Queer Torah Study 1: Leviticus and Us

From Rabbi Benay Lappe and Dan Libenson, "A Third Torah From Sinai: Revising Our Myth for a New Jewish Era, https://svara.org/hot-off-the-shtender-a-third-torah-from-sinai-revising-our-myth-for-a-new-jewish-era/

God gave Moses three torahs at Mount Sinai—the written torah, the oral torah, and the svara torah—the torah of our own moral intuition, the torah that is in our hearts and minds, the torah that we know to be True in our kishkes, the torah drawn from the insights gained from our lived life experiences—and the queerer the lived life experience, the richer the insight, and the more essential it is to be brought into the tradition which so desperately needs it in order to be the liberatory enterprise it has always sought to be.

From Rabbi Steven Greenberg, "Prayer to be Recited Before the Reading of Aharei Mot", https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/silence-is-not-ok-when-torah-is-painful/

Master of the Universe, to Whom all secrets are known,
Before You we stand both confused and undaunted,
In parashat Aharei Mot, Abomination! Is spoken
and one out of ten [of us]
Hear the words “V’et Zachar” and weep
In the farthermost pews,
Outcast and broken.

As we read these words now, God remember in truth
The myriad souls, who from their youth,
Found in their hearts a fierce connection,
A mighty love, toward members of their own sex

Remember Hashem their paralyzing fear,
The terrifying longing, the shaming embrace.
Accusing themselves with the full force of Law
Of perversions that could only be remedied by death.

Remember the thousands consumed by shame,
Cast out in outrage, or suffering unseen.
Not one dared imagine that rather than cursed
They were blessed by the One, Who varies [Their] creatures.

Master of the universe, Why? And have
the tears of the oppressed made it through to Your heart?
Can it be that the Torah demands we cast out
Beloved [children]?

If they have no power and no redress,
Then be Thou their comfort, their strength and fortress.
Bless us with peace, and our sages with tenderness.
Grant us strength from on high to uphold them in love,

Be generous with the gift of hope from above,
For life and wholeness your salvation is at hand.

From Rabbi Denise Egers, "Acharei Mot/Kedoshim" at https://www.keshetonline.org/resources/achrei-mot-kedoshim-leviticus-161-2027/

In both of these portions also discussed is a detailed list of sexual offenses. In both Achrei Mot and Kedoshim everything from incest, to adultery, and bestiality are described as abhorrent and an affront to God. These acts do not bring about holiness and are describe in Achrei Mot as “practices of the land of Egypt…” and “of the land of Canaan…” (Lev. 18:3). These are associated with pagan worship and idolatry and therefore punishable by death as described in Kedoshim. “All who do any of those abhorrent things — such person shall be cut off from their people.” (Lev. 18:29). Karet—or being cut-off from the people was seen as a kind of death if not a physical one as individuals had to be part of a household, clan or tribe.

...

[O]thers have discussed this prohibition in relationship to pagan worship. In many pagan cults the priests and priestesses of the various gods and goddesses were often sex surrogates for the local deity. If it was a male god, they were served by female priestesses. If it was a goddess they were often served by male priests. In Judaism of the Bible we have a male deity served by male priests — thus the prohibition of male –male receptive sexuality.

All too often the Bible and these verses are used to keep gay men and lesbians from full equality in our society. This is wrong. We are not talking about pagan worship today when two gay men fall in love and form a family. We are not talking about “imitating the idolatrous practices of the Canaanites” when two women fall in love and want to affirm their relationship beneath the chupah- the wedding canopy. . .

It is time to make sure that when we approach Leviticus –the path to holiness is examined in its fullness and not isolated as with these two verses. The Path to holiness also includes reaching out to the poor, being fair in weights and measures and never insulting a parent. These are how we ought to be and ought to strive for holiness, while including gay men and lesbians in the fullness of our families, our society and our Judaism with equal opportunity and equality.

From Rabbi Gordon Tucker, "דרוש וקבל שכר: HALAKHIC AND METAHALAKHIC ARGUMENTS CONCERNING JUDAISM AND HOMOSEXUALITY" c. 2006; at https://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/sites/default/files/public/halakhah/teshuvot/20052010/tucker_homosexuality.pdf

Now the theological argument against normalization generally begins with the observation that the Torah is rarely as simple and as direct as it is in these two verses. . .

There are three refutations of the theological argument against normalization that I shall present. The first two are here because they are surely worth some consideration, but it is the third that is by far the most important, and that I aim to highlight:

(1) The theological argument attaches great importance to the unambiguous clarity of Leviticus 18:22, and the consequent impermissibility of modifying the scope of its meaning (to encompass, for example, only exploitative or promiscuous sexual relations). Granting for the moment the claimed clarity of the verse, this first reaction to the theological argument notes that the same argument has never been made for Exodus 21:12 (“He who fatally strikes a man shall be put to death”), which is, if anything, even more concise and clear than Leviticus 18:22. The scope of Exodus 21:12 (whose lucidity is reprised in Leviticus 24:17) has been readily subjected to modification and contextualization, so as to legitimate, for example, self-defense killing.12 And these restrictions on the scope of the prohibition did not, in and of themselves, undermine the divine authority of the text. Why is Leviticus 18:22 different in this respect?

(2) The second reaction to the theological argument does not take as given the claim that Leviticus 18:22 unambiguously prohibits all sexual relations between two males. The claim certainly is plausible on the surface. But the most prominent explicator of Leviticus in our time, Professor Jacob Milgrom, does not agree. Starting from an analysis of the rare form אשה משכבי as applying only to illicit relations, and apparently from the observation that the prohibition in Leviticus 18:22 comes at the end, not in the middle, of the list of human sexual relations forbidden by consanguinity, Milgrom offers the following reading of the verse:

….since illicit carnal relations are implied by the term אשה משכבי ,it may be plausibly suggested that homosexuality is herewith forbidden for only the equivalent degree of forbidden heterosexual relations, namely, those enumerated in the preceding verses. However, sexual liaisons occurring with males outside these relations would not be forbidden.

In the opinion of this renowned biblical expert, then, one can at least call into question the unequivocal and exceptionless nature of the ban on gay sex in the plain meaning of Leviticus 18:22.14

(3) The third, and most far-reaching, reaction to the theological argument against normalization calls into question the very theological premise on which the argument rests. When someone says, “What can we do? The Torah is clear on the subject!”, what is being said amounts to a claim of infallibility and irrefutability for the text of the Torah. And that claim ultimately rests on the assumption that the words of Leviticus (and, of course, those of the other four books of the Pentateuch) express directly and completely the will of God. (Indeed, treating a text as infallible on any basis other than on such an assumption would surely count as a form of idolatry.) But that assumption (that the Torah is the direct and complete expression of God’s will) is one that, for all its currency in parts of the Jewish world, is not accepted in our Conservative Jewish world. And it is not accepted for good scholarly and theological reasons. We should be clear that this is not an assertion that the Torah is not divine, or that it is merely human. Heschel famously wrote that “as a report about revelation, the bible itself is a midrash.”15 We quote this phrase often enough, but perhaps don’t sufficiently appreciate that its far-reaching implications both free up our religious thinking and tie us to traditional theological categories at the same time. It is, in other words, possible to (a) believe in God; (b) believe in revelation; (c) believe that it is meaningful to speak of a divine will for the world; and (d) to have faith in the idea that the Torah is our first (and thus, in an important sense, most sacred) expression of God’s will in human language, and still insist that the sacred text of the Torah does not perfectly and infallibly express that will.16 Heschel also wrote that “…whatever hand wrote the Torah included the ‘finger of God’…..”. But “the question as to whether the Pentateuch was entirely written in forty years or in eighty years is a temporal question asked in the context of the problem of eternity.”17 This is a view of the Torah that conforms to scholarly discoveries about its text, and at the same time presents to us a most compelling theological image of human-divine partnership. That is, the non-acceptance of biblical infallibility is not merely a negative verdict on the divine authorship of the Torah born of academic skepticism; it is a profound and inspiring positive message about the ways in which God and humans find each other on the stage of history onto which we have been placed. A large part of our understanding of the role of human beings in the generation and perfection of religious truth hinges on the idea that God’s will is not infallibly represented in the Torah, but only imperfectly, in a form that awaits the engagement and honest searching of religious communities that connect to one another, and to Sinai, throughout the ages, but do not simply duplicate one another…

From "Affirmative Interpretive Translation of Leviticus 18:22" by Rabbi David Greenstein, in full at https://www.keshetonline.org/resources/affirmative-interpretive-translation-of-leviticus-1822/

This page, which can be inserted into a Mahzor, High Holiday Prayer Book, offers new interpretations of two verses in the Torah, Lev. 18:22 and 20:13, with translations that are different than the ones in our printed editions of the Torah and in our prayer books. Our interpretation of these verses is offered in place of those printed translations.This interpretation is offered in order to counter the opinion that the Torah stigmatizes homosexuality.

INTERPRETIVE TRANSLATION – TARGUM
–
OF TWO VERSES IN THE TORAH

Leviticus 18:22

V’et zakhar –

And along with another male

lo tishkav –

you shall not lie

mishkevei ishah –

in forced sexual intercourses with a woman;

toevah hi –

it is an abomination.

Thus the prohibition is against a man joining with another male partner in order to gang rape a woman.

Leviticus 20:13

V’ish asher yishkav –

Any man who shall lie

et zakhar –

along with another male

mishk’vei ishah –

in forced sexual intercourses with a woman

to’evah `asu sh’neihem –

both of them [the men] have done an abomination

mot yumatu d’meihem bam –

these [two men] shall surely die, their bloodguilt upon them.

The death penalty is explicitly directed at the two perpetrators of the rape. It is not directed against a criminal and his victim.

From Rabbi Dr. David Frankel, "Male Homosexual Intercourse Is Prohibited – In One Part of the Torah" at https://www.thetorah.com/article/male-homosexual-intercourse-is-prohibited-in-one-part-of-the-torah

. . .It is of little use to attempt to make the text say something other than what it plainly says. An authentic grappling with the biblical text requires intellectual honesty and exegetical candor. How then might we accommodate for these texts?

A more credible approach would be to recognize that the passages in Leviticus 18 and 20 are lone voices within the law collections of the Torah. They do not represent the “majority view.”^[10] As has been shown conclusively by critical analysis, the various Pentateuchal law collections with their surrounding narratives represent conflicting accounts not only of the covenant event itself, but also of the essential divine demands that were imposed during that event.^[11]

From Rabbi Jacob Staub, "Going after Unknown" at https://www.keshetonline.org/resources/going-after-the-unfamiliar-parashat-reeh/

We can never know everything, and we should never be afraid of moving towards or into the unknown. Whoever wrote the verse Leviticus 18:22 (“You shall not lie with a man as with a woman; it is an abomination.”) could not have known me and so could not have been referring to me. There were no male-male couples in monogamous, long-term relationships in Ancient Israel.

It is so very important, then, that we admit what we don’t know and venture into the unknown to adapt our traditions to unprecedented circumstances. Queering questions create the openings for flexibility and new growth. It is far more of a blessing to remain open-minded and open-hearted than it is to remain inflexibly and self-righteously bound to what we already know.