Pride House in Beersheba

The story

Pride House in Beersheba is an LGBT organization active in the city and in the Negev region. It opened in October 2000 on the initiative of activists in the community, mainly graduates of the “Sagol” group and among them Barak Atar, as a branch of the LGBT Association — and for most of the years of its existence it was the association's only branch outside Tel Aviv. In 2001 the first youth group in the city opened in it. In 2005 the youth groups in the country withdrew from the association and founded the organization IGY, and Beersheba was the only place in which a youth group of the association went on operating, in cooperation with IGY and without joining it; only in 2010 did the group join IGY officially. At the end of 2014 the LGBT Association decided to stop funding the local centers in the country, and the activists in the city, headed by Barak Atar, incorporated and founded an independent nonprofit named “Pride House in Beersheba”; its opening ceremony was held in January 2015, and at it the mayor Ruvik Danilovich spoke. In 2017 the city council decided to maintain a municipal community framework for the pride community, as part of the fabric of Beersheba's communities, and the municipality funds the location of the house and helps to fund a social worker. The premises changed place more than once: from July 2017 the house operated at 36 Smilansky Street in the Old City, and from April 2023 it is at 36 Ha-Histadrut Street, on the corner of Ha-Avot Street — premises that were dedicated in a ceremony on 3 September 2023 in the presence of the mayor. A community center operates at the place, mainly in the evening hours and on weekends, with groups for youth, for young adults, for adults, for men, for women, for transgender people, for children of LGBT people and for religious people, as well as lectures, community discussions and Kabbalat Shabbat gatherings. The house is a partner in a queer reading group with the Department of Gender Studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

• Communities
• Beersheba