TWICE BLESSED

In Twice Blessed, Christie Balka and Andy Rose have assembled a brave, eclectic mix of contributors, including Rebecca Alpert (Like Bread on the Seder Plate) and Evelyn Torton Beck (Nice Jewish Girls: A Lesbian Anthology), who write with authority, wit, and candor as they negotiate the gap between religious observance and sexual independence. The essays address everything from growing up in a yeshiva to finding a new Judaism-based theology of gay sexuality, from the search for Jewish gay role models to Jewish marital commitment ceremonies. This is a necessary book, not only for Jews who live their sexuality in silence, or gays and lesbians who long to reclaim their Jewish upbringing, but for family members, lovers, and friends of those who struggle to unite both worlds and to discover "the blessing of affirming both our Jewish and our lesbian and gay identities, and to living our lives based on the wisdom of two cultures." --Kera Bolonik