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Written by Daniel Smajovits
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Tuesday, 16 March 2010 |
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MONTREAL – Upon speaking to a packed house at the Shaar Hashomayim Synagogue last Wednesday night, David Brody spared no time in clearing up a rumour circulating about his life.
“I’ve actually been accused of being heterosexual,” he said.
Brody, an Orthodox Jew who is openly gay, pulled no punches as he spoke on the topic of Growing Up Jewish, Orthodox and Gay as a part of the synagogue’s Challenging the Norms weekly lecture sessions.
Beginning with his childhood in London, he delved into a lifetime full of obstacles, relationships, as well as how his family and religion became the inspiration for his first novel, Mourning and Celebration.
“I looked back at my life and thought what if I had been born 100 years before my time in my grandfather’s shtetl?” he said. “All of a sudden my imagination started working and there was this character, this long-distance cousin [named] Yankl. I asked him how did he survive? And he told me a story.”
The story translated into a deep and detailed conversation between the thoughts and life experiences of the gay fictional character living in 19th century Poland as well as the reality, both past and present of the writer.
“At the beginning I saw myself in the same room as Yankl, so after a few chapters, I added conversations between myself and the character I created. [The conversations] were fascinating because we were both from different worlds,” he said. “Of course, I also told him about gay marriage, he couldn’t conceive two men being married in public.”
Although gay marriage was inconceivable for Yankl, the literary technique used by Brody allowed him to look back at his life, making him realize that he had witnessed the evolution of homosexuality from being considered a crime into an accepted part of society.
“There are two signal events in my life: the creation of Israel and the decriminalization of homosexuality,” he said. “When I was growing up in London, it was a criminal offense to engage in homosexual acts… [and] when I think about it, I’ve seen the complete evolution of gay emancipation from the beginning to now.
“I don’t see anything left to fight for except for education,” he added. “I’m showing that we are just a variant of the human condition and not a deviant of the human condition.”
While, although society has accepted homosexuality, Brody believes that the Bible was given to the people to interpret, and as such, even though Judaism frowns upon homosexuality today, there will come a day when it will be accepted.
“I do believe in faithful relationships and I don’t see intrinsically what rejection Judaism should have to that reality down the road,” he said. “It’s going to take a long time, [but it will happen].” |
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 24 March 2010 )
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