Conservative Judaism at the crossroads
Nov. 30th, 2006 02:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thedarkagesThe Forward reports that the vote on ordination of gay clergy and legitimization of same-sex unions comes next week. From what I can see, the prognosis does not look good for the proponents. The Committee on Jewish Law and Standards first postponed the vote until after gay-friendly decisors had left the panel, then used parliamentary procedure to marginalize gay-friendly opinions.
The question of how to reconcile Torah values and homosexuality is, to put it mildly, vexed. It has been the subject of endless and acrimonious debate on Jewish newsgroups for as long as I've been reading USENET. The text itself states that "man lying with man as he would with a woman" is an "abomination". That pejorative is applied to only three other acts in the Bible, including child-sacrifice and idolatry.
The history of how this text has been finessed in the rabbinic literature could take up a whole book, and probably has. Some people have argued that since the text says nothing about women, lesbianism is AOK. Other people have argued that women are included in the ban by analogy. And, still others have argued that the proscription extends only to anal sex between men. There have even been opinions that, like the laws concerning animal sacrifice and the Temple, the chapter-and-verse on homosexuality does not apply to modern Jews. For the fine print, go to Google Groups and search soc.culture.jewish.moderated for "homosexuality."
I think that, in a movement that condones wholesale violations of the dietary laws, Sabbath laws, and laws against intermarriage, one can hardly exclude gays and lesbians. The Conservative movement, of which I am a proud part, is essentially post-halachic. It's time to admit it, and leave the homophobia to the Orthodox.
The question of how to reconcile Torah values and homosexuality is, to put it mildly, vexed. It has been the subject of endless and acrimonious debate on Jewish newsgroups for as long as I've been reading USENET. The text itself states that "man lying with man as he would with a woman" is an "abomination". That pejorative is applied to only three other acts in the Bible, including child-sacrifice and idolatry.
The history of how this text has been finessed in the rabbinic literature could take up a whole book, and probably has. Some people have argued that since the text says nothing about women, lesbianism is AOK. Other people have argued that women are included in the ban by analogy. And, still others have argued that the proscription extends only to anal sex between men. There have even been opinions that, like the laws concerning animal sacrifice and the Temple, the chapter-and-verse on homosexuality does not apply to modern Jews. For the fine print, go to Google Groups and search soc.culture.jewish.moderated for "homosexuality."
I think that, in a movement that condones wholesale violations of the dietary laws, Sabbath laws, and laws against intermarriage, one can hardly exclude gays and lesbians. The Conservative movement, of which I am a proud part, is essentially post-halachic. It's time to admit it, and leave the homophobia to the Orthodox.
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Date: 2006-12-01 02:22 am (UTC)The Fourth Abomination
Date: 2006-12-02 12:45 am (UTC)another marriage to another man.
The concordance actually lists five entries for toeivah ("abomination"). After discovering this, I had a vague memory that the fifth one was eating the flesh of an unkosher kind of seagull, but I was wrong.
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Date: 2006-12-01 03:07 pm (UTC)Meanwhile, the Reformiot are considering the possibility that maybe it's not such a good idea to serve shrimp cocktail at the Sisterhood dinner. Next thing you know they'll observe the second day of Rosh Hashanah.