Disconnect

For the past several months I watched what's been happening on the Israel front from my Kansas redoubt. I don't think it's a surprise to anyone who has been keeping up with me that I think the Gaza incursion was counterproductive and morally questionable, and that I am against the vilification of the human rights community (Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, etc) that has come in the aftermath of their reports - and in this category I include Goldstone and his report, which whatever you may think of its provenance, was not markedly out of step with the rest of the reports coming from the HR community.

I have also been greatly disturbed by the election of a hard right government in Israel, including the inclusion of stone racist Avigdor Lieberman in the cabinet, which if it happened in any other country would be met with the kind of protest it deserves. Netanyahu himself, like too much of Israeli leadership, thinks tactically rather than strategically, figuring that if he kick the can of - what? reconciliation? reason? reckoning? - down the road a few yards, he will have done his job. Along with this is the complete collapse of the Israeli left, which has 3 mandates (Meretz) in the Knesset and an annual Rabin day commemoration in Tel Aviv and not much else.

So I've been following the increase in volume of those who are anti-Israel (particularly the BDS movement, which has made great inroads in the aftermath of the hell in Gaza), as well as those who, like me, are pro-Israel but see clearly that the current course is unsustainable, both politically and morally.

It's interesting that none of this consideration was in evidence at all at last week's General Assembly. With the exception of a small presence by Americans for Peace Now, and one protestor against Nethanyahu's speech (pulled out of the room and dismissed with a chuckle), the entire tenor of the gathering was that all criticism of Israel is illegitimate (well, they may admit that criticism of Israel that isn't anti-Semitic is theoretically possible, but they can never find an example), that Goldstone is at best a pawn and at worst an anti-Semite, that Bibi is doing what's best for the country, that Gaza was a necessary and well-executed operation, that "delegitimization" of Israel is just this year's version of the age-old hatred of Jews. This, I believe, is self-inflicted blindness of the most astonishing kind.

One of the more reasonable criticisms of J Street's recent conference that I heard at the GA (and by reasonable I mean not that I agree with it but that that it wasn't spittle-inflected vilification of J Street as Saudi proxies or self-haters or whatever) was that people were disturbed that there were non- and anti-Zionists there, and vocally part of the proceedings. I heard this from both left and right. This is surprising to people because many on the left, such as Brit Tzedek and Eric Yoffie, have seen it as their role to define what acceptable discourse is - exactly how far left one is allowed to go. Jeremy Ben-Ami doesn't seem to be interested in this, probably because J Street is not a plenary organization, so people can say whatever they want but he's the one who decides what the policy of J Street is.

To me, J Street's conference didn't cause that discussion, it revealed it. Most OJC types are so into their own interpretation of what's happening that they have no idea that the discourse, even within the Jewish community, is moving far beyond it. That's why Jay Michaelson's piece in the Forward, for instance, was such a surprise to so many people. People like Uriel Heilman can continue to say, in response to Roger Cohen (who I'll get to in a minute):

Again, no word on what the Palestinians must do to prepare for peace, such as giving up the goal of eliminating Israel entirely, championed by Hamas, or electing a leadership free of corruption and capable of delivering on a peace deal....

Typical, in that when Israel is criticized the OJC response is to point the finger at the other guy. Tired, because largely not true - the leadership of Fatah, Abbas and the rest, have done what they were called on to do in the Road Map - stopped incitement and cracked down on violence. Israel has not done what it was supposed to do - end settlement activity. These are facts, and if you don't believe me, you can ask the US government.

The biggest disconnect, which was in full bloom at the GA as in this piece, is the inability or refusal to recognize that settlements are illegal, that they are counterproductive, that Israel has twice committed to ending them, and that restricting them would signal as nothing else could Israel's good intentions, as continuing them signals the opposite. Not recognizing this means you are not serious about pursuing peace. And by the way, the only person I heard mention "settlements" at the GA was Rahm Emanuel, and the word "occupation" was uttered not at all.

But I went back to read Cohen's piece, and it strikes me that he's largely correct. (Contra Heilman, he doesn't exclusively blame Israel, but then again, neither did Goldstone.) First, he says, Obama came into office thinking that he could pick up from Taba, but there's a lot of water under the bridge since then:

[Obama's] approach ignored the deep scars inflicted in the past decade: the killing of 992 Israelis and 3,399 Palestinians between the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000 and 2006; the Israeli Army’s harsh reoccupation of most of the West Bank; Hamas’ violent rise to power in Gaza and the accompanying resurgence of annihilationist ideology; the spectacular spread of Jewish settlements in the West Bank; and the Israeli construction of over 250 miles of a separation barrier that has protected Israel from suicide bombers even as it has shattered Palestinian lives, grabbed land and become, in the words of Michael Sfard, an Israeli lawyer, “an integral part of the West Bank settlement plan.”

These are not small developments. They have changed the physical appearance of the Middle East. More important, they have transformed the psychologies of the protagonists. Israelis have walled themselves off from Palestinians. They are less interested than ever in a deal with people they hardly see.

He concludes by saying, like Thomas Friedman the other day, that Obama should dial expectations way back, and that a tense detente may be the best we can hope for at this point.

Stop talking about peace. Banish the word. Start talking about détente. That’s what Lieberman wants; that’s what Hamas says it wants; that’s the end point of Netanyahu’s evasions.

It’s not what Abbas wants but he’s powerless. Shlomo Avineri, a political scientist, told me, “A nonviolent status quo is far from satisfactory but it’s not bad. Cyprus is not bad.”

I recall my friend Shlomo dreaming of peace. That’s over. The last decade destroyed the last illusions: hence the fence. The courageous have departed the Middle East. A peace of the brave must yield to a truce of the mediocre — at best.

There are only two things wrong with this. First, without an Israeli commitment to ending settlement activities - well, they've already committed to it, so let's say, without an implementation of the Israeli commitment to end settlement activities - they will continue apace, and five years from now there will be 500,000 settlers in the Palestinian territories, making it all that much more impossible to retract them. Second, the other pressures on this situation will not abate in the absence of action: first, the demographic issues will continue to grow, meaning that the pressure of Israel as Jewish state vs. Israel as democratic state will not go away (you can't have both and the territories) and second, delegitimization will continue to grow, becoming ever more powerful as people who would normally oppose it become increasingly frustrated with Israeli intransigence and pull out of the conversation. And in this, I include the many progressives and young people represented by the 1,500 people who attended the J Street conference, who are at J Street on their way out the Zionist door, should this situation continue as it is with no hope of resolution.

Bibi's, with his tactical thinking, is not prepared to deal with any of this. The OJC, with it's mythology about how everything is either the Palestinians' fault or motivated by anti-Semitism, is not prepared to deal with this. Their aversion to recognizing that time is not on their side is the biggest disconnect of all.

Parshat Hayei Sarah

At the beginning of this week’s parshah, Hayei Sarah, Sarah dies, and Abraham goes to the neighboring Hittites in order to buy a plot in which to bury her. The plot – a cave, actually - belongs to a fellow named Ephron, who says, “No, my lord, hear me: I give you the field and the cave that is in it; I give it to you in the presence of my people. Bury your dead.” (Gen. 23:11)

I would venture to say that most of us, when someone is willing to give us something that we were willing to buy, would put our wallets away and try to take possession before they changed their minds! But not Abraham: “Abraham … spoke to Ephron within the hearing of the people of the land, saying: ‘If you would only hear me out! Let me pay the price of the land; accept it from me, that I may bury my dead there.’” (v. 13). He doesn’t want it for free; he wants to purchase it. Ephron responds:

A piece of land worth 400 shekels of silver – what is that between you and me? Go bury your dead.’ Abraham accepted Ephron’s terms. Abraham paid out to Ephron the money that he had named in the hearing of Ephron – 400 shekels of silver… (v. 15-16)

I always liked Ephron’s approach here: I’ll give it to you, but if you won’t buy it, I won’t let a little thing like 400 shekels stand between us! Thereby naming the price without naming it as the price, if you see what I mean.

But the more interesting response is Abraham’s. Why does he insist on paying for that which he could have gotten for free? Perhaps Abraham fears that the Hittites will later claim that they, rather than he, own the land that his beloved late wife is buried on. It’s also possible that Ephron was being a little sly with Abraham, first by including the field with the cave - the cave was the part Abraham wanted, but he accepts the increased plot; and then by asking for what may have been considered an exhorbitant price, which Abraham accepts – perhaps to Ephron’s chagrin!

One notes that although God has repeatedly promised the entire land of Israel to Abraham, and the cave (called, then as now, Machpeleh) is part of the land, Abraham does not rely on this divine promise when it comes to this real estate deal. In this, Abraham reminds me of the Jewish National Fund in the early part of the 20th century, which made sure to purchase, in a way that was clearly legal and above-board, all the land it could for the settlement of then-Palestine by the Jewish settlers arriving from Europe as elsewhere. For although their need was great, and although many people – then and now – held that the Biblical promise to Abraham was all the “deed” the Jews needed, to the Zionists it was important that their claim to the land of Israel was not only necessary, not only moral – but was legally binding as well.

Just like our father Abraham, who I suppose we might rightly call the JNF of the ancient world.

This week's links

Coverage of the GA by JTA, including new Jewish Federations’ CEO Jerry Silverman; the military chaplains’ Torahs for the Troops campaign; and various blogs and speeches.

Also JTA, Sholom Rubashkin, former owner of the massive Iowa kosher slaughterhouse Agriprocessors, convicted on 86 of 91 fraud charges.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday called for an "immediate" resumption of Middle East peace talks, but Palestinian and Arab leaders responded coolly to the speech, which had been seen by the White House as an opportunity for new concessions by Israel. Wall Street Journal. Money quote:

"Palestinians still find it difficult to resume negotiating the end of the occupation while the other party is busy consolidating this occupation by expanding settlements," said Palestinian Authority spokesman Ghassan Khatib.

One of the popular items at the conference was the new book “Start-Up Nation,” which tells the story about the Israeli “economic miracle”: how a country with almost no resources became one of the most innovative in the world. Review in Ha’aretz. Money quote:

The "untold story" of Israel's economic accomplishments actually has been told not a few times, mainly in the country's daily papers. Senor and Singer's unique contribution is to tie together the myriad stories of Israel: Take a young nation born in bloodshed, add a melting pot of nationalities and ethnicities, mix in the Jewish cultural aspiration to excel in one's profession, and an army that is light on officers but heavy on grunts who need to do the thinking for themselves (or die ). Toss in a healthy dose of audacity, an indefatigable willingness to hurl oneself into the maelstrom time and again, contempt for the trappings of hierarchy -- and presto. What we receive is a unique combination of factors that, combined with sound science, birthed an "economic miracle": From a base of almost no natural resources and an economy ravaged by one war after another, Israel created a flourishing, booming sector producing one breakthrough technology after another.

I Hate Abraham

I have a book from Israel called "Al Tishlkach yadkha el ha-na'ar" - or, Don't Send Your Hand Against the Boy, which is the line that the angel uses in this week's parshah, Vayera, to stop Abraham from sacrificing Isaac. The book is all kinds of poetry, prose and art on the theme of the Akeidah.

I translated a couple of the pieces from the book, which I've used over time whenever we read this parshah, not only in the yearly cycle but also on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, when this story is also read.

Here is a selection from a book called Days of Ziklag (Hebrew: ימי צקלג, Yemei Tziklag), a novel by S. Yizhar, first published in 1958. It is widely considered to be one of the most prominent works in Israeli literature, but it isn't available in English, perhaps because it's over 1,000 pages long. In any case, the novel follows a squad of IDF soldiers trying to hold to a post in the Negev desert during the Israeli War of Independence. The snippet is called, "I Hate our Father Abraham":

I hate our father Abraham, who went to sacrifice Isaac. What right does he have over Isaac? Let him sacrifice himself! I hate the God who sends him to sacrifice and closes off every other option – that only the path of Akeidah is open to him. I hate that Isaac is nothing but the subject of an experiment – an experiment between Abraham and his God. This demonstration of Abraham. This proof of love. This demand for a demonstration of love. God sanctifying himself through the sacrifice of Isaac. I hate that the slaughter of sons is taken as a proof of love! To take strength and to gamble and to take life in order to settle an argument. And because the world is silent, and doesn’t rise up and rush forward to stop it. Scoundrels, why do sons need to die?

I hate the need to obtain something at the price of destruction, or annihilation, or torment, or compulsion. I doubt it’s even worth as much as a clove of garlic – that which can only be acquired through such destruction. Better to give up, to put up your hands and pull away – from battle, from kidnapping. I hate this warfare more than anything else. This arming of everything.

And I sit here waiting to murder, to kill, to destroy, and I collect all my strength and my nerve and my muscle and my mind – for that final moment when it will by my lot, according to my ability – to burst forth, and to take prey, to save my life in the devouring of what I will devour, to bite what's near, to slit a throat with a touch. And there isn’t any escape. That’s the way the world is built. It’s the way life is designed. That’s how it is – decree.

And it isn’t even possible to run away. If you are not okay with killing and being killed – there won’t be any good in the world. No justice, no love, no beauty. All of this – this is their path. If you are not ready to hand over your soul, to leap at the flame, to go out and draw near and kill, with skill, with finesse, even with bloodthirst, there is no world and there is no life, and all is chaos and emptiness. That is the way the world is made. And for me, myself, there is no other, more personal way. Only to take part.

Closing Remarks for 2010 Campaign Event (undelivered)

This was written to be the closing remarks at the MKJF's Campaign event on November 1, but in the end they didn't get delivered (nobody ever complained that a rabbi spoke too little). But I thought they were interesting (at least, they're interesting to me), so I'm posting them here and to the blog on the MKJF website.

I'm often looking at Jewish texts with one eye toward their use in Federation settings, writings with the themes of peoplehood, Jewish unity, charitable giving and Israel. I found a quote from Mordechai Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, that addresses all of these, and I want to share parts of it with you. Now, Kaplan can be a difficult writer, so rather I'll hit the highlights.

What are the implications, Kaplan asks – social, political, cultural, and religious – of thinking of the Jews as an international people with its cultural center in Israel?

The social implications in their relations with one another is the sense of oneness and the mutual responsibility for each other’s spiritual and material well-being. In relation to the non-Jewish community, it means the right to continue to possess and develop our identity as a unique group, “combined,” Kaplan says, “with the readiness to cooperate as Jews in all endeavors for the establishment of a free society based on justice and peace.”

The political implications of Jewish peoplehood are the concern of Jews everywhere with a responsive society that looks after the less fortunate among us, as well as our concern with the freedom, stability, and security of the state of Israel.

Culturally, Jewish peoplehood means the fostering of Hebrew language and Jewish cultural expression by Jews in both Israel and the Diaspora, as well as each community's interest in the experiences of each other. In relation to the non-Jewish world, it means, where appropriate, the integration into Jewish culture of values found in other cultures which are compatible with Judaism, and the sharing of Jewish cultural creations with other cultures. This is what Joshua Nelson does with his melding of African American musical forms with Jewish religious content, and what we're going to be doing by sharing this music with our community and with the entire city of Wichita.

Although religion as such is the direct concern of the Federation, Kaplan points out that the modern conception of Jewish peoplehood has legitimated Jewish presence in the Diaspora even when settlement in Israel is available, and recognizes that freedom of conscience, even in religious matters, has become an integral component of Jewish life.

The conception of the Jewish future as the culmination of these factors, Kaplan writes, “marks a higher stage in the development of the Jewish [people]. It places the basis of Jewish unity not in an authoritative traditional creed or code but in the common purpose of Jewish to raise the moral and spiritual level of their group life.”

That's Kaplan's take. This is a Jewish Federation text if ever I saw one. For where is it that members of Jewish community of all customs, backgrounds, and beliefs come together in the shared endeavor of building Jewish peoplehood? Where is it that we organize ourselves to care for one another, for Jews all over the world, and for the well-being of the city and society in which we have chosen to live? Where is it that we organize ourselves politically in order to represent our communal interests, and culturally, to bring Jewish cultural expression to ourselves and to the community around us? Where is it that we are free to choose the means of Jewish expression that are most meaningful to us? It is in the Jewish Federation that we accomplish all these things.

As we begin our campaign year, may we keep these factors close to our hearts, as the main motivation for the work we do. May always remember that, the adage kol yisrael arevim zeh le'zeh – all members of Jewish community, all over the world, are responsible for one another – is never as fully expressed - socially, politically, culturally, even religiously - as in the work of the Jewish Federation. And may fulfilling that adage be our goal, as it has ever been the goal of Jewish people everywhere.

Parshat Lech L'cha

In this week’s parshah there’s a good Biblical example of the modern adage, “good fences make good neighbors.”

When he came to the land of Israel, in addition to his wife and their company, Abram brought his nephew, Lot. As they settled in the land, the Torah tells us, Abram and Lot both prospered: “Abram was very rich in cattle, silver and gold” (Gen. 13:2); “Lot… also had flocks and herds and tents…” (v. 5). As is sometimes the case, having wealth makes it hard for them to get along: “… their possessions were so great that they could not remain together” (v. 6).

The traditional commentators tend to look at this in light of Lot’s presence in the evil city of Sodom a couple of chapters down the line; Rashi says that what was happening was that Lot’s men were grazing their animals on other people’s fields, and Abram’s men were trying to stop them.

Now here’s where Abram’s moral character comes into play. He intervenes before the situation gets out of hand, and even though he is the senior partner, his solution is both humble and magnanimous:

’Let there be no strife between you and me, between my herdsmen and yours, for we are kinsmen. Is not the whole land before you? Let us separate: if you go north I will go south; and if you go south, I will go north.’

In other words, Abram gives Lot first dibs, even though it is Abram, and not Lot, who has been led to this land – promised this land - in the first place. But not to worry, because Lot’s requirements are decidedly less lofty than Abram’s:

Lot looked around him and say how well watered was the whole plain of the Jordan, all of it… So Lot chose for himself the whole plain of the Jordan, and Lot journeyed eastward. Thus they parted from each other; Abram remained in the land of Canaan, while Lot settled…near Sodom. (vv. 10-12)

Lot has the choice of where to go, and chooses - for material reasons – to go east. We know he wasn’t concerned with spiritual matters because the very next verse tells us that Lot is moving into a bad neighborhood: “Now the inhabitants of Sodom were very wicked sinners against God” (v. 13).

So Lot causes the problem, and Abram addresses it early and with care. He gives Lot the choice of where to go, and Lot’s choice is to leave Abram where he was. Abram’s Does the Right Thing throughout, and – in spite of this? because of it? – he ends up in Canaan, exactly where he was supposed to be, where his destiny and that of the people who came after him were to be.

There are times when circumstances determine that people need to separate. This could be due to all kinds of factors, and the reasons almost don’t matter: Abram certainly doesn’t seem to think any less of Lot, doesn’t treat him like someone who did something wrong, although he probably could have. The best we can do when we find ourselves in such situations is to try to be like our father Abraham: handle the situation as gently as we can, in the hopes that the relationships will be sustained, and in the faith that it will all end up as it is supposed to.

Shabbat shalom.

Parshat Noach

This week’s parshah is Noach. Because of the themes of environmental destruction and renewal in this parshah, many Jewish organizations (including the JCPA, the national community relations arm of the Federation movement) have designated this as “Global Climate Healing Shabbat,” an opportunity for the Jewish community to join with many others around the world in prayer and action “to prevent destruction and preserve the web of life in which the human race has emerged and created civilization.”

There’s a midrash (interpretive story) that it took Noah 120 years to build the ark, because he planted the cedars, waited for them to grow, and then cut them down, in full view of everyone. When the people of his generation asked him what he was doing he said, “The Sovereign of the Universe has informed me that God will bring a flood to the world.” (Gen. Rab. 30:7). In other words, everyone had plenty of warning, they just chose not to act on it. This comes to mind because of the article that was in the Eagle today that says polling shows that fewer people now believe that global warming exists, despite all the evidence. Will we make the same mistake as Noah’s generation?

At the end of the episode, God establishes a covenant with the human beings “and with every living thing on earth.” “I will maintain my covenant with you: never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” This is a commitment on God’s part not to destroy the earth. That power, these days, is in the hands of human beings, even more than it’s in God’s hands. Can we make a covenant with each other, with God, and with our fellow living creatures, not to destroy the earth? Will we?

Shabbat shalom.

This week's links

Here’s a story that was on NPR the other morning about a French priest who searches for unknown mass graves in Eastern Europe and records interviews with witnesses to the Holocaust.

Ha’aretz: US special Mideast envoy George Mitchell said Thursday that it was too soon to brand his efforts to resume peace talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders a failure.

A couple of weeks ago, Jay Michaelson (a writer and teacher in New York and the founder of Zeek magazine) wrote a piece in the Forward entitled, “Why I’m Losing My Love for Israel.” It’s generated a lot of discussion and response, as you might imagine. Links to the original article, some of the follow-ups (including articles by Rabbi Daniel Gordis of the Shalem Institute and historian Jonathan Sarna), as well as a follow up by Michaelson himself, are found here.

Ha’aretz: A tribute to troubadour Chava Alberstein at the Tel Aviv music festival featured unconventional interpretations of her songs.

Soupy Sales, the boundary-breaking comedian who good-naturedly endured, by his count, more than 20,000 pies to the face, has died. He was 83. Original name: Milton Supman.

Remarks for "Religion and Homosexualty" Panel

Wichita State University, Wichita, KS
October 22, 2009

Two preliminary points: The treatment of this topic in recent years is an attempt to find a balance between the need for a legal structure to channel human impulses and the need for a compassionate approach to individuals. As our understandings of homosexuality have developed over the past 50 years, this balance has changed as well. I’ll return to this topic toward the end of my remarks, but here I would like to say that God created homosexuals and must have known what God was doing. The idea that a young person struggling with - not sexual practice, not lifestyle choice, but with identity – can be made to feel that they are somehow sinful in the eyes of God, is a tragedy, and it costs lives, and it is to the credit of various contemporary religious communities, including large portions of the Jewish community, that they have striven to revise their understandings of God’s will to make a place for lesbians and gay men in their communities.

Second: Like Christianity, Judaism has a lot of different streams which approach issues of belief and practice differently. Although the focus of my remarks will be on a particular interpretive track, this is by no means exhaustive, nor is it to say that queer Jews are looking for progressive legal interpretations to permit them to be who they are. Queer Jews will be so without worrying too much about rabbinic niceties.

Ok. Judaism is an interpretive tradition, by this I mean that, in the Jewish tradition, what is written in the Torah is filtered through an interpretive process consisting of midrash (interpretive story) and halakhah, Jewish law as construed by the rabbinic tradition. The idea that one could just read what the Torah says and take that as a meaningful guide for human behavior is not a Jewish one. For instance, in Leviticus there is a requirement that an obstinate son be taken to the gates of the city and stoned to death. I think it’s fair to say that if this were interpreted as literally as the prohibition against homosexuality has been, there would be a lot of dead teenagers. However, the rabbis interpreted this instruction in such a limiting way – in terms of age, the actual behavior in question, and the process necessary for its implementation – as to legislate it out of existence. And the same is true for many other Levitical laws, particularly the ones that call for the death penalty.

This does not mean that Torah doesn’t mean what it says, but simply that what the Torah says is the beginning of the process, not its end. There’s a midrash on the building of the mishkan, the tabernacle in the desert that I learned from my friend and colleague Rabbi Toba Spitzer, that speaks to this point. Moses asks, how will your great Presence, God, that which the entire world can't contain, fit into the limited physical structure of the mishkan? God's response is, I will diminish My Presence in order to dwell in this space, close to human beings. And the same is true for text. We can't fully understand God's reality or meaning, and all we have are small human spaces in which God's reality is diminished, in order to give us access. To put it another way, our understanding of what God is trying to teach us in a particular verse is conditional, and can change in response to our changed understandings.

The Torah is the product of its time, an attempt by our ancestors to reach for holiness and truth based on their own understandings. The rabbis, who interpreted Torah’s teachings and put them into a legal framework, did the same thing. We know that in each case some of what they wrote is true and enduring, and some of it is limited. It is our job to figure out which is which. So how do we do that?

The verses in question in Leviticus come in the context of all kinds of prohibited sexual relationships, particularly those of family members – father, mother, sister, son’s daughter, daughter’s daughter, daughter in law, brother’s wife, etc etc. There has been a bit of a cottage industry in the past few years of scholarly exploration into exactly why this prohibition was promulgated. One theory is that there was some sort of homosexual cultic practice among the surrounding peoples, and that the Israelites were being warned against participating in that. It may also be part of a general prohibition against non-procreative sexual activity, such as masturbation.

Another interpretation which I find compelling is that the prohibitions in this section of Leviticus have not so much to do with sexual behavior in and of itself but with social relationships – which is to say, property relationships. The laws of inheritance and identity as they are put forward in Torah require knowing, so to speak, who the father is. Unfortunately, this is the basis on much of religion’s historic repression of women, as well as homosexuals. Men were agents, women were property. “Your father’s wife’s nakedness is your father’s nakedness” means that you are transgressing your father’s claim to his wife – the sexual relationship and the property relationship are indistinguishable. So a man lying with a man is against the natural order of things because it would confuse this agent/property relationship. This would be why lesbian relationships are not mentioned in Torah – the powerlessness of the parties poses no threat to the clear understanding of proper social relationships.

But scholarly interpretation alone will not suffice for our purposes here. We must deal also with what the verse has always been taken to mean – how it has been interpreted rabbinically and how that interpretation has been put into action by the Jewish legal tradition known as halakhah. There’s no question that in Orthodox interpretations of halakhah, homosexual behavior is seen as prohibited. This has led to the same kinds of struggles within that community that we have seen in other strict traditions. The Reform movement is not motivated by following Jewish law, so this is not an issue for them – at least not a legal issue.

Where the really interesting process on this issue has taken place is within the Conservative movement in Judaism. The Conservative movement considers itself bound by Jewish law but is willing to be more proactive in its legal interpretations. For the past almost 20 years or so, it has been wrestling with this issue, in the form of the question of whether to admit out gays and lesbians to its rabbinical seminaries or to perform marriage ceremonies for gay or lesbian couples. I’d like to trace some of this community’s recent thinking on this matter.

One thing you need to know in advance is there are two categories of law - law which is taken from Torah, and law which was promulgated by the rabbis. They’re both binding, but Torah law is taken as more inviolable than rabbinic law. There is also a rabbinic principle known as “building a fence around Torah” – that is, prohibiting by rabbinic fiat behaviors that might lead to a transgression of a Toraitic prohibition. Many of the rabbinic prohibitions are fences built around Torah law. An example is, if one is not allowed to light candles during the Sabbath, one is not allowed to touch candlesticks either. Touching of candlesticks was not prohibited by Torah, but rather by the rabbis, attempting to make it less likely that one would accidentally break the Torah law.

So - the verse in question in Leviticus has generally been taken to be a Torah law prohibiting anal intercourse. Under the principle of building a fence around the Torah, the rabbis of the Talmudic tradition prohibited homosexual relationships generally in order to prevent the possible accidental transgression of the Torah’s prohibition against anal intercourse. Under this framework, the anal intercourse prohibition is considered torah law, and the prohibition against homosexual behavior is considered rabbinic – still binding, but not as inviolable as a torah provision.

Now we have to look at context. The Levitical author, and the classical rabbis, saw homosexual behavior as a choice - a “lifestyle”, to use the contemporary terminology - made by an individual who would otherwise be heterosexual. The prohibition against homosexual relationships was meant to push people back into heterosexual relationships. And, in fact, where bisexuality exists the halakhic inclination is to push people into covenanted heterosexual relationships. Yet today we understand, as the American Psychological Association puts it, that “human beings cannot choose their sexual orientation.” That is, sexual orientation is not behavior – sinful or not – but rather identity. Further, we know that homosexuality is not a form of mental illness, that it is not inherently harmful to individuals or their children or families, and that it is not reversible by any available therapy.

Given these facts, there are only two available choices for the gay man or lesbian under the traditional prohibitions - first, a heterosexual marriage despite homosexuality – and this, unlike homosexuality itself, is known to be harmful to both the individuals involved and their children. Or the second choice would be celibacy. Nowhere in Jewish tradition is celibacy a desired outcome. Jewish tradition has always seen the ability of a human being to be in a committed, covenantal, sexual relationship as a vital part of the happiness and fulfillment that God wants for God’s children. This is a quandary that gay men and lesbians who have wanted to live as committed Jews in a halakhic framework have had to deal with for generations, much as committed Christians with similar issues have had to deal with the intolerance of their tradition and authorities.

For the Conservative Movement’s Law Committee, the way out of this quandary was to rely on the concept of kavod habriot – the dignity of the human being. There are many examples of halakhic restrictions that are waived when their fulfillment would compromise the dignity of the person involved. This is particularly so in cases where the entire community is recognized or celebrated in a particular context, and a minority or individual is excluded, causing them shame, as is the case when homosexual members of the community are ignored or scorned.

The Conservative movement’s conclusion was basically to retain the Biblical prohibition on anal intercourse while removing the rabbinic “fence” around it which had prohibited all gay or lesbian relationships or other sexual activity. The law committee found that the dignity of the person should overrule an overly restrictive rabbinic law but not a law from Torah, which they continued to interpret in the traditional manner. But the Law Committee also stated that the observance of this prohibition would be up to the individual’s conscience, and would not be checked before allowing gay men and lesbians full involvement in communal religious activities, any more than one’s observance of Jewish dietary restrictions or restrictions on activities on the Sabbath are checked.

I happen to belong to a denomination, the Reconstructionist movement, which along with the Reform movement has been welcoming lesbians and gay men to full participation in religious life for upwards of 25 years, and supports same-sex marriage rights. I bring the example of the Conservative movement because I believe that it is a good example of a process on the part of a religious community that strives to balance the acceptance of God’s creation in all of its manifestations with the wish to stay true to Biblical truth as they understand it. This is what the Episcopalian Church has been doing as well.

I want to move toward a conclusion by saying that the holiness code is about promoting holiness, holy behaviors. The question - the only question – is, can this be applied to homosexuality?

Our understanding of the nature of homosexuality has changed in the past 50 years, let alone 3,000 years. We know now that first, homosexuality is not chosen, but rather is the result of some combination of biological and environmental influences that can determine a person’s sexuality from an early age. Second, we understand that homosexuality is not by definition degraded, to’evah – to use the Hebrew term from the text - any more than heterosexuality is. Any sexual activity can be either holy or degraded. A religious approach teaches that in order to be holy, sexuality must be channeled in sanctified ways, through dedicated partnership, mutual respect, and respect for the boundaries of commitment. And these guidelines are as available to gay men and lesbians as they are for anyone else. In fact, it would be irreligious to deny them based upon ancient prejudices.

In a midrash on the holiness code, there is a debate between Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Ben Azzai over what is the fundamental principle (klal gadol) of the Torah. Akiva says it is "v'ahavta l'reyecha camocha" - love your neighbor as yourself. Ben Azzai says the fundamental principle is "These are the generations of Adam" - that is, we are all descendants of the first human, and thus are all created b'tzelem elohim – in the image of God. Together, these two principles give us a measuring stick for what it means to be holy, to live a holy life.

So when we look at a particular text, or a particular legal stricture, we can ask these questions:

• Does this practice or teaching lead to greater love of one's neighbor, or the opposite?
• Does this practice or teaching affirm that which is Godly in Creation, in every human being, or deny it?

Using this principle, we can approach sacred text and tradition in a new way, making wiser choices about what laws may need to be re-interpreted or overturned, and what is God’s enduring truth.

Parshat Bereshit

This week we begin the cycle of reading the Torah once again, with Breishit, the first parshah in the book of Bereshit, or Genesis. This parshah, of course, begins with the story of creation. I find myself focusing this year on the Adam and Eve material. There are actually two stories of the creation of human beings, this one, from Gen. 1:27-28:

And God created man in God’s image, in the image of God, God created him; male and female God created them.

And this one, from chapter 2:

God formed man from the dust of the earth. God blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being … Then God said, “It is not good for man to be along; I will make a fitting helper for him”…. So God put a deep sleep upon the man, and while he slept, took one his ribs and closed up the flesh at that spot. And God fashioned the rib God had taken from the man into a women, and brought her to the man… (Gen. 2: 7, 18, 21-22).

There are some clear differences between these two texts: in the first one, humans are created at the end of the process; in the second, at its beginning. The first story seems to indicate that the humans were created together, or even as one creature; the second one has the woman created from part of the man.

But the “Five Books of Miriam” has an interesting take on this: maybe the two stories aren’t so different after all, as in the second story the man is instructed to merge back into the woman: Gen 2:24: “Therefore a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, so that they become one flesh.” Or as the “Five Books of Miriam” puts it: “In both cases, human wholeness depends upon a Other to complete the divine image.”

What is Genesis but the story of the development of humanity from two early specimens, to a family-clan grouping, to a people in relationship with God? What I take from this is, without relationship there is no humanity – only creatureliness. Relationship with spouse or partner; relationship with parent or child; relationship with friends and co-workers; relationship with community. The Torah is telling us that, as much as we think of ourselves as individuals, and as much as our society is based on our separate identities as individuals, we need to be in relationship – real relationship, deep relationship - in order to become fully human.

Shabbat shalom.