Did Jewish Lesbian Moms Appear in Kids’ Book 27 Years Ago?

I wrote the other day about The Purim Superhero, the first LGBT-inclusive Jewish children’s book in English—but two lesbian moms might be lurking in a children’s book about Judaism that was published 28 years ago.

According to two reliable sources (a GLBTQ resources list from the American Library Association and Jaime Campbell Naidoo’s Rainbow Family Collections book), Patricia Schaffer’s 1986 book Chag Sameach! (Happy Holiday!) includes a lesbian couple and their child celebrating Havdalah, the end of Shabbat. You can see the page here at Google Books. What do you think?

As I see it, the couple could be read as sisters or friends, even if the author intended them to be a couple—so I think The Purim Superhero can still claim to be the first LGBT-inclusive Jewish children’s book in English. It’s certainly the first clearly inclusive one, and the first to focus on an LGBT family.

But I have to imagine the Chag Sameach! image brought a smile to the face of some lesbian families back in the ’80s.

Happy Purim to everyone celebrating it this evening. Don’t eat too many Georgia O’Keefe hamentashen.