Parasha Acharei: Leviticus 16:00-18:30
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"Well I'm not dumb, but I can't understand why she walked like a woman and talked like a man, oh my Lola"
This parasha includes verse 18:22 from Leviticus, which has put liberal Judaism in the news and even on the front page of the New York Times. "You shall not lie with a man as one lies with a woman." This law is repeated in 20:13 with the addition of teaching us the penalty for transgression, which is death. As we read in an earlier d'var Torah, expounding on verses in a manner that ignores their historical context can have consequences that affect us still today.
While I abhor the idea of giving publicity to hate groups, I sadly refer you to the Westboro Baptist Gospel Church of Texas Web site: www.GodHatesFags.com. Their
"logical" syllogism takes Leviticus 18:22 and classifies all homosexuals as an abomination. By quoting Psalm 5:05, "Thou hatest all workers of iniquity," they believe that if God hates the homosexual, so should we. They further quote Isaiah 66:24, which they translate as saying that those who have transgressed against God will not have "their fires quenched" and that this means that homosexuals will reside in hell for all eternity. By referring to the death penalty of Leviticus 20:13, they justify the killing in
Please note that my use of the
The Anti-Defamation League reports that violent crimes against gays and lesbians are continuing to rise. The FBI says they are the third highest targeted group for hate crimes. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says that gay and lesbian youth are at a four times higher risk for suicide than their straight peers. According to the National Network of Runaway Youth Services, 40 percent of the homeless teens on our streets are homosexual.
The rabbis of Reform Judaism, in an overwhelming vote, approved a resolution to back any rabbi's decision to preside over a gay union through "appropriate Jewish ritual." A compromise was reached to recognize the diversity of opinion within the movement and to support those who choose not to officiate at such ceremonies. Rabbi Paul Menitof, vice president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) stated: "These are people who are subjected to signals, subtle and not so subtle, that they are abnormal, sinful, less than whole. Can you imagine the impact on them to finally hear a confirming message after so many negative messages from all these religious groups?"
Please note that the Union of Reform Judaism (URJ) does not call these commitment ceremonies marriages nor does it give them the status of kiddushin (sanctification). But there is an ecclesiastic imprimatur that makes it clear that their fellow congregants and God attach holiness to their union.
In 1990 the United American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC) agreed to ordain openly gay rabbis. On March 16, 2000,
There are some aspects of Jewish tradition that oppose homosexuality. These need to be understood in the historical context of the need to have children and the need to keep us from the bad habits of our neighbors. Homosexuality was looked upon as a deviant behavior under one's control. The authors of our laws were not aware of any biological or scientific basis for homosexual behavior. Since they believed that the behavior is under one's control, they viewed homosexuality as an abomination of what was normal. But just as the ancient church had pro-gay writers such as St. Aelrod, Ausonius, and St. Anselm, so did we. In his essay Deal Gently with the Young Man, Norman Roth describes the flourishing of homoerotic Jewish literature in
The Rambam (Maimonides), who was close to being a contemporary of Yishaq ben Mar-Saul and Isaac Ibm Abraham, accepts Jewish homosexuals as not being violators deserving of being on his list of apostates. He based this on Talmud Bavli Tractate Chullin 4a and 5a, which clearly teaches that one who repeatedly violates a particular commandment out of inner compulsion rather than to flout the tradition is to be considered a functioning equal member of the community. Ironically this same tractate, Chullin, also gives credit to the pagans who practice homosexuality for not actually marrying each other with a ketubah.
The rabbis declared in Talmud Bavli Tractate Kiddushin 82a that two Jewish bachelors are permitted to sleep in the same bed because Jewish men are not suspected of being homosexual. We saw in an earlier d'var that the same men were allowed to herd sheep because Jewish men are not suspected of bestiality. Rabbi Harold Shulweis posits that the rabbis clearly believed that homosexual behavior was a controlled, willful act and could be avoided if one wished to do so. But they were aware of other inborn behaviors. According to Jewish law, activities that are uncontrollable, even if they are prohibited, are "patur aval asur," which means free of culpability. Talmud Bavli Tractate Nadarim 33a teaches that God "frees one from punishment who is coerced."
The Talmudic Bavli Tractate Bava Batra 43a teaches that if we are to judge, we are "to judge according to that which you see with your own eyes." If we are to see gay men and lesbian women as deviants and sinners in control of their abominable behaviors, then we will continue to judge them in this manner. But if we open our eyes to the scientific evidence and an understanding of the history of the times when our laws were written, we will see them as caring, loving folk who wish to stand on our bimah and declare their love for each other before God, and we will therefore no longer judge them.
If the rabbis of the Talmud knew that homosexuality was not a learned, controlled behavior, I believe they would have reformed the Torah in the same manner they reformed the laws requiring us to kill a rebellious son (Deut. 21:18), torture the wife of a jealous man (Num. 5:12), and destroy a city in which Jews worshipped idols (Deut. 13:13). The Talmudic rabbis called these laws theoretical and having no application to life: "Lo hayah v'lo atid lihyot." If they knew that gays' sexual orientation was not an act of their willing, the laws against homosexual behavior might well have been set aside as well.
The rabbis also abolished another law. In Talmud Bavli Tractate Yebamoth 64a, the law is given that after ten years of marriage, if the wife has not given birth, it was grounds for divorce, as the purpose of marriage was to have Jewish children. The rabbis nullified this. There is also a law forbidding a man incapable of having children from marrying a Jewish woman who is capable. But do we see any rabbi refusing to wed a healthy woman to a man who had (God forbid) prostate, penile, or testicular cancer, or who is paraplegic? We say that they can adopt and raise Jewish children. And so can gay or lesbian partners, who can also deliver biological children. Please also note that in Talmud Bavli Tractate Sanhedrin 54b, where the rabbis discuss this Sabbath's parasha verse, there is no law against lesbianism.
Consider how much Judaism has reformed itself from the days of the Torah to the days of our prophets. While I am not comparing gay men to eunuchs, Deut. 23:2 says that a eunuch cannot enter into the Assembly of God. But Isaiah says in chapter 56, "As for the eunuchs who keep My Sabbaths, who have chosen what I desire and hold fast My covenant, I will give them in My house and My walls, a monument and a name. Better than sons and daughters, I will give them an everlasting name which shall not perish." Isaiah, and hopefully we, would rather have gay and lesbian couples among us who do good mitzvoth than heterosexual couples among us who are mean-spirited.
None of us is pure. Few of us follow every halacha to the letter of the law. Sabbath breakers, according to the Torah were to be stoned – as were homosexuals. Yet we do not vilify Sabbath violators today, keep them from marriage, or call for their execution. The Rambam understood that none of us is perfect. He reminded everyone of this by signing his letters, "Moshe Ben Maimon who transgresses three negative commandments in the Torah every day." He was referring to the prohibitions of a Jew returning to and living in Egypt. The rabbis overlooked that Torah law because of the mental anguish a forced move on the Jews living in Egypt would cause.
The canard "allowing gay or lesbian couples on our bimah, under a kuppah wedding canopy will cause other people to become gay" is just ludicrous. It is just as silly as saying that mentally healthy gay men or mentally healthy lesbian women recruit children while mental healthy heterosexuals do not. The URJ did not condone child molestation. Thinking of homosexuals as perverted leads to horrible consequences. When liberal movements openly allowed rabbis to welcome homosexuals to their temples and to partake of every aspect of Jewish life, it was an indication of another ideal of liberal Judaism.
Parasha Kedoshim: Leviticus 19:01-20:27
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"Getting Back to the Garden"
This Torah portion is entitled "Kedoshim." In it we read many of the wondrous man-to-man laws that help define our ethical relationships to one another and thereby form the basis for our civilization's codes of legal and subscribed behaviors. The word kedoshim is translated into English as holy. The root word, however, comes from the Hebrew word that means "set aside." While it is a virtual impossibility for any flesh and blood human to be truly holy, it is certainly possible for each of us to set aside a part of ourselves for holiness.
What is notable in this portion of Leviticus is that there are few priestly rituals listed. As we have seen so far, the sacrificial rituals and the priestly rules have made up the bulk of this third book of the Chumash. We therefore get a broad hint on how to achieve spirituality during our sojourn on earth. We seem to be told that the way to achieve closeness to God is by doing good to our fellow men and treating them with honesty and respect.
In pasuk (verse) 19:18 we read: "you shall love your fellow as yourself - I am God." How can we be commanded to love? What exactly is "our fellow?" Is this mitzvah so important that God had to remind us that He indeed is God? Why did Rabbi Akiva say this is "the great principle of the Torah?" Why did the medieval Jewish mystic Judah the Pious say that this will be the one question God will ask of us when we seek admittance into Heaven? Why did the student Yeshu of Nazareth, called Jesus today, say that this mitzvah is second only to the command to love God?
In the 950-year-old text Duties of the Heart, Rabbi Bachya ibn Paquda devotes his 925-page book to the concept of obeying the commandment "to love." Before we can love our fellow, we must accept the other commandment of the love of God. He asks us to understand that whatever we have is a gift, or better stated, a loan from God. We should never lose sight of our love for Him. We must further understand that all humans are God's children and beloved equally by Him. We can reach a conclusion that by loving others, we are helping to repay God for his gifts to us. Since His gifts are really just loans, we are only just in an infinitesimal way beginning to thank God by helping another with our time, resources, energies, and emotions. Can one ever fully thank our Maker for the gift of life itself?
The Hebrew word ray-eh-cha has been translated as your fellow, your friend, or your neighbor. This beautiful mitzvah has been colored by the words preceding it in the first part of the verse. They are, "you shall not bear a grudge against the children of your people." (b'nai amekah). When the verse continues and uses the word rayehcha, are we to believe that this love is just to be directed for our "fellow Jew," or to our "fellow human neighbor" in our earthly home?
One can certainly not speak for God in today's age. Traditionally we believe that our prophets were inspired divinely. They have made it quite clear to us in their writings that God meant by rayehcha, all of our fellow humans, not just our fellow Jews. As Orthodox rabbi and psychiatrist Dr. Abraham Twerski posits, Judaism teaches that spiritual drives are an expression of the neshemah (soul). The Torah states that when God created man, He "breathed the breath of life into him" (Gen. 2:07). The Zohar, the text of the Kabbalah, points out that when one exhales, he or she exhales something from within himself or herself. Thus, God - by breathing a breath of life into man - put something of Himself into each one of us. The human spirit is therefore part of God Himself.
Since God is absolute unity, all souls are one, and all humans are one spirit. Since we are separate individuals we have separate physical bodies, but our souls are attached. In other words, mankind is one in spirit, but many in corporeality. By loving all of our fellow humans, the Zohar teaches, we are striving for the essence of Judaism. We are emphasizing our spiritual soul that would keep us together rather than feeding our physical bodies with pleasures, which keep us apart.
When King Solomon built the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, he specifically asked God to heed the prayers of non-Jews who came to the Temple (Kings I 8:41-43). The Temple was the universal center of spirituality that the prophet Isaiah called the "house of ALL nations." The service at the Temple on the week of Sukkoth featured 70 bull offerings corresponding to each of the 70 nations of the world. The sages said, with hyperbole, that if Rome knew how much benefit they were getting from the Temple, they would have never destroyed it.
When our rabbis finally wrote the Talmud, 1,000 years in the making, in 500 C.E., the concept of loving equally the Jew and non-Jew was reinterpreted. To some sages, loving your fellow became loving a fellow Jew. Ahavath rayehcha became ahavath Israel. Loving the non-Jewish stranger (ger) became loving the Jewish convert. This is not what the Torah or the prophets taught. But because the rabbis of the Talmud during this period of harsh Diaspora, said their word was the Oral Law directly from Mt. Sinai, this reasoning found its way into some teachings and traditions.
The Torah is very clear in that on a religious level a convert to Judaism is as Jewish as a born Jew. It was assumed in Torah times that when a non-Jewish woman married a Jewish man, she automatically became Jewish, as were her future children. Conversion ceremonies, independent of marriage, first appeared in the post-biblical period. We also see that in Torah law a non-Jew was equal to a Jew and should be loved and treated equally. Judaism via our Torah does not distinguish, on a human level, between those who are Jewish and the non-Jews who live among us. On a religious level the Torah does not distinguish between one who is born Jewish or one who converts either by ceremony or by marriage.
However, by the time our Talmud was put into written form this universality of the prophets was amended in some ways. In 500 C.E. Judaism was in much danger. We were dominated by the Roman Empire. We were homeless and unfortunately, but understandably, enemy-centered for mere spiritual and corporal survival.
William James once said, "A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices." Our Talmud - some small parts of which are embarrassing to us now in the third millennium C.E. - has some statements in it that if read out of context can be hurtful not only to others but to ourselves. Both Jews and non-Jews have read the Talmud out of its historical time frame with disastrous results. We need to remember, before continuing, that the Gemorah part of the Talmud records all opinions of the rabbis, not just the ones that became law.
Talmud Bavli Tractate Moed Kattan 17A suggests that if a Jew is tempted to do evil, he should to go to a non-Jewish city where he is not known. Tractate Bava Metzia 114B speaks of Jews being only truly human (designated men) and Tractate Beracoth 58A speaks of having sex with a non-Jewish woman as having sex with a she-ass. Tractate Bava Kamma 37B says that if a Jew's ox gores a Canaanite's ox there is no liability, but if the Canaanite's ox gores a Jew's ox, there is full liability.
The Talmudic rabbis quote Ezekiel 34:31 as their proof that gentiles are not men (adam) as Jews are, because God says that His sheep (Jews) are "men." But when did Ezekiel write? He wrote during the Babylonian captivity, and he was using poetry as a rallying cry to let Israel know that their God would soon rescue them. The Babylonians were the preying wild beasts, which Ezekiel had to refer to carefully as Egyptians, and the Jews were the set upon sheep. This was all metaphor.
We must remember that the Talmud was written during some very tough times for our people. It is a 1,000-year text. There was understandable hatred in many rabbis' hearts for the pagan Romans. Their concern was not against the early Christians. Gentile meant Roman. But as the Talmud, centuries later, found its way into the hands of the church fathers, these statements about gentiles were forced to be amended. Maimonides, in his book on the Talmud, called the Mishna Torah, says it is a religious duty in the Talmud to "eradicate traitors, minnim, and apikorsim" such as the Saducces (who denied the oral law and were against the Pharisees, the forerunners of Rabbinic Judaism), apostates, and followers of Jesus. The Rambam continues "as for gentiles, the basic Talmudic principle is that their lives must not be saved, although it is also forbidden to murder them outright." The Talmud Bavli in Tractate Avodah Zarah 26B expresses this maxim as "gentiles are neither to be lifted out of a well, nor hauled down into it." The beginning of the second millennium when the Rambam wrote was a bellicose time. Writing these pugnacious words in the relative safety of Moorish Spain or Muslim Egypt was the only safe way Maimonides, a Jew, could express his outrage at the wholesale slaughter and discrimination the Church was rendering to his people.
Tractate Bava Metzia says that if a Jew finds a lost object of a gentile it does not have to be returned. Be mindful that all of these quotes are taken out of context. For example, it is a general Talmudic principle that any object that is found that the owner has given up hope of recovery may be kept. Since Jews and non-Jews lived separately, the likelihood of a non-Jew having hope of finding a lost, unidentifiable object in a Jewish town was nil. Hence, the object was attainable by the finder. The Talmud says we should go out of our way to find this gentile and return the object. But as we have seen so many times before, when any group interprets the Torah through their eyes (especially when they say they know the right and only way of interpretation), hurtful behaviors can result. We need to understand always that the Talmud is the work of men who were doing what they thought was best for our people during the tumultuous times it was written. We as modern liberal Jews do not accept the Talmud or the books of the rabbis of the Middle Ages as divine. In Jewish Spiritual Renewal we work on ourselves with God's aid to become the best loving people we can be and use our texts for the parts within them to help us in this direction.
When every word of the Talmud is assumed to be the word of God, certain rabbis can then give license for bigotry. Thank heaven these rabbis are very small in number. Ordained, hateful behavior gets directed not only toward non-Jews, but also to Jews labeled as apikorsim or minnim. These are code words for assimilated or liberal Jews who deny that the Talmud, and works that stem from it (like the Rambam's text), are divine. In Aramaic, "shitta sidhre" means the six orders (sections) of the Mishna (oral law). The term is abbreviated sh's and pronounced shas. Is it any wonder why the Shas party of Israel spews forth such vile anti-liberal, anti-Jewish, and anti-Arab verbiage? They believe they are just quoting God as revealed in the Talmud.
As written in traditional Pesach Haggadot, when we open the door at the end of the seder to welcome Elijah, one says in a loud voice, "Pour out Thy wrath upon the Gentiles that know Thee not, and upon the kingdoms that call not upon Thy name, for they have consumed Jacob and laid waste his habitation. Pour out Thy rage upon them and let Thy fury overtake them. Pursue them in anger and destroy them from under the heavens of the Eternal." One can easily see how our Christian neighbors might misunderstand this prayer.
Our Haggadah, codified in Talmudic times, is referring to the Roman pagans who conquered us and sent us into the Diaspora. No wonder the Christian Church in the Middle Ages demanded that we keep our doors open during our seders! The liberal movements deleted this section of the Passover ceremony. What is overlooked is the following fascinating Midrash saying that many first-born Egyptians ran to the land of Goshen to sleep in the beds of the Jews to escape the Angel of Death. And it worked! They were spared death and lived. It was not the Paschal lamb's blood on the door that saved them, but our unconditional Jewish hospitality and love for our fellow man. Is this an answer to Noah's prayer in Genesis 9:27: "May God extend Japheth and may he live in the tents of Shem?"
When Baruch Goldstein, on Purim 1994, gunned down 40 Palestinian civilians, including children, he was quoted as saying that his rebbe told him the Talmud said that "all Arabs are dogs." Professor Ehud Sprinzak described Goldstein's and his rebbe's philosophy in a1994 New York Daily News interview. "They believe it is God's will that they commit violence against 'goyem' (non-Jews)." Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg declared in a 1989 New York Times interview, "We have to recognize that Jewish blood and the blood of a goy are not the same thing." Rabbi Yaacov Perrin stated in a 1994 New York Daily News report that, "One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail." Presently, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, head of Israel's ultra orthodox Shas party, is being considered for criminal prosecution for calling liberal education minister Yossie Sarid "Satan, Haman, and Amalek" and saying he should be wiped out. His speech was received with thunderous applause and shouts of approval. So much for the love and the universality of man as spoken to us by our prophets.
"As water reflects a face back to a face, so one's heart is reflected back to him by another." (Prov. 27:19). As related in Talmud Bavli Tractate Shabbat 31A, when Rabbi Hillel was asked to sum up Judaism, he said that the love of one's neighbor was most important. He said the rest of the Torah was commentary that needed to be studied. The Talmud makes it very clear that the Adam and Eve story was to teach us that we all come from the same first man and woman so that no one can say that their ancestors were better than another's. But how do we love another? We begin not by receiving from him, but by giving to him. When you give to another, a part of you becomes incorporated in that other person. He becomes an extension of you!
Rayehcha did mean all fellows even at the time we were being formed as a nation in the wilderness of Sinai. We were a mixed multitude of peoples, not just the children of Jacob. Leviticus 19:33-34 reminds us that we were strangers (ger) in Egypt and to love the stranger that resides with us as ourselves. There was no Torah double standard. A complete read of the Talmud shows there was no Talmudic double standard either. The Mishna says that saving a single soul (Jew or non-Jew) was equally important, although there are some versions of the Mishna, i.e., the traditional approved Art Scroll edition, in Tractate Sanhedren 37A, that say "who saves a single soul of Israel." The rabbis taught that we do bikur cholem (visit the sick) to Jew and non-Jew alike, as well as all acts of tzadakah (poorly translated as charity).
The thirteenth-century Spanish rabbi, Nachmanides the Ramban, speaks sarcastically of "a boor in the realm of Torah." This boor is a learned and observant Jew who has not violated a single mitzvah but still brings disgrace by misinterpretation. It is clear to so many that love of your rayehcha is a universal decree. There is a Judaic concept, not often taught, of Yirei ha Shem. This idea states that there are other ways to reach God outside of Judaism. Judaism is not the only path to spirituality. The Midrash Rabbah comments on Deuteronomy 34:10, one of the last verses of the Chumash, which says, "And there never again arose a prophet in Israel like Moses." The Midrash says this means that in Israel a prophet like Moses did not rise again, but among the other nations of the world there arose other prophets of Moses' stature. In his introduction to Duties of the Heart, Ibn Paquda, who is referred to earlier, says that he drew on teachings from the Muslims and the ancient Greeks.
God is Infinite. Can any religion really say that they know the true way to God? The twentieth-century physicist, Heisenberg, who was in charge of wartime Germany's race for the atomic bomb, states in his Uncertainty Principle that when one measures the location of a subatomic particle, the act of measuring it changes its location. When we read of a religion or philosophy that states with authority that it knows the mind of God, we must be careful. One can reach spiritual heights by going through an intermediary (like Jesus, if one is Christian). You can do the same by following ritual minutia. Or, as spiritual renewal Judaism teaches, one can study and determine what paths work well at various points in life. The Talmud teaches that "the righteous of all nations have an equal share in the world to come." The parasha at hand this week, called Kedoshim, gives us clear insights on attaining a righteous, set-aside holiness.
A wonderful Midrash asks, "What is the tzelem Elohim, the image of God, in which all humans are made?" It answers that when an ordinary king like the Roman emperor puts his image on a coin, all the coins get minted the same and are therefore identical. But when God, the ultimate Ruler, puts His image on a coin (humans), we each come out differently. God equally loves any religion or way of life that helps one seek holiness and a love for their fellow. For Jews, we have our way, and within our way, we have many ways. All are beloved of God. No one way is better than the next. We do not believe we have the "true" religion. What we do believe is that we need to derive mussar, ethical teachings, from our Torah, so that we can treat all of our fellows with love. As Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan said, "The past should have a vote, not a veto."
Even those who unfortunately misinterpret this d'var to mean love your fellow Jew miss this narrow interpretation as well. The Talmud tells of a horrible tragedy that befell our people during this period of time we now celebrate during the counting of the omer. This is the seven-week period between Pesach and Shavuot, when we were given the Torah on Mt. Sinai. About 1,900 years ago, Rabbi Akiva witnessed the sudden death of 24,000 of his students. The Talmud explains that they were punished because they disobeyed the mitzvah of ve'ahavta l'rayehcha kamocha and treated each other harshly, snubbed each other, did loshan ha ra about each other, and belittled each other's rabbis and teachings, each thinking they knew the right and only answer. God struck them dead rather than let them go out and become rabbis, judges, and teachers of our people. Those who think this verse means to just love your fellow Jew are mistaken, but those who think it means to love only your fellow Jew who is a member of your own sect or shul are also sadly mistaken.
Every person is in the image of God, b'tzelem Elohem. This is true of anyone of any creed. All of us need to understand this as we are now securely into the third millennium of the Gregorian calendar. Everyone needs, as Rabbi Judith Hauptman has written, "our active monitoring of his or her welfare and protection from discrimination and exploitation." We must be a light for the other nations.
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