‘There’s nothing religious people fear more than gay men’

Read More

Ten minutes into our phone conversation, Daniel Zamir breaks down. In a shattered voice, he recounts how on the same morning we met two weeks earlier for a sit-down interview, he was invited to lead the prayers at the Shtiblach synagogue in Jerusalem’s Katamon neighborhood, where he is a regular. However, in the middle of the prayer, a member of the minyan (prayer quorum) approached him and demanded that he step down from the prayer stand.

“The first thing I wanted to do was to give him the finger, but I restrained myself,” Zamir recounts. “After that, I had the idea of hitting him, and I gave up that idea too. And then I thought that maybe I would take his picture, but that didn’t happen either in the end. He tried to continue to convince people to replace me. Something like a third of the worshippers left the synagogue. I realized that it’s not so simple.”

Zamir is one of Israel’s most admired jazz musicians, having also developed a following on the international stage. When he talks about the fact that “it” isn’t so simple, he’s referring to the complicated situation in which he finds himself after coming out a year ago, following an interview in a synagogue pamphlet.

Zamir, who defines himself as ultra-Orthodox after returning to religion in his 20s, revealed in that 2020 interview that he is bisexual. Rather than sufficing with a general description of his attraction to both men and women, he spoke with rare candor about his significant long-term relationship with another man. He also stated that although he didn’t choose his sexual identity, he prefers to live with a woman.

He said he disliked the gay scene because it consisted mainly of drugs, sex and parties. In the same interview, he said his first sexual experiences with boys had taken place with school friends during his childhood years. However, during the eight years of his marriage (from 2008 to 2016), he never had intimate relations with men, he added.

In hindsight, Zamir says now, he would have said things somewhat differently.

Daniel Zamir. ‘What people don’t understand is that a person with a sexual proclivity like mine – he didn’t choose it.’
Emil Salman

“If there’s anything I regret about that interview, it’s the exclamation points. There were all kinds of clear and absolute definitions there that are now less clear and absolute. The reality is far more complex,” he says. “The interview came right after my separation from my male partner. I was angry at him and at that world – an irrational anger,” Zamir adds.

These Haredi men chose to have ‘conversion therapy’ to control their desires. This is how it went

What happened when four gay guys from Tel Aviv took a vacation to Dubai

‘The LGBT issue is slicing Israel’s religious-Zionist community in two’

He approached our interview no less charged up, but somewhat more cautious. We are talking against the backdrop of his participation in Roni Kuban’s “Yotzim Mehaklal,” a Kan public television docuseries focusing on people and communities on the margins of Israeli society, and his episode explores loneliness.

In the episode, Zamir completely exposes himself emotionally: Sometimes he is full of yearning for his ex; at other times he relays how he has nobody with whom to share Friday night dinners, even though he’s a father of two. He was forced to leave the Chabad community after coming out, and is now also experiencing alienation in the religious Zionist community where he ended up.

Last July, Zamir tweeted how at the Katamon synagogue, they prevented him from leading the prayers and saying Kaddish for his deceased grandmother because of his sexual identity. The tweet received 3,400 “likes” and became the talk of the town in the religious Zionist community.

Things reached a point where Zamir requested a halakhic response on the subject from the conservative and Orthodox chief rabbi of Safed, Shmuel Eliyahu, who ruled that it is forbidden to exclude someone who came out of the closet from leading the prayers.

Along with many expressions of support, Zamir’s tweet also aroused criticism. Many of those responses claimed that Zamir was being self-righteous, that he was trying to have his cake and eat it – both to be “out” and to continue to belong to the Haredi community.

A scene from Roni Kuban’s Kan docuseries “Yotzim Mehaklal.”
Kan 11

“What people don’t understand is that a person with a sexual proclivity like mine – he didn’t choose it,” Zamir says. “And that’s the thing: If you see me participate in gay porn and the next day I come and ask to lead the prayers, I’ll understand [the criticism]. But I didn’t do anything here in public. Every straight person who transgresses the prohibition of nida [relations with a woman during and right after menstruation] is transgressing a prohibition just as grave as that of a man who sleeps with another man. That’s what amazes me: There’s simply a social stigma here and people are ax-grinding against me.”

To what do you attribute the religious community’s blatant rejection of people in the LGBTQ community?

“There’s nothing religious people fear more than gay men. They’re far less afraid of lesbians, incidentally. A gay man is a primeval fear for religious people, from the most ‘lite’ religious Jews to the most ultra-Orthodox. It’s the fear of destroying the family, that you won’t produce grandchildren. I’m simply distraught about it. I go to this synagogue for my late grandmother to say Kaddish, and every day I have to see who will insult me in front of everyone. Who has such power? It kills me that I realize I have nowhere to go.”

There’s a large community of gay men who live an Orthodox-Jewish existence. You met them during the filming of “Yotzim Mehaklal,” but didn’t seem to connect.

“I don’t want to change communities. In a way, that’s missing the point – because the problematic aspect isn’t mine. I’m not willing to be excluded from this nation or to be considered a bit less than any other Jew. After all, every Jew is a sinner. A friend asked me why I was being interviewed. I told him that I wanted to repeat it: I’m attracted to men, I didn’t choose that. It’s like blaming me for not hearing the shofar because I’m deaf, or stoning a person without hands because he can’t put on tefillin [phylacteries].”

You realize that the comparison between physical disabilities and sexual identity is problematic.

“I’m not comparing, only in the sense that it’s not done from choice. I’m happy with who I am, but I didn’t choose it.”

Daniel Zamir, last week. He said he disliked the gay scene because it consisted mainly of drugs, sex and parties.
Emil Salman

Do you ever flirt with the idea of leaving religion?

“I would love to leave religion, but I’m really a believer. Leaving religion would solve all my problems in life. I also said that to Roni Kuban when he asked me how I can hold two such opposite extremes. The answer is that you have to moderate one of them to a great extent: Either you’ll be religious and repress your homosexuality, or you’ll be gay and greatly moderate your religiosity.

“That’s what they do in groups of religious gay people. They’re very charming and cute, but I’m not there. I put on four sets of tefillin every day; I haven’t missed a single prayer since becoming religious; I didn’t desecrate a single Shabbat. After I got divorced, I had a girlfriend and she would bathe in the mikveh [after menstruation, as the law demands of married couples]. I’m a strong believer.”

Only sources of consolation

When I ask Zamir how old he is, it takes him a moment to say he was born 37 years ago in Petah Tikva, to secular parents (his mother studied music and his father was the manager of a travel agency). On his Wikipedia page it actually says he’s 42, and he explains the disparity by saying he’s in a dispute with the website. As a result, a profound internal conflict is evident in almost every sentence he utters. One moment he says he’s made peace with himself after coming out, and the next he admits his life is unbearably difficult.

Music and his children are the only sources of consolation in his life, he says. His connection to the world of music began when he was 6, when he started playing the piano, and afterward the violin. It was only later that he discovered the saxophone, which has become the instrument most identified with him. He studied at Givatayim’s Thelma Yellin High School of the Arts, gaining acceptance there after playing a Charlie Parker number for his entrance exam.

He says his high school years were very good, and he flourished there and became a real musician. He also met musicians who later became colleagues and fellow travelers, such as saxophonist Eli Degibri and trumpeter Avishai Cohen.

After completing high school, Zamir went to New York, where he became part of the local jazz scene and signed up to the Tzadik record label run by saxophonist John Zorn. It was there he began the process of returning to religion and becoming close to Chabad Hasidism, after previous spiritual searches in Buddhism and Zen.

During his years in the United States, he released three albums that combined jazz and Jewish klezmer music. He returned to Israel in 2006 and released the album “Amen,” which became a rare commercial success on the local jazz scene after topping 5,000 sales.

He has released a number of albums since then – some of which feature Zamir on vocals – and collaborations with Eviatar Banai, Berry Sakharof, Yoni Rechter and Matisyahu, to whom he traveled a day after our interview in order to write and produce new material.

One of Zamir’s most recent songs, “Elai,” is a love song to his former partner.

When I cautiously ask him about that relationship, something of which can still be seen burning inside of him, he says “it was a very strong love. I met him in 2008 at a performance of mine. He was the director of the show of another musician with whom I appeared, and I fell madly in love with him. I loved the guy, I admired his character. We started working together, and at first he made a condition that nothing would happen between us. But then he fell in love with me too. I couldn’t manage without him. On the other hand, it caused me terrible conflicts – I was really eaten up inside.

“He was ‘my first,’ and after we slept together, as a religious man it was really hard for me to go and put on tefillin. It also affected him badly. There was actually talk of a wedding, but he saw that I wasn’t 100 percent there. I entered the LGBT world through him.”

What does that mean?

“His friends met me, and my parents met him and really liked him. After the tension between us increased, I left him after almost two years. I asked that we remain good friends and work together not as a couple. He wasn’t willing, so he left everything. That was in August 2020 – I call it ‘Black August.’ There was the coronavirus; I didn’t have work. I traveled to a guesthouse in the north and found myself walking along on the Golan Heights, where I simply cried my soul out.

“After a month, I realized that maybe my suffering could help many people to some extent. If they’re in a situation similar to mine, maybe I can spare them 20 years of worry and anxiety. I realized that I could provide a narrative people usually don’t hear.”

The idea of crying out to the heavens and then channeling the suffering in order to bring good into the world – that’s a very Hasidic concept.

“That’s true. In Chabad, there’s such a concept of truth. You don’t begin to worship God if you yourself are repressing something. For years, I thought I had overcome the homosexuality, and afterward there was a stage when I realized I was able to conceal it. So, I lived a dual identity. After coming out, I remember that I felt really light. It’s like living all your life where someone is constantly pulling your hair. It hurts, but at some point the pain becomes part of you. If they suddenly stop pulling, you’ll be in shock – what a pleasant feeling!

“So it’s a little like emerging from the darkness into the light, because at least now everything is out. I sit with my Haredi friends and laugh with them about what I see on [the gay dating app] Grindr. I’m not some kind of militant gay man and won’t drag anyone out of the closet. But as far as I’m concerned – if you ask me, I really recommend it.”

Does the process you’re undergoing affect you as a musician?

“It affects me. In Israel, there’s a kind of big ghetto. It’s hard for people to separate what and who you are from your work. People say they’ll throw out my records. The Jewish Culture department in the Education Ministry no longer invites me to perform. They didn’t tell me it’s connected to my coming out, but the fact is they don’t call [anymore]. It’s not funny – it’s serious, very serious. I’m artistically isolated, they’re ostracizing me.”