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Queer Jews as Heroes

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Photo Voice
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By Alan Benstock

Earlier this year, Keith Kahn-Harris published a book called What does a Jew look like?, in collaboration with the photographer Rob Stothard. The book tries to challenge the use of stock photos of strictly orthodox Jews in the British media – of men in long black coats with payot (long ringlets of uncut hair) hanging down from under the brims of black hats. They will have been photographed walking along the streets of Stamford Hill London. Through a compilation of portraits that capture the diversity of British Jews, Khan-Harris demonstrates diversity carries its own dilemmas.

Collections of images of Jews are not new. During a visit to the Jewish Museum in London in 2018 I came across an exhibition titled Through a Queer Lens. It is described by its curators as “the first comprehensive series of photographic portraits of LGBTQ Jews”. The portraits were the result of a collaboration between Black Queer artist Ajamu X, and Trans activist and heritage manager Surat Shaan Khan. The display grew out of the landmark Rainbow Jews project which documented Jewish LGBT history in the UK.

The individuals featured identify as Jewish and LGBTQ in different ways; some occupy positions on the inside of the established Jewish community, and others have a less conventional relationship to their Jewishness.

All the images in the collection were monochromatic and my reaction on entering the gallery was to see them merely a continuation of the stereotypical imagery of my faith and heritage that I had grown up with – black and white pictures of immigrant poverty, ghettos, and death camps. All of which had been in the galleries I had just walked through. I wanted to ask the curators why they had commissioned portraits devoid of colour as the information labels did not explain this.

Then, one picture intrigued me. It was of Surat Shaan Knan. The information label described how Surat is driven by the believe that LGBTQ Jews have been excluded the British Jewry collective memory. It adds that the Jewish community is not the only focus of his attention, as he has launched a heritage project “Twilight People’ which explores the lives of British transgender people from across the Abrahamic religious spectrum.

As I spent some time looking at his and the other images, I realised that the pictures were interacting with the space in which they were displayed. Colour was being imposed on four of the portraits.

 

The colours were coming from another artwork in the gallery. It was the permanent memorial to all Jews who fought for the British Armed Forces. Further they were not random strips colour but key elements to another story – medal ribbons. Whether the curators intended this to happen, I again never found out.

 On the face of it, the new image is the coalescence of two discrete stories with a single common thread of Jewish faith and identity. Arguably, though there is another – that of heroism.  Each display celebrates heroes and champions – those on the battlefield under fire, and those of the richness of LGBTQ Jewish life in the UK today.

Alan Benstock is a PhD student in Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Leeds.
Photo credits: Alan Benstock, 2018