Shelly Weiss was a longtime, beloved JFREJ member who passed away this past February. She was a member leader in the New York Caring Majority, in JFREJ’s Poor & Working Class caucus and the Disability caucus.
After college she moved to Park Slope, where she became known as the first “out” lesbian in the Brooklyn neighborhood. (Weiss gently denied this, reminding people that there were undoubtedly “out” lesbians among the Native Americans who previously settled the area.) She strongly identified as a lesbian feminist in the 1970s, and in 1986 worked with Rabbi Helene Ferris and the feminist writer Elly Bulkin to organize a “Lesbian & Gay Jews in the Jewish Community Conference” at Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in Manhattan, the first citywide gathering of lesbian and gay Jews.
In the early 1990s, as a single mom raising a young son in Park Slope, she became a proponent of public school curricula that would teach tolerance for different groups, including gay men and lesbians. She was one of three spokespeople for the Coalition for Inclusive Multicultural Education, leading actions that would anticipate some of the cultural battles surrounding gay and transgender activism three decades later.
In 1994, Weiss put aside her career in social work and health administration to found OUTMedia, booking LGBTQ performers at college campuses. Shelly was an active member of Kolot Chayeinu, a Jewish Congregation in Brooklyn. At Kolot Chayeinu, she served as chair of the Social Justice committee and was a member of its Gemilut Hasidim committee, White Anti-racist Affinity Group and the Queer & Trans Working Group.
She is missed dearly by the JFREJ community and was nominated for a Mazals Award by representatives of all four of JFREJ’s identity-based caucuses.