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As the date of the Jerusalem Pride Parade approaches, right-wing and religious members of the Knesset and some ultra-Orthodox rabbis will attempt to stop the parade, as they have done in the past. But Jerusalem is not only a home to the religious and the sacred: it is a city of close to a million people who embrace all varieties of observance and belief. As one of the world’s most venerated holy cities, Jerusalem is home to many in the ultra-religious communities of Jews, Christians, and Muslims who feel that a parade celebrating the LGBTQ community is an affront to the city’s sacred nature. Jerusalem Pride is a celebratory parade that co-mingles with the political.
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It is a roving party with thousands marching and thousands more waving from balconies and spritzing the revelers with super-sized water cannons as the parade winds its way through Tel Aviv’s streets. With 200,000 participants, it is one of the largest Pride Parades in the world, bringing together political, social, religious, and cultural organizations – along with floats featuring local celebrities, speedo-clad dancers, and a large assortment of drag-queens. The week culminates in the Pride Parade that begins in the center of the city and slowly inches its way down to the beach where thousands join in a seaside dance until just a few minutes before Shabbat begins. Tel Aviv Pride is a weeklong festival drawing revelers from all over the globe to a film festival, parties, speakers, dinners, political events, more parties, and still more parties. Tel Aviv boasts one of the world’s largest LGBTQ communities, with recent estimates claiming that 25 percent of the population identify as gay or lesbian. During Gay Pride week, the main boulevards and streets are festooned with the rainbow flag. Tel Aviv is a booming, bulging Mediterranean metropolis with a population that is mostly secular or mildly observant. (Merlin, by the way, does not march.)Īlthough Jerusalem and Tel Aviv are only 36 miles apart, there is a world of difference in their gay pride parades. I’m still marching, but now in the gay pride parades in Israel, ever since our family – my husband, Rabbi Donald Goor, I, and our cat Merlin – made aliyah in 2013. Marriage equality was not on the horizon and the AIDS pandemic was a few years away.įast forward almost 40 years. Those were the early days of gay pride (the first gay pride parade was held in 1970 in New York City) and many of us were inching our way out of those proverbial closets and coming to terms with issues of identity, coming out to families, and fighting discrimination at our jobs. The first time I participated in a gay pride parade was in 1981, when I marched with my mother as part of the contingent from PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays).