Just shy of midnight, Shahar Hadar trades his knitted white
yarmulke for a wavy blond wig and a pink velvet dress.
Cheers greet him in a packed gay bar as he starts to swivel
to a Hebrew pop song, his shiny red lips mouthing lyrics that mean more to him
than the audience knows: "With God's help you'll have the strength / To
overcome and give your all."
It has been a long and agonizing metamorphosis for Hadar,
34, from being a conflicted Orthodox Jew to a proud religious gay man — and
drag queen. Most Orthodox Jewish gay men, like those in other conservative
religious communities around the world, are compelled to make a devil's
bargain: marry a woman to remain in their tight-knit religious community, or
abandon their family, community and religion to live openly gay lives.
But while Orthodox Judaism generally condemns homosexuality,
there is a growing group of devout gay Jews in Israel unwilling to abandon
their faith and demanding a place in the religious community.
"As much as I fled it, the heavens made it clear to me
that that's who I am," Hadar said. He is marching Thursday — out of
costume — in Jerusalem's annual gay pride parade.
Hadar, a telemarketer by day, has taken the gay Orthodox
struggle from the synagogue to the stage, beginning to perform as one of
Israel's few religious drag queens. His drag persona is that of a rebbetzin, a
female rabbinic adviser — a wholesome guise that stands out among the sarcastic
and raunchy cast of characters on Israel's drag queen circuit.
"She blesses, she loves everyone," said Hadar of
his alter-ego, Rebbetzin Malka Falsche. The stage name is a playful take on a
Hebrew word meaning "queen" and Hebrew slang for "fake."
Her philosophy, and Hadar's, draws from the teachings of the Breslov Hasidic
stream of ultra-Orthodox Judaism: embrace life's vicissitudes with joy.
"Usually drag queens are gruff. I decided that I wanted
to be happy, entertain people, perform mitzvoth," or religious deeds, he
said.
An encounter with a popular Israeli rebbetzin is what launched
Hadar's inner journey at age 19.
He began by wearing a yarmulke, a religious skullcap, and
reciting morning prayers in his bedroom. He left home to enroll in a Jerusalem
yeshiva, or religious seminary, hoping that daily Torah study would make him
stop thinking about men.
It didn't.
After a brief nighttime encounter with his roommate at the
yeshiva, Hadar said, he was booted from the seminary. He transferred to another
religious studies center, where a student matched him up with his wife's
ultra-Orthodox friend. They quickly married.
"I wanted to take the path that (God) commanded of us.
I didn't see any other option," Hadar said. "I thought the marriage
would make me straight and I would be cured."
He felt distressed while intimate with his wife, and
wouldn't tell her why. She demanded a divorce. She later gave birth to their
daughter, who is 11 years old today. His ex-wife still refuses to let them
meet.
After Hadar's own sister met a similar fate — she divorced
her husband because he was gay — homophobic conversation erupted around the
Hadar family dinner table. Hadar's brother reprimanded the family, who had also
become religious, by simply asking, "Are gays not human beings?"
His brother had stood up for Hadar without even knowing it.
A few months later, in 2010, Hadar mustered up the nerve to
march in Tel Aviv's gay pride parade. When he returned home that Sabbath eve,
he finally told his mother he was gay. "I thought it would be the blackest
day in my life," Hadar said, but she accepted him.
As a practicing Orthodox Jew, it hasn't been easy for Hadar
to integrate into mainstream gay life. He used to tuck his shoulder-length
religious side locks under a cap to fit in at bars. Eventually, he sheared his
side locks and trimmed his beard to thin stubble to increase his luck on the
dating scene.
He's still looking for love. But this year, Hadar found
acceptance — and self-expression — at Drag Yourself, a Tel Aviv school offering
10-month courses for budding drag performers. Students learn how to teeter on
high heels, apply false eyelashes and fashion their own drag personas. Hadar,
still a beginner, graduates next month.
The drag school, much like Israel's gay community itself,
offers a rare opportunity for Israelis to interact with others from disparate
and sometimes warring sectors of society. The school may be the only place
where a Jewish settler, a lapsed ultra-Orthodox Jew, an Arab-Israeli and
Israeli soldiers have stuffed their bras together.
Of all the students in his class, Hadar was the only one to
show up wearing a yarmulke.
"I think it's fabulous," said Gil Naveh, a veteran
Israeli drag queen and director of the school, as he painted Hadar's lips
apple-red before his midnight debut at a Jerusalem gay bar. "He stays true
to who he is."
Here's a gallery of Associated Press images featuring the
Israeli gay Orthodox Jewish drag queen Shahar Hadar.
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