Rabbi Steven Greenberg is the first Orthodox rabbi to come out as openly gay. It is his tenacious personality and authentic love for the proximity and wholeness of Jewish practice found within Orthodox Judaism that has enabled his continued presence amidst Orthodox communities, in spite of adversity and misunderstanding. He is the Founding Director of Eshel, an organization aimed at increasing the inclusion of LGBTQ+ Jews within Orthodox communities.
Steven Greenberg was born in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1956, where his father was permitted to take leave from the U.S. Army for a few weeks for the birth of his first son. Three months after his birth, Steven and his mother returned to Pittsburgh, where they waited for another year before the family was reunited following his father’s tour of duty. His father Dan had grown up in America, while his mother, Frances (originally Fanny) Silberstein Greenberg had survived the Holocaust as one of the 1300 Hidden Children in central and southern France during World War II. She emigrated to the U.S. after the war at the age of 11.
Although Fanny was only 5 years old, she remembers the night in July 1942 when French police took her father in the middle of the night to a French internment camp in Drancy. A month later he was sent to his death in Auschwitz. Her mother, Jeanne (Gitel) Toder Silberstein tried to protect her two daughters, Fanny and Gizele, but when it became too dangerous, she was able, with help from a Jewish agency (OSE-O euvre de Secours aux Enfants) to send the girls to the countryside where they would be hidden and given French Christian identities. Steve’s mother and aunt were protected by a number of Catholic families and by orphanages staffed by heroic nuns and priests. While Jeanne survived the war in hiding in Paris, she died soon after Victory in Europe Day from illness, leaving both Fanny and Gizele orphaned at the end of the war. Fanny (later changed to Frances) and Gizele (later changed to Gloria) were sent to American relatives who split the sisters apart. Gloria was taken in by family and Fran was given to an American Jewish couple, Harry and Sophie Ginsberg for adoption.
Steve’s parents met in high school in Squirrel Hill, a Jewish suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and they married when she was 18 and he 20. While Steve’s father grew up nominally Orthodox and his mother had almost no Jewish upbringing during the war, they chose a Conservative community in Columbus, Ohio.
Steve grew up in the heart of the Midwest in the town of Bexley, Ohio which, in his words, “offered boys two interests: football and girls.” Young Greenberg was not preoccupied with either of these social frames. He found a more comfortable social world in a local Jewish circle of peers, youth leaders and teachers. He became involved in USY, a youth movement within Conservative Judaism, and found himself part of the more serious, Jewishly-engaged crowd. There, he was taught by the renowned teachers Saul and Barbara Wachs of the Jewish Theological Seminary, who piloted an educational program teaching biblical criticism to children as young as eleven.
At age 15, young Greenberg unknowingly triggered a fateful chain of events that inspired his shift into Orthodoxy. One Saturday morning, he was heading out to join his friends in walking the rabbi 1.5 miles from the rabbi’s house to shul (synagogue). Pointing to the drizzling weather, Steve’s mother insisted that he instead drive to shul, something that, according to normative Jewish law, is prohibited on the Sabbath. Point-blank refusing, Steve surprised himself by saying, “Fine! I’ll just go to the Orthodox shul!” which was just a few blocks away. The rabbi there was Joseph Vilensky, who was trained in Gateshead, a right-wing Orthodox Yeshiva. Vilensky noticed him, and in a captivating British accent, invited young Steve over for shabbos (Sabbath) lunch.
The rabbi’s home and shabbos atmosphere enchanted him. Half of the rabbi’s books were the usual high-brow secular literature like Chaucer and Shakespeare, while the other half contained tomes of heavy, leather-bound books in Hebrew letters. During the meal itself, the family served a lavish assortment of Ashkenazi Jewish food— flanken, kishke, cholent— this was not the tuna-fish-and-cottage-cheese shabbos lunch he was used to. By the end of the meal, the rabbi insisted that Steve come back each week to learn Torah “over tea and oranges,” intrigued and provoked by Steve’s unassuming description of a certain Torah verse as “part of the J school of bible authors.” He returned faithfully each week with three of his friends. All four of them were pulled into this warm community of shabbos, shul, and inexhaustible meal invitations, and all four of them became observant.
In Greenberg’s words, “I was invited into vertical and horizontal communities in which I had never been before. In the vertical one, around the table sat Moses, the ancient Babylonian and Jerusalemite sages, medieval scholars like Maimonides, Nachmonides, and Ibn Ezra, and the later rabbis, and my friends— and we were all arguing about the meaning of life and the struggle to put goodness into action. I was blown away by learning Torah. And the horizontal community was all of these people scooping us up, inviting us to shabbos and holiday meals and putting us to work in the creation of this tight-knit community! It was a wild experience— on Jewish holidays, I was going to shul (synagogue) in the morning and then going to public school with schnapps and herring on my breath ... .My parents thought I was bodysnatched by some Polish great grandparents!”
Defying familial expectations, Greenberg insisted on attending Yeshiva University after high school and for two years loved the learning and the camaraderie. As was customary for many at Yeshiva College, he decided to spend time studying full time in an Israeli yeshiva. He attended Yeshivat Har Etzion, for two years where he studied Talmud, Bible and Jewish philosophy. It was there, living with 300 other young men engaged in interactive learning with an uncommon intellectual and religious intensity, that an awareness of his sexual attraction towards men began bubbling up. He realized that this was the dangerous secret inside of his gut that plagued his childhood. He knew no words to describe these feelings, and had no idea what to do with them— he had never heard the words “gay” or “homosexual” ever spoken by friends or family.
He knew it was too risky to confide about these feelings to anyone in his yeshiva, so at age 20, he traveled to the sage Rav Yosef Shalom Eliashuv, who lived in one of the most secluded Ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods in Israel. Nothing he said there would ever make it back to his friends and teachers in his Modern Orthodox Yeshiva. Steve spoke in Hebrew, “Rabbi, I am attracted to both men and women. What should I do?” The rabbi’s soft-spoken response left him stunned. Rav Eliashuv responded, “My precious friend, you have twice the power of love. Use it carefully.” That was all. Steve was elated. The rabbi had smiled and assured him that there was nothing ugly about Steve’s inner life. Steve remembers that he almost danced his way back to his yeshiva with a sense of profound relief. Greenberg assumed he was bisexual enough to get by and still have a family, but began to positively consider that this aspect of his sexuality could widen his emotional life and make him a better rabbi.
Stephen (Steven) Greenberg yearbook photo, Yeshiva University 1979.In 1978, he flew back to New York City to finish college, start rabbinical school, and get married. In 1983, he received his rabbinic ordination from Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, and in 1984 began to work as a congregational rabbi in New York City. In 1986, he started teaching Torah as an adult educator at The National Center for Jewish Learning and Leadership (CLAL), where he stayed on as a senior teaching fellow until 2009.
While many of his friends after Yeshiva were engaged or already married, Greenberg would spend the next fifteen years dating women until he could fully admit out loud, at age 35, “I am gay.” These years were confusing and painful. With no gay role models, it seemed his sexuality offered him no future— no spouse, no family, and no place in the Jewish community that made up his world. Dating as an Orthodox rabbi provided cover for his lack of sexual feelings, since he would not be expected to touch his partners before marriage, which is prohibited according to normative Orthodox Jewish law. While intermittently in relationships with men, he was desperate to marry, thinking himself to have “fallen in love” three times and even initiating one failed engagement. He felt himself humiliated by his lack of sexual desire for the women he cared about so much. With the last woman he seriously dated, he opened up to her about his struggle, and while this created an emotional intimacy between them deeper than he had with any other woman, the lack of mutual desire precluded the possibility of a long-term relationship.
In 1985, while he was working as a congregational rabbi, a friend had figured him out and asked if he ever felt desire for a man. Greenberg writes, “I surprised myself and nodded yes.”[1] The magazine Ha’aretz quotes him as describing that moment, “A heavy weight was lifted from me. I almost passed out.”[2] In 1991, Greenberg came out to his family. His dad accepted him after a few months, on the condition that Steve allow him to hold onto the fantasy that there is still one woman out there with whom he could make it work. It was much harder for his mother, especially because he was named after her father (his grandfather) who perished in Auschwitz. Gayness for her meant intolerable discrimination, vulnerability and danger. She feared that Steve would now never have a family.
While many other gay Jews chose to leave Orthodoxy upon acknowledging their unbudging, immutable sexualities, Greenberg did not feel like this was an option. The reasons he found himself crossing into Orthodoxy in his teens still felt valid! He loved learning and teaching Torah, and could not see himself as a rabbi within any other Jewish movement. In 1993, he got his first taste of what a wider Orthodox gay community could look like. Writing anonymously under the pseudonym “Rabbi Yaakov Levado” (Rabbi Jacob Alone), he published an article in Tikkun magazine titled “Gayness and God: Wrestlings of an Orthodox Rabbi.” For a few months after its publication, he received a mix of letters from gay, lesbian, and straight Jews, many of whom left Orthodoxy years ago. Greenberg writes, “[these] letters were my first taste of support and acceptance…I felt the beginnings of a community and a growing sense of responsibility to it.”[3] He knew that he needed to develop a deeper argument for the inclusion of gay and lesbian Jews within the Orthodox community.
"Wrestling With God and Men: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition," published in 2004.From 1996-1998, Greenberg took a two-years’ break from CLAL to join a fellowship of the Mandel Institute in Jerusalem, where his independent research there would become the foundation of his seminal book Wrestling with God and Men: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition, later published in 2004. During this period, Greenberg became involved in the Jerusalem gay community. With Amichai Lau-Lavie, they started a gay men’s study group called Moach Gavra (The Mind of Man), which attracted an eclectic mix of regular attendees: academics, Ultra-Orthodox, ex-Ultra-Orthodox, secular Jews, and a Catholic priest. It was in this study group that Rabbi Greenberg began to realize that traditional Jewish texts may have left behind an authentic, compelling argument for the inclusion and permissibility of gay relationships within Jewish law.
People within the queer community began hearing of this American Orthodox gay rabbi. The Jewish gay filmmaker Sandi Dubowksi knocked on his door, asking if he would participate in a documentary about gay Orthodox Jews that would later debut in 2001 as Trembling before G-d. Greenberg laughed and point-blank refused, completely unbelieving that there would be enough people to create such a documentary or that anyone would want to watch it. After a few years of Dubowski persistently coming back to show his progress in video snippets, Rabbi Greenberg acquiesced and later became one of the most important voices in the film.
Additionally, he was invited to join the group of people planning to create Jerusalem’s first LGBTQ community center, which later successfully opened in 1999 as the Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance. After a month of weekly focus-group discussions, Greenberg became an integral part of the project’s founding. By 1998, the Open House had run out of money to continue its opening. Greenberg flew to NYC to meet with philanthropists Rita and Stanley Kaplan with whom he was connected through CLAL. The Kaplans had lost their son Paul to AIDS and Greenberg suggested that this was a perfect way to honor Paul. Greenberg flew back to Jerusalem with the biggest check the Open House had ever seen. Soon afterwards they began looking for a meeting space to rent, and finally after many rejections, found one landlord willing to rent a space on Ben Yehudah Street for this purpose.
It was the opening of the Open House that finally pushed Rabbi Greenberg to come out publicly. The group asked if Greenberg would be willing to come out a few weeks before the grand opening in order to highlight the Jerusalem Open House’s Jewishness. Fearing that the cost of his honesty would be isolation and marginalization, Greenberg initially refused. By stroke of fate, however, the man sitting next to him on his flight back to New York City was the exact reporter from the Israeli newspaper Maariv whom he was told to contact if he wanted to come out publicly. Steve was thinking, “Well, I was not willing to make this appointment, but obviously Someone Else was…” Armed with the sheer serendipity of the situation, Greenberg arranged to meet with the reporter in the five overlapping hours they had in the city of Miami a couple weeks later.
In 1999, he came out in the Israeli newspaper Maariv, which was then published in the American Jewish newspaper The Forward a few weeks later.[4] One friend abandoned him, while a few of his rabbi friends called and said something like, “Very gutsy, Steve, congratulations! But don’t quote me on that.” CLAL stood by him, affirming the importance of pluralism in their educational environment. His coming out was largely ignored by the Orthodox community, although he did receive harsh pushback from a rabbi at his alma mater, saying that being both gay and Orthodox is “an oxymoron,” among other things. While Yeshiva University did not rescind his rabbinic ordination, his name and presence there remains controversial and contentious to this day, in 2024.
The 2004 release of his book Wrestling with God and Men: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition offers his own compelling autobiographical narrative and became a groundbreaking precedent for alternative justifications for gay relationships within Jewish law. About its publication, the Jewish magazine Ha’aretz quotes Rabbi Greenberg in 2013 as saying, “On the individual level, more and more people come to me and say things like: ‘This book saved me from total depression ... The book made my father understand me ... I gave it to my children who were having a hard time dealing with the fact that their father is gay, and now we’re able to talk about it.’ Something was opened up. …. Rabbis read it, even if they don’t say so openly. Rabbis refer young people who are deliberating about coming out to the book….”[5] The book received the Koret Book Award for Philosophy and Thought, one of the most prestigious awards for Jewish prose. It was also a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards.
The Orthodox world tends to prefer more conservative, incremental change, rather than the bold, public radical shifts of mainstream secular progressivism. If an Orthodox rabbi comes out with too bold of a stance, their very adherence to Orthodoxy may be questioned. If they come out with a stance seen as too radical by their generally socially-conservative communities, they may lose their rabbinic authority and along with it the ability to actually make the very change they set out to accomplish. In addition, all previous Jewish legal rulings and conversions they have made previously may come under doubt. In light of these complex social realities, Rabbi Greenberg left his full-time position at CLAL to join a group of like-minded Orthodox Jews to start the non-profit Eshel, an organization that aims to build LGBTQ inclusion into Orthodox life in 2010.
In 2010, Eshel held their first shabbaton (weekend conference that takes place over the sabbath) for LGBTQ Orthodox and ex-Orthodox Jews. Greenberg describes it as “an unbelievable event…People were weeping, overwhelmed with joy, never having [had] this experience of being together in a place where their full selves could be so completely present and wanted… Religiously, physically, fearlessly…” In 2013, they held their first parent retreat, where 80-100 Orthodox parents of LGBTQ children came together to share their stories with each other. In addition to their annual shabbatons, Eshel has support groups serving 12 cities across the United States, although they mostly take place online. They also have a warm line, where they receive calls from all over the world, from teens, parents, and adults looking for support. Lastly, with Eshel, Rabbi Greenberg has also facilitated a number of conversions for gay and trans people committed to Orthodox Judaism.
Rabbi Steve Greenberg officiating at the historic same-sex commitment ceremony of Yoni Bock and Ron Kaplan. Washington DC, November 10th, 2011.
In 2011, Rabbi Greenberg became the first Orthodox rabbi to officiate a “same-sex commitment ceremony” for two Jewish men, legally recognized by the local government. He maintains that the traditional religious ceremony between men and women, called kiddushin, is not appropriate for same-sex couples within the bounds of Jewish law.
Rabbi Greenberg pictured with his husband, Steven Goldstein, and one year old daughter, 2012.
While Rabbi Greenberg met his now-husband Steven Goldstein in 1999, they had their civil marriage in 2012, with their one-year-old daughter in their arms at the courthouse. Rabbi Greenberg lives with husband and daughter in Boston. His family unit is not formally recognized by their Orthodox synagogue, but his tenacious personality does not let that deter him from living in his community of choice. He understands that while his staying within the Orthodox world is not only greatly important to him personally, it creates avenues of positive change and possibilities for the next generation.
(This biographical profile was written by Charlie Feuerman and edited by Rabbi Steve Greenberg, based on an interview taken March 14, 2024, and the sources below.)
[1] Greenberg, Wrestling with God and Men : Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition, 8.
[2] Karpel, “And God Created Gays.”
[3] Greenberg, Wrestling with God and Men : Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition, 10.
[4] Staff, “From the Archive.”
[5] Karpel, “And God Created Gays.”
Biography Date: July 2024
———. Wrestling with God and Men: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition. Madison, Wisc: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004.
Ruttenberg, Roee. “Orthodox Rabbi Marries Gay Couple in Historic Wedding in DC.” +972 Magazine, November 11, 2011. https://www.972mag.com/orthodox-rabbi-marries-gay-couple-in-washington-dc/.