Navigating the intersection of being Jewish and being part of the LGBTQ community has often been challenging, but since Oct. 7, some LGBTQ Jews have been left feeling isolated.

In recent years, the 2019 DC Dyke March barred Israeli symbols and Pride flags with the Star of David. This year, multiple Pride celebrations adopted “Dykes Against Genocide” as their theme.

At the same time, tensions on college campuses continue to run high, and fear remains a factor for some of Baltimore’s LGBTQ Jewish families when they are deciding which environments are safe.

For some LGBTQ Jews, this tension has steered them away from secular LGBTQ spaces.

While the tension over Israel isn’t new, the intensity is, according to Adam Drutz-Hannahs.

Drutz-Hannahs, the LGBTQ+ family connector with the Jewish Connection Network, lives in Owings Mills with his husband and their daughter.

As a couple, Drutz-Hannahs said he and his husband regularly attend Pride in Washington, D.C., and had been planning to attend the parade in Baltimore this year — until they felt the climate shifting.

“Oct. 7 hit and we were a little afraid to go,” Drutz-Hannahs said.

But the immediate fear following Oct. 7 was only part of the equation. Within a week following the attack, Drutz-Hannahs said he felt the narrative shifted from the Jews being hurt to the Palestinians.

“We started seeing a lot of our younger friends go away, I started talking to people within my connected group,” Drutz-Hannahs said. “A new person who joined with me a couple months ago lost her entire friend, like LGBT friend, network.”

While Drutz-Hannahs and his connectees have been affected deeply by this tension, not all LGBTQ Jews in Baltimore have had the same experience.

“I felt totally safe being queer and being Jewish,” Marc Wernick said of his experience at Pride events this year.

Wernick, who is gay, is a member of the JPride grants taskforce, serves as chair of religious culture committee at Bolton Street Synagogue and helps plan Pride Shabbat.

Wernick attended Baltimore’s 2024 Pride parade along with about six other members of Bolton Street Synagogue who marched with Faith Communities of Baltimore with PRIDE — an interfaith contingent.

Wernick’s perspective on the tension was informed by his own experience and a fireside chat held with LGBTQ Jews across many ages. After hearing Jewish LGBTQ panelists speak during the chat, Wernick said he felt that those in their late 20s and early 30s were experiencing more tension between their identities surrounding the conflict.

To understand why the Israel-Hamas war has affected the relationship U.S. LGBTQ Jews have with the larger LGBTQ community, people need to understand the role of activism in LGBTQ spaces.

In LGBTQ spaces, there’s a strong emphasis on the responsibility people have to support marginalized communities. Wernick connected this idea to the origins of Pride with the Stonewall Riots of 1969, a turning point for LGBTQ rights.

“To be LGBTQ is inherently a political identity, and queerness and social justice are forever interlinked,” Rabbi Ariana Katz of Hinenu Baltimore said. “There’s often the slogan that queer activists have tried to get into the world, which is that ‘The first Pride was a riot,’ referring to the Stonewall resistance in 1969 that was started by trans women and drag queens.”

Katz and nearly 50 members of Hinenu also attended Baltimore’s Pride parade this year. Katz, who attended the parade with her partner and their 2-year-old son, spoke to the climate of the parade.

Hinenu, which has had a statement of solidarity with the Palestinian people in place since 2018, participated in Baltimore’s Pride parade this year with a float. One of the banners the congregation marched with read “FEYGELES for a free PALESTINE” on a pink background with a watermelon slice.

At the same time, the attendees on the float were dancing to klezmer.

“It was very healing to be at Pride, to be with a community that we are a part of in so many ways,” Katz said. “To be received by Jews and non-Jews [who] were receiving us in our Jewishness and in our politics.

“There’s certainly antisemitism on the right and the left, and I think that sometimes because we have generations and generations of fear as Jews, people equate antisemitism with anti-Zionism,” Katz said. “It makes us more afraid than we need to be as Jews.”

Katz explained her views through her lived experience.

“When I first started finding myself in spaces that were not my Jewish day school and I went to college and I saw people talking about Palestine, I felt immediately unsafe,” Katz recalled. “I know the experience personally of seeing a Palestinian flag and feeling in danger.”

But Katz said her understanding of her feelings became more complex with experience, as she said she developed her senses to better discern between danger and discomfort.

“I tried to put myself in places where they are not catering to Jewish people,” Katz said. “When I am at Palestinian solidarity rallies, there are chants that I don’t say and that’s fine. I’m there, I won’t say those words, but I respect that I can stretch and be uncomfortable.”