Click here for a video recording of this CLGS Jewish Queeries Series event!
In this online CLGS Jewish Queeries Series event, Andrew Ramer, Rabbi Jay Michaelson, and Bernie Schlager discuss aspects of gay male spirituality, using Ramer’s recent book Two Hearts Dancing: A Spiritual Journeybook for Gay Men as a springboard for discussion and conversation.
“The book Two Hearts Dancing… isn’t a guidebook on ‘coming out,’” Ramer writes, “but a guidebook on coming in—coming in to who we are as mystics, lovers, and healers… The first section of this book, Stories of our People, contains fourteen tales that are grounded in gay archetypes and ends with a responsive reading to be used in gay men’s rituals… the second part, Poems of Our Tribe, contains twenty-four poems that are mythic, mystical explorations of embodied spirituality, sexuality, and love.”
Maggid Eli Andrew Ramer is the author of the gay underground classis Two Flutes Playing, as well as Revelations for a New Millennium, Queering the Text, and several other books. He is also a coauthor of the international best seller Ask Your Angels. Born in Elm/hurst, New York, across the stress from an amusement park called Fairyland, he now lives in Oak/land, California, up the street from an amusement park called Fairyland.
Rabbi Dr. Jay Michaelson is a visiting scholar at CLGS, as well as an author (God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality), journalist (New York and The Daily Beast) and meditation teacher (Ten Percent Happier). He holds a PhD in Jewish Thought from Hebrew University, a JD from Yale, and nondenominational rabbinic ordination. Jay worked as a professional LGBTQ activist for ten years, founding two religious LGBTQ nonprofits, Nehirim and Eshel. His newest book, The Heresy of Jacob Frank: From Jewish Messianism to Esoteric Myth, will be published in July, 2022, by Oxford University Press.
Bernard Schlager is Executive Director of CLGS and Associate Professor of Historical and Cultural Studies at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California. The co-author (with David Kundtz) of Ministry Among God’s Queer Folk: LGBTQ Pastoral Care (Second Edition: Cascade Books, 2019), Dr. Schlager has published articles on ancient church history, medieval hagiography, the history of sexuality, and queer history.
This CLGS Jewish Queeries Series event was recorded on 7 April 2022.
