Rabbis, Gays and Lesbians - Pride Torah II

"Moi, je suis pas un problème, je suis une existence"

I am not a problem, I am an existence. ~ Judite Cohen-Solal

The Greek practice of pederasty came suddenly into prominence at the end of the Archaic period of Greek history; there is a brass plaque from Crete, about 650–625 BCE, which is the oldest surviving representation of pederastic custom. Such representations appear from all over Greece in the next century; literary sources show it as being established custom in many cities by the 5th century BCE. [Dover, Kenneth J. Greek Homosexuality. Duckworth 1978. , pp. 205-207]

"Pederasty is an ancient Greek form of interaction in which members of the same sex would partake in the pleasures of an intellectual and/or sexual relationship as part of a socially acceptable ancient custom (Hubbard: 4-7). The question of whether the ideal pederastic relationship was the most common form of pederasty in Greece, or whether the reality of ancient same-sex desire involved relationships between males of the same age, is one that has been contested between scholars for many years.

The ideal pederastic relationship in ancient Greece involved an erastes (an older male, usually in his mid- to late-20s) and an eromenos (a younger male who has passed puberty, usually no older than 18) (Dover, I.4.: 16). This age difference between the erastes and the eromenos was of the utmost importance to the scheme of the ideal pederastic relationship. The power dynamics involved in such a relationship, with the erastes always in control, ensured that the erastes kept his dignity as a fully-functioning member of Greek society, while the eromenos grew up under the tutelage of such a man and as such could become a great citizen when he reached adulthood. Both people in an ideal pederastic relationship would have practiced great sophrosyne, or taking no indulgence to excess (Dover, II.C.5.: 97). The erastes shows restraint in his “pursuit” rather than his “capture” of the young boy, and the eromenos would similarly show restraint by not immediately giving into the older man’s sexual desires.

Ideal pederastic couples were ones whose relationship directly benefitted their Greek society. Another important reason for the age difference between the erastes and eromenos was that the older male was responsible for teaching the younger male about Greek politics, military, and social gatherings (Hubbard, Introduction: 12). The ideal erastes was meant to be more of a teacher than a lover. The eromenos would receive this training in exchange for the sexual favors he provided to his erastes. Also important to the ideal pederastic relationship was the fact that the eromenos supposedly did not enjoy the sexual actions that he performed with his erastes, adding to the idea of the older male acting as a teacher."

http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/175/examining-greek-pederastic-relationships

see also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pederasty_in_ancient_Greece

Greek women had virtually no political rights of any kind and were controlled by men at nearly every stage of their lives.

[https://www.penn.museum/sites/greek_world/women.html]

Mo Goldberger

(from source sheet Judaism and the Gays: Part 1 - Dealing with Mishcav Zachar)

DEFINE MISHKAVEI:

The only other time in Tanach where the construct "mishkavei [something]" appears is in the story of Reuven and Bilha. According to the pshat (simple meaning) of the text, Reuven rapes Bilha in an attempt to assert his dominance over his father and to take control as the head of the family. His act is called "mishkavei avicha." Similarly, it seems that here (Leviticus 18 & 20) the phrase "mishkavei isha" refers to violent sex whose express purpose is to increase the power of one of the partners. (There are those who say that Reuven did not go through with the act, but rather made it appear that he did; in any case, there is at the very least what appears to be sex whose only function is to increase the power of the active partner.) This is consistent with the Gemara in Kiddushin 22b that says anal sex is abnormal because there is only benefit for the man (and that creates a power dynamic).

Additionally, "mishkavei avicha" is usually translated as your father's bed which I believe is a misinterpretation... It should be interpreted as the lyings of your father as in when you mounted a woman who sleeps with your father. If we use this reading for Reuven we should be consistent and use it in the case of "mishkavei isha." "Ve'et zachar lo tishcav" - and a man should not lie, "mishcavei isha" - with a man who lies with women (heterosexuals) "toevah hi" - it is an abhorrence. Basically, we are saying that it is an abhorrence for gay men to sleep with heterosexual men. This also fits perfectly with the nature of the word "mishcavei" that is speaking about lying in the "atypical manner" and denotes rape, violence, and abuse of power that we get from the story of Reuven.

Rabbi Steve Greenberg - An Openly Gay Orthodox Rabbi

"The verse (in Leviticus) prohibits the kind of sex between men that is designed to affect the power and mastery of the penetrator. Sex for the conquest, for shoring up the ego, for self-aggrandizement, or worse, for the perverse pleasure of demeaning another man is prohibited."

On the word toh'eh'vah:

Total appearances in the Torah: 25

Genesis / Bereshit: 2

Exodus / Shemot: 1

Leviticus / Vayikra: 6

Numbers / Bamidbar: 0

Deuteronomy / Devarim: 16

Rabbis and Leviticus ~ or searching for understandings

Rabbi Jacob Milgrom (1923-2010), who was both a leading Leviticus scholar as well as a Conservative rabbi, offers three different approaches:

• Protecting Reproduction: First, he argues that the biblical prohibition reflects the concerns of a precariously fledgling nation with its own preservation through human reproduction. In other words, biblical law prohibits homosexual relations between men because they threaten to thwart reproduction through heterosexual relations. Following this interpretation of the law, Milgrom goes on to assert that it is not applicable in the world of today, which struggles with the challenges of overpopulation.
• Only in Israel: Milgrom further argues that the prohibition is addressed to those living in the land of Israel and has no implications for the rest of the world. Obviously, this is hardly helpful for the people living in Israel.
• Mirroring Heterosexual Prohibitions: Milgrom suggests taking the prohibition of lying with a man “the lyings of a woman,” as referring to the prohibited heterosexual relationships mentioned earlier in the text. In other words, the text indicates that just as a man cannot have sex, for instance, with his uncle’s wife, so may he not have sex with the male counterpart to her, his uncle. Homosexual activity with a man from outside one’s family would then be permitted.

Rabbi Brad Artson, the Dean of American Jewish University, in 1991:

"committed, permanent, exclusive homosexual relationships between equals were unknown until the modern era, and therefore could not have been explicitly prohibited by earlier Jewish law, and that our current construal of homosexuality has so radically shifted from what was practiced in the past that the traditional prohibition of male-male sex does not (and should not) expand to include this novel form of homosexuality. If it is true that neither the Torah nor Jewish law explicitly prohibits committed exclusive gay or lesbian relationships, and contemporary science indicates that sexual orientation is fixed irrevocably, then it follows that a contemporary posek may legitimately choose to sanction such relationships as are otherwise consistent with Jewish law.[1] I will then argue that simple justice, compassion, and a commitment to strengthening Jewish life make it imperative to do so."

Rabbi David Greenstein, a Reconstructionist rabbi, suggests that the verse refers to a man who lies with a woman together with another man. These two men, who have heterosexual relations with the same woman at the same time, are condemned to death. The woman is not held accountable since she is considered a victim of rape. Here is how he translates the text:

V'et zachar - and along with a male

lo tishkav - you shall not lie

mish'kevei ishah - in sexual intercourse with a woman

toeivah hi - it is abhorrent

[David Greenstein, ‘”A Great Voice Never Ending”: Reading the Torah in Light of the New Status of Gays and Lesbians in the Jewish Community,” in R. Lisa J. Grushcow ed., The Sacred Encounter: Jewish Perspectives on Sexuality (New York: CCAR Press, 2014), 43-56. Available at https://books.google.com/books?id=HEslBQAAQBAJ and also https://www.academia.edu/9137619

Prof. Rabbi David Frankel a Professor of Bible at the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, focuses on the idea that Torah is "a “polyphonic” text, or a loose anthology of competing claims regarding the legal stipulations of the covenant. The edited Torah, following this approach, was not meant to be read as a practical and coherent handbook on how to carry out the law, but as a collage of competing understandings of the requirements of the covenant." Therefore he posits that "the question of male homosexual congress may be another example of a dispute between the law collections. Leviticus 18 and 20 prohibit male homosexual congress in the strongest of terms, but both of these texts are part of one legal corpus, the Holiness Collection. No other law collection in the Torah (or passage in Tanach!) says anything explicit about homosexual relations."

And so: "we cannot assume that all the authors of the texts of the Torah that fail to prohibit homosexual sex would necessarily have approved of homosexual relations or relationships. But none of them deemed this matter relevant or worthy of mention within the context of the foundational covenant made between God and Israel... We have a מחלוקת (difference of opinion) in the Torah on homosexuality. While Leviticus 18 and 20 severely prohibit it, the other law-codes of the Torah do not deem it relevant to the covenant. "

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, Chabad

"There are 613 commandments in the Torah. One is to refrain from gay sex. Another is for men and women to marry and have children. So when Jewish gay couples come to me for counselling and tell me they have never been attracted to the opposite sex in their entire lives and are desperately alone, I tell them, “You have 611 commandments left. That should keep you busy. Now, go create a kosher home with a mezuza on the door. Turn off the TV on the Sabbath and share your festive meal with many guests. Put on tefillin and pray to God three times a day, for you are His beloved children. He desires you and seeks you out.”

Once, I said to my friend Pat Robertson, whom I have always found engaging and open in our conversations, “Why can’t you simply announce to all gay men and women, ‘Come to church. Whatever relationship you’re in, God wants you to pray. He wants you to give charity. He wants you to lead a godly life.”

He answered to the effect that homosexuality is too important to overlook, seeing as it poses the most grave risk to the institution of marriage. Other Evangelical leaders have told me the same. Homosexuality is the single greatest threat to the family.

BUT WITH one of two heterosexual marriages failing, with 70 percent of the Internet dedicated to the degradation of women through pornography and with a culture that is materially insatiable even as it remains all-too spiritually content, can we straight people say with a straight face that gays are ruining our families? We’ve done a mighty fine job of it ourselves."

Kavod is the inner value that makes man a human being, that gives him/her identity as such; it constitutes a condition of human existence for him/her. This signification can slide into more institutional connotation, also present in the Bible. The kavod is, then, the social nature of a human being, his/her status, his/her importance, his/her value in society….Since the Middle Ages, the word kavod has represented the name of God. What makes us human beings is the divine part of us, the presence of God in us.

[Tel Aviv University professor Delphine Haiun, “The Israeli Patients’ Rights Law: A Discourse Analysis of Some Main Values” in Korot: The Israeli Journal of the History of Medicine and Science, Healing Individuals, Healing Society, Volume 17 (2003-2004), pp.97-124.]

"The opposite of dignity, בושת , or disgrace, is a major offense in Jewish law. Fear of shaming illiterate individuals led to exempting them from reciting the biblically-required first fruits declaration, and allowing the kohen to read on their behalf. The same concern led to the modification of many funeral customs,and also to the separation of the role of aliyah laTorah from the obligation to chant the actual text." ... "A Jew may detour from the task of reading Megilah or performing a brit milah in order to assure the burial of an unattended corpse (מת מצווה). Yet, other examples clearly refer to the dignity of the actor himself: An elder need not return a lost object, since this act would undermine his dignity. A person may carry stones in a כרמלית in order to wipe off excrement for his own dignity’s sake. A superior court judge need not testify in a lower court. A man caught [or carried off by gentiles] outside of the Shabbat boundary, the תחום שבת , and therefore prohibited from moving more than four cubits, may nevertheless move away from a
place where he has defecated, or move to a private location for his own dignity’s sake.

...

Dignity is a social phenomenon. In all of these cases, there is interplay between the dignity of the actor and the dignity of his neighbors. For a person to smell filthy in isolation maybe uncomfortable, but it becomes humiliating only when others smell him. His humiliation humiliates them and vice versa. For a mourner to walk home alone from the funeral may be depressing, but his dignity is impugned only when it appears that a neighbor has refused to walk with him. For a sage to strip off forbidden clothes in public may be an affront to the dignity of his neighbors, but this is certainly because they feel horrified to have witnessed his humiliation. For a sage to be forced to stand in testimony in a lower court humiliates him and also his students, who feel that they have participated in his humiliation. It is therefore not accurate to discuss the dignity of X as if it were separate from the dignity of Y. As Rabbi Waldenberg writes in the passage cited above, the halakhah considers the person’s dignity, “whether in his own eyes, or in the eyes of others.” Some cases are primarily about the actor’s dignity, and some are primarily about the dignity of his neighbor, but all are ultimately about the social fabric of Israel.
This, of course, is precisely our point. We are concerned for the dignity of gay and lesbian Jews not only because we are sympathetic to their dilemma, but also because their humiliation is our humiliation."

[Rabbinical Assembly, Responsum: HOMOSEXUALITY, HUMAN DIGNITY & HALAKHAH: A COMBINED RESPONSUM FOR THE COMMITTEE ON JEWISH LAW AND STANDARDS by RABBIS ELLIOT N. DORFF, DANIEL S. NEVINS & AVRAM I. REISNER, 2006 - full text available at https://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/sites/default/files/public/halakhah/teshuvot/20052010/dorff_nevins_reisner_dignity.pdf

Rabbi Norman Lamm (1927-2020) and the Yeshiva University

Judaism does not accept the kind of thoroughgoing relativism used to justify the gay life as merely an alternative life style... Under no circumstances can Judaism suffer homosexuality to become respectable. Clearly, while Judaism needs no defense or apology in regard to its esteem for neighborly love and compassion for the individual sufferer, it cannot possibly abide a wholesale dismissal of its most basic moral principles on the grounds that those subject to its judgments find them repressive. All laws are repressive to some extent -they repress illegal activities- and all morality is concerned with changing man and improving him and his society. Homosexuality imposes on one an intolerable burden of differentness, of absurdity, and of loneliness, but the Biblical commandment outlawing pederasty cannot be put aside solely on the basis of sympathy for the victim of these feelings. Morality, too, is an element which each of us, given his sensuality, his own idiosyncracies, and his immoral proclivities, must take into serious consideration before acting out his impulses. [Article on Encyclopedia Judaica, Yearbook, 1974]

"As an Orthodox Jew, I cannot and do not condone homosexual behavior, which is expressly prohibited by Jewish law. But as president of a nondenominational institution that must accommodate people who reflect a wide range of backgrounds and beliefs, it is my duty to assure that the policies and procedures of Yeshiva University conform to the applicable provisions of secular law, even in the rare instances in which these may offend my own religious beliefs and personal convictions. " [1995]

In September 2020, the [YU Gay Straight Alliance] applied for club status, and the administration released a statement announcing new LGBTQ inclusivity policies and that the club would not be recognized at YU since it clouds the Torah’s “nuanced message.” You can read the statement here: https://cardozo.yu.edu/sites/default/files/2021-01/Statement.pdf

On April 2021 the YU Pride Alliance, three Yeshiva University alumni and a student announced an LGBTQ discrimination lawsuit against the university. Read more at: https://yucommentator.org/2021/04/yu-and-administrators-sued-for-lgbtq-discrimination-by-yu-pride-alliance-students-and-alumni/

Rabbi Seth Farber, Eshel, 2012

Oness Rahmana Patrei

My own approach to the matter is that the Orthodox community should adopt the stance of “oness rahmana patrei” – The Merciful One overlooks what is out of a person’s control. This was first suggested by R. Norman Lamm in the 1974 Encyclopedia Judaica Yearbook and I believe that this principle should serve as a basis for formulating an Open Orthodox response to the many challenges of accepting and integrating homosexuals into our community...

...urges are controlled by the calming factor of knowing there is an alternative outlet. Unlike heterosexuals, gay Orthodox Jews have no halakhically acceptable outlet for the vital human need for intimate partnership, and never will. This is the key difference between this case of oness and most other cases. One cannot view celibacy as moment by moment abstinence. The oness derives from the cumulative weight of the totality of the moments of a person’s life, an absolutely crushing weight in this case.

Psychologically, gay Orthodox Jews are faced with one of two options: either be sexually active and fragment this transgression from their conscious minds, or be celibate and live with the knowledge that they will never experience a real intimate relationship. I firmly believe that the latter is not really a livable option for most adults, but a debilitating and life-crushing prospect. Advocating for it is an exercise in futility.

...

Caveat

To be sure, calling something oness does not make the action halakhically permitted; it is not. Moreover, adopting the oness principle does not mean that halakha recognizes same sex qiddushin (Jewish marriage) – it does not. Finally, the concept of oness does not cover people with a more fluid sexuality; those who are capable of forming a satisfying intimate bond with members of the opposite sex and choose to do so with a member of their own sex cannot reasonably be called “compelled.”

However, the concept of oness does apply to that percentage of the population for whom homosexual love is the only expression of emotional intimacy and sexuality available. Consequently, it is my firm belief that the Orthodox community should accept the fact that there will be non-celibate homosexuals in our midst and we should welcome them.

Read more at Eshel - Eshel’s mission is to create a future for Orthodox lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals, and their families.

http://www.eshelonline.org/morethodox/

Rabbi Steve Greenberg - A gay orthodox rabbi

Whatever the halachic argument will be, we will need to know much more about homosexuality to ensure that people are treated not merely as alien objects of a system but as persons within it.Whatever the halachic argument will be, we will need to know much more about homosexuality to ensure that people are treated not merely as alien objects of a system but as persons within it...

...the standard Orthodox position is to require celibacy. Many recent articles and responsa regard gay sex as indistinguishable from adultery, incest, or bestiality. The heterosexual is asked to limit sexuality to the marital bed, to nonrelatives, to human beings; the homosexual is asked to live a loveless life. I have lived portions of my adult life as a celibate clergyman. While it can have spiritual potency for a Moses or a Ben Azzai, who abandoned sexual life for God or Torah, it is not a Jewish way to live. Always sleeping alone, in a cold bed, without touch, without the daily physical interplay of lives morning and night - this celibate scenario is life-denying and, for me, has always led to a shrinking of spirit. What sort of Torah, what voice of God would demand celibacy from all gay people? Such a reading of divine intent is nothing short of cruel.

...

For the present, in regard to sexual behavior, I personally have chosen to accept a certain risk and violate the Halacha as it is presently articulated, in the hope of a subsequent, more accepting halachic expression. I realize that this is a “civil disobedience.” It is not the system itself which I challenge but its application to an issue that has particular meaning for me and for those like me. There is always the possibility that I am wrong. Ultimately, the halachic risks that I take are rooted in my personal relationship with God, Who I will face in the end. It is this faith that makes me both confident and suspicious of myself.

[printed under a pseudonym on 2003, reprinted with his name on 2019

Read in its entirety at: https://www.eshelonline.org/gayness-and-god/]