Lynn schusterman lgbtq

Human Rights Campaign Releases First-Ever Index of LGBT Inclusion within a Faith-Based Community

WASHINGTON — The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest lesbian, homosexual, bisexual and genderqueer (LGBT) civil rights organization, released today its first-ever index of inclusion within a faith-based people. The Jewish Corporation Equality Index (JOEI) provides benchmarks for gauging, and resources for improving, LGBT inclusivity policies and practices of North American Jewish communal organizations. The entire report is accessible at www.hrc.org/joei.

Key findings from the index create a preliminary snapshot of how a broad range of Jewish organizations—from national umbrella and advocacy groups to local nonprofits and synagogues—address LGBT diversity and inclusion in three categories of practice: organizational inclusion efforts, community/client engagement and workplace policies.

An estimated 10% of the organizations invited to take the 89-question survey completed it, which is consistent with HRC’s trial in launching inaugural indices of this type. Of the 204 Jewish charity organizations that participated, 50% received the to

Lynn Schusterman

Lynn Schusterman was born on January 21, 1939, in Kansas City, Missouri, the oldest of three sisters. Her mother, Amelia Mayer, was born in Saint Joseph, Missouri, to Helen Loewen Mayer and Moses Emmanuel Mayer, who had immigrated to the United Declare from Germany in the 1800s. Her biological father was Wes Rothschild, whose parents, Louis Phillip Rothschild (b. 1864) and Nora Westheimer Rothschild (b. 1873) were born in Kansas and Missouri respectively. Lynn was raised by her stepfather, Harold Josey (born in Lillian, Texas), to whose example of helping others she credits her early involvement in giving back to the collective. During World War II, Lynn moved with her family to New Orleans, where Josey was the Commander of the Waterfront; following the war, the family moved to Oklahoma City, where Josey started an investment company.

Schusterman’s Jewish upbringing was consistent with that of the German-Jewish community of the day. She was confirmed at Sunday school at Temple B’nai Israel in Oklahoma City, but the family also celebrated Christmas and Easter. Growing up in Oklahoma City, Schusterman was very aware of entity Jewish. With only a handful of Jewi

Seeing Progress and Potential, Jewish LGBTQ Donors Form a Network to Support Their Community

In recent years, Jewish communal organizations have made unprecedented efforts to create their spaces and programs more welcoming to LGBTQ Jews. Likewise, Jewish philanthropies — including major funders such as the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, the Shimon Ben (Jim) Joseph Foundation, and the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation — are supporting Jewish LGBTQ initiatives like never before.

For people who have been operational and living in both worlds, it’s a heartening development, albeit an overdue one. And according to leaders like Stuart Kurlander, Washington, D.C.-based attorney and philanthropist, even more can be done to back this segment of the Jewish community.

Kurlander, a past chair of Keshet, a Jewish LGBTQ organization and past president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington, has long supported LGBTQ Jewish causes. As early as 2005, Kurlander led an LGBTQ mission to Israel and he came away with “a sense that there could be more done with respect to the LGBTQ Jewish community in a variety of different ways.”

Philanthropists Jeff Schoenfeld and

lynn schusterman lgbtq

In her recent personal essay LGBTQ Acceptance in the Jewish Community: How Far We've Come and What's Next, Cantor Shira Stanford-Asiyo, shares the story of meeting her now-wife at summer camp when they were just kids. Now a project manager with the URJ’s Audacious Hospitality team, Cantor Stanford-Asiyo talks about the importance of creating transformational changes that will more fully authorize LGBTQ youth to access Jewish community as their full selves. She also shares a few of the Reform Movement’s recent steps toward making this inclusive dream a reality.

In honor of Pride Month, we’ve rounded up resources – both from us and from others in the Jewish community – that will help your congregation better practice audacious hospitality to the LGBTQ community.

  • The pilot edition of our Audacious Hospitality Pilot Toolkit is now free. This how-to guide for becoming a more welcoming congregation and will soon include a module that will provide guidance for ensuring that LGBTQ people and their families experience like an integral and accepted part of your Jewish community. 
  • Read through "18+ Ways to Make LGBTQ Members Feel Welcome in Your Congregation" and "3 Ways to Build LGB

    LGBTQ parents, as a whole, are cute awesome. We increase our children as successfully as anyone else (as decades of research has proven), often in the face of marginalization and discrimination. LGBTQ parents are having an impact in the wider world too, some in very seeable ways. Let’s join a few of them.

    First, more than three-dozen LGBTQ parents are running for public office in the 2018 election at the local, state and federal levels. These are not necessarily endorsements; any candidate may have flaws, and we should all learn more about anyone running in our locales. The candidates above extend us useful examples, however, of how a person can balance both family and public service while also existence out and proud.

    Perhaps most prominent are the four running for governor: Kate Brown is running for a second term as governor of Oregon. Brown, who is pansexual, is the first openly LGBTQ governor of any culture. She and her husband raised two children, now grown. Christine Hallquist, running in Vermont, would become the country’s first openly gender non-conforming governor if she wins. The former CEO of a utility company, she is also the parent of three and grandparent of two. Actor Cynthia N