This week’s Torah portions are filled with inspiring, confusing, disturbing, and beautiful verses. While parts mark the basis of loving thy neighbor, other parts in each Parsha have been used to cause immense harm to millions of LGBTQ people. Its entirety reflects the richness and complexity of a heritage that actively invites us to engage with our Judaism. We grapple with texts, debate their meaning, and study the biblical applications – affirming the value of our traditions while caring for communal consequence.

However, before we can successfully confront these portions in any meaningful way, we must approach them from a place of wellness, safety, and kavod habriyot — human dignity. While we know that some verses are complicated, as long as we engage with them from a place of health, dignity and personal resilience, we can hold this complexity and grow from the experience.

Ensuring wellbeing and self-worth is essential, and are the first steps on the long and winding road to understanding the mysteries of our faith and tradition. Especially today, when the wellness of vulnerable youth is on the forefront of our minds, it seems clearer than ever that discussions about religious observance and ideology must first be rooted in mental health and physical wellbeing. This is what drives JQY and is at the heart of our mission.

Please consider sharing this post or publicly supporting JQY over the course of the next week — so that friends and community members who may need will see that regardless of how we each experience a sentence in the Torah, we are all committed to each other’s well being and dignity

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