List of LGBT Jews

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This is a list of LGBT Jews. Each person is both Jewish (by ancestry or conversion) and has stated publicly that he or she is lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) or identifies as a member of the LGBTQ community. Being both Jewish and LGBTQ is a canonical (recognized) example of some facet of each person on this list such that the below listed person's fame or significance flows from being both Jewish and LGBT.

In Queer Theory and the Jewish Question, editors Daniel Boyarin, Daniel Itzkovitz, and Ann Pellegrini explain:

While there are no simple equations between Jewish and queer identities, Jewishness and queerness yet utilize and are bound up with one another in particularly resonant ways. This crossover also extends to the modern discourses of antisemitism and homophobia, with stereotypes of the Jew frequently underwriting pop cultural and scientific notions of the homosexual. And vice versa.

Politicians

• Roberta Achtenberg, former HUD assistant secretary
• David Cicilline, the Mayor of Providence, Rhode Island, member of the United States House of Representatives
• Barney Frank, Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives
• Marcia Freedman, former member of the Israeli Knesset
• Ron Galperin, City Controller of Los Angeles, first openly gay person to be elected citywide in Los Angeles.
• Nitzan Horowitz, Israeli Member of Knesset, first openly gay person to be elected to the Knesset.
• Rebecca Kaplan, City Councilmember At-Large, Oakland, California
• Anne Kronenberg, American political administrator
• Mark Leno, California State Assemblymember
• Carole Migden, former California State Senator
• Harvey Milk, former San Francisco city supervisor
• Jared Polis, the Colorado Democrat, a former Internet entrepreneur, became the first openly gay non-incumbent male elected to Congress
• Stan Rosenberg, President Pro Tempore, Massachusetts State Senate.

Religious LGBT figures

See also: LGBT clergy in Judaism

• Lionel Blue, the first British rabbi publicly to affirm his homosexual orientation and who published Godly and Gay in 1981. He has been openly homosexual since the 1960s
• Deborah Brin, the first openly gay rabbi in Judaism, was ordained by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 1985.
• Malka T. Drucker (b. 1945) is an American rabbi and author. Ordained in 1998 from the Academy for Jewish Religion, a transdenominational seminary, Malka Drucker is also the founding rabbi of HaMakom: The Place for Passionate and Progressive Judaism, in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
• Denise Eger, first female and the first gay President of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California.
• Steven Greenberg (b. 1956), first out Orthodox rabbi and staff member of CLAL.
• Jason Klein became the first openly gay man chosen to head a national rabbinical association of one of the major Jewish denominations in the United States in 2013, when he was chosen as president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association. He is also the first Hillel director to hold the presidency. As of his election as president, Klein is the executive director of Hillel at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, a post he has held since 2006. He will be president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association for two years.
• Debra Kolodny is an openly bisexual American rabbi. She edited the first anthology by bisexual people of faith, Blessed Bi Spirit (Continuum International 2000), to which she contributed "Hear, I Pray You, This Dream Which I Have Dreamed," about Jewish identity and bisexuality.
• Stacy Offner is an openly lesbian American rabbi who accomplished important firsts for women and lesbians in the Jewish Community. She was the first openly lesbian rabbi in a traditional congregation, as well as the first openly lesbian rabbi hired by a mainstream Jewish congregation. She would rise through the congregation becoming the first female rabbi in Minnesota as well as the first rabbi elected chaplain of the Minnesota Senate, the first female vice president of the Union for Reform Judaism and the first woman to serve on the [U.S.] national rabbinical pension board.
• Toba Spitzer became the first openly lesbian or gay person chosen to head a rabbinical association in the United States in 2007, when she was elected president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association at the group's annual convention, in Scottsdale, Arizona.
• Margaret Wenig is an American rabbi and instructor of liturgy and homiletics at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. In 1976, Naomi Janowitz and she self-published Siddur Nashim: A book of Sabbath Prayers for Women, which referred to God using female pronouns and imagery, and was the first Sabbath prayer book to do so. Wenig was ordained at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1984. In 1990 she wrote the sermon, "God is a Woman and She is Growing Older," which as of 2011 has been published ten times (three times in German) and preached by rabbis from Australia to California.
• Sherwin Wine (1928-2007), rabbi and founding figure in Humanistic Judaism.
• Ron Yosef (b. 1974) (Hebrew: רון יוסף) an Orthodox rabbi who helped found the Israeli organization Hod, which represents gay and lesbian Orthodox Jews. His organization has played a central role in the recent reevaluation of the role of religious homosexuals in the Israeli Religious Zionist movement.
• Reuben Zellman is an American teacher, author, and is the assistant rabbi and music director at Congregation Beth El in Berkeley, California. He became the first openly transgender person accepted to the Reform Jewish seminary Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati in 2003. He was ordained by the seminary's Los Angeles campus in 2010.
• Rebecca Alpert, lesbian professor in the Departments of Religion and Women's Studies at Temple University.

Academics

• Mark Blechner, psychologist
• Allan Bloom, philosopher
• Judith Butler, philosopher
• Martin Duberman, historian
• Uzi Even, Israeli chemist and former Knesset member
• Magnus Hirschfeld, sexologist and activist
• Ron Huberman, Israeli-born CEO of Chicago Public Schools
• Fritz Klein, psychiatrist and sexologist
• George Mosse, historian
• Ludwig Wittgenstein, philosopher.

Show business

• Chantal Akerman, film director
• Simon Amstell, comedian and television presenter
• Michael Bennett, choreographer and musical theatre director.
• Sandra Bernhard, actress and comedian
• Ilene Chaiken, creator of The L Word
• George Cukor, film director
• Harvey Fierstein, actor and playwright
• Stephen Fry, actor, comedian and writer.
• Victor Garber, actor, comedian and writer
• Judy Gold, stand-up comedian and actress
• Julie Goldman, stand-up comedian.
• Todd Haynes, film director
• Nicholas Hytner, theatre and film director
• Moisés Kaufman, award-winning Venezuelan-born playwright/director long resident in the U.S.
• Jerome Robbins, choreographer and musical theatre director
• John Schlesinger, film director
• Antony Sher, actor
• Bryan Singer, film director
• Mauritz Stiller, film director
• Bruce Vilanch, comedy writer and actor.
• Billy Eichner, American comedian, host of Billy on the Street and recurring cast member of Parks and Recreation
• Max Rhyser, actor

Musicians, Composers, Lyricists, Vocalists

• Howard Ashman, musical writer
• Babydaddy, member of Scissor Sisters
• Frieda Belinfante, conductor (Jewish father)
• Leonard Bernstein, composer and conductor
• Marc Blitzstein, composer
• Carrie Brownstein, guitarist in Sleater-Kinney
• Aaron Copland, composer
• Joel Derfner, musical theatre composer
• Fred Ebb, musical theatre lyricist
• Michael Feinstein, singer and pianist
• William Finn, musical theatre composer, lyricist and librettist
• Ari Gold, pop singer
• Lesley Gore, pop singer
• Howard Greenfield, composer ("Love Will Keep Us Together", TV theme song from "Bewitched")
• Lorenz Hart, lyricist
• Jerry Herman, musical theatre composer and lyricist
• Vladimir Horowitz, classical pianist
• Janis Ian (born Janis Eddy Fink), American songwriter, singer, musician, columnist, and science fiction author.
• Dave Koz (born David Kozlowski), jazz saxophonist.
• Adam Lambert, singer and runner-up on the 8th season of American Idol
• Jack Lawrence, composer and former president of ASCAP
• Jon Moss, drummer, member of Culture Club and The Damned
• Laura Nyro, singer-songwriter
• Peaches, Canadian electro-punk musician and performance artist
• Phranc, singer-songwriter
• Lou Reed, Guitarist, vocalist, and principal songwriter of The Velvet Underground
• Marc Shaiman, musical theatre and film composer
• Socalled, rapper
• Stephen Sondheim, musical theatre composer and lyricist
• Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor, composer, and pianist
• Troye Sivan, gay South African-born YouTuber and actor

Writers

• Leroy F. Aarons, journalist/editor/author/playwright and activist founder of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA).
• Jon Robin Baitz, playwright and screenwriter
• Steve Berman, speculative fiction writer
• Betty Berzon, author and the first psychotherapist in America to come out as gay to the public (which she did in 1971).
• Jane Bowles, novelist and playwright
• Alfred Chester, novelist.
• Nick Denton, founder of Gawker Media (Jewish mother)
• Joel Derfner, writer and memoirist
• György Faludy, poet
• Edward Field, poet
• Sanford Friedman, novelist
• Allen Ginsberg, US Beat generation poet
• Richard Greenberg, playwright
• Jacob Israël de Haan, poet
• Marilyn Hacker, poet
• Aaron Hamburger, novelist
• Max Jacob, poet
• Chester Kallman, poet and librettist
• Tony Kushner, playwright and screenwriter
• Stephen Laughton, playwright
• Arthur Laurents, playwright, screenwriter and librettist.
• David Leavitt, novelist and short-story writer
• Leo Lerman, writer/editor
• Michael Lowenthal, novelist
• Jay Michaelson, writer, columnist, author of God vs. Gay?
• Herbert Muschamp (1947–2007), New York Times architecture critic
• Harold Norse, poet
• Marcel Proust, novelist (Jewish mother)
• David Rakoff, essayist
• Paul Rudnick, playwright, screenwriter and columnist
• Siegfried Sassoon, poet (Jewish father)
• Martin Sherman, playwright
• Susan Sontag, essayist and novelist
• Gertrude Stein, writer
• Julian Stryjkowski, novelist
• Kathy Acker, bisexual sex-positive feminist, novelist, punk poet, playwright, essayist and postmodernist.

Artists and Architects

• Claude Cahun, French photographer and writer
• Robert Denning, American interior designer, from the age of 15 was the partner of Edgar de Evia, photographer and from 1960 both life and business partner of Vincent Fourcade, French interior designer.
• Nan Goldin, photographer
• Herbert List, photographer
• Maurice Sendak, illustrator and author of children's books as well as costume and set designer for films, theater and opera.
• Simeon Solomon, painter

Fashion Designers

• Arnold Scaasi, Canadian born, American fashion designer

Sports figures

• Robert Dover, 6-time Olympic equestrianist
• Renée Richards, tennis player

Miscellaneous

• Gad Beck, Holocaust survivor and memoirist
• Roy Cohn, lawyer and co-counsel—along with Robert F. Kennedy—to Sen. Joseph McCarthy
• Barry Diller, media executive
• Sandi Simcha DuBowski, documentary filmmaker.
• Brian Epstein, manager of The Beatles
• David Geffen, film producer and record executive
• Mitchell Gold, furniture company CEO and gay rights activist
• Michael Lucas, gay porn star
• Ezra Nawi, Israeli human rights activist
• Ari Shapiro, American radio journalist
• Randi Weingarten, current president of the American Federation of Teachers

See also

• Homosexuality and Judaism
• Keshet Rabbis
• LGBT clergy in Judaism

External links

• World Congress of Gay & Lesbian Jews