June is Pride Month, and as a result, both Jewish members of the LGBTQ community and allies may be looking for more ways to get involved.

One local organization that can provide that experience is JPride Baltimore. Founded in 2012 and originally called JQ Baltimore, the volunteer-based organization has supported Jewish LGBTQ individuals through community outreach, as well as by providing microgrants to related events and organizations. Previous grants have gone toward inclusivity training for synagogues and programs that focus on LGBTQ Jewish people, such as the annual Baltimore LGBTQ Seder, which JPride Baltimore has supported since its inception.

“We’ve been supporting what’s going on in the community and following their lead,” said Liz Minkin-Friedman, JPride Baltimore’s chair emeritus. “A lot of that was based on the mission of being a more inclusive society, advocating and educating people. We’ve gone where community needs are.”

JPride was started by two Jewish community educators, Mindy Dickler and Neely Tal Snyder. They wanted to create a dedicated body for organizing and funding LGBTQ-focused programming, which was not as common at the time. Same-sex marriage would not be legalized in the U.S. for another three years, and resources for LGBTQ Jewish people were relatively rare.

Snyder died in a car accident in 2015. One of JPride’s most notable grants, the Neely Tal Snyder Seed Grant, was named in her memory. Before that point, JPride had stagnated a bit because it was managed entirely by volunteers. Snyder’s death sparked new activity in the organization, which rebranded as JPride Baltimore in 2017, with Dickler returning as its chair.

The current chair, Justin Fair, said that he first became involved with JPride due to this rebrand.

“Unless someone is really pushing, it’s hard to keep things going [with a volunteer-based group],” he explained. “When [Snyder] passed away, the decision was made to focus on funding folks. At the relaunch, I got to meet other queer Jews who came from a variety of different backgrounds. I was so delighted.”

Fair first joined JPride as a volunteer, but later became part of its grants task force and worked his way up to the chair position from there.

Minkin-Friedman noted that she is not a part of the LGBTQ community, and one of JPride’s goals is also to encourage Jewish allies to get more involved in supporting their LGBTQ peers and familiarizing themselves with the community. But she wanted the face of the organization to be LGBTQ, so that prospective volunteers would know that they had their best interests as LGBTQ people in mind.

“I always felt very strongly that I myself am an advocate. I am a huge ally and advocate, but I am not queer,” she said. “So I feel like it’s really critical that the face of JPride should be part of that community.”

An important focus for JPride in the current moment is providing social opportunities for members of the LGBTQ community. In part due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the idea of a “loneliness epidemic,” many people do not have the social opportunities they once had. This also applies to the LGBTQ community.

“The overwhelming message from surveys we’ve conducted is that we need more socialization,” Minkin-Friedman said. “People don’t always want to get together solely based on the fact that they are queer. They want to have unity. They want to get together and share common interests.”

Fair agreed. “It’s not just about funding things that are fun and interesting,” he said. “It’s also about facilitating discussion.”

Currently, JPride is planning a slate of activities for Pride Month. On June 16, the organization will be participating in the Pride in the Park event at Druid Hill Park. Fair noted that a number of local congregations will be joining in tabling there, which goes to show how far the organization’s work has come over the past 12 years.

“We wouldn’t be able to do the work that we do if it wasn’t for their support,” he noted. “It really takes a village.”