Page 8 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE October, 1990

LESBIAN GAY

GREATER CLEVELAND

This space has been donated to the Center by the Chronicle, and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Chronicle staff or management.

by Robert Laycock

Annual Meeting. The Center will hold its 1990 Annual Meeting on Tuesday, October 23 at 7:30 p.m., in the MacDonald Room at the Center.

The meeting this year will feature a replay of sensitivity training now being presented to all Cleveland police officers by the Center. This training, presented by the Cadet Training Team of the Maryann Finegan Project, is just one of the Center's many accomplishments this past year. Since January, the Center has been working successfully with the administration of Mayor Michael White, and has achieved increased acceptance and cooperation from the city in addressing the needs of our community.

All Cleveland police officers are required to attend these training sessions, which address issues of homophobia, hate crimes and law enforcement responses. The next 80-minute training session will be presented October 8 by Director of Services Aubrey Wertheim.

The Annual Meeting will also feature reports on our activities and accomplishments this year, finances, and our plans for the coming year. Elections will also be held for the Center's board of trustees.

Join us for this important and informative meeting as the Center enters an exciting new year serving Greater Cleveland's lesbian-gay community.

Maryann Finegan Project. The Maryann Finegan Project, mentioned above, is a new program at the Center addressing the problem of anti-gay violence and harassment. The program is named after Maryann Finegan, a Cleveland lesbian who died in an anti-gay attack several years ago.

If you'd like to know more about this program, or would like to volunteer, call the Center.

Come Out! Come Out! Wherever You Are! Okay, so some of you thought that headline on our classified ad for the executive director was corny. Maybe so, but on October 11 we all celebrate our personal journeys and achievements on "National Coming Out Day." If you're out, or are thinking about it, this is your day.

The Center will celebrate the day with an open mike for your spontaneous and spirited sharing of your personal coming out experiences. Few things are as exciting in our lives as when we take that first

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step into the open. Sometimes its scary, but it's also powerfully liberating!

Don't miss this one. Join us for a great night on October 11. We'll start at 6:00 p.m. and continue until 10:00.

Lesbian-Gay Hotline. Most folks don't like to reach an answering machine at the other end of the phone. If you're one of these people, you can help out by volunteering to staff the Lesbian-Gay Hotline at the Center.

This vital service is often the first link to our community for someone struggling with their lesbian-gay identity and just coming out. We all remember what that was like and how important those first helpful words were.

The hotline is beginning training for new volunteers on Tuesday, October 2, at the Center. It's okay to start late if you see this article later in the month.

If you're interested, call the hotline at 781-6736 for more information.

It's A Stage. This month, the Center's showtune sing-a-long will feature a cornucopia of Broadway favorites highlighted by the talented fingers of Bob Navis on the keyboard. (You all know Bob from his entertaining performances with the Near West Theatre.)

Join us Saturday, October 13, at 7:30 p.m. Everyone is welcome!

PRYSM. Presence and Respect for Youth in Sexual Minority, the Center's youth group, will hold its monthly special topics meeting Saturday, October 20, at 1:00 p.m. The topic this month is "Gay and Lesbian Health Care."

Two PRYSM members spoke September 20 at a meeting of P-FLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays).

PRYSM is open to youth under the age of 22. Call the hotline for more information.

Speech! Speech! Aubrey Wertheim will speak on the Center and lesbian-gay rights to the Fairmount Temple Sisterhood on Tuesday, October 23.

Where There's A Will. The Center welcomes Monotones as a new user of the Center's facilities. Monotones, the organization for lesbian and gay couples, held a forum on September 16. The topic was "Legal Wills."

the

Continued on Page 10

Kaye/Kantrowitz

creates 'safe place'

by Diana Miller

Author and activist Melanie Kaye/ Kantrowitz read two stories from her new book My Jewish Face and Other Stories on September 16 at the Cleveland Heights bookstore, Gifts of Athena. Kaye/Kantrowitz has expressed her various identities in her publications. She has co-edited the lesbian journal Sinister Wisdom from 1983-87, contributed pieces to the lesbian anthology Nice Jewish Girls and edited The Tribe of Dina: A Jewish Women's Anthology.

The stories she read, influenced by her own experiences, flowed freely and simply, drawing the listener into the world of her characters. Her title story "My Jewish Face", in which Jewish feminists speak out publicly against anti-Semitism, was particularly moving.

Kaye/Kantrowitz' lucid and direct writing mirrors her personality. Casual in manner and displaying her obvious political and self-examination, the author created a "safe place" for the avid audience to air their concerns and challenges. Addressing the incidence of homophobia among many Jewish communities, she

תברר תהך

חקוה

This

Chevrei Tikva

The Cleveland Religious

nation for Gay and Lesbian JoWS

has been donated to Chevrei Tikva by space the Chronicle, and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Chronicle staff or management.

The fall season in the Jewish calendar is filled with festivals and holy days. It begins with Rosh Hashana, this year on the eve and day of September 19 and 20, and is followed by Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. These are the serious holidays. Succot and Simchat Torah follow in a joyous festival atmosphere.

“And you shall dwell in a Sukka for seven days" God commanded the Israelites. This is to commemorate the houses or

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expressed the need for Jewish communities to be inclusive of gays and lesbians because "Jews need each other."

Responding to one woman's question about her surname, she said that she wished to reclaim the Jewish name "Kantrowitz" which her father had changed to "Kaye" during World War II, while encoding her understanding of the name change by still using "Kaye" She also discussed the tension between assimilation or "passing" as gentile and shaping comfortable Jewish identities, especially when one's "Jewish face" betrays one's heritage.

Presently, Kaye/Kantowitz' main interest lies in helping to foster understanding between Arabs and Jews. Ultimately, she hopes for a Palestinian homeland alongside Israel, and peaceful relations between Jews and Arabs.

Besides sitting on the board of the New Jewish Agenda (co-sponsor of the reading), which advocates a Palestinian homeland, she meets with Palestinian-American women whom she says are receptive and excited to work together towards peace. Additionally, she and Naomi Shihab Nye, a Palestinian-American poet, plan to coedit a book that includes writings of Jewish-American and Palestinian-American women, but their idea is still in the formative stages.

booths that the Jews lived in during their 40 years of wandering in the desert between Egypt and Israel. The Sukka is a semi-enclosed affair with slats for a roof in order to see Heaven. Fresh branches are laid on the slats allowing space to see the stars, but in order to have more shade than sun. The booth is then decorated with fruits and vegetables from the last harvest of the season. All meals for seven days are supposed to be taken in the Sukka "weather permitting" (try an evening meal in October in the Rockies; it takes more than a few bowls of hot soup to keep you warm!)

Sukkot marked the end of the fruit harvest, when the Israelites brought their fruit offerings to the Temple as a thanksgiving for God's kindness and goodness. This is a happy time of the year because the Jews also rejoiced for their produce during the entire year.

Conservative and Orthodox Jews celebrate this holiday for two days; Reform Jews on one day.

The first two days of Sukkot are the most important; no work is allowed according to the Torah (the first five books of the Bible). The next four days are called Hol Ha Moed (the half holidays). Ordinary work is allowed but the festival spirit still continues. The last two days are known as Sh'Mini Atzeret and Simchat Torah. Simchat Torah is the celebration of the Torah. It's really a kid's holiday but more than one "kid" of 75 has been seen dancing around the synagogue with a Torah in his or her arms, maybe a flag with an apple

at the top. In the villages of Eastern Europe before the second world war, Jews often paraded down the main streets with their Torahs in celebration.

The serious reason for this holiday is the reading of the last portion of the Torah (Deuteronomy), re-rolling the scrolls and continuing with the first portion of Genesis. In this way, the Torah never stops being read but is a constant, ongoing procedure in the religion.

Chevrei Tikva will celebrate these holidays at our regular Friday Shabbat services October 5 and 19. We meet at 8:30 at the Unitarian Society on Lancashire Road in Cleveland Heights. Please join us. ▼