'I'm gay and I'm Jewish – please tell me you care'

I think about my dad, telling me that before the Six-Day War, no one (in Leeds, anyway) wore a kippah in the street. Then there was a moment of pride, and the kippot came out. There are still places in Europe where people are advised not to wear a kippah. There are large parts of London where I would feel unsafe holding another man's hand - never mind sharing a kiss - or openly wearing a Pride T-shirt.

Almost every Jew I know has thought about their Emergency Plan: a passport and some vague ideas of where they might go if they had to. Life is hard for Jews in France and thousands have moved to Israel and London. Where can LGBT people go? Where would I go if things once again became tough for us in this country? Where can I be sure I would be safe?

The smallest things meant so much to me this week. People who picked up the phone, sent me a text, gave me a hug. People who shared their grief and showed solidarity: "I saw the news, and I wanted you to know I cared." As Jews, we can find this empathy. So please, wish me a happy (and safe) Pride this month. If bad stuff is happening to LGBT people, let me know you care.

I cried when I heard that during the Yizkor (memorial) prayers last Monday, the rabbi at a major London Orthodox synagogue prayed publicly for those LGBT people murdered in Orlando.

Keshet UK - the LGBT education and advocacy charity - was established to work towards a future where no one has to choose between their Jewish and LGBT identity. The Jewish world now needs to show solidarity with LGBT people. What better way than tackling our own community's homophobia?

Dr Benjamin Ellis is Co-Director of Keshet UK

As a gay, agnostic, Jewish woman, I enjoy thinking of myself as ISIS’s worst nightmare. OK second to worst nightmare, maybe. That lingering belief that there may be a God, I suspect, deprives me of public enemy number one status. Perhaps I’m a neo-Nazi’s worst nightmare. They tend not to be particularly God-fearing, right?

As far as I can remember, the first time I experienced anti-Semitism was at primary school. This was before religion was shooed out of state schools and, in an assembly, the head teacher was telling the New Testament story of Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus. There was something about the way she said Paul (then Saul) was “a Jew”. It was crawling with conspiracy. So much so that even I, a nine-year-old, picked up on it. Sitting cross-legged on the hard floor of the school hall, I could tell something wasn’t right. Of all the Bible stories – ones with fish and multitudes and walking on water – why was she telling us about this Bad Man, Saul the Jew, who converted to Christianity, becoming both “Paul” and a Good Man? After the assembly, I and the two other Jews in my class radiated towards one another and agreed that we felt weird and picked-on.

The first time I experienced direct homophobia (not the more subtle kind, implied by the general lack of acknowledgment that people can be anything other than straight) I was eighteen and kissing a girl at a bus stop. “Lesbians,” said a passing idiot. He was, at least, correct, although this was far less philosophical than my first experience of anti-Semitism.

The recent Orlando attack left 49 LGBT people – a high proportion of whom were Latin American – dead. It was both racist and homophobic. For the most part, my gayness and Jewishness are invisible. I neither dress like an strictly Orthodox woman, nor do I have a buzz cut and one of those t-shirts that says, “nobody knows I’m a lesbian”. That isn’t to say that now – with anti-Semitism on the rise across Europe and the biggest mass shooting in recent US history targeting LGBT people – it doesn’t feel like a challenging, and even slightly scary time to be both gay and Jewish. I’ve always considered these two parts of my identity completely separate. But anti-Semitism and homophobia so often go hand-in-hand. If someone hates Jews, the chances are they’re not all that keen on gays either. Maybe that’s just the ironically non-discriminatory nature of being a bigot.

At the same time, I have the privilege of being part of not one, but two love-filled, vibrant and unequivocally supportive communities. Both homophobia and anti-Semitism only serve to make me feel gayer and Jewish-er. Something LGBT people and Jews have in common is that their culture and identity has been shaped by oppression. Sad as this may be, it shows an enormous amount of strength that – in spite of millennia of persecution – neither community has allowed itself to be cowed into quietness and submission. If anything, we’re louder and prouder than ever.

Eleanor Margolis writes the Les Miz column in the 'New Statesman'

On Monday, I was staying at my parents’ house and my mum hugged me tighter than usual. We both knew why. The attack to the Latinx* LGBT nightclub, Pulse, has hit home — in a very hard way.

When I walk down the road, some people stare at me because I wear more masculine clothes and have a short haircut and they can’t work out what gender I am. When I walk down the street and get shouted at: “Mister, what’s the time?” I am worried that if I respond they will realise I am not a man, they will feel tricked and threatened and I will get hurt.

When I walk into an LGBT club, I breathe. I am queer, I am glittery, I dance, I am myself.

These clubs are our safe place. They are home. I felt similar when I worked at an American Reform Jewish summer camp. It introduced me to a Jewish community of all genders, sexualities, races. I grew up in the UK, in a Jewish space that wasn’t inclusive. I didn’t meet a Jewish LGBT person until I was 15. I didn’t meet an LGBT rabbi (or even one who said positive things about being LGBT) until I was 18. I didn’t find a Jewish LGBT community in the UK until I was in my twenties. Our community has, over the past few years and across many denominations, supported the LGBT community. But we can’t be complacent. We create and foster the homophobia, the transphobia, the biophobia, the racism, the sexism, the disablism — the discrimination — within our communities. We need voices who say it’s okay to be LGBT. We need our spaces to not just “tolerate” LGBT people, but to include us.

Some commentators ignore the race element of this attack, how Latinx communities feel and what we can do to support them. We need to listen.

Equally, we cannot let hate and discrimination pour on to the Muslim community. This attack had nothing to do with Islam. It had everything to do with a homophobic man, created in a society that perpetuates and enables homophobia, transphobia and bi-phobia. My thoughts are with all of those affected by the attack in Orlando but particularly the Latino and Muslim queer communities.

*Pronounced la-teen-ex, Latinx is a gender neutral term that includes the numerous people of Latin American heritage outside of the man and woman binary, as well as people from across the gender spectrum.

Dalia Fleming is a queer activist and a volunteer for Keshet UK