Rab­bi Mike Moskowitz is Schol­ar-in-Res­i­dence for Trans and Queer Jew­ish Stud­ies at Con­gre­ga­tion Beit Sim­chat Torah, the world’s largest LGBTQ+ con­gre­ga­tion. He is simul­ta­ne­ous­ly a deeply tra­di­tion­al and rad­i­cal­ly pro­gres­sive LGBTQ+ advo­cate.

His three ordi­na­tions from Ultra-Ortho­dox yeshiv­as enable him to reach com­mu­ni­ties oth­ers can­not, help­ing them nav­i­gate tra­di­tion­al val­ues while fos­ter­ing accep­tance and under­stand­ing, and pro­vid­ing author­i­ta­tive Halakhic guid­ance that embraces LGBTQ+ peo­ple. 

Ances­tral Ally­ship, Moskowitz’s fifth book, explores the week­ly Torah par­sha as a prac­tice of ally­ship — a response by some­one of priv­i­lege to the oppres­sion or afflic­tion of anoth­er. Ally­ship is nec­es­sary only when the uni­ty of our human­i­ty has already bro­ken down. In the Jew­ish tra­di­tion, we are oblig­at­ed to pre­vent this break­down proac­tive­ly. When we attach our­selves to God’s expec­ta­tions of eth­i­cal liv­ing, cleav­ing to an ide­al way of being, we strive to cre­ate a world free from all forms of dehu­man­iza­tion. This book, root­ed in the knowl­edge that how we treat each oth­er defines our reli­gious iden­ti­ty, helps us to move clos­er toward it.