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Judaism and homosexuality

CMike

Well-Known Member
Sure. And the passage in Shmot states that if someone takes out your eye, you take their eye out. And the passage in Vayikra states that every seven years, all debts are cancelled-- end of story. And then again in Shmot it says a mechalel shabbos is stoned to death.

Except that Our Rabbis tell us nobody's eye gets put out, and at the end of seven years, you transfer your debts to the beis din, and that to put a mechalel shabbos to death you need two eyewitnesses with independently matching accounts, who gave hatra'ah to the mechalel and heard him verbally reject the warning, and it requires a verdict of precisely one less than the total number of judges in a court of between 23 and 71. All of which seem to go against the pshat of what the passages state.

The Rabbanim must have been like Jews for Jesus, changing the meaning of Torah like that!

Nice try.

The Torah does say that the sages can clarify passages and they have Torah authority behind them.

However, you aren't one of those sages.

An eye for an eye means money compensation because right after it, it talks about damages from animals, and it speaks about money compensation. That's a way of learning. That money compensation also refers to an eye for an eye.

However, just because the Torah doesn't fit into a radical left wing agenda, doesn't mean it can be legitimatelly twisted around to make it fit.
 

Levite

Higher and Higher
Nice try.

The Torah does say that the sages can clarify passages and they have Torah authority behind them.

However, you aren't one of those sages.

An eye for an eye means money compensation because right after it, it talks about damages from animals, and it speaks about money compensation. That's a way of learning. That money compensation also refers to an eye for an eye.

However, just because the Torah doesn't fit into a radical left wing agenda, doesn't mean it can be legitimatelly twisted around to make it fit.


I never claimed the power of the Rabbanim. I specifically noted that when I said there were other ways to interpret those verses, those were ways I would use or advocate if I had the power of the Rabbanim, which I don't.

However, the possibility for other interpretations exists. You are portraying the verses as absolute, and the Rabbanim teach us that no verse in Torah has only one meaning.

What I do propose to do in making a takkanah to cease using those two verses for practical halachah until the moshiach comes may be a very very radical move, but it does theoretically fall within the scope of authority that post-Talmudic rabbis have. You may not like that, or agree with what is involved, but it does not change the fact that rabbis have often used takkanot to effect radical changes, and not just during the time of the Rabbanim.

This is simply a matter of you not happening to like who is doing the psak halachah and why. If it were some charedi rav "twisting around" the Torah to fit their radical right wing agenda, you'd probably say it was halachah mi-Sinai, or that the rav had ruach hakodesh or da'as Torah or something.
 

RabbiO

הרב יונה בן זכריה
Nice try.

The Torah does say that the sages can clarify passages and they have Torah authority behind them.

However, you aren't one of those sages.

An eye for an eye means money compensation because right after it, it talks about damages from animals, and it speaks about money compensation. That's a way of learning. That money compensation also refers to an eye for an eye.

However, just because the Torah doesn't fit into a radical left wing agenda, doesn't mean it can be legitimatelly twisted around to make it fit.

Presumably you are referring to:
ובאת אל הכהנים הלוים ואל השפט אשר יהיה בימים ההם ודרשת והגידו לך את דבר המשפט
and what follows.

Which brings us back yet again to the oven at Aknai and, because it popped up in my mind, Sefer haChinuch.

And I would note that everything surrounding the verse in Vayikra chapter 20 regarding some sort of same sex activity, both before and after, and with the exception of the verses dealing with barnyard friends, all deal with prohibited family relationships. Hmm, what do you make of that?

As for your preoccupation with radical left wing agendas, I think your paranoia is beginning to show. Of course, I'm not a doctor nor do I play one on TV so feel free to ignore this last observation.
 
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Levite

Higher and Higher
As for your preoccupation with radical left wing agendas, I think your paranoia is beginning to show. Of course, I'm not a doctor nor do I play one on TV so feel free to ignore this last observation.

Pretty sure he would've ignored it anyway....
 

TheKnight

Guardian of Life
Dan -

Thank you for bringing the question from the Orthodox DIR to the more general Judaism
DIR.

As you know I am not Orthodox and, despite my friend Avi's belief that I am a closet Conservative, I am not Conservative either.

The last thing I posted on the other thread was in response to your noting that the Conservative position was different than the Orthodox. Because it appeared to me that your knowledge of the Conservative position was based solely on a brief comment by a Conservative rabbi, and because it appeared to me that CMike's position was a knee jerk reaction of if it's not Orthodox, feh!, I thought it might be useful to provide the following document from 2006.

http://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/si...er_dignity.pdf

Homosexuality, Human Dignity & Halakhah: A Combined Responsum For The Committee On Jewish Law And Standards

My own position is - take note of this, Avi - more liberal and I will address that a little ways down the road.

I found it to be an interesting read (I did skim a lot of it). I cannot say that I agree 100% with the conclusions.

1. I think an argument can be made that the verses do not blanketly prohibit anal sex between men.

2. I also believe that there is away to justify treating a homosexual relationship with the same level of sanctity as a heterosexual relationship. Although I suppose it does depend on how you readGenesis 2.

3. I have no issues with this conclusion except I feel that to reach it you don't need the first two, or any of the other conclusions for that matter.

4. See point 2.

Interestingly, I listened to an audio lecture by Rabbi Dovid Gottlieb on this topic a few years back. He doesn't talk about whether or not homosexual conduct is permissible, but does discuss how homosexuals should be treated within Jewish communities. It's a pretty good lecture IMO.
 

TheKnight

Guardian of Life
While I admire the Dorff-Nevins-Reisner teshuvah for its scholarship (Dorff and Nevins both having been among my teachers), my primary objection to it is that it does not go far enough. I have been trying to assemble a bet din in order to issue a takkanah l'akor davar min ha-torah (what essentially amounts to a rabbinic injunction rendering the two verses from which we derive our historic prohibitions of homosexual acts incapable of usage for practical halachah), such a takkanah to be of limited duration (1000 years or until the moshiach comes, whichever is first). I have several rabbis willing to join me for a bet din, but I am trying to get 200 rabbis total to add their names to the takkanah, which would then give it extreme reach and latitude.

Rav Dorff's solution not only still renders impermissible a central facet of gay male sexual relations, but it has to run itself around in circles to even get that far.

I am much more inclined to simply say that, given that it is theologically inconceivable that God would create ten percent of the human race to be either doomed to inevitable sin or doomed to inevitable wretchedness and solitude, we can only conclude that whatever the original meaning of those two verses in Vayikra, it cannot be a universal ban on homosexuality. But since there have been no reliable precedents in the tradition for interpreting it otherwise, we can only assume that we do not know how to interpret it correctly, and so must wait for Eliyahu ha-Navi to come and show us how those verses are to be understood in such a way that gay and lesbian Jews are able to have full lives and sanctified relationships.

Gay and lesbian Jews have the right to live their lives as God made them. And, even if we set aside the obvious ethical motivations for relieving their suffering, we are not in a position to be turning away people who want to live Jewish lives, observing mitzvot and raising Jewish children, simply because we are unwilling to act. This is a classic example of Eit la-asot l'Hashem, hefiru toratechah ("A time to act for God, to abrogate the Torah") as the Gemara brings to support various radical changes that have been necessary, and as several of our great sages have noted as a principle for doing so in exigent circumstances.

I have done gay and lesbian weddings, and would gladly do so again-- but I will not use kiddushin and a classic ketubah for a gay/lesbian weddding, since the halachah of kiddushin is simply not constructed in such a way that men or women can acquire one another in that fashion. I will only marry gay couples using an alternative methodology-- however, to be fair, I also don't approve of men acquiring women using kiddushin, either, and always recommend to the straight couples that I marry that they use the Brit Ahuvim marriage created by Rabbi Rachel Adler and modified by her son Rabbi Amitai Adler. I only marry straight couples using kiddushin if they insist on it.

:clap
 

CMike

Well-Known Member
There is something really bad if not sinister to try and change the Torah to make it fit your beliefs rather than the other way around.

Our mission as jews is to do what the Torah says, not to tell the Torah what it should say to make it more "stylish" and "hip".
 

metis

aged ecumenical anthropologist
There is something really bad if not sinister to try and change the Torah to make it fit your beliefs rather than the other way around.

Our mission as jews is to do what the Torah says, not to tell the Torah what it should say to make it more "stylish" and "hip".

But that largely depends on how one views Torah, especially in regards to the issues of "divine inspiration" and "inerrancy".
 

CMike

Well-Known Member
But that largely depends on how one views Torah, especially in regards to the issues of "divine inspiration" and "inerrancy".

That's true.

That's why the left of judaism has very little in common with the mainstream/right of judaism.

They create their own law to be whatever they want it to be. That only leads to bad things.
 

metis

aged ecumenical anthropologist
That's true.

That's why the left of judaism has very little in common with the mainstream/right of judaism.

Well, I do believe we have a lot in common, but certainly there are differences of opinion, which is all fine and dandy. One thing I especially learned in my 36 years of teaching is never compare brothers and sisters because they especially don't like to be told that they look somewhat alike or have similar personalities.

As for me, I'd rather more deal with our similarities while at the same time recognizing our differences and not seeing these differences as somehow being "bad". My wife and I have been married for 47 years, and yet we are very different people that often disagree with each other. It's how we deal with disagreement that's most important.
 

CMike

Well-Known Member
Well, I do believe we have a lot in common, but certainly there are differences of opinion, which is all fine and dandy. One thing I especially learned in my 36 years of teaching is never compare brothers and sisters because they especially don't like to be told that they look somewhat alike or have similar personalities.

As for me, I'd rather more deal with our similarities while at the same time recognizing our differences and not seeing these differences as somehow being "bad". My wife and I have been married for 47 years, and yet we are very different people that often disagree with each other. It's how we deal with disagreement that's most important.

I like bagels, cream cheese, and lox, what about you?
 

metis

aged ecumenical anthropologist
Absolutely.

I can go for a good falafel.

Oh, another one of my favorites-- as I drool all over my computer. Falafel with a fatoush salad is hard to beat. Remember La Shish in our area? Great food-- bad owners.
 

CMike

Well-Known Member
Yep. Now my wife and I go about once every two weeks to a Lebanese place owned by Christians-- I learned my lesson.

LOL there is no way I'm going to knowingly give my money to an terrorist supporter.
 

metis

aged ecumenical anthropologist
LOL there is no way I'm going to knowingly give my money to an terrorist supporter.

At the time we obviously didn't know the owner was funneling money to Hezbollah, and it was quite a shock when the State Department began legal action against him. However, he and his son left the country to go back to Lebanon and has never returned, and his restaurants were confiscated.
 

metis

aged ecumenical anthropologist
When are you going to visit my synagogue?

Never been in a Chabad synagogue, although as you know I've been over at the Friendship Circle numerous times since two of my grandkids did volunteer work there, and talked with some who go to your shul. And, of all places, I also had some good discussion at a Chabad house in Florence, Italy.

However, I'll be frank with you-- if I told my wife I was meeting someone who I've met on-line, my life could be in jeopardy-- she's Sicilian, you know.;) Two of her cousins left their wives to live with someone they met on-line, and my wife hates any and all of the social media found here, and I promised her years ago I would never under any circumstances meet with someone whom I only know on the internet.

Maybe I could sneak in incognito?
 
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