When someone defaced a banner advertising “GayW3” week at the JW3 centre last year, Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis spoke out. “Homophobia is unacceptable and we must have zero tolerance for it,” he said. 

It was a sentiment not universally shared across the community.  He was berated for his intervention by one rabbi on the Orthodox right, who thought he should have condemned the centre rather than the graffiti.

While there may be some who would rather that LGBT+ Jews  be invisible, the Chief Rabbi has instead shown an outstretched hand. They are not a problem to be wished away, but a valued part of the Jewish community.  

His newly published guidance on the need to ensure the wellbeing of young LGBT Jews is an unprecedented document for Orthodox schools. While Orthodox schools may have understandably found it challenging to engage with the issues, he says, to duck them would be an “abrogation of our responsibility to the Almighty and to our children”. 

The timing of the publication, on the eve of the New Year, at the peak religious season, indicates the importance he has attached to it.
 The fact that it runs to 36 pages rather than a few paragraphs underlines the care that has gone into it.

 Moreover, he has produced his guidance not in rabbinic isolation but in collaboration with LGBT+ Jews and including their voices.

It may not be revolutionary. He has not found a way in halachah to sanction same-sex sexual relations, for example.  But what is significant is its tone; a plea for “genuine respect, borne out of love for all people across the Jewish world”.  Treating LGBT+ Jews with sensitivity is a positive obligation which he underpins with reference to a number of Torah sources.

His guidance may have been primarily drafted for the modern Orthodox schools under his aegis. But it might help some schools further to the right that have been struggling to frame an approach towards LGBT+ issues that could satisfy the inspectorate.