In 1991, I attended the 12^th International Conference of Lesbian and Gay Jews, held in San Francisco. I was looking forward to meeting the 500 delegates expected from around the world, particularly the first-time delegates from North Africa and the former Soviet Union. The conference was called Creating Our World.

     I live in the boundary of what people may consider mutually exclusive identities. I'm an Arab-Jew; my family is Tunisian. I'm too dark to pass as while in Europe but too light to be coloured in North America. I'm an anti-Nazi skinhead. I'm a queer activist in a Kippa. I live on the fringes of modern Jewish identity, but the fringes are tzitzit.

     The first official event was a Kabbalat Shabbat in a century old Reform Synagogue in downtown San Francisco. It's a beautiful church-like building with stain-glass windows, depicting Moses and Solomon. The Conservative Hazzan (Cantor) pointed out a crack in the ceiling from the latest major earthquake.

     The shul was packed almost equally with women and men, seating separately. This happens at most queer events anyhow. Some congregates wore kippot and I saw three men who looked as if they were Hassidim. (I later found out that they were.) The Rabbi who led the service was a Reconstructionist. While she led the songs to the Sabbath Bride, I opened myself to the experience of receiving a second soul for the Shabbat.

     Just then the service was interrupted. A man ran up to the Bimah and made a special announcement. After 30 years of Ethiopia denying passports to the Jews, Israel was being allowed to evacuate Ethiopian Jews. Tens of thousands of Ethiopian Jews were returning to Eretz Israel at that moment.

     We rose as one to recite the Shehecheyanu.