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| Gay Pride Parade in Tel Aviv, 2010 |
We have a double portion
this week: Acharei Mot/Kedoshim, Leviticus,
chapters 16 through 20. Double portions
are used to make sure the lectionary begins and ends on Simchat Torah, since
the number of weeks in a Jewish year varies.
They’re also used, as in this case, to get diaspora and Israeli
communities in synch when an extra day of a festival outside Israel puts more
traditionalist diaspora communities behind our Israeli cousins in the reading
cycle. In Acharei Mot we find the well-known passage detailing specifically
forbidden sexual practices. Prefacing
the list, Leviticus, chapter 18 verse 3 admonishes: “Do not perform the
practice of the land of Egypt in which you dwelled; and do not perform the
practice of the land of Canaan to which I bring you, and do not follow their
traditions.” Continuing one’s reading of
the chapter, one finds a litany of 14 unacceptable sexual unions. One is not
permitted to “uncover the nakedness” of one’s mother, one’s father’s wife,
one’s sister, and so on.
Then we reach verse 22,
which states: “You shall not lie with a man as one lies with a woman, it is an abomination
(Hebrew: to’eva).” The term to’eva/abomination does not
appear earlier in the chapter, to describe all the other forbidden sexual
unions. So what is the distinct
connotation of the word to’eva? It is that this – male homosexual
behavior or perhaps some specific behavior – is singled out for particular condemnation The Torah sees this as worthy of singling out
in a list of forbidden acts that many of us, at least up to verse 21, would
think unnatural. I don’t think many of you
reading this would argue that it isn’t unnatural on some level to have sexual
relations with one’s father, one’s mother or step-mother, one’s sister, etc.
Unnatural or not, the
chapter in its outset clearly states that these were acts characteristic of the
pagans among whom our people lived in Egypt and Canaan. Implied by their
inclusion of the list is that they were acts that were, if not common then at
least known among the Israelite people; had such acts not had an attraction so
that the people engaged in them, it would not have been necessary to admonish
against them! We don’t know how widespread these practices were among the
Israelites. Does the attachment of the pejorative ‘abomination’ to male
homosexual acts, imply that these were particularly attractive to the
people?
I can’t answer this
question with any degree of certainty, but in that the best, educated guess
today is that less than two percent of the adult population in the USA define
themselves as homosexual, the best guess is that homosexual proclivities were
not significantly more widespread then. What I do know is that the Torah is all about
boundaries. Evidence outside the Torah
informs us that there were few, if any boundaries in pagan society. Standards on any given issue were that which
were proclaimed by the cultic and temporal leaders, by those who wielded power
of various sorts. We find an example of
the last in the fifth chapter of Exodus, where the Pharaoh, peeved by Moses and
his stubborn insistence that he “let my people go,” (imagine that!) demands
that his taskmasters stop providing the Israelites with straw yet uphold the daily
quota of bricks to be made. In Pagan
society, where there is no rule of law based on a higher power, people’s
day-to-day lot depends on the capriciousness of whoever rules.
I want to be clear that,
when I write disparagingly of ‘pagan’ society I’m not referring to a
contemporary religious phenomenon known as ‘Neo-paganism’ as well as by various other
names: Wicca, Earth-centered Religion,
and probably others. In my experience,
this phenomenon is more a liberal reaction against more-traditionalist forms of
Christianity, than anything else. But
that’s another sermon for another day…
So the text repeatedly
admonishes against the practices of the Egyptians and the Canaanites, this
including some homosexual act that males engaged in, presumably sodomy. Those who advocate strongly for removal of
social liabilities from GLBTQ people – specifically of recent, the state’s
refusal to sanction same sex unions on the same basis of male-female marriage –
often assert that Leviticus 18.22 represents the beginning of discrimination
against homosexual people. Even Jewish religious
leaders who would advocate strongly for the importance of a deeply spiritual
practice of Judaism, often strongly reject this verse. In a recent, generally thoughtful piece in CCAR Journal: The Reform Jewish Quarterly, Rabbi
Jeffrey Brown (a 2005 ordinee of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of
Religion) stated that he was “…cognizant of…the tragic and painful history
surrounding Leviticus 18.22 and its problematic and complicated impact on
Western and Jewish sexuality.” But Brown
is not only of a mind to reject this one verse among the Torah’s many
individual verses. He advocates “preaching
against the text,” that is, “actively asserting that the Torah is…wrong.” My purpose here is not to register a strong
complain against Rabbi Brown as an individual; I’m highlighting his words here
because of their recent publication and because I believe he has articulated
very clearly a philosophical attitude toward the Torah held by many, if not
most of my Reform rabbinical colleagues today.
As the astute reader has
no doubt already surmised, my own approach to Torah is somewhat different. If one upholds the words of the Torah only
where one agrees with them, and dismisses as “wrong” any verse with which one
disagrees for whatever reason, then the Torah is practically meaningless. If so, if we wish to subject the Torah in
each instance to the test of what we already believe to be true according to
whatever may be the current sensibility, then perhaps we should cease referring
to our congregations as ‘temples’ or ‘synagogues,’ and acknowledge that they
are primarily Jewish ‘social clubs.’
If it is true, as Tamar
Cohn Eskenazi and Andrea L Weiss assert in The
Torah: A Women’s Commentary, that “in
the early 21st century, (Leviticus 18.22) is one of the most
misinterpreted, abused, and decontextualized verses in the Torah,” then to me
the antidote is to cease misinterpreting,
abusing, and decontextualizing this verse, and any other verse about which it
might be said; the antidote is not to reject the Torah's authority.
For the record, I agree
that this verse, inasmuch as may be used in certain circles to marginalize
GLBTQ people in this day and age, is being misinterpreted and
decontextualized. (“Abused” is too
strong a word for me in this context.) In
order to understand any passage in
the Torah, whether we might disagree with it or not, we have to first
take into account the circumstances of the people to whom the passage was
written. Imagine, then, a people in
transition: a people leaving one pagan
society and going through a phase of hardship in the desert as their leader
attempts to forge them into a nation, a people ready to rule themselves in a
new land, a land where other pagans will surround them, under the sovereignty
of their God. Although there was
hardship enough in Egypt, there was also incredible wealth, an extremely
vibrant society with many exciting attractions and diversions. Don’t think of the ‘slavery’ of the
Israelites in Egypt in terms of the slavery of black Africans in the American
south through the second half of the 19th century. Think, rather of the lot of the Israelites in
Egypt as more analogous to the condition of coal miners in West Virginia before
an unionization (“St. Peter don’t you
call me ‘cause I can’t go/I owe my soul to the company store.”) In this context, the slavery in Egypt begins
to look more like an extended servitude, like consignment to a permanent
underclass. If so, then it is easier for
the contemporary reader to understand the Israelites’ periodic nostalgia for
Egypt during their wanderings in the desert.
Feeling constricted in their very austere present circumstances, they
are remembering the attractions that they enjoyed, even as “slaves,” in Egypt.
The Wisdom of the Ages seems to bear this up; in many Passover Haggadot, we find commentary defining Mitzrayim not only as Egypt, the
physical place, but also as a place of narrowness where our potentials cannot
be realized.
So where does this leave
us with regard to Leviticus 18.22? Think
of the sexual boundaries prescribed through verse 21 as reflecting that there
were no accepted boundaries in ancient Egypt.
For the good of a society where families would be strong and family
relationships would be meaningful, it was necessary to draw certain boundaries
around sexual behavior. And where the
Torah refers to specific behaviors, such as sodomy, with the pejorative to’eva/abomination, think of the
proscription as having to do primarily with the cultic practices of the pagan sects
which form the social norms of the place.
Expressed another way, Leviticus 18.22 is almost certainly not about
sexual orientation, a concept that could not have been known or understood by
the ancients. It is not about loving
relationships between those of the same sex.
In that sense, it has not much to do with the normalization of GLBTQ people within our communities that are being advocated in the
early 21st century of the Common Era. Rather, it is about the specific cultic
practices, about which we have ample knowledge, within the pagan temples of
Egypt and Canaan.
Now there are other
verses in the Torah which can be read as declaring the monogamous, male-female
relationship as the ideal building block of a healthy family and society, but
they don’t hit one with the same force as Leviticus 18.22 and should be dealt
with as we encounter them in the text - lest we take them out of context. For the time being, let’s try to understand
and contextualize the verse in question, in an authentic way. Let’s see it as arguing against attraction
for the cultic practices of the pagans of the world surrounding the ancient
Israelites.
If we read this passage
of Torah in this way, then we can honestly ask ourselves to what extent we are
attracted to the paganism of our own age, and how much that attraction dilutes
our spiritual life in the context of Jewish Tradition. When I say “paganism of our age,” don't think of the aforementioned Neo-paganism. Rather, think of materialism
and the enthroning of the self at the expense of the values of family,
community and society. Just as the
ancient Israelites needed to be reminded that the pagan gods of Egypt and
Canaan were powerless to save them and forge them into a people living in the
Image of God, we sometimes need to be reminded that our ‘pagan’ gods cannot save us and enable us to live in God’s
image.
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