After a successful first-ever LGBTQ+ Pride Shabbat service in 2023, the popular event is returning to Temple Adas Shalom in Havre De Grace for this year’s Pride Month.
On June 28, this year’s Pride Shabbat service will be putting a spotlight on inclusion and the progress that the LGBTQ community has made over the year.
Last year’s Pride Shabbat was held in July, after Pride Month had already wrapped up. But because it was so well received by the congregation, planning for 2024’s service started almost immediately when the synagogue’s calendaring committee met so that it wouldn’t miss Pride Month this year.
Lyn Griffin, a congregant who helped plan last year’s and this year’s Pride Shabbat, said she first got involved with Adas Shalom because she saw a post about the service on Facebook.
“I reached out to the person who posted about it, and then I showed up. I was pleasantly surprised at how welcoming the place was,” she said.
Like with the prior Pride Shabbat, this year’s service is set to be held in person at the synagogue and streamed over YouTube for people who cannot attend.
“Everyone thanked our congregation and the people who were involved with planning the service last year, and I assume that the vast majority will feel the same this year,” said Rabbi Meeka Simerly, Adas Shalom’s rabbi. “The comments we got made me wish that we hadn’t waited so long to create such a service.”
In a new addition, the upcoming Pride Shabbat service will have a keynote speaker. Last year’s featured remarks from congregants who are members of the LGBTQ community. This year’s speaker is Randy Taylor, the chief adviser to the mayor of Havre De Grace, former senior commander of Aberdeen Proving Ground and retired U.S. Army general. Taylor got involved with the event because he also spoke at Adas Shalom’s Holocaust memorial service, where he discussed how German gay men and lesbians were affected by the Holocaust and drew parallels between their treatment and the Nazis’ treatment of Jewish people. He and his husband, Lucas, are members of the LGBTQ community.
“He’ll be focusing more on his own experience and how he got to where he is now as an officer and adviser to the mayor,” Simerly explained. “And how he got to be where he’s at, in a climate that’s still not fully accepting of LGBTQ people into everything and everywhere.”
The synagogue is taking additional steps to make the service more inclusive, such as incorporating an original siddur with commentary specifically relating to the LGBTQ community.
Simerly noted that there are not as many options for Pride Month-related activities in Harford County compared to other places, like her previous home in Santa Cruz, California.
Temple Adas Shalom is also the only Reform congregation in the area, which means that for some people, it’s the only Jewish institution in Harford County that is putting on an event to celebrate the month.
“I probably wouldn’t have showed up [to Adas Shalom] if they didn’t have a service like this,” Griffin said. “I’d been looking for a synagogue for a long time, but I was always apprehensive about whether I would be welcomed there. But this place is very welcoming.”
As a Reform congregation, though, Simerly said that it is important for the synagogue to provide a welcoming and inclusive Jewish environment for congregants who fall under the LGBTQ umbrella.
“Over the years, we’ve seen that families are not always how they were defined in biblical times. Back then, a family might have been a husband, a wife, 10 children and a bunch of farm animals,” she said. “This is not the environment we live in anymore, though. As Reform Jews, we pay homage to our traditions, but we also embrace modernity. And in modern times, everyone deserves to be happy no matter how they feel or how they were born.”
