The World of Polyamorous Jews

Polyamory, while hardly a sweeping mainstream trend, is a lifestyle that an increasing number of Jews are embracing. But in light of the ongoing—and often vicious—debate both in religion and politics about same-sex marriage, polyamorous Jews are choosing to love their partners quietly and discreetly, wrestling with what it means to be both Jewish and polyamorous out of the public eye.

Rabbi Jacob Levin, 62, is an exception. When he came out to his synagogue’s board seven years ago, his disclosure was met with a mix of confusion and dismay. Homosexuality they understood—there was growing acceptance, some synagogues more conservative than theirs were even supporting gay marriage—but polyamory? This was different, this was weird. They were Jews after all, people of the Book, not pagan nature worshipers or—God forbid—Mormons. In the four-hour conversation that followed Levin’s announcement, the board drilled him on everything from Jewish law to whether their daughters would be safe from sexual advances. Would he advocate that husbands leave wives?

Levin’s synagogue, located some 300 miles north of San Francisco, ultimately decided to let him stay, though there remain a number of congregants displeased with the outcome. A few left, refusing to worship with him. Levin, who is straight, describes the decision to tell his synagogue as the most difficult of his life, not unlike, he imagines, a gay man coming out in the ’50s. Levin insists that he was faced with everything a gay rabbi would have been up against—questions of faith, ostracism, distrust. “I had people come up to me and say, ‘I’m more accepting than most and if you were a truck driver it would be okay, but you’re our rabbi.’” While Levin believes that a person’s sexual identity is a “private and personal matter,” because he lives in such a small, conservative community, he feels there is no way to hide if you are gay, lesbian or poly. Rather than congregants finding out backhandedly, he wanted to be up front. As far as he knows, Levin is the only polyamorous rabbi who is out to his congregation.

Because “poly” is not one of the categories kept by the American Jewish Committee, there are no real estimates as to their numbers. A paper published in 1999 by psychologist Geri D. Weitzman suggested that 15 to 28 percent of all heterosexual married couples “allowed non-monogamy under certain circumstances,” but the study is based on data collected 20 years earlier and numbers are difficult to verify because so many remain closeted. Were it not for the anonymity afforded by the internet, there’s a good chance poly Jews would remain largely invisible to those outside the community. Group websites like KinkyJews, which welcomes “all sexual orientations and all streams of Judaism” (and boasts more than 1,000 members), and the listserv AhavaRaba (“big love”), an online forum for poly Jews, offer the opportunity for people to share their experiences living as poly within the constraints of Judaism and the larger, monogamous-centered culture. Even without official data, their conversations indicate that many of the chosen choose more than one person for long-term intimacy. To be sure, we’re talking about a subset of a minority population, but nonetheless, Jews who consider themselves polyamorous—loosely defined as loving more than one person or having more than one partner—are not the hippy oddballs you might assume them to be.

This excerpt is from an article originally published in Heeb #12 Spring 2007.