Miryam Kabakov is the executive director of Eshel, a national organization that supports Orthodox Jews who identify as members of the LGBTQ+ community and their families. While Orthodox Judaism is not a monolith, the various communities that make up that umbrella are historically not the most open to queer Jews, Kabakov said.
“For the most part, the Orthodox communities are not accepting. They’re not aware. It’s not even on the radar, because there has never typically been representation of LGBTQ people in Orthodox communities,” she said. “People don’t see themselves in that community, and so they tend to leave.”
Eshel is taking its annual LGBTQ+ retreat to Charm City this month, where the organization will host a series of sessions, panels and conversations at the Pearlstone Retreat Center from March 13-15. Baltimore is home to a high concentration of Orthodox Jews relative to its overall Jewish population, and Eshel has an active chapter in the city. Baltimore’s Eshel group was started by the mother of an LGBTQ Orthodox Jew who wanted to seek belonging for her child.
Helping the families of LGBTQ+ Orthodox Jews, not just the community members themselves, is a key tenet of Eshel. It has initiatives for the LGBTQ+ Jews and their loved ones, too.
Kabakov said this gets at one of the biggest goals of Eshel: help LGBTQ Orthodox Jews find belonging in the community they are already a part of.
“Our mission is to have people stay within orthodoxy. They don’t have to choose another denomination or another community that does not resonate with their experience of who they are,” she said.
One of the most important ways that the organization does this is by meeting with Orthodox rabbis. While all indications may be that a traditionally religious clergy member may not be willing to budge much on modern social justice issues, Kabakov said that has not been what Eshel has found.
“They are actually receptive. Part of why they are receptive is because we tell them that we won’t be publicizing the fact that they had this conversation with us. So given that they feel safe to actually open up and to share some of their questions, their concerns and things that they’ve never really been able to ask anybody, they can actually ask us and understand without feeling that somebody else in their Orthodox world will ostracize them,” Kabakov said.
Some of these conversations go better than others. The goal, Kabakov said, is “incremental, small but important changes in their communities.”
Some shuls have even gone as far as placing notices on their websites that they are welcoming to LGBTQ+ Jews who are interested in joining.
“That’s not necessarily the point of having these dialogues, but it is really nice to have a public list so that people can feel like there is a place for them,” Kabakov said.
The event in Baltimore is the 16th such annual retreat for Eshel, where the goal is always to create an environment of “recreating what you had, but in the ways that you couldn’t exactly have it,” Kabakov said. There are 150 people expected to come right now, with additional names on a waitlist.
Anonymous online reviewers of past retreats stated that while they’ve “known for a while that I’m not really alone, this weekend made that reality truer than ever,” and that they “loved being in a space where I can be openly gay and frum at the same time.”
“We’ve increased the capacity, and we could potentially have it continue to grow there,” Kabakov said of the Pearlstone Retreat Center and its capabilities. “It’s completely accessible — everything is zero entry.”
A new element this year is the inclusion of college-aged LGBTQ Orthodox Jews. The 2026 retreat is at the same time as many universities’ spring breaks, and there are more young members of the community scheduled to attend than past years.
Kabakov is excited for this year’s retreat, and to have it in Baltimore. Like Eshel as a whole, the Baltimore chapter is “still going, and very strong,” she said.
