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T
he Torah portion of
Acharei Mot, Kedoshim
contains the
two texts religious conservatives love to quote – the two
prohibitions against male homosexual sex: Leviticus 18:22
“
Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman; it is an
abhorrence.” and Leviticus 20:13, which repeats the term
to’eva,
abhorrence, and decrees a death sentence for both
partners. The question this brings up for me is what do we
do with Torah texts that make it impossible for some people to
live a Jewish life with dignity and joy? How can we understand
such texts and take away their destructive power? What are
some strategies for dealing with them?
Reject the notion that the Bible speaks with a single voice and
look for counter-narratives
.
The Bible is not a single consistent
voice of authority. You cannot say, “The Bible says: it is
forbidden for men to have sex with men.” You can only say
that the Holiness code section of the book of Leviticus says
so. The Bible is not a single book. It is a collection of differ-
ent books, spanning eight centuries, not all of which agree
with one another. I picture the authors in one big room in
the next world arguing. Ezra is proclaiming that every Judean
married to a foreign woman should send her away. Ruth is
saying to him, “Don’t be a snob. Foreign women have blessed
the people. King David has two foreign women in his geneal-
ogy and that means the Messiah will have those women in
his
genealogy.” And Leviticus? Leviticus is ranting about human
sexual fluids. But Song of Songs is countering him. So “the
Bible” as a single consistent point of view doesn’t exist.
Contextualize historically to understand what the text’s concerns
were.
Leviticus wants to see clear boundaries, distinct cate-
gories. It sees boundary-making as the very act by which the
world was created. God started with
tohu vavohu
,
chaos, and
carefully separated out the light from the darkness, the waters
above from the waters below, the land from the sea. God cre-
ated categories of birds and fish and beasts and humans and
told them to be fruitful and multiply. They were supposed
to do that with their own kind of creature to keep all the
categories clear-cut. And males are supposed to do it with, or
perhaps to, females. For Leviticus, when people start eroding
these categories, they are un-creating the universe. But, we
may object, many categories of creatures have same-sex
sexual behavior and the universe hasn’t caved in yet! Leviticus
doesn’t know of this. Moreover, Leviticus may think that a
man who has sex with another man is declassing him, mak-
ing him subordinate like a woman. And finally, as a product
of the priesthood, Leviticus sees fertility as a sign of blessing.
He can’t foresee that gay men will have the option of becom-
ing parents. He worries about the world being depopulated.
Except for Leviticus, the only two explicit texts we have about
homosexual behavior are about rape and really cannot be
compared to a loving relationship. In both the threatened rape
is the climax of a narrative that is really about a shocking lack
of hospitality. According to early rabbinic commentators, that
is the real sin of the Sodomites. In contrast, there are two texts
where David acknowledges his love for Jonathan. In David’s
lament (II Samuel 1:26) he says, “your love was wonderful to
me, more than the love of women,” but there are no explicit
narratives of sexual behavior between them. Nevertheless, these
texts appear in some strategies as counter-examples to Leviticus.
Re-interpreting the Bible
Rabbi Rachel Adler, Ph.D.,
Professor of Jewish Religious Thought and Feminist Studies,
HUC-JIR/Jack H. Skirball Campus/
Los Angeles
Andi Arnovitz
All Good Jewish Women
, 2011
Etching, 22" x 30"
