Wednesday, June 18, 2025
Pride Month Pop Quiz: Name three LGBTQ historical figures (a) with a connection to Washington, D.C., and (b) who were or are Jewish.
Larry Kramer, Wilson High ’53 — author of “The Normal Heart” and co-founder of Gay Men’s Health Crisis and AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) — doesn’t count (too easy).
Costume worn by Michael Airington when he portrayed his alter ego, “Ester Goldberg.” Photo by Richard Selden.
Other than Kramer, perhaps the best-known figure is Dr. Frank Kameny, an astronomer fired from his job at the Army Map Service in 1957, then banned from future federal employment. During the Cold War years of targeted surveillance known as the Lavender Scare, thousands of men were dismissed from federal jobs for homosexuality, considered a security risk. A leader of the LGBTQ rights movement, Kameny received a formal apology two years before his death in 2011.
A second notable: activist Ruth Eisenberg, former director of legal services at Whitman-Walker, the D.C.-based health collective founded in 1973 as the Gay Men’s VD Clinic in the basement of Georgetown Lutheran Church. During the AIDS crisis, states the exhibition text, Eisenberg “represented hundreds of people seeking damages for discrimination because of their HIV+ status.”
For number three, may I introduce Ester Goldberg, a star of the exhibition “LGBTJews in the Federal City,” on view through Jan. 4 at the Lillian and Albert Small Capital Jewish Museum, where a mannequin wears her gown, wig, glasses, earrings and necklace. The alter ego of comedian Michael Airington, “Ester” herself is shown with members of Congress Tammy Baldwin and Barney Frank in a photograph from a Whitman-Walker fundraiser at JR’s in 2000.
Though these three, Kramer and other individuals are singled out, the exhibition centers the community as a whole, more or less decade by decade, highlighting key events such as the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights in 1979 and its successors.
In addition to Airington’s Ester getup, the artifacts on view include political buttons (“Save Our Children From Anita Bryant”) and matchbooks (Tracks, 1111 First St. SE, “a dance club which hosted ‘Lesbo-agogo’ on Tuesdays”); a copy of “Betty & Pansy’s Severe Queer Review of Washington DC,” published in 1993; a wall-size panel from the AIDS Memorial Quilt with the names of Library of Congress employees; and the beautifully decorated ketubah — a Jewish marriage contract — of Amelia Letnes and Melanie Cohen, whose pre-legal wedding ceremony was held in 2009 at Temple Shalom in Chevy Chase.
Timed to coincide with WorldPride, “LGBTJews in the Federal City” is the first major self-curated exhibition for the Capital Jewish Museum, which reopened in June of 2023 in Capitol Crossing with a new multistory building joined to the relocated 1876 synagogue that was D.C.’s first to be built as such.
A significant challenge for the curators, Dr. Sarah Leavitt and Jonathan Edelman, was to find ways to tell a story that “begins with darkness,” as the introductory text states, adding that “some of the history of LBGTQ+ people has been purposefully hidden, some has been forgotten and some remains unknowable.”
Installation view of “LGBTJews in the Federal City” at the Lillian and Albert Small Capital Jewish Museum. Photo by Richard Selden.
One experiences much of the exhibition as colorful panels of narrative, timelines and enlarged photographs. Cases display a variety of materials acquired or on loan from community members, from the DC Public Library and from Bet Mishpachah, the nation’s fourth-oldest LGBTQ-friendly synagogue. Founded in 1975, Bet Mishpachah, meaning House of Family, hired its first rabbi, Bob Saks, in 1991.
Reading (and listening to, see below) everything could take hours. Here are a few sentences from the May 1970 issue of the Washington Blade, launched seven months earlier as a mimeographed newsletter called the Gay Blade: “This month’s Blade is printed in the buff (paper, that is) to cheer the ‘nude-in’ that took place in and around the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool on May 9. The Gay Liberation Front of New York had some nice exposure w. their naked bodies and banner that read ‘Bring Our Boys Home.’ Some guys held hands while marching.”
In a lounge-like space with, of all things, two black rotary phones, visitors can dial up 18 oral history recordings made in collaboration with the Rainbow History Project. Some titles: Levon Avdoyan on “Losing a friend to AIDS,” Jocelyn Kaplan on “It’s okey to be gay and Jewish,” Stuart Sotsky on “Coming out professionally as a gay psychiatrist” and Kathy Woodrell on “Lesbian book clubs and potlucks.”
Listening to these shared stories and memories, always fascinating, is at times powerfully moving. Several are lighthearted. In the middle of Larry Neff’s recollections of “Gay bars,” he talks about a friend from the University of Maryland Hillel House: “We both used to do Israeli folk dancing, and I had people over to my little tiny apartment on K Street. And he was there and he went through my records. And he saw the LP Gloria Gaynor ‘Never Can Say Goodbye.’ And even though we had been friends for three years, at that point, he said, that’s when he knew for sure.”
A still-relevant topic the exhibition addresses is the incorporation in Jewish liturgy of gender-inclusive language and readings celebrating LGBTQ identity, both in English and in Hebrew, which has a gender-based grammar. According to the text: “many Jewish movements and communities have reworked prayer language to be more inclusive of nonbinary people and to allow for a gender-expansive understanding of God.”
Ketubah (marriage contract) of Amelia Letnes and Melanie Cohen, 2009. Photo by Richard Selden.
Participation is invited at several points. By sending photos to archives@capitaljewishmuseum.org, visitors can “Join our wall of family photos and celebrations!” On the museum’s second floor, as an adjunct to the exhibition, is a Community Action Lab with activities such as composing a prayer or a poem, designing a pride flag or creating a safe space sign. A family exhibition guide is also available.
Public tours of the museum are offered on Sundays at noon. Upcoming events include Family Day: Full of Pride on Sunday, June 22, and Community Day on Saturday, July 5.
Postscript: Originally, this story was to run on May 22, the day after two employees of the Israeli Embassy, one Israeli, one American — a couple due to be engaged — were murdered on the sidewalk in front of the museum after attending an American Jewish Committee-sponsored Young Diplomats Reception.
LGBTJews in the Federal City
Through Jan. 4, 2026
Capital Jewish Museum, 575 Third St. NW
Wednesday to Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.