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
Center Arts Gallery celebration, auction to take place on Oct. 17
D.C. LGBTQ+ Community Center to mark event’s 10th anniversary
The D.C. LGBTQ+ Community Center is hosting its 10th anniversary celebration of the opening of its Center Arts Gallery on Saturday, Oct. 17, at the Center’s offices at 1827 Wiltberger St., N.W., from 6 – 9 p.m.
“For 10 years, the D.C. LGBTQ+ Community Center’s Arts Gallery has been more than a place where art is displayed,” a statement released by the center says.
“It has been a space where LGBTQ+ artists are seen, celebrated, and connected to community, and where their work has given expression to the stories of joy, resistance, grief, beauty, survival, courage, and imagination,” the statement adds.
It says those attending the event would have an opportunity to bid on donated artwork in an auction and to meet and interact with “the artists whose creativity has helped bring Center Arts Gallery to life, enjoy wonderful food and music, and celebrate a decade of LGBTQ+ artistic expression.”
But the statement posted on the LGBTQ+ Community Center’s website says free general admission tickets have sold out, with $75 VIP tickets still available. It says the proceeds from ticket sales will be used to help support the LGBTQ+ Community Center’s operations.
Attendees and others were also invited to an event after party at the LGBTQ bar and cafe Spark Social from 9-11 p.m. at 2009 14th St., N.W.
District of Columbia
Physician: addiction doesn’t always look the way you think it does
Yngvild Olsen headed HHS’s Center for Substance Abuse Treatment during Biden-Harris administration
Many people think the telltale signs of drug addiction include sweating and vomiting. But a prominent addiction medicine physician says the best signals aren’t always so visible.
Dr. Yngvild Olsen says more accurate signs come from the brain, specifically the compulsion to keep using drugs, including opioids, despite damage to education, career and relationships.
While it may be harder to understand the true nature of drug addiction, it’s never been more important because of the increased fatality risk of even microscopic amounts of fentanyl, which can be found in many illegal drugs.
Olsen, who headed the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment at the Department of Health and Human Services in the Biden-Harris administration, has worked in addiction treatment for more than two decades. She is now a healthcare advisor with the law and professional consulting firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips and a physician at the Institute for Behavior Resources/Reach Health Services in Baltimore.
Olsen met with Youthcast Media Group to discuss her career, the opioid epidemic and what to know about fentanyl. The physician, a graduate of Harvard Medical School and the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, cited her field experiences as key in shaping her perspective on addiction treatment and recovery. This interview is edited for clarity and length.
What made you believe this work in addiction treatment is important?
I had a couple of experiences really early on in my career that very significantly shaped my interest in addiction and addiction medicine, and my belief that I had a role, and that I could really help people get better from that disease. So the first was during the summer between my first and second year in medical school. I spent the summer on the Eagle Butte and Pine Ridge reservations in South Dakota and really saw firsthand just the devastating impact that substance use — in that case, alcohol — had on not only individuals, but their families and whole communities, and just how profound that impact had been for people who had lost their lives, who had lost family members, who had physically, emotionally and spiritually negative impacts of just feeling very hopeless and and trying to find solace in their substance use, particularly their alcohol use, and doing that without really finding it. I think that was really the lesson that experience taught me.
What did you learn about treatment practices during your medical education? How was that helpful to your career?
When I was a resident in general primary care at Boston Medical Center, I was really fortunate to have a group of mentors who also were general internists, like I was training to be, who were very interested and focused on medical education and research in substance use. And so they modeled for me many of the interactions that we had with patients. I got to do a research study with one of them looking at smoking cessation among people with opiate use disorder, taking methadone. And really importantly, I got to spend a month with one of them at the Boston City Public Health Department’s Opioid Treatment Program, or what some people call a methadone clinic, because he was their medical director. I got to see people recover, and who had recovered, who had gotten their lives back together, gotten their families back together, had new families (or) businesses. It was unbelievably helpful to see that people could recover, that they did recover, and that I, as a physician, could be part of their treatment. I saw people get better, and recover, with medications like methadone and buprenorphine, and other services designed individually for them. That was really helpful and kind of a big eye-opening moment for me.
What factors contribute to addiction and why is it considered a complex disease?
People come into treatment for their addiction — or when they’re not in treatment, but are in an emergency department or on the street — with a lot of shame. They have a lot of shame about this disease that they have, that for so long, they were told, ‘Well, you know, you should just stop. Why can’t you just stop?’ Well, we know that addiction is a disease. It’s a complex disease that has lots of different factors related to it. So there’s a big genetic component that combines with environmental factors and other risk factors. For example, people have what’s called adverse childhood experiences. Some of these are if they grow up with lots of physical or sexual abuse or emotional abuse or have parents who are in jail. That’s really traumatic and so all those childhood experiences that increase stress are a big risk factor.
What is the easiest opioid to get addicted to?
It used to be heroin. That was a big problem, particularly in the Northeast and other parts of the country. That shifted to prescription opioids, beginning around the year 2000. So for about 10 years, it was really prescription opioids that were a big problem — people misusing them. And then it switched back to heroin. And then in about 2015, fentanyl came on the scene, and that really changed the game, given just how unbelievably potent fentanyl is, so it doesn’t take a lot to cause an overdose. Now there are all those other synthetic opioids, like the orphines and nitazenes and all those combinations of other substances, but fentanyl is really what’s still kind of driving a really big part of the overdose crisis.
Do LGBTQ individuals face heightened challenges when battling addictions? How do addiction specialists like you account for those challenges?
We certainly know that the prevalence of overdose and the challenges of substances is higher in the LGBTQ+ community. Where I see patients, we did a big LGBTQ+ training and had a grant to specifically provide services to that population. Where we were located, in Baltimore City, there is a big transgender community not that far from us. Particularly in the LGBTQ+ population, they have multiple stigmas. So it just compounds multiple stressors. And stress is a risk factor for substance use, and particularly a risk factor for recurrence of a substance use disorder. And so when you have all these negative factors building up in people, that can make it that much more challenging for people to find the services that they find meaningful and that are welcoming and supportive of them. So we tried very hard — and we still do — to make sure that we are a welcoming and safe space, because I think it is that safety that is really paramount.
What advice would you give someone worried about a friend or family member’s substance use?
There are two things. One is: I would talk to that person about your concerns and how that person’s personality changes or their behavior changes when they’re using or in withdrawal, and how that might be impacting their health and how they’re feeling. And then second: you can let them know that there are actual treatments that are really helpful, that can make them feel better and that can help them get back to who they were before they started using. It’s important not to be accusatory because … [people] have a lot of shame already, and so when somebody starts accusing them, that shame just gets worse. And a lot of times, people who have a substance use disorder or are using opioids won’t necessarily agree that they have a problem when you first start to talk to them. But talk to them again every time something happens and say, ‘I’m really worried about you because this now has happened and I see it as being tied to your substance use.’ And let them know that there are people who can help and that they could actually feel a lot better.
This work is part of a partnership between the Washington Blade Foundation and Youthcast Media Group, funded in part through a FY26 Community Development Grant from the Office of D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser. Adrian Malone is a senior at Bard High School Early College DC, one of Youthcast Media Group’s journalism class partners. Shreya Jyotishi, YMG assistant manager of content and programming, is a former Washington Blade intern and 2026 graduate of American University.
District of Columbia
Bet Mishpachah participates in D.C. Oct. 7 commemoration ceremony
Wednesday marked three years since Hamas attacked Israel
Bet Mishpachah Executive Director Joshua Maxey on Wednesday was among those who spoke at a ceremony in D.C. that marked the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack in Israel.
The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington hosted the ceremony that took place at the Washington Hebrew Congregation in Northwest D.C. Bet Mishpachah is the city’s LGBTQ synagogue.
“It was a deeply moving evening, especially hearing the stories of people who knew those who were murdered and those who survived and experiencing music that gave a voice to grief and hope,” Maxey told the Washington Blade.
Hamas militants on Oct. 7, 2023, killed roughly 1,200 people, including upwards of 360 partygoers at the Nova Music Festival near Re’im, a kibbutz that is a couple miles from the Gaza Strip, when it launched its surprise attack on Israel. The militants also kidnapped more than 200 people.
The Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry says Israeli forces have killed more than 74,000 people in the enclave since Oct. 7.
The International Criminal Court in 2024 issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant; former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar; Mohamed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri, the head of Hamas’s military wing known as the Qassam Brigades; and Ismail Haniyeh, chair of the Hamas Political Bureau, after it accused them of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza and Israel.
The Israeli government has strongly denied it has committed genocide in Gaza.
An Israeli airstrike on a compound in Khan Younis, a city in southern Gaza, on July 13, 2024, killed killed Deif, one of the alleged Oct. 7 masterminds. Israel less than three weeks later assassinated Haniyah in Tehran, the Iranian capital. Israel Defense Forces soldiers on Oct. 16, 2024, killed Sinwar in Rafah, a city in southern Gaza.
Hamas last October released the remaining hostages in Gaza as part of a ceasefire agreement that President Donald Trump helped broker. Israel has continued to conduct airstrikes and other military operations in Gaza since the official suspension of hostilities took effect.
“For Bet Mishpachah, it was especially meaningful to lift up the names of LGBTQ+ people, those whose identities we know and those whose stories may never be fully known, who were murdered, and to honor the LGBTQ+ survivors whose resilience continues to inspire us,” said Maxey, referring to his participation in Wednesday’s ceremony. “Emily Damari’s story is particularly poignant: while held hostage, she had to hide the fact that she was gay because she feared that revealing her identity to her captors could put her life at even more risk. Yet, she survived.”
“Her story, like so many others, reminds us of the extraordinary courage it takes simply to remain human in the face of hatred,” he added. “May we continue to remember and to mourn, to honor, and to work toward a future rooted in peace and hope.”
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