Jewish LGBT+ people should have the experience they're expecting to have in the Jewish community, including in rituals and life cycle moments. This is why KeshetUK is starting a new partnership project about ritual and lifecycle events.

We know that there are multiple ways to create a special moment and to create inclusive rituals and life cycle moments. This project aims to bring together all the different options and templates for ritual and life cycle moments. KeshetUK is not an organisation with expertise around Halacha. That is why we see ourselves as facilitators in this project. We will be working in partnership with Jewish communities and denominations who are the experts on Halacha and then help centralise what exists. We will be working with Rabbi's and leaders across the community and we want to insure it's informed by Jewish LGBT+ people - who've experienced these moments. We then want to help facilitate the creation of what needs to be created to ensure that Jewish LGBT+ people can access their communities rituals and life cycle events they need, like everyone else in there community. 

​This project will work across many areas of life, such as:

• Birth (e.g. Brit Milah, Simchat Bat, Pidyon Haben)
• Death (e.g. Stone setting, tahara, kaddish, Funerals) 
• Bar/Bat/B'/B'nei Mitzvah
• Synagogue services and daily life (e.g. Aliyah, mikveh)
• Relationships (platonic and romantic), marriage and divorce (e.g. Ketubbah, wedding ceremonies, coming out, niddah)
• Conversion 
• Other moments such as: naming ceremonies

Each project will be in two phases:

1. The first phase will be about collecting the existing documents, templates and materials and centralising them for each denomination. 
2. The second phase will be about understanding what is missing and what needs to be created - what needs to be focused on by the religious leadership for each denomination 

If you want to be invovled in this project in anyway - whether you've had experiences (good or bad) around ritual and life cycle events, if you've got templates you want to share or anything else - please do contact us.

Submit Ritual documents here

Belong in Ritual: Collecting the templates

To start this new ritual project, we are collecting documents and templates linked to ritual and life cycle events that are actively inclusive to LGBT+ Jewish people. We would like to hear from you, whether you’re Liberal, Masorti, Orthodox, Reform or non-denominational.

We are now looking for exampls of templates from the whole life cycle. And so please do send us anything you feel would be important for synagogues, Rabbi's, Cantors, religious leadership to have in relation to Jewish LGBT+ people and ritual. You see the list of some areas above. 


Please, click here, and use this Google form to upload any templates, examples, translations, or prayers you think could create joy or meaning for LGBT+ Jewish people. If you do not have a Gmail account, please send them as attachments to [email protected].

Please include the following information:

• Who created the materials you are submitting?
  • Please let us know your name (if it was you) or anyone else involved (e.g. a Rabbi, Cantor, educator etc). Please include individuals/Rabbi's full names (synagogue community if relevant), so that we can contact them if necessary. 
• When were the materials created?
  • This doesn't need to be exact. If you only know the year, please put the first of January of that year (e.g. 1 January 2018) or if you only know month and year, please put the first of that month and year.
• Do you have permission to share the resources you have emailed us or do we need to contact the owner?"

Submit Ritual documents here

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