In Parshat Acharei-Mot (Lev. 16:1 - 18:30), we confront perhaps the most clearly homophobic verse in the Torah. In this Torah study, we will discuss contemporary reinterpretations of this verse and then take a step back: what does it mean to reinterpret a text? How does it feel to try? Content warning: homophobia and sexual violence.
Blessing for Torah Study
Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu melech ha-olam, asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav v’tzivanu la'asok b’divrei Torah. Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Sovereign of all, who hallows us with mitzvot, charging us to engage with words of Torah.
Beginning with Our Own Torah
1) Think of or imagine a moment when you felt, read, heard, or witnessed something hurtful and were later able to reinterpret the situation. What might you have gained from reinterpreting it? What might you have lost?
2) What does it mean to interpret something or someone generously?
Sexual "Purity" and "Holy" Homophobia
Questions to Consider
Who is God instructing? What are commonalities between different prohibitions? Do you see any themes? What prohibitions do you think are "good" and "bad"? How do you think verse 22 relates to the rest of the chapter?
(1) ה' spoke to Moses, saying: (2) Speak to the Israelite people and say to them: I ה' am your God. (3) You shall not copy the practices of the land of Egypt where you dwelt, or of the land of Canaan to which I am taking you; nor shall you follow their laws. (4) My rules alone shall you observe, and faithfully follow My laws: I ה' am your God. (5) You shall keep My laws and My rules, by the pursuit of which human beings shall live: I am ה'.
(19) Do not come near a woman during her menstrual period of impurity to uncover her nakedness. (20) Do not have carnal relations with your neighbor’s wife and defile yourself with her. (21) Do not allow any of your offspring to be offered up to Molech, and do not profane the name of your God: I am ה'. (22) Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman; it is an abhorrence. (23) Do not have carnal relations with any beast and defile yourself thereby. Likewise for a woman: she shall not lend herself to a beast to mate with it; it is perversion. (24) Do not defile yourselves in any of those ways, for it is by such that the nations that I am casting out before you defiled themselves. (25) Thus the land became defiled; and I called it to account for its iniquity, and the land spewed out its inhabitants. (26) But you must keep My laws and My rules, and you must not do any of those abhorrent things, neither the citizen nor the stranger who resides among you; (27) for all those abhorrent things were done by the people who were in the land before you, and the land became defiled. (28) So let not the land spew you out for defiling it, as it spewed out the nation that came before you. (29) All who do any of those abhorrent things—such persons shall be cut off from their people. (30) You shall keep My charge not to engage in any of the abhorrent practices that were carried on before you, and you shall not defile yourselves through them: I ה' am your God.
Possibilities of Reinterpretation
"Male Homosexual Intercourse Is Prohibited – In One Part of the Torah - TheTorah.com" by Rabbi Dr. David Frankel (2017)
One of the common methods for dealing with this issue is to construe the texts as somehow saying something other than what they seem to be saying. 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: Finally, Milgrom, following one of his students, 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.
Other scholars have suggested alternative approaches to tackling this problem:
Violence or Degradation: Rabbi Steven Greenberg interprets the biblical prohibition of Lev 18:22 as concerned basically with the active partner. The phrase “lyings of a woman” is taken as a reference to sex as an expression of “humiliation and violence.” Following this, Rabbi Greenberg suggests that the verse considers it an abomination for a man to have sex with another man only when it is “for the perverse pleasure of demeaning another man.”
Ménages à Trois: Rabbi David Greenstein suggests that the phrase ואיש אשר ישכב את זכר refers to a man who lies with a woman together with another man (את זכר). 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.
Politics of Reinterpretation
"Returning to Mitzrayim (Parashat Acharei Mot) - Keshet" by Rabbi Rachel Barenblat (2008)
To many queers, verse 22 feels toxic and constricting. That a man lying with a man “as he lies with a woman” is abomination. I can’t connect this all-too-human injunction with the infinite expansiveness of God. Even though I like Rabbi Waskow’s reading (he suggests this text may be read as a prohibition against only those homosexual interactions that involve destructive power dynamics, or as a prohibition against sexuality conducted in ways that involve closing one’s eyes to who one’s sexual partner truly is) it feels to me like an equivocation, a way of selectively rereading the text to make it palatable. Maybe this text just isn’t palatable, and we should let it go, like we’ve let go of many of the other outmoded prohibitions in Leviticus. Maybe this text no longer reflects us, if it ever truly did.
(כב) בֶּן בַּג בַּג אוֹמֵר, הֲפֹךְ בָּהּ וַהֲפֹךְ בָּהּ, דְּכֹלָּא בָהּ. וּבָהּ תֶּחֱזֵי, וְסִיב וּבְלֵה בָהּ, וּמִנַּהּ לֹא תָזוּעַ, שֶׁאֵין לְךָ מִדָּה טוֹבָה הֵימֶנָּה:
Ben Bag Bag said: Turn it over, and [again] turn it over, for everything is in it. And look into it; And become gray and old in it; And do not move away from it, for you have no better portion than it.
Loving Our Own Bones: Disability Wisdom and the Spiritual Subversiveness of Knowing Ourselves Whole by Rabbi Dr. Julia Watts Belser, pg. 21-22 (2023)
Sometimes I believe [Ben Bag Bag]. But sometimes I am haunted by the enormity of absence, by a loneliness within the sea of Talmud, by the palpable weight of all the voices, all the worlds that are not there. Every time I name that grief, someone tries to tell me how to solve the problem Someone always jumps in to rescue the text, to explain all the ways that Torah and tradition can be read as kind of just or good. But those efforts to rescue the text leave the authority of the text in place. They reinscribe the power of text as the true arbiter of worth and value. That, I will not do…. If we cannot confront the violence, if we cannot come to the edge, look into the abyss, and feel the loss that is there, the anger, the grief, the rage––then we will end up doing harm, most likely wrapped in pious good intentions.
As a passionate queer Jewish feminist, as a proud disabled Jew, as a white person committed to disrupting white supremacy and all the interlocked structures of inequality that drive our world and ways of being, I will not try to paper over the times that text and tradition have let me down. But I also won’t assume that there is nothing here for me. I claim this tradition and am claimed by it. I shape it and am shaped by it. I child hold it close, and am held.
Ending with Our Own Torah
1) Return to that moment when you felt, read, heard, or witnessed something hurtful and later reinterpreted it. Why did you reinterpret it? Do you think reinterpreting it was necessary? How do you feel when you think about that moment now?
2) Return to thinking about interpreting something or someone generously. Is there a limit to the generosity? If so, how can one identify the limit? What could one do if they have reached that limit?