By Melanie Nathan, January 15, 2024.
Last week I spoke to Rabbi Jane Litman, the first openly LGBTQ person to be admitted to a rabbinical seminary, recently fired by The Pacific School of Religion, the context and circumstances of which scream antisemitism. HAARETZ posted an article about the firing by Judy maltz on January 12, 2024 is as follows:
Trailblazing LGBTQ Rabbi Accuses Progressive Protestant Seminary That Fired Her of Intolerance
The Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley rejected the claim, saying Rabbi Jane Litman was fired following a ’employer-employee disagreement’
A rabbi responsible for Jewish programming at one of the first Protestant seminaries in the United States to focus on pan-denominational issues and social justice says she was fired from her job this week because of religious and political intolerance.
Rabbi Jane Litman, the first openly LGBTQ person to be admitted to a rabbinical seminary, was notified on Tuesday that her employment at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California, had been terminated following a series of complaints she had filed with the administration.
“I am deeply disappointed and saddened,” she told Haaretz in a phone call, adding she “will be seeking justice.”
In a request for comment, the school said that Litman had been fired because of an “employer-employee disagreement, and not a religious or political one.”
For the past seven years, Litman, who was admitted to the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 1984 and later joined the Reform movement, ran the Jewish Roundtable of the Center for LGBTQ and Gender Studies at PSR, which is the oldest Protestant seminary west of the Mississippi River. Her responsibility in this position was organizing a monthly speakers’ series with LGBTQ rabbis, educators and activists.
With her departure, this program has also been canceled.
“The center has different roundtables – an African-American roundtable, a Latinx roundtable and Asian-Pacific roundtable, and until now, a Jewish roundtable,” she said. “The cancellation of this program is a real failure of intersectionality. I think it shows there’s been a true collapse of the intersectional approach.”
Litman said she began feeling targeted just before the Jewish High Holy Days, in last September, when what she describes as unreasonable demands were put on her to submit material for upcoming programs.
“They wanted me to provide bios, blurbs and photos of the speakers I had organized for the coming year,” she relayed. “I pointed out that we really needed to wait until after Yom Kippur because for rabbis, this is the busiest time of year, and I’m not going to bother them now.”
After the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, she said, she sensed even greater hostility from the administration, which she believes was connected to her support for Israel’s right to defend itself. Litman, who identifies as a “peacenik,” said she became a victim of “lefty antisemitism” at the school.
“After the massacre, the administration sponsored a vigil, ostensibly in support of peace but certainly not in support of Israel,” she said. “At that vigil, I would say, there were veiled calls for the non-existence of Israel.”
The following week, she took off for vacation. When she returned, she was notified that she had been put on unpaid administrative leave until January. Litman was notified earlier this week by email of the decision to fire her. READ MORE HERE
Rabbi Litman today told me:
“The saddest part is that in order to punish me, the administration cancelled all of the semester’s Jewish programming, including participating in a long planned Kaddish ceremony for the Trans Day of Remembrance. This action alone was not only Antisemitic, but also a profoundly callous lack of respect for trans people.”
From my perspective, as an observer with an opinion, the optics are obvious in what now presents as a sour taste for us in the Jewish queer community. There has been a long history of failure to respect and nurture Jewish inclusion in some LGBTQI+ organizations such as the attack against Jews at LGBT Task Force Creating Change Conference 2016. Now there seems to be an emboldened entitlement displayed by The Pacific School of Religion that one can fire in a dispute that was clearly not egregious enough to warrant no warning. It is logical thinking that even if The Pacific School of Religion excuse is to be believed there must surely be evidence of a robust attempt to mitigate or resolve the differences of such alleged “employer-employee” disagreement. Administrative leave does not resolve disagreements.
Of course one can predict the added onslaught that Rabbi Litman will now face given that she has spoken out. People who deny the experience of any one who has their lived experience of antisemitism, are likely antisemites themselves.
BY MELANIE NATHAN
nathan@AfricanHRC.org
ABOUT Melanie
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