Three panelists will be presenting at Congregation Sha'ar Zahav on their personal and professional Jewish LGBT narratives: Rebecca Weiner, the Education Director at Congregation Sha'ar Zahav and former Director of Education at Temple Israel in Alameda. Arthur Slepian, Chair of Federations’ LGBT Alliance and Executive Director and Founder of a Wider Bridge, working to create opportunities for LGBTQ Jews to engage with Israel. Ron Lezell, a former Regional Vice President of the World Union for Progressive Judaism and active leader at Congregation Sha'ar Zahav, who is training to bike from San Francisco to Los Angeles to raise funds for the San

1. Rebecca Weiner, Arthur Slepian and Ron Lezell will be presenting on the panel at Congregation Sha’ar
Zahav. Each of them has a very in-depth personal and professional Jewish LGBT narrative that I find to
be both engaging and quite diverse along the spectrum of local LGBT Jewish lives.
Here is a lite bit more on each of them.
Rebecca Weiner is Congregation Sha'ar Zahav Education Director and the former Director of
Education at Temple Israel in Alameda. She has been a Jewish educator for the past 25 years with a
MA in Drama Therapy. When she is not ensuring the continuity of the Jewish people, she is a
consultant and a curriculum writer, and pursues a variety of creative pursuits.
rebecca@shaarzahav.org
Arthur Slepian is the Chair of Federations’ LGBT Alliance, Executive Director and Founder
of a Wider Bridge a new organization, working to create more opportunities for LGBTQ
Jews in the U.S. and around the world, along with friends and allies, to engage and
connect with Israel. He has also served as a Congregation Sha’ar Zahav President
aslepian@pacbell.net
Ron Lezell, served for 8 Years as Regional Vice President of the World Union for
Progressive Judaism and is an active leader at Congregation Sha’ar Zahav. Currently
he is training to bike 545 miles from San Francisco to Los Angeles as a third time
participant in the AIDS/LifeCycle June 5-11, 2011. ALC strives to make a difference in
the lives of people living with HIV and AIDS and to fight this preventable disease and
he is riding to raise funds to support the San Francisco AIDS Foundation (SFAF).
If it would be helpful to prep your meeting, I have provided two documents: 1. a recent community
organizing model of how our local Jewish community recently responded to a cultural boycott of Israel
at our local LGBT Film Festival and 2. our Federations’ Celebrating Distinctions publication.
Celebrating Distinctions is our strategic planning document that provides an overview of our local LGBT
Jewish community as well as a vocabulary listing of some regularly used terms. I find the vocabulary
listing particularly helpful when discussing and understanding issues of gender identity versus sexual
orientation at a deeper level.