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The Emerging Torah of Same-Sex Sexuality
From a Jewish standpoint, the question would have to be whether a gay man or woman, involved in a sexual relationship that if it were heterosexual would be celebrated by the entire Jewish people, can be a good candidate for, let's say, Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, Rabbi of Temple Emanuel in New York City, or Chief Rabbi of Great Britain -- if he or she were qualified in all other ways. (I think those are the nearest posts we have to being Episcopal Bishop of Los Angeles.)
And from a Jewish standpoint, the only texts that might make it a problem are of course not from Saint Paul but from Leviticus, condemning the act of a "male lying with a male as with a woman" as an abomination subject to the death penalty.
Why?
The sexual ethic of Levitical Judaism was rooted in a broader biblical sexual ethic that professed three basic rules for proper sexual ethics:
1. Have as many children as possible. Gen. I: 28: "Be fruitful, multiply, fill up the earth, and subdue it."
2. Men were to be in charge. Genesis 3: 16, where God says to Eve, "Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you."
3. Sex was delightful and sacred. (Song of Songs, throughout.) Celibacy was almost unheard of, and almost always strongly discouraged.
How did these affect attitudes toward homosexuality?
"Be fruitful and multiply, fill up the earth and subdue it" worked against homosexuality, since having children was presumably impossible.
What were the effects of "He shall rule over you"? If a man had to be in charge in a sexual relationship, there was no way to deal with a relationship of two men. Neither one could be subordinated -- "as with a woman." Such a relationship would blow out all the circuits. Conversely, a relationship between two "subordinate" women would not even turn the power on -- and so it was ignored in biblical tradition.
Is this statement of male supremacy as one of the consequences of Eden intended by Torah to persist forever? No more than the twin statement (Gen. 3: 17-19) that human beings (or at least men) shall "toil in the sweat of their brow," wringing a livelihood from a hostile earth. Do we think Torah commands us to eschew the machines that make our labor easier?
Like this statement about unremitting toil, and like "Be fruitful and multiply," the overlordship of men was not an edict to be obeyed but the description of a sad oncoming history -- the disastrous result of trying to gobble up all the available abundance of the Garden when God -- Reality -- had warned us to set limits on how much we consumed. Torah wants us, implores us, to transcend that mistake and learn to live in love with the earth, not gobbling it. Or each other.
So I am suggesting that Torah looks forward to its own transformation. Especially about the intertwined issues of our sexual relations with each other and our erotic relationships with the earth. Just as Maimonides said we had outgrown the childish need for animal sacrifices, so we can try to outgrow the adolescent need for male domination and for domination of the earth.
There is wise and powerful teaching in the passage of Talmud that cautions against raising goats and sheep in the Land of Israel. Since our forebears Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rivkah, did precisely that, how could the Talmud have the chutzpah to oppose it?
The Rabbis know the world had changed. They knew that the numbers of goats and sheep, and of the human population, would denude and ruin the land if these animals were bred there.
The world had changed, and so did Jewish holy practice.
So then we must ask ourselves, as the Rabbis of the Talmud understood that in their new world they must oppose raising sheep and goats as their forebears did, what must we change in our new world?
In a world filled and subdued by the human race, multiplying our numbers may actually contravene God's intention. In a world where men are not required to be dominant nor women to be subordinate, a relationship of two men or two women need not be either destructive or irrelevant.
So we are evolving past these two rules that underlay the opposition to gay and lesbian relationships and marriages.
The third basic rule -- that sex is delightful and sacred -- still stands. The biblical Song of Songs embodies it, and the Song - far from being outdated -- may point beyond the Eden of the past, of a childish human race, past our history of toil and hierarchy, toward an Eden of the Future. "Eden for grown-ups," for a grown-up human race and for newly mature individual human beings.
In the Song, bodies are no longer shameful as they were after the mistake of Eden; the earth is playful, not our enemy; and women and men are equal in desire and in power. And God is never named -- no longer Papa/Mama as in Eden, giving orders, but inherent in the very process of life.
Though the drama of the Song is on its face heterosexual, it describes the kind of sensual pleasure beyond the rules that has characterized some aspects of gay and lesbian desire, especially because marriage was forbidden.
So we now have the opportunity to open heterosexual relationships and marriages to the kind of joy the Song embodies, while opening gay and lesbian life to the more planful structure that marriage makes possible.
Love and marriage are present in the Song, suffused with joy and pleasure rather than with rigidity and rules. For millennia, Jews have prided ourselves on the worth of marriage as a carrier of holiness and community. Now we can expand the circles in which marriage -- a new kind of marriage -- is possible.
From a spiritual as well as a legal standpoint, the secular courts of the United States, Canada, and several European countries have begun opening the way to enhancing, not destroying, marriage. They have opened the gates; but only spiritual communities can enter.
So what shall we do today, in a generation when the earth is full, over-full, of human beings and our numbers are helping wreck our planet ? --
For today the sheer number of humans is putting impossible burdens on our global ecosystem and plunging into extinction thousands of the species that God commands in the story of the Flood we must not allow to die.
So this biblical injunction to be fruitful and multiply arithmetically, biologically, has been accomplished.
Today we need to encourage, not forbid, forms of sexuality that avoid biological multiplication. We might now read the command as teaching us to be fruitful and expansive emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually rather than biologically.
Modernity has transformed the world we live in. The Modernity that eases our work and makes women and men equal and brings the human race to fill up and subdue the earth may well be what God intended as a step forward in the maturation of humanity.
But that kind of maturity is not enough. God does not, I think, want us to stick with rules for adolescence when we have come to wield the power of adults. Like most maturations, this one brings an advance in our abilities -- and also new problems. Like the danger that our continuing to enforce immature rules as we wield adult tools will destroy the planet that nurtures us.
I would be glad to welcome as a colleague a lesbian Chief Rabbi of Great Britain -- and to embrace as a fellow-seeker of the Holy One a gay Episcopal Bishop of Los Angeles.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Rabbi Arthur Waskow, director, The Shalom Center; co-author, The Tent of Abraham; author of Godwrestling -- Round 2, Down-to-Earth Judaism, and a dozen other books on Jewish thought and practice, as well as books on U.S. public policy. The Shalom Center voices a new prophetic agenda in Jewish, multi-religious, and American life.
By
Arthur Waskow
|
August 4, 2009; 2:13 PM ET
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Posted by: Paganplace | August 12, 2009 3:33 PM
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The Torah concerns itself with the rape of a man by another man, not with homosexuality as we know it. Homosexuality as a construct did not exist until the nineteenth century.
Male-on-male rape was a favorite practice of the region, usually of a weaker man, e.g., a soldier from a vanquished army, by a more powerful, in this example a victor.See "Contending of Horus and Seth" (use google) for this sort of rape.
It was this that the Tanakh was at pains to end.
Posted by: Farnaz1Mansouri1 | August 7, 2009 9:57 PM
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What a wonderful piece!!
Recognition of a faith as being dynamic and adaptive is what keeps it alive.
The unyielding and literal interpretations of a stagnant philosophy will be the undoing of other religions.
Posted by: trambusto | August 7, 2009 7:49 AM
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A bit of pre-Torah Egyptian Culture:
http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:j-dVBrm9q0YJ:proteus.brown.edu/fairburn/admin/download.html%3Fattachid%3D8701319+faulkner+book+of+dead+spell+125&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
I have not copulated.8
8. Variant: "I have not copulated with a boy."
Posted by: macnietspingal1 | August 5, 2009 12:32 PM
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Even if you say that the Torah needs to be amended, who is to decide which amendments are OK and which are not? What about adultery? Many American politicians go in for that. Should we reinterpret the Torah so that adultery is OK? What about bearing false witness?
The trouble with hanging on to a scripture at the same time as changing it is that it is not clear which path to follow when making the changes.
This is especially important since it looks like you are responding to American liberal culture. And that culture is fine as far as it goes, but maybe it isn't the word of God. What do you think?
Posted by: rohitcuny | August 5, 2009 10:28 AM
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Sorry about the last sentence. It should have read:
"Doesn't this imply that the "adult rule" would be the dismissing of the marriage requirement at all since just desire to be together, the pure pleasure as written in the Song of Solomon is the purpose of life? Humans, I guess, progress from knowing nothing and wanting everything to reaching a final, mature state of knowing everything and wanting everything."
Posted by: safiyah111 | August 5, 2009 9:08 AM
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Rabbi,
You have made the case that the Torah anticipates that it will be changed based on the changing needs of the society that is living with it yet you never touch on what inspired the writers of the Torah in the first place and if that entity is continuing to inspire these changes or is Man essentially on his own after the first inspiration from God?
I am in no position to argue what the Torah says or doesn't say or allow but I can ask you who gives the readers the authority to change even a word of it? Is it from God? Was it at one time but that time has passed leaving the believers with human commentators who have reached a status where they are equals of God where discussion with Him is not only possible but fruitful? Does God continue to guide His creation, Man being a very small and insignificant portion of it or is it without a "governor"?
Having said all of this, is it not a stretch to equate a prohibition against a behavior that makes one of the true joys of life an impossibility with rules in place governing "childhood" and endorsement for the behavior an example of a rule for the "adolescent". Doesn't this imply that what would be an adult rule for be the endorsement of getting rid of the silliness of marriage as the "adult" rule?
Posted by: safiyah111 | August 5, 2009 8:47 AM
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Leviticus refers to rape, not homosexual sex, although I doubt, Rabbi, that you will agree with me.
You are correct about same-sex marriage as my brilliant lesbian rabbi would tell you.
--------------------------------
Rohit,
Don't worry. Nobody is going to force you to marry a man. Your bigger concern should be the Dalit.
Also, as I asked you before, how do you get on at CUNY? If, in fact, you are there.
Posted by: Farnaz1Mansouri1 | August 5, 2009 5:05 AM
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I am so thrilled the Washington Post printed this commentary. I was 64YO when I discovered that "under God" was in the flag pledge. I was horrified. I posted the usual whining about separation of church and state and thought Eisenhower was an idiot. After about 5 years of this, I decided to talk "God" to death. Instead, I discovered that the grapevine I heard all my life "It's all in the Torah" was true. Funny memory. During the Congressional investigation of the reasons for the Iraq Invasion, one Neo-Con said to Sandy Berger: Stop being so Talmudic:) I'm now grateful Eisenhower was so far-sighted.
Posted by: macnietspingal1 | August 4, 2009 11:19 PM
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"God does not, I think, want us to stick with rules for adolescence when we have come to wield the power of adults. Like most maturations, this one brings an advance in our abilities -- and also new problems. Like the danger that our continuing to enforce immature rules as we wield adult tools will destroy the planet that nurtures us."
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I thought that the planet was in danger from too much CO2 being emitted. Who would have thought that it was actually our objection to gay marriage? I assume that God told you that if we legalize gay marriage and have gay rabbis, then we can drive all the SUVs we want, turn up the AC all the way to the top and we will be safe. The North Pole will again freeze up, etc. etc. :)
What about the Israeli settlements in the West Bank? Are they a danger to world peace, or are they fine as long as we have gay marriage? Do you feel that gays are fine but Arabs are a "No No"?
Dear Rabbi, you want to do what is politically correct, you don't really care what the Torah says and the distortion in your science is glaring.
As far as favoring gays is concerned, you are quite justified. Gays are people too and should be treated with respect. But putting opposition to gay marriage on the same boat as global warming, that really takes the cake.
Well, I am not Jewish so I don't really care if you change that faith beyond recognition. Perhaps my Jewish friends will care.
Posted by: rohitcuny | August 4, 2009 3:02 PM
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The comments to this entry are closed.
Now, here's a fine piece exemplifying why I find it a lot more productive (and informative) to speak to Rabbis than Christian clergy.
As for this, Rohitcuny:
"Even if you say that the Torah needs to be amended, who is to decide which amendments are OK and which are not? What about adultery? Many American politicians go in for that. Should we reinterpret the Torah so that adultery is OK? What about bearing false witness?"
Judaism actually has procedures for handling their own holy books. Procedures which the Europeans who saw fit to appropriate the *books* did not also see fit to emulate.
Many of our European ancestors dealt with the perils of written holy words by *not writing things like that down.* The Jews coped with these perils by *a process of constant examination, debate, and adaptation, in a way.*
They most certainly responded to medieval Christian 'conservatism' in this process, and are under no obligation to stop there.
Now, I tend to presume that I, or at least some among my ancestors, in other lives, were among the very thieves that brought you your notion you know the Torah and Talmud (that very sort of commentary and refinement in question, here,) better than Rabbinical scholars do.
Before too many more lifetimes out, people may refer to the writings of Maimonides and who knows who else in the same vein *as* that Talmud.
It's *you* who presume that for something to be a 'Word of God' that it has to pose as something that *stopped* at a point of your choice in the past.
This is impossible. No matter how faithfully you preserve or try to translate a written word, the meaning changes. Cause language isn't a *record,* it's a *living thing,* Fix it in bronze and stone and Lucite if you like, but that won't stop language itself from changing *around* it.
This isn't a bad thing. Just a reality we ignore at our peril.
Also why you're the confused one.