K'doshim 
Thu May 08, 2008 at 21:00:38 PM EDT
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( - promoted by Mik Moore)
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." This quote from A Tale of Two Cities sums up my feelings about parshat K'doshim-it's the best of parshiot (Torah portions), and in some ways the worst. The best, because it encapsulates what it means, to me, to be a Jew: to be committed to a path of holiness involving an interwoven practice of ritual and ethical obligations. The best, because it has at its heart two of the Torah's most powerful instructions: V'ahavta l'reyecha kamocha, "love your neighbor as yourself," and V'ahavta lo kamocha ki gerim hayitem b'eretz Mitzrayim, "You shall love [the stranger] as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt" (Leviticus 19:18, 34). The best, because it contains key practices for living a just life-including instructions for caring for the poor, dealing justly with workers and with the weakest members of society, avoiding corruption, practicing right speech, and cultivating a compassionate heart.
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Fri Apr 27, 2007 at 09:28:38 AM EDT
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On April 24, 1999, six months after the murder of Matthew Shepard, I was in synagogue, about to chant the infamous verse from this week's Torah portion, Leviticus 18:22: "Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; it is an abomination." I suddenly realized that in good conscience, I could not simply chant the words without making any comment. I felt that with my silence, I would join the religious voices that either condemned gays and lesbians or at least passively condoned discrimination against them.
So before chanting the aliya, I made the disclaimer that this verse, without radical reinterpretation, did not necessarily reflect the opinions of the synagogue or its clergy, and should not be used, as it had in the past, to encourage bigotry.
During the eight yearly cycles of the Torah since then, both the secular world and the Jewish world have made progress towards welcoming our GLBTQ friends into the community, but we have much more work to do. Gay marriage is currently legal in Massachusetts, as it is in the Netherlands, Belgium, South Africa, Canada, and Spain, and as many of us suspected, this has not led to the dissolution of any heterosexual marriages.
Civil unions are now legal in several states and in a number of countries. On the other hand, though, a majority of U.S. states have passed constitutional amendments banning gay marriage. The U.S. military still keeps the "don't ask, don't tell" policy that harms both itself and the GLBTQ community. And for eight and a half years since Matthew Shepard was murdered, legislation to make violence to gays a hate crime has been stalled.
As this law is taken up again by the new Congress, there is much we can do, locally, and nationally, to try to influence our communities to be less hateful, and more open and welcoming.
Within the Jewish sphere
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Wed May 03, 2006 at 21:24:13 PM EDT
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It is always difficult to read parshat Acharei Mot, the section of the Torah most famous for the verse, "Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman; it is an abhorrence," (Leviticus 18:22) which has traditionally been understood as a prohibition on male homosexuality. It is even more complicated than usual to read this verse in a year in which the Conservative Movement (with which I am affiliated) has again delayed a vote on reversing the ban on ordaining gay rabbis, and in which the Orthodox Union has signed on to an effort to promote a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman. (On a positive note, the Religious Action Center of the Reform Movement has prioritized equal marriage as one of their top issues).
Much has been said about potential reinterpretations of the offending verse. Some argue that this verse refers only to a particular cultic practice, or only forbids men married to women from having extramarital affairs with other men. (a la Greek practice, as detailed in Plato's Symposium and elsewhere). Others accept a ban on anal sex between men, but refuse to extend this ban to a general prohibition against same sex relationships.
While I support this project of reinterpretation, I will not rehash these discussions. I do, however, encourage you to check out the sources and divrei torah available at the website of Keshet, the student group at the Jewish Theological Seminary that has led the efforts to educate the Conservative Movement (and lots of other people as well) about gay and lesbian issues in halakha and in the Jewish community.
Rather, I want to share with you a painful series of midrashim that appear at the beginning of the section on Acharei Mot in Vayikra Rabbah, the primary collection of narrative midrashim on the book of Leviticus.
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Wed May 03, 2006 at 18:55:31 PM EDT
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Back on the theme of the month, I want to draw your attention to this week's d'var torah from the Jewish Theological Seminary, written by Rabbi Felipe Goodman, himself a Mexican immigrant. Goodman writes, in part:
One of the most beautiful yet most difficult to understand statements made by God in the entire Torah is contained in the opening verses of Parashat Kedoshim: "Kedoshim tihyu ki kadosh Ani Adonai Eloheihem [You shall be holy, for I, The Lord your God, am holy]." In a sense, this is one of the things that we as humans expect God to demand from us. To read the opening words of Parashat Kedoshim produces no great shock or crisis in faith; on the contrary, it immediately makes us proud to know that God expects more from us than what we usually expect from ourselves. . .
During the past months our country has been involved in a very interesting debate about immigration. This very week we saw hundreds of thousands of immigrants take to the streets pleading that the importance of their contribution to the workforce, the economy, and prosperity of our country not be trivialized. While the debate moves forward I have watched with both attention and pain of the silence of The Jewish community. Have we forgotten that we were once immigrants? Have we forgotten that God was the one who liberated us from slavery and oppression? For many of the immigrants in our country, oppression in their lands of birth comes in a variety of forms. For some it is hunger and social chaos, for others it is persecution for their political beliefs. Whatever shape or form oppression takes, we as Jews cannot turn a deaf ear to their plight.
God commands us not once but multiple times in the Torah to treat the stranger with dignity and compassion because we ourselves were strangers in a strange land. Remember the powerful words of this week's sedra: "Kedoshim tihyu ki kadosh Ani Adonai Eloheihem." Becoming holy is not only about keeping kosher, observing Shabbat, or giving tzedakah. Becoming holy is about never ignoring the context in which God expects us to act. Holiness is not just what we do, but also the kind of people we are.
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Tue Apr 11, 2006 at 09:05:06 AM EDT
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When I read, "You should love the stranger, for you were strangers in the Land of Egypt" (Deut. 10:19), what immediately came to mind was how similar this is to "Love your neighbor as yourself," (Lev. 19:18). Many commentators have written about the difficulty of legislating love. I choose to understand these commandments as instructing us how to behave AND what feelings to cultivate, guiding our actions and our kavanah.
The stranger and our neighbor are both 'the other", though to different degrees, one radical otherness and the other close enough to more easily see ourselves in the other. To help overcome this radical otherness we are reminded that we, too, were once strangers and treated as radically other. Each of us needs to draw on our own experiences to remember everyday what it feels like to be treated or seen as other. This helps us develop in an on going way empathy, this is how we begin to develop the kavanah of loving the other.
We are being told to remember being victims (slaves) to develop compassion--a state of feeling connected, we are not remembering for the purpose of developing an aggressive or defensive posture--responses to feeling isolated. We need to remember to keep our hearts open to the pain of the other, as opposed to remembering our pain for the sake of feeling "how I have suffered." Every human being feels pain, experiences suffering.
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