The Marvelous Michael Moskowitz

I don’t really have any Orthodox friends. No one in my family, on either side, was raised in or adopted Orthodox Judaism. For someone who operates in the Jewish “space,” I am menutak—cut off—from the lived reality of Orthodoxy.

Part of this is a matter of location. I have spent my entire adult life in Tulsa, Oklahoma and there is no appreciable Orthodox presence here. The last mainstream Orthodox rabbi was my predecessor, the gentle and beloved Asher Dov Kahn. I was recruited to Tulsa to set a different course, and though I loved Rabbi Kahn, I could not be part of his world.

That is the other determinant: my own abundant crotchets and aversions. I’ve had plenty of time to think this through, and there is no place to connect myself to Orthodoxy. I reject what it says about the nature of the Law, the place of women in Jewish life, it’s prevailing certainty, and its tendency toward exclusion. I also reject the tone of its practice: a rushed and anxious determination to get it right, whatever “it” happens to be, which is usually a race against the setting sun.

But as with every rule, there is a shining exception. In my case it’s Rabbi Michael Moskowitz, a full-blown, authentic Orthodox presence who is still ascending in American Jewish life, but who promises to be one of the Next Big Things.

You’d agree if you spent five minutes together. He is, as they say, the whole geschichte: a beautifully educated Jewish soul, raised in the culture of texts and traditions, who leads with the heart and empathic understanding. He looks like the picture of charedi authority: big black beard, big black hat, big black frock coat, and neat black payes, the curly side locks of traditional Jewish men.

But that’s just part of the Moskowitz story. For the past several years, he has been a scholar-in-residence at the flagship GLBTQ+ synagogue on Planet Earth. That would be Congregation Bet Simchat Torah in Manhattan, the brilliant achievement of Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, one of the great luminaries of this moment in Jewish history. The fact that she is one of my son’s beloved mothers-in-law has only something to do with my own admiration; Sharon Kleinbaum is also the whole geschichte.

And she was the one who recruited straight Michael Moskowitz. What she understood was that Michael could play two important roles. Let’s say you’re a struggling Jewish family. Your kid has just come out as gay or trans and you need a new framework to accommodate this reality. You love the child, but you have never been here before, not in a culture that privileges heteronormative regularity, that is enchanted with marriage in its most traditional form, that sees generational continuity as the highest good. That’s the story of Orthodoxy, but also many of the rest of us.

You say all of this to someone you know, and that other person says “I’ve got a guy.” The guy she means is Rabbi Michael Moskowitz, who brings the full, gorgeous force of his pastoral gifts and helps open up avenues of communication and acceptance. His appearance is part of the magic of his presence: if this guy is saying it, it must be true. And he works without fanfare or self-aggrandizing flourishes. His quiet self-restraint is part his power. If you don’t have to deal with the ego of a super-hero, there is a better chance that the hero will succeed. I felt it strongly in his recent visit to Tulsa. He came to help memorialize non-binary Nex Benedict, who took his own life when he was savagely bullied. Michael came quietly to stand with their family and let them know that the world was listening.

The other thing that Sharon Kleinbaum understood is that Michael Moskowitz was a very big thinker. Schooled in the granular detail of Jewish texts, he could say something powerful and authentic about living in the world. I've just taken a deep dive in Ancestral Allyship, Michael’s new book about the nature of human ties, and the Torah’s demand that we show up for one another. How do we go deep in a culture of appearances where we interact with a careless and fatal shallowness. Drawing on all the resources of traditional Jewish scholarship, Michael Moskowitz stakes out a path of righteousness.

Michael is now on his own path again. This has been a time of transition in His Brilliant Career, and you are likely to see him in your community soon. He will be back in Tulsa sometime this summer, but start looking at his work wherever you find it. I think you will be nourished by what you see. (rabbimikemoskowitz.com)

And if you have the opportunity, spend some time together. I think he could be your first Orthodox friend.