Click on the following videos to listen to interview excerpts. To enable Closed Captioning, please click on “CC” on bottom right corner of each video.
Jacqueline Walters: “it was profoundly sad that folks weren’t being able to be authentic… and feel accepted in the communities” Click <HERE> to view the 2004 needs assessment
Selina Robinson: “there’s space… it’s not enough space… there’s more work to be done, but there is space and that didn’t used to exist”
Alan Stamp: “It’s been a bit of a struggle… we could never get people to come together and I would love to see that change in the years to come”
Pat Johnson: “the Hillel movement has been explicitly inclusive to LGBTQ employees and students… we decided that we would participate in the Pride Parade… I don’t think we heard one word of criticism from a donor, a rabbi or anyone in the community”
Jono Lerner: “Hillel… was very supportive of me as a LGBTQ Jew… Yad b’Yad (meaning hand-in-hand)… decided our first thing would be to be in the Parade… it was very well received in the Jewish community”
Aaron Devor: “I served on the Hillel board for 10 years and the fact that I was trans was never discussed… I’m sure everybody knew… but it just wasn’t an issue”
Hope Forstenzer: “I found the lack of any other queer families to be odd… what has been the history in Vancouver of the treatment of queers in the Jewish community?… they must feel on some level quite alienated if they’re not bringing their gaybies to the J”
Queering Jewish organizations continues to be a work in progress today. Thank you to everyone (featured here and beyond) who has worked for BC Jewish organizations and pushed for more inclusive policies and programming over the decades.
In 2022, JQT conducted a community needs assessment and produced a report as part of TWICE BLESSED 2.0: THE JEWISH LGBTQ2SIA+ INITIATIVE in partnership with JFS. Data points from the 2022 survey were compared to data points from the community needs assessment conducted by Jacqueline Walters (a former JFS employee) in 2004. LEARN MORE HERE!
To continue with the online exhibit, please click below on Celebrating being Jewish and LGBTQ+.
To return to the main page of the online exhibit, please click here.