Making Waves: Rainbow Jews founder nominated as LGBT pioneer for Pride 2014

In honour of Tel Aviv Pride 2014, international Israeli newspaper Haaretz nominated  ‘seven queer Jews to be reckoned with. Taking the baton after Magnus Hirschfeld and Harvey Milk’, Rainbow Jews founder Surat Shaan Knan is said to be one of the new Jewish queer leaders ‘making waves around the world’.

Here’s an extract of the article in Haaretz, Wednesday, June 11, 2014 Sivan 13, 5774- find the full article via this link http://bit.ly/1kOZmBb: or Haaretz LGBT pioneer 2014

Transforming narratives – Surat Shaan Rathgeber Knan

From a 1980s AIDS memorial quilt to the story of the United Kingdom’s only known intersex Jew, a landmark archive and exhibition opened in London recently, marking the fruition of transgender activist Surat Shaan Rathgeber Knan’s vision. Driven by the belief that LGBT Jews have been excluded from British Jewry’s collective memory, the initiative, “Rainbow Jews,” tells the diverse stories of this double-minority group through a trove of oral testimonies, photographs and other sources that stretch back to Nazi Europe. Through their activites, Knan and company shed light on an oft-ignored layer of the world’s fifth-largest Jewish community – seeking to write LGBT Jews back into the history books. In another endeavor, Knan is about to launch a second, equally unprecedented heritage project, “Twilight People,” which will explore the lives of British transgender people from across the Abrahamic religious spectrum.