Life is primarily about what God wants, not what we want.
By DAVID BENKOFDavid Benkoff 224.88(photo credit: Courtesy)
With the High Holy Days coming up, I thought I would offer my own Rosh Hashana drash with reference to my fellow gay men and Torah Judaism.
Many gay and lesbian Jews have argued that since God made them gay, He must certainly want them to express that sexual orientation in their family and bedroom lives. Even Steve Greenberg, who has rabbinic ordination from Yeshiva University, has made this argument. Now, I believe on most levels that God does not give people sexual orientations, but that's a subject for another column. For now, let's assume that being gay or lesbian does come 100 percent from God.
On the second day of Rosh Hashana, the Torah reading is from the book of Genesis, the story of the akeda, or the binding of Isaac. One of the most famous and challenging stories in the whole Bible, it goes something like this, at least if you have my subject in mind: God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac. So what did Abraham do? He did not reply, "But I'm not the kind of father who is able to sacrifice his son. Maybe you should give that mitzva to one of the Molech worshipers down the street. Every bone in my body resists your commandment that I sacrifice Isaac. I'm not 'oriented' toward child sacrifice. In fact, I think it's a mitzva not to kill one's own child."
Nor: "I have no other heir. Preparing Isaac to be a forefather is my entire life's work. You're asking me to cancel everything I thought my life was about. No!" He didn't say that either.
Instead he replied, "Hineini," which means "Here I am," and he brought Isaac up the mountain, prepared to sacrifice him, and in the end God made it all okay.
Now, over the centuries there has been a tremendous amount of commentary, creativity, energy and debate over just what the akeda means - albeit probably never making this kind of reference to gays. There have, however, been some gay-related interpretations of this story, including a 1995 homoerotic photograph called "Akeda," which shows a shirtless man wearing tefillin and a Band-Aid, as a commentary on the AIDS crisis.
A 2003 Rosh Hashana sermon by Rabbi Michael Strassfeld (of the Jewish Catalogs) at the Conservative-Reconstructionist congregation Society for the Advancement for Judaism said: "The clearest place where the tradition's voice is overruled is when we have concluded that the tradition is out of step with contemporary moral values. The values of equality, inclusiveness and pluralism then lead to creating new traditions related to women and gay people."
BUT FOR me, the story reinforces my decision nearly eight years ago to stop having same-sex relations and to eventually pursue traditional Jewish family life married to a woman.
The idea that we should avoid following one of God's mitzvot because we're not oriented that way is inconsistent with my understanding of Torah beliefs. For example I know some men who feel they're oriented toward being attracted to non-Jewish women, yet the Torah has no exception for them. Many, many men will admit they are honestly oriented toward loving and being aroused by more than one woman at a time, yet polygamy was never encouraged by Judaism, and since the 11th century it has been forbidden to Ashkenazi Jews.
Conservative activist and perennial candidate Alan Keyes got in a lot of trouble for calling lesbian second daughter Mary Cheney a "selfish hedonist." But the term is not so far off the mark. A person who believes in God and the Torah but overrules one of the commandments because it doesn't match his internal sexual makeup is basically saying, "It's all about me, me, me. My pleasure, my identity. Me." Judaism believes - and Abraham believed - that life is primarily about God and what God wants, not what we want.
Now, some Jews don't believe that the Torah comes from God. That's a much larger discussion. But what if my akeda drash can convince such people that if the Torah comes from God (assuming Leviticus 18:22 means gay sex is wrong - another larger discussion), then gay men should be celibate or marry women? If it can, this essay will have done its job.
DavidBenkof@aol.com
