As the 10 stories by gay men in Lawrence Schimel's new anthology "Kosher Meat" illustrate, a Jew in America never seems to resolve the burning questions of his identity; those of us among the chosen people who also turn out to be queer go through life taking identity crisis, so to speak, at both ends.

Underlying our conflicted self-concepts are two things about Judaism that reflect its odd duality as both a religion and a people. One is the Torah's contradictory messages about homosexuality: Leviticus tells us it's an abomination, but then there is that glorious passion of Jonathan and David. This ambiguous message is compounded by the legendary love of Jewish mothers for their sons that is, often enough, undiminished when the sons turn out to be faygelach. My own mother, intuiting that I was queer, protected and supported me in many ways -- although she died when I was 16, well before changing social mores would have encouraged her to verbalize it, even to herself. I often wonder what to make of the fact that, stuck for names, she read the Bible while recovering from my birth and came up with Jonathan David. "Miz Lerner," a nurse is supposed to have declared, "you're just the most sanctified woman we've seen."

The other confusing message we get from Judaism is the imperative to do our part in ensuring survival of the tribe. Accepting being gay is an act of self-love and self-respect. Self-love and respect, for Jews, naturally extends to our roots, and it doesn't take much knowledge of the history to feel proud of our survival. "Be fruitful and multiply" is the biblical commandment. The standard joke is that this is actually expressed to us as the threat that it will kill our parents if we don't produce darling grandchildren on whom they can dote. But having children is something few Jewish queers, however otherwise gifted, will achieve. You might be surprised how much anguish this can cause us, never mind what it does to our parents.

Gays like to think that we can nearly always recognize one another -- even those who are not "obvious." We call this keen discernment "gaydar," and pretend it's innate, but it's actually something we've trained ourselves to do. Though the particular signals are different, it's much the same with Jews, who can be just as skilled as gays at picking one another out in a crowd. My parents and the liberal, suburban, mostly secularized Jews I grew up among somehow programmed me to automatically examine the name and features of every single person I ever meet for the possibility of Jewishness.

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