LGBTQIA+ Legacy Profiles

The stories in this exhibition focus on Rabbi Angel's "Circle of Elders," which includes the 23 individuals found below plus Rabbi Angel herself. Each one of these individuals has contributed something to the future that is unapologetically queer.

In contrast to narrow definitions of Jewish religiosity, which often require observing dietary laws or Sabbath observances, many of these elders do not describe themselves as religious. However, each has dedicated considerable time, energy, and resources toward the work of social justice, within and outside of Jewish communities. They see their work as being influenced by their Jewish identity and values.

In the course of students' work and research on these legacy videos, they became acquainted with many aspects of Jewish and LGBTQIA+ cultures and histories. These queer elders invested themselves in cultivating literate allies, partially to help ensure that their hard-won rights aren't lost. Teaching about their activism ensures that their successes can be emulated and failures are not repeated. Sometimes students helped elders create legacy videos more than a single time (i.e., with different students from distinct iterations of the course, offered in subsequent semesters).

We have by no means exhausted the subject of Jewish LGBTQIA+ history in the Bay Area. In fact, we've barely even begun. This exhibit is simply an initial attempt, a rough map of the recent past as it presents itself from a particular twenty-first-century vantage point. We hope that future historians will find in this exhibit a tempting invitation to uncover more of the rich legacies of Jewish and Queer people in the San Francisco Bay Area.

One final thing to note is that a small number (five) of the queer elders in this exhibit, and who participate in the course out of which this exhibit grew, have religious histories that are not Jewish. One can find this note on the relevant individuals' pages.