Tel Aviv Pride, the California connection

A high-profile California contingent contributed to the size and impact of the week-long LGBT Pride Celebration in Tel Aviv last week, with Los Angeles leaders joining Bay Area collegues in staging events aimed at strengthening the standing of Israel’s gay community.

“Five years ago, pride here was a ‘nice’ event,” said Joel Simkhai, Israeli-born, West Hollywood-based founder and CEO of the international mobile gay meet-up app, Grindr.

“But it has grown exponentially. Now Tel Aviv is an international gay destination, with more Europeans, Americans and people who aren’t Jewish visiting Israel for the first time to participate” in the celebration, Simkhai said.

When Simkhai discovered that Jared Fliesler and Geoff Lewis, two friends from the Bay Area venture capital world, were also heading to Tel Aviv Pride, he decided to organize a LGBT Tech meet-up to give young Israeli entrepreneurs a forum in which to network and learn from American collegues.

“I’m a big believer in people starting their own businesses; we do this for the LGBT community in L.A., and it just made sense for us to do it here, too.”

Simkhai promoted the event on his app, and in less than three hours the meet up on the terrace at Brown’s – a posh boutique hotel – was over-subscribed with gay tech entrepreneurs eager to pitch ideas to successful California counterparts. 

“It is wonderful to come back to Israel and see the visibility of the young LGBT community.  The next generation is so comfortable. It just wasn’t possible when I was coming out,” Simkhai said.

An estimated 180,000 people turned out for the June 12 LGBT Pride parade in Tel Aviv, up from 130,000 in 2014.

Todd Shotz is a Los Angeles Film & TV Producer and Jewish educator whose company, Hebrew Helpers, offers Bar and Bat Mitzvah training in Southern California, New York and Washington, D.C.

Todd Shotz with A Wider Bridge founder Arthur Slepian

“I come to Israel every year to officiate services for my students,” said Shotz, who also serves as board chair for JQ International, a resource and social service organization for the LGBT population. “But when I was at the AIPAC Conference in March, I ran into Arthur Slepian, who insisted I come again for the summit of LGBT leaders he was organizing in Tel Aviv.”

Slepian’s San Francisco-based “Wider Bridge” organization was founded to promote ties between LGBT communities in North American and Israel, but has become a global operation connecting activists, politicians, and cultural figures from Africa, Asia and Europe to the Jewish State.

“A Wider Bridge planned this global conference in Tel Aviv, because we believe the Israeli LGBTQ community deserves to have an important voice in the global struggle for LGBTQ equality.  Both the progress and the challenges here contain lessons for the rest of the world,” said Slepian who brought two busloads of international leaders to a legislative hearing on resources and protection for transgender citizens.

“A third of the total Kenesset members stopped by the meeting,” said Shotz. “There were even members of the Likud there talking in support of the trans kids and trans teachers.”

Wider Bridge made headlines in Israel by bringing Seattle Mayor Ed Murray to the country to speak at its Forty Years of Pride Conference, hosted jointly with the Aguda- Israel LGBTQ Task Force; Murray also marched in the Tel Aviv parade.

A progressive Democrat, Murray faced strong objections to his trip from Seattle’s well-organized Boycott, Divest, Sanctions coalition, which included some of his own supporters.

“I believe that the situation is very complex,” Murray told the Wider Bridge-Aguda conference Thursday. “I wish that people who are boycotting would actually come here, go to the West Bank like I went to the West Bank, talk to people here in Israel as well.

This march is just enormous. It goes on and on, and, yes, there are lots of LGBT people who came from all over Israel and Europe – but a huge proportion of this crowd is straight people who are supporters,” said Los Angeles attorney Jennifer Pizer, Law and Policy Project Director for Lambda Legal’s Western Regional office.

Pizer presented at a panel examining how the LGBT community has moved from sexual expression to making family rights its main issue.

Adoption rights and civil marriage both are challenging both for Israel’s heterosexual couples, as well as homosexuals, in a country where family status issues are still largely influenced, if not controlled by religious authorities.

“I think the vigor and exuberance of the Pride March in Tel Aviv echoes the popular vote on marriage in Ireland. I don’t think that is just a reflection of support for gay people but also a strong statement of support for the idea that everybody should have an equal place and be free to live according to their own conscience,” Pizer said.

Shervin Khorramian, who launched programing targeted for Los Angeles’ Iranian- Jewish community for JQ International sees Tel Aviv Pride as an impetus for LGBT visibility throughout the region.

“I am very proud to say that my Jewish culture has done this in the Middle East,” said Khorramian. “It’s my hope that I will live to see a parade like this in Tehran during my lifetime.”