District of Columbia
Bet Mishpachah celebrates 50 years as D.C.’s LGBTQ synagogue
Oct. 25 ‘gay-la’ to honor and reflect on role as home for queer Jewish community
Leaders and members of Bet Mishpachah, D.C.’s LGBTQ synagogue, have been reflecting on the positive impact it has had on their lives as its 50th anniversary celebration on Oct. 25 is about to take place.
The anniversary celebration, to be held at the Washington Hebrew Congregation’s gathering hall at 3935 Macomb St., N.W., will honor Bet Mishpachah, among other things, for its role as a, “beacon of love, acceptance, and spiritual connection for LGBTQ+ Jews and allies in our nation’s capital and beyond,” according to a statement it released.
“Founded by a small group of visionaries, we quickly grew into a diverse and thriving community that has supported hundreds of individuals and families over the years,” the statement says. “From the early days of meeting in living rooms and small venues, to our current home in the heart of D.C., Bet Mishpachah has remained steadfast in its mission to offer a spiritual home for all who seek it,” the statement continues.
“Throughout these five decades, we have witnessed profound shifts in both Jewish life and LGBTQ+ rights, and we are proud to have played a role in advancing both,” it says.
Joshua Maxey, Bet Mishpachah’s current executive director, said the LGBTQ synagogue has about 190 members and holds its weekly Friday evening Shabbat services at the Edlavitch D.C. Jewish Community Center at 1529 16th St., N.W.
Longtime D.C. gay activist Joel Martin, who is one of Bet Mishpachah’s founding members, said like other founding members, he first learned about a fledgling D.C. gay Jewish group through an ad in the then Gay Blade monthly newspaper in 1975 or possibly 1974.
A Blade archives search shows that a small ad appeared in the April 1974 Gay Blade, which stated, “JEWISH GAYS of Greater Washington-Baltimore is forming to help gay Jewish people to develop social contacts. They also intend to do consciousness raising amongst the Jewish Community to the problems of gay people.” The ad included only a post office box number for people to obtain more information about the group. It did not have the name of the person who placed the ad.
In the July 1974 issue of the Gay Blade, an article titled “Gay and Jewish” appeared under the byline of authors Herb Gold and Jen Lib that talked about the group it identified as Jewish Gays of the Baltimore-Washington area.
The article said the group had 35 members and that, “All members prefer that their gayness remain undisclosed for professional and personal reasons.”
Martin told the Washington Blade in an interview this week that he doesn’t recall whether the three or four men he met through the Gay Blade ad were part of this group. But he said they continued to meet at first in someone’s house or apartment in D.C. and decided on the name of Bet Mishpachah, which is a Hebrew phrase for “house of family.”
According to Martin, the group grew in numbers most likely due to additional ads or write-ups in the Gay Blade and soon began looking for a place to hold its meetings and services, which had been taking place in people’s homes. He said one place the group approached was the organization that had started the D.C. Jewish Museum. “And we were told to go away,” he said in recounting the response they received from what was then the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington.
Sarah Levitt, a spokesperson for what is now known as the D.C. Capital Jewish Museum, said the Jewish Historical Society at that time had a policy of not allowing on their premises “congregational services to anybody, so they declined the request on that basis.”
She added, “I can’t speculate on other reasons they might have said no. Certainly Joel and others felt a lot of cold shoulders from Jewish institutional life in that period.”
In a sign of how things have changed, the current Capital Jewish Museum at this time has a special exhibition entitled LGBTQ Jews in the Federal City that includes exhibits about Bet Mishpachah.
Martin said the fledgling Bet Mishpachah group soon was able to arrange to meet and hold its services at D.C.’s First Congregational Church at 10th and G Streets, N.W. Around that same time, First Congregational also allowed the Metropolitan Community Church of Washington, the city’s longtime LGBTQ Christian congregation, to hold its services at their church.
The Capital Jewish Museum’s LGBTQ exhibition shows that Bet Mishpachah held its services at First Congregational Church from 1976 through 1978, when it moved to Christ United Methodist Church along the city’s Southwest waterfront. The exhibition shows that in 1992, Bet Mishpachah moved its services to the National City Christian Church at Thomas Circle before moving in 1997 to its current location at the Jewish Community Center on 16th Street, N.W.
Bet Mishpachah has prepared a booklet to be handed out on Oct. 25 at the anniversary gala that includes statements from about 25 of its longtime members describing how the LGBTQ synagogue has impacted their lives in a positive way.
It also includes statements from Rabbi Bob Saks, Bet Mishpachah’s first rabbi, and Rabbi Jake Singer-Beili, its current rabbi.
“At the core of Bet Mishpachah’s founding was the idea that one should not have to hide one’s sexuality or identity in a Jewish space, and that all of us are created in the Divine image,” Singer-Beili said in his statement. “Its message was and is this: love is holy, the fullest expression of oneself is essential.”
He added, “We also proclaimed that we will celebrate these things as Jews and people who love Jews, in a dedicated Jewish space where everyone belongs. How awe-inspiring it is that we have made it to our 50th anniversary.”
In his own statement, Bet Mishpachah’s current president, Joseph Pomper, expressed a sentiment like other members about how Bet Mishpachah has helped them reconcile their status as Jewish and LGBTQ.
“My history with Bet Mishpachah goes back to 1980 when I moved to Washington, D.C. to go to graduate school,” he stated. “I remember stumbling across an ad for the synagogue in the Washington Blade. I could not believe it was possible for there to be a place where I could be both LGBTQ+ and Jewish,” he said.
“While that may not seem like such a big deal today, back then it was hard to even imagine that a place where one could be both LGBTQ+ and Jewish actually existed,” he wrote. “After much deliberation, I finally summoned up the courage to go to services one Friday, mainly out of curiosity.”
He said he quickly became a regular member and moved later to take on leadership positions. “Perhaps most important, I found my community at Bet Mishpachah,” he wrote, adding that many of the people he met are an “amazing circle of friends” who “remain among my closest friends today, 45 years later.”
Longtime Bet Mishpachah member Stuart Sotsky, who wrote in his statement that he became involved with the group in 1975 as one of its founding members, told of the obstacles that Bet Mishpachah faced in its early years.
“With the major denominations still considering homosexuality as religiously prohibited and unacceptable, no synagogues accepted gay or lesbian people or relationships openly, and no synagogues would have sponsored or hosted our congregation in their facilities,” he wrote.
He told of how Bet Mishpachah evolved into a strong organization that developed ties to the wider Jewish community to fight for the rights of LGBTQ people in the faith community and the secular community. He said like the wider LGBTQ community, Bet Mishpachah members struggled to comfort those whose loved ones were lost during the height of the AIDS epidemic.
“Yet, as was true for the Jewish people wandering in the desert for forty years after the Exodus from Egypt, we were tested and strengthened as a community by our trials,” he wrote. “We not only survived but we were inspired toward social and political activism in the Gay and women’s liberation movement, and encouraged to risk coming out to our family, friends and co-workers,” he continued.
The statement released by Bet Mishpachah announcing its 50th anniversary gala celebration on Oct. 25 says the event would honor “visionary trailblazers,” including its Rabbi Emeritus Bob Saks and nationally acclaimed LGBTQ rights attorney Evan Wolfson, the founder of Freedom to Marry, the advocacy organization credited with leading the successful campaign to legalize same-sex marriage.
District of Columbia
Push to elect more LGBTQ ANC members yields results
31 of 43 known LGBTQ ANC members elected in 2024 seeking re-election
A 2026 list of candidates released by the D.C. Board of Elections shows that 31 of the 43 known LGBTQ candidates who won election in 2024 as Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners have filed the required petition signatures to be placed on the ballot this year to run for re-election.
The Washington Blade reported in 2024 that 43 known LGBTQ candidates won election to ANC seats that year in the November election
In a related development, the president of Capital Stonewall Democrats, D.C.’s largest local LGBTQ political group, said the group this year has recruited at least 39 LGBTQ candidates to run for Advisory Neighborhood Commission seats in the city’s Nov. 3 general election.
The group’s president, Stevie McCarty, an incumbent ANC member in the city’s Shaw neighborhood who is running for re-election, said the 39 candidates and possibly more responded to the group’s Queering ANCs campaign launched on July 7 that includes a website with detailed instructions for how best to run for an ANC seat.
“Since launching in early July, the site has drawn more than 20,000 views, and 39 candidates have used it to actually run,” McCarty said in a statement. He said he wasn’t sure if all the 39 candidates wanted to be identified as LGBTQ, and he was reviewing the list of incumbent LGBTQ ANC members who won election in 2024 to determine if any of the 39 candidates recruited were among those incumbents. He said he was not ready to release the names of the 39 candidates he said his group recruited to run for an ANC seat.
If none of the 39 candidates recruited by Capital Stonewall Democrats are among the 31 known LGBTQ ANC incumbents running for re-election, it would mean at least 70 LGBTQ ANC candidates will be on the city’s November election ballot.
McCarty said Capital Stonewall Democrats will send candidate questionnaires to the known LGBTQ ANC candidates as part of its process for endorsing candidates in the November election. He said he expects the group to help campaign for and provide financial support for the ANC candidates it endorses.
The D.C. local government is believed to be unique among U.S. cities in currently having 46 Advisory Neighborhood Commissions consisting of 345 single member districts in neighborhoods throughout the city in which unpaid Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners are elected for two-year terms.
The commissions are charged with considering a wide range of policies and programs impacting their neighborhoods, including traffic, parking, recreation, street improvements, zoning, liquor licenses, and economic development. Although ANCs do not have authority to set or reject policies or actions by city agencies, the agencies are required to give “great weight” to ANC recommendations, according to the law creating the ANCs.
“As an ANC member, I know firsthand how these seats shape our neighborhoods, from housing and public safety to sanitation,” McCarty said in the Capital Stonewall Democrats statement announcing the launch of the Queering ANCs campaign in July. “I’m proud to lead this effort to ensure more LGBTQ+ Washingtonians see themselves as leaders in their communities,” he said.
Some local LGBTQ activists, who asked not to be identified, said they were not aware of a significant boost in new LGBTQ ANC candidates from the Queering ANCs campaign. However, they praised the effort to recruit more LGBTQ ANC candidates and said the campaign could have yielded more candidates if it had started sooner than less than a month before the deadline for becoming a candidate.
McCarty said Capital Stonewall Democrats will continue to recruit LGBTQ D.C. residents to run as write-in candidates for ANC seats, especially in the 45 single member districts in which no candidate will be on the ballot. The Board of Elections candidate list shows many ANC single member districts that have just one candidate running without an opponent.
Following is a list of 33 known LGBTQ ANC candidates running in D.C.’s November 2026 election and the single member districts and neighborhoods in which they are running. All but two – Vida Rangel and J. Swiderski – are incumbents running for re-election. The Washington Blade will update this list if and when more LGBTQ ANC candidates become known.
1A04 – (Columbia Heights) Jeremy Sherman, he/him
1A10 – (Columbia Heights) Vida Rangel, she/they [non-incumbent candidate]
1B03 – (Columbia Heights/U Street) J. Swiderski, they/he [non-incumbent candidate]
Jamie S. Sycamore, he/him
1B06 – (Columbia Heights/Meridian Hill) Miguel Trindade Deramo, he/him
1B07 – (U Street) Matthew Holden, he/him
1E01 – (Park View) Brad Howard, he/him
2B02 – (Dupont Circle) Jeffrey Rueckgauer, he/him
2B03 – (Dupont Circle) Vincent Slatt, he/him
2C01 – (Penn Quarter) Michael D. Shankle, he/him
2F05 – (Logan Circle) Christopher Dyer, he/him
2F07 – (Logan Circle) Kevin Cataldo, he/him
2G01 – (Shaw)Parker Griffin, he/him Howard Garrett, he/him
2G02 – (Shaw) Alexander ‘Alex’ Padro, he/him
2G04 – (Shaw) Steven McCarty, he/him
3B06 – (Wesley Heights) S. Robert Rodriquez, he/him
3F05 – (Van Ness/Cleveland Park) Adrian Jesus Iglesias, he/him
4B01 – (Takoma) Doug Payton, he/him
4B10 – (Lamond Riggs) Jinin Berry, she/her
4C06 – (Petworth) Christen Boss Hayes, they/them
4E02 – (16th Street Heights) Vince Micone, he/him
5B04 – (Brookland) Ra Amin, he/him
5B05 – (Brookland) Mónica Martínez López, she/her
5D05 – (Trinidad) Salvador Sauceda-Guzman, he/him
5F06 – (Eckington) Joe Bishop-Henchman, he/him
6B03 – (Capitol Hill) David Sobelsohn, he/him
6B09 – (Capitol Hill/Barney Circle) Karen Hughes, she/her
7C01 – (Deanwood) Brian Glover, he/him
7C03 – (Lincoln Heights) Carlos Richardson, he/him
7C04 (Deanwood) Anthony Lorenzo Green
7C08 – (Capitol View) Brandon M. Scott, he/him
8A01 – (Fairlawn) Tom Donohue, he, him
8B06 – (Garfield Heights) Marcus Thomas Hickman, he/him
District of Columbia
Gay-owned pizzeria in Dupont Circle burglarized
Protest Pizza owners say community has expressed support
Gay activist Randy Downs said he and his business and life partner Ricky Bennett are grateful for the support they have received from the Dupont Circle community after they released a video showing a suspect breaking into their recently opened pizza shop and taking money from a cash register shortly before 3 a.m. on Friday, Aug. 21.
The surveillance video shows a man wearing black clothing with his face covered, smashing the glass front door of Protest Pizza, located at 1633 ½ P St., N.W. The video, which Downs and Bennett provided to D.C. police, also shows the suspect climbing over the bar to get to a cash register, which he opened to take out cash.
A D.C. police report obtained by the Washington Blade lists the incident as a Burglary in the Second Degree and says the owners reported “approximately $78 in cash” was taken from the cash register. The report says the incident is not listed as a suspected hate crime.
Downs told the Washington Blade that after he and Bennett reported the break-in and theft on social media, they received an overwhelming showing of support from neighbors and others, including business owners, from across the nation.
“The break-in was upsetting, but it is not what will define Protest Pizza,” Downs said. “What defines us is how quickly people showed up,” he told the Blade. “One person came looking for a cash register; our community saw a gathering place worth protecting. The response reminded us that Protest’s real value was never in the register.”
Downs said he and Bennett, who live around the corner on the section of 17th Street, N.W., near several other bars and restaurants, including the gay bar JRs are located, opened Protest Pizza in November 2025.
“Ricky and I built Protest Pizza as a positive, welcoming, queer owned neighborhood restaurant and bar — a space for protest and joy,” he said.
A D.C. police spokesperson said police offer a reward of up to $1,000 for information leading to an arrest and conviction of a suspect responsible for the type of burglary and theft that occurred at Protest Pizza. Police say anyone with information to help solve this type of crime should call the police tipline at 202-727-9099.
District of Columbia
Advocates honored at Engendered Spirit Awards
Annual ceremony held at conclusion of Trans Pride DC
The 2026 SaVanna Wanzer Engendered Spirit Awards ceremony took place at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library in D.C. on Saturday. The ceremony was held at the conclusion of the day-long Trans Pride DC: Encore.
Honorees included D.C. Mayor’s Office of Community Affairs Deputy Director Vida Rangel; the LGBT+ Counseling Collaborative, Inc.; and Connor Keuntje, CLP, CLPC.
Trans Pride DC: Encore was held throughout Saturday with several workshop sessions and a virtual conversation with actress and advocate Dominique Jackson.
The annual Engendered Spirit Awards were renamed the “SaVanna Wanzer Engendered Spirit Awards” in honor of SaVanna Wanzer, founder of D.C. Trans Pride. Wanzer died on April 24 of this year.
Speakers at the ceremony included Japer Bowles, director of the D.C. Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs and Bianca Sprague, executive director of D.C. Trans Pride.
“The intent behind this award and honoring members of our communities, organizations, and allies, is to really elevate all of the work that they’re doing to provide resources, tools, learning opportunities and connections: centering trans folks, gender non-conforming, and gender diverse individuals,” Sprague said.
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