Horizons 2000, the 16th World Conference of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Jews
July 30, 2000, Woodcliff Lake, NJ

Thursday evening Reception — Michal Eden

 My family found out that I was a lesbian in 1990, when I was twenty years old and had just broken up with my first girlfriend. I found myself in a cafe in Tel Aviv, surrounded by my whole family. My father suddenly had a million wrinkles, and his hair was gray. My mother, brothers and sisters looked at me without speaking. I had a feeling there would be no compromise in that conversation. 

My father bit his nails, and then got up and started pacing back and forth. And my mother cried. My mother actually cried. My father made things clear: if I did not change, any contact that I would want to make with my family would be subject to his approval. And he would not approve unless I changed. 

I kept talking -- but I was talking to blank walls. I told them "Mom, Dad, I'm still me, Michal, and I can't give up my feelings -- not even for you." 

My family left me. All I had was a backpack full of folded clothes, and I was looking for shelter. I wandered from one friend's house to another, working at whatever jobs I found. I even contacted the Israel Gay and Lesbian Association and the Women's League House, looking for a place to stay -- but in Tel Aviv in 1990, there was no solution for me. 

But I was determined to live my life my own way, and I didn't give up. I started to build a new family within the gay and lesbian community; I went to college; and I found a partner and moved in with her. 

My father didn't give up, either. 

As soon as he understood that I really was a lesbian, he began to harass me and to threaten me and my friends. 

My father had people follow me; he found out the telephone number in every apartment I moved into and called them, in order to threaten my friends. He smashed a car that belonged to a gay friend of mine who had given me shelter. He threatened my partner and demanded that she and I break up. He left her an anonymous letter saying: "You're playing with fire; if you keep it up, bad things are going to happen to you." 

He has been harassing me by phone for years. At the beginning of that relationship, my partner and I got hundreds of anonymous telephone calls. I filed a complaint with the police, and I began to understand that my father had become the enemy. The police monitored the telephone lines from which the harassing phone calls were made. My father was called in for an interrogation and denied any relationship with me. 

During that period of time, I used to make phone calls from college to my mother's office at the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in Tel Aviv. Every few weeks, I would come to her office, and she would put together packages of food for me, because she knew I had no money. This was our secret connection -- my only connection to my family. 

One day I called my mother, and she said, "Michal, please don't call me any more." I will never forget that sentence for the rest of my life. I couldn't understand what she was saying to me; I froze, muttered "OK" and hung up the phone. I walked to my next class, not believing that I had actually heard my mother say that to me. That sentence still echoes in my mind. The last bond between me and my family had been broken. We did not speak to each other for several years. 

Three years ago, I was very ill and I was hospitalized. Someone told my parents, and when I came home, she called me. So much time had gone by that I didn't recognize her voice. "Who is this?" I asked. And she answered: "It's Mom. How do you feel?" 

Afterward, I heard that she had told my father about the telephone call, and that, in response, he did not with her for two months. He told her that, as far as he was concerned, she could pack up and go. She didn't leave him. 

I miss my mother; I want to hug her. Ever since then, on her birthday, I call her office at the Philharmonic, just to hear her voice on the answering machine. And I send her flowers and the picture, with best wishes. I hope she has stayed strong; I hope she is standing up for her rights. 

I am a lesbian. In order to realize my identity, I had to give up my family and the home where I grew up. Ignorance, stupidity and inability to transcend distorted social concepts caused me to lose my parents, and they lost me. 

I am a lesbian. I have built my own social circle and made my own home, and I have discovered that so many people have undergone experiences of unnecessary separation. 

I am a lesbian, I am a Jew and I am an Israeli. I live in a society where Orthodox Judaism has laid claim to ownership of the Jewish religion, and where it condemns me and anyone else who does not live according to its rules. 

Because I am a lesbian, a Jew and Israeli, and I cannot deny any of my identities, and because I believe that these three identities together can compose a complex and entire human being, and that they can coexist without contradiction, I have chosen to stand up and fight for my beliefs. 

Because I believe that, in order to be recognized, the struggle must take place in the political arena and we must demonstrate our visibility in Israeli society, I have chosen to go to the media and to become involved in Israeli politics. 

I chose to become involved in Israeli politics in order to change the situation still prevailing in Israel -- the situation where, on an almost weekly basis, members of Knesset and Government ministers verbally attack lesbians and gays. For example, the Ministry of Health, Shlomo Benizri, from the Sephardic Orthodox Jewish party known as Shas, who suggested, at the time of the Gay Pride events this year, that we should all be locked up in a psychiatric ward. 

In June 1997, I became the first lesbian in Israel to run for public office on the gay and lesbian ticket. At a convention of the Meretz Party, I announced that I intended to run for the Tel Aviv City Council. I told my older brother, who was, at the time, in contact with me every few months. He said that I was going into politics in order to take revenge on my family. He said that, if he were my father, he would murder me and kill himself. 

"Michal," he said, "this isn't right for Israel, and it can't happen in Israel. They'll kill you, the way they killed Itzhak Rabin, the way they killed Martin Luther King. You're ahead of your time. The people won't tolerate your way." 

That happened on a Saturday night. The next morning, I was asked to give a telephone interview for a popular radio program. I gave the interview from my bed, paralyzed with fear. I knew that people considered me as a source of strength and power; I did not want to share with them the feeling that I was under an actual physical threat. 

A year later I was elected. Thousands of Gays Lesbians and friends chose me to  to promote our right to live the way we want to live, with the one we love. And , along with hundreds of proud Jewish Israeli lesbians and gays, We are transforming our society. 

I still remember the time first Gay Pride event, 10 years ago, in a tiny park on Shenkin Street in Tel Aviv. It was attended by about 50 people, who hid their faces from the TV cameras and the press.  

This past June, the events were organized by the Tel Aviv city council, of which I am a member. 20,000 proud gays and lesbians marched from City Hall, waving banners, down one of the city's largest streets. The City Council, allotted a budget of hundreds of thousands of sheqels to the event, and to additional events celebrating Gay Pride and gay culture. The Committee for the Struggle against AIDS, which I head, finances activities aimed at public relations and prevention and provides assistance to people with AIDS and HIV-positive men and women. 

And there is so much more to do -- and I intend to go on doing it, at the local level and that the national level. This year, for the first time, the Tel Aviv Municipality will erect a hostel for lesbian and gay youth. I have pushed this project from my first day in office, so that children whose parents throw them out of their homes will have a place to go. 

This coming December the “Gimnasia Herzelia”, a prominent high school in Tel Aviv, who’s ex-principle once said to a local paper - “two men who kiss each other disgust me”’ will start a series of workshops on gay and lesbian youth for all its’ teachers. 

The mayor of Tel Aviv who has given approval to this queer educational program, is by the way, the same principle I just mentioned, and his homophobic remark was given only 4 years back. 

Yet, there are so many more places where we need visibility -- and I intend to be visible, and to move proudly forward in Israel's greatest social revolution in these years. 

Still, to this day, something of the fear remains. Every time I take a step forward, I'm afraid my father will hurt me again. Everything that I do for the gay and lesbian community is perceived by him as revenge. 

I am moving toward the day when I will be able to look my father in the eyes without fear. And I intend to look my father in the eyes, without fear, from the podium of the Knesset in Jerusalem.