The road to wide acceptance in larger Jewish institutions took decades. As the larger Jewish community - as well as most religious institutions - turned their backs on gay people in the 1980s, the Jewish LGBT community took the responsibility of supporting each other into their own hands.
Proud Consortium holding events for June’s Pride Month, that allyship was not always guaranteed. Though the American Jewish community now prides itself on its support of the LGBT community, with the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia and Philadelphia-based J. Though HIV can be transmitted through any unprotected sexual encounter or through intravenous drug use, the disease’s initial proximity to gay men gave it its early monikers of the “gay cancer” and “Gay-Related Immune Deficiency,” stigmatizing gay men and the queer community who supported them. in 1981, when five healthy, young gay men in Los Angeles suddenly died of pneumonia. The disease first made headlines in the U.S. “And although completely different, people losing people every day, the losses of what it meant to the family, what it meant to society, what it meant to the arts, what it meant to culture, I had lots of rushes of the AIDS epidemic.”įrom 1981 to 1990, there were 100,777 deaths of those diagnosed with AIDS reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For me, the COVID pandemic brought back a lot of issues around death and dying,” Zinman said. “The ’80s and the ’90s were filled with trauma and fear. We do not share data with third party vendors. Get Jewish Exponent's Newsletter by email and never miss our top stories After more than 1 million reported COVID deaths in the United States in 2022, the toll of one public health crisis in the wake of another one still impacts Zinman. He’s the co-founder of the AIDS Library of Philadelphia, now the Critical Path Learning Center at Philadelphia FIGHT.Īn activist during the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, Zinman witnessed the deaths of loved ones and the complacency of the government to address the epidemic. Zinman, now 71, is on the Governor’s Pennsylvania Commission for LGBT Affairs, advocating for the greater inclusion and cultural competency to support older LGBT people, and the co-chair of pRiSm, Congregation Rodeph Shalom’s LGBT affinity group. W hen Heshie Zinman visited his buddies - HIV/AIDS patients in Pennsylvania Hospital - in the mid-1980s, delivering their food trays or just saying hi, he would hold his breath, sneaking out of the room into the hall or bathroom to suck in a gulp of air. Beth Ahavah founder Jerry Silverman (left) and other Beth Ahavah members in front of their Letitia Street location in 2007 | From The Jewish Exponent archives