It was a heart-wrenching choice. But when Daniel Gammerman decided to never set foot back in an Orthodox synagogue, he thought of it as an act of love. Not toward the Jewish community he was born into, but to himself.

“A synagogue is a spiritual place, but it’s also a community place,” said Gammerman, 47, from his home in Miami. “If I have to basically check at the door half of my identity in order to come in, I don’t feel that’s welcoming enough for me.”

Dozens of LGBTQ+ Jews like him have struggled to find support and acceptance within their Orthodox communities. Most were raised with little knowledge of what being gay or queer meant. They just felt different, but found it hard to ask their rabbis: “This is who I am, is there still room for me here?”

“The way it mostly works is invisibility,” Gammerman said. “There’s no addressing the existence of LGBT people among us. And, whenever you hear something about it, of course it’s negative.”