'Pride is also a Yizkor': Remembering LGBTQ Jews we've lost

“Pride is also a Yizkor.”

Those were the words of the Forward’s archivist, Chana Pollack, early in Pride month, as she and I discussed her planned dive into the Forward’s archives in search of its queer history.

Her point: Generations of LGBTQ Jews who have faced exclusion from their families and communities have wondered who would perform mourning rites for them after their deaths, like saying Kaddish, or the memorial prayers included in the Yizkor service. Pride, a ritual of communal celebration and remembrance, functions in part as an answer to that question. The LGBTQ Jewish community keeps the memories of its own alive.

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There’s no perfect way to address this kind of systemic exclusion. But on the last day of this year’s historic Pride, at a time when, after more than a year of distancing and seclusion, we can once more take to the streets, we’re choosing to hold our own version of Yizkor, honoring a few of those LGTBQ Jews who have passed on in recent years, and reflecting on the work their legacies ask us to continue.

Many of those we’ve lost have names readers will recognize from our reporting. Among them: Edie Windsor, lead plaintiff in the 2013 Supreme Court case that overturned a major section of the Defense of Marriage Act; Debbie Friedman, songwriter whose music became a crucial part of communal life in synagogues nationwide; Maurice Sendak, author of “Where the Wild Things Are;” Larry Kramer, playwright and activist; Connie Kurtz, who with her partner Ruthie Berman played a major role in securing domestic partner benefits for employees of New York City’s government; Adrienne Rich, poet; Oliver Sacks, writer and neurologist; Arthur Laurents, theatrical jack-of-all-trades; Leslie Feinberg, author of the seminal work “Stone Butch Blues;” and Lesley Gore, singer of the classic “You Don’t Own Me.”

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