Sabbatical Reflections from Asher

Asher in Tokyo during Sabbatical

As shared by interview with Asher Gellis, and written by Esther Kustanowitz

Twenty years ago, I was in grad school, searching for community and feeling split at the root: I had my Jewish world and my gay world. But they didn’t meet. That’s when I founded JQ International.

The Jewish community was different then; people in the Jewish communal space said, ‘we like what you're doing, but we won't associate with it,’ and ‘You're destroying Judaism by doing what you're doing.’ I just kept pushing, to raise visibility of our queer community within the Jewish community. I showed up regularly at the federation, meeting with people I knew and connecting to new people. And I told my story — how I suffered in silence for 10 years because I had no one I could talk to, which made me feel there was no place for me in the Jewish community. It took years of storytelling to shift people's understanding. But today, we have created partnerships that have helped build JQ — our helpline, our support groups, our young adult and teen programs — and have been funded by the federation for a decade.

For the first half of JQ’s existence, I was either not paid or barely paid. I still ran events regularly and tried to organize help from volunteers. But I was the one who had to make sure programs happened, to apply for grants, meet with donors and build the organization. I always had to hold things together as if I had eight arms just to keep everything moving, and I never took care of myself. For years, people had been telling me to take a sabbatical, but I couldn’t afford it financially or organizationally — even if I left, I knew I’d end up working. And now, the organization was larger than ever.

When I was selected as a sabbatical grantee with R&R, I struggled with how to spend the time I had been gifted. My logic model brain asked: what did I want my outputs/outcomes to be at the end of the sabbatical? I wanted to have fun, spend quality time with friends and family, and go to places I've never been. Working with an R&R coach, I decided on a theme: around the world in 90 days, going east — some places for a week, others for two weeks — until I'm back in LA. I wanted to keep going places, to do so much in three months that when I came back it would feel like I'd been gone a year. And it really did. I got to see friends and family, to visit East Asia, Indonesia, Japan and South Korea, which were all new to me, as were Spain, Denmark, Norway and Paris. I was in northern Europe in winter and in Barcelona in a 100-degree heatwave. I was alone for the last three weeks of the trip in Bali, Japan and South Korea and nervous about it — I hadn’t traveled alone for 20 years. But I rediscovered that I can talk to complete strangers and make friends everywhere.

I removed my work email, calendar and chat from my phone and after about a month, I realized I had gone all day without taking out my phone. I have new respect for the concept of 25 hours off, that real disconnect, giving your brain a break, and that's what a sabbatical is.

After October 7, I felt very alone on the other side of the planet, away from everyone I knew. I was staying up watching the news and then trying to do things I had carefully planned — it was emotionally exhausting. I asked JQ’s interim CEO Neil [Spears] if he needed help crafting something to go out to the community, but he said “We have it under control.” He offered for me to see it. But I didn’t need to — they were in control.

Stepping away and then coming back made me feel really good. My staff, some of whom are new, stepped up while I was gone. Things are not always being done how I would do them. But if it's not mission-critical, I'm just letting it be.

People in my role just never get a break — we work seven days a week and even during ‘vacation,’ I'm still working. But the sabbatical really allowed me to think about myself for the first time in 20 years: What do I want? What do I need? What's missing in my life? It allowed me to prioritize some personal goals as well, around dating and fitness, and I’m trying to keep those things going.

While I was gone, events happened, the helpline ran, support groups ran etc. My staff stepped up and made things happen, and I think gained some self-confidence in the process. Neil’s experience as interim director has generated fresh ideas of how to manage the organization. And I have confidence that JQ will survive whenever I leave. Maybe in a couple of years, new leadership will take it to a whole new level.

Our community’s leadership is being drained in this moment and investments in rest and rejuvenation, like R&R, are so desperately needed. The leaders who are working to shape what Judaism is becoming are killing themselves to take our community to the next level, to expand it and engage people and to build out the new face of Jewish life. They need support and programs like this desperately. It was such a gift to me and my organization.