by a Jewish gay man and is curated and preserved by Rabbi Mark Solomon who is a key discussant in this film along with other Gay Jews. The quilt incorporates embroidered and appliqued richly coloured Jewish symbols, Hebrew text and symbolic representations which enable both Gay and Jewish identities to be publicly displayed and celebrated including (as discussed) within inter-faith World Aids Day events.
The film (which captures a World Aids Day event for 2014) takes place at the Synagogue located at the Headquarters of Liberal Judaism in London, at which location a World Aids Day Shabbat always occurs through the auspices of the Jewish Gay and Lesbian Group
Go to resource
