Lech L'cha: Going Forward

Last night I attended a vigil in Loring Park in solidarity with students who have been bullied or who are being bullied because of their actual or perceived sexuality or gender identities. This week, I heard a GLBTQ leader's interview on public radio where she said that there aren't all of a sudden more cases of bullying, but that we are both paying more attention and that the cases are more severe than they have been. As I've recently posted here, Dan Savage's It Gets Better Project is encouraging teens who are being bullied to know that things won't always be like this. And I've heard from friends, colleagues, congregants, and others that Dan Savage's project falls short of what we need. Telling teens that it gets better is telling them to wait it out. But as one of the speakers last night at the vigil pointed out, we need to be telling teens, "It gets better now." We need to be doing the work to make this world safer for our children.

Then, this morning, I read an email from a congregant that included Rabbi Shmuley Boteach's post opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal, My Jewish Perspective on Homosexuality. In it, Boteach begins strongly by stating that when the Bible uses the word תועבה (to'evah), meaning abomination, in regards to sex between two men, it is important to note that there are over 120 other instances where this word is used and that a sexual act between two men is no worse than any of these other instances, according to the Hebrew Bible.

As I read the rest of Boteach's editorial, I felt as though I was on an emotional roller coaster... sudden ups and downs, twists and turns. At moments I thought, “Whoo-hoo! A ‘right wing’ religious leader who gets it!” and then all of a sudden, I found myself saying, “But you’re still saying homosexuality is a sin!”

I really appreciated his putting abomination in context. And I love that he says, “You have 611 commandments left. That should keep you busy. Now, go create a kosher home,” reminding us that none of us can actually follow all of the commandments, but at the same time I’m troubled by the idea that he disqualifies two commandments with his statement, the prohibition against men lying with one another and one commanding us to bear children. The commandment in Genesis is not, “Marry a woman and be fruitful and multiply.” It is simply “Be fruitful and multiply.” It doesn’t tell us with whom. And he doesn’t even begin to address, in the midst of his concern about divorces and children growing up in multiple homes, all of the children who are not growing up in stable homes at all, whether they are in orphanages or foster homes, who could be the well-loved children of gay and lesbian couples. Talmud (Sanhedrin 19b) teaches us that someone who teaches Torah to a child is considered as if he had produced that child. Even the Talmud understands that some people will “be fruitful and multiply” through non-conventional means.

I love that he implies, in his remarks about Pat Robertson, that homosexuality just isn’t big enough of a deal to exclude people from our communities. But nonetheless, he still labels homosexuality as a sin, He says it is a religious sin, one we commit against God, not a moral one, one we commit against our fellow human beings.

It's a a good start that had me hoping he’d done better. Judaism changes. It always has. It changed when Mahlah, Noa, Hoglah, Milcah and Tirzah, Zelophehad's daughters challenged the laws of inheritance and insisted that in spite of the fact that they had no brother, their father's property should not leave their family; they should be allowed to inherit. It happened when the rabbis examined the text of the wayward and defiant son whom the Torah commands to have stoned to death (Deuteronomy 21:18), and they conclude that never has such a son existed and never will he. Judaism changes.

But I also hold the value that the Reform rabbis of 1885 held when they wrote their Declaration of Principles, the Pittsburgh Platform of 1885:

We hold that the modern discoveries of scientific researches in the domain of nature and history are not antagonistic to the doctrines of Judaism, the Bible reflecting the primitive ideas of its own age, and at times clothing its conception of divine Providence and Justice dealing with men in miraculous narratives.

So, when we look at this week's Torah portion, Lech L'cha, and we see Abraham setting out from his father's house, and we consider the midrash from Genesis Rabbah 28:13, we know that we have to move beyond what we have always done when what we have always done is no longer enough. In the Torah portion, Abraham sets out for a new life. In the midrash, we learn that his father was an idol maker. One day, when left to tend the shop for his father, Abraham smashed all of the idols but one, the largest one, with a stick and then placed the stick in the largest idol's hand. When his father returned and asked him what he'd done, Abraham blamed the largest idol, saying it was jealous of the other ones. When his father told him that was impossible, Abraham asked why his father would worship something without knowledge or power. And so, he set out on his own.

When texts and interpretations hinder our relationships with one another and with God, it is time not to rationalize them or to cast them aside as inaccessible, as Boteach claims by telling gay and lesbian Jews that there are still 611 commandments they can follow, but rather to reinvent them, grapple with them, and understand them in the modern world which God has created. It's not enough to say, "It's still a sin, but God will deal with that." God gave us Torah and it is our responsibility to wrestle with it and make sure no one is left out.