"Last year, I officiated at the first same-sex wedding in the 145-year history of my synagogue. For a Conservative congregation, this was quite a break with tradition. Nevertheless, I was proud to stand beneath the wedding canopy with this couple, who affirmed the sacredness of their union “in accordance with the laws of Moses and the people of Israel.” Before I chose to officiate, I studied the texts, teachings, and arguments in my tradition. I didn’t make this decision lightly. Today, I am unfazed by the apparent biblical injunction against homosexuality as an “abomination.” I am confident in my stand, despite a 3,000-year-old tradition that has no precedent for such a marriage. In fact, it is from a place of humility and awe before my tradition and God that I have chosen take this stand."Read More Here:The queerness of love: A Jewish case for same-sex marriage | Opinion | Jewish Journal
"The Torah teaches us to treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves. It is this fundamental Jewish value that was emphasized throughout my yeshiva education and today it is this same value that I stress to my own children.
I read with utter disbelief that a rabbi would suggest that the suicide of a homosexual Jew is a mitzvah (“The Cost Of Standing Idly By,” Opinion, Oct. 15). (http://www.thejewishweek.com/editorial_opinion/opinion/cost_standing_idly by Rabbi Steve Greenberg)
I don’t understand how we Orthodox Jews cannot bring ourselves to feel compassion and be tolerant towards homosexuals in our community. I am not advocating changing the Torah law. But the Orthodox community has shown that it can embrace Jews who have transgressed many laws in the Torah; why must we single out homosexuality as being so abhorrent? Why are we teaching our children to hate and exclude?
The sin that a homosexual couple may or may not commit in the privacy of their home is between them and God. The sin that we as the Orthodox community commit in our attitude towards homosexual Jews is between us and our fellow Jews. Shame on us."
"In his new book Oddly Normal, New York Times writer John Schwartz shares the moving story of how he and his wife Jeanne have struggled against often-problematic systems to support their son Joe, who is gay. I asked Joe, now 17 years old, to expand on some of the themes explored in the book and answer some questions raised by people who have commented on it."
"At home they observe mitzvoth, but sometimes they sneak out to clubs and chows down on seafood. Ynetnews presents story of haredim who hide new secular life because price of exposure is too high...
This wasn't the first time he had tried. At first, he filled the bathtub with water and tried to drown himself. Later, he thought of entering the sea and never coming out, filling his lungs with water and sinking into eternal rest. But every single time, he thought of his children, who would be left fatherless. "I am suffering," he told me when we first met months ago. "There's not a day that goes by that I don't think about how I'm living a double life: A secular living under the guise of a haredi. It feels like Purim, only in my life, I am always in costume."Living in ultra-Orthodox closet YNETNEWS.COM
"Eli Ben Dahan, number 4 on the Jewish Home party list, came under fire on Monday for speaking out against the institution of homosexual marriage and calling it a “recipe for the destruction of the Jewish people.”Ben Dahan emphasized in an interview with Walla News that he was not talking about how members of the gay community should be treated, but was specifically referring to the legal recognition of gay marriage. “Every sociology professor will tell you that the foundation of every nation is the family unit,” said Ben Dahan, a rabbi who holds degrees in business administration and public policy. He said that we cannot recognize a “reality in which we do not create a next generation.”
"This is just awful. A Brooklyn Rabbi, Yehuda Levin, wrote that gay men should consider chemical castration “as you do with cancer” to stop their same-sex feelings. Levin made his comments in a Letter to the Editor in response to a groundbreaking op-ed written in the Jewish Press by Chaim Levin. (No relation). The op-ed was important because it was the first time that this conservative publication published a column written from the perspective of an openly gay former Orthodox Jew."
http://www.truthwinsout.org/blog/2012/02/22164/
"If you think the Christian world has a problem with gay people, you should try orthodox Judaism. For centuries homosexuality has been taboo; it's not what nice Jewish boys or girls do. The biblical proscription against "men lying with men as though with a woman" (Leviticus 20:13) is considered the very bedrock of Jewish morality. For traditional Judaism marriage is the highest state of social bonding – a true union of body and soul. Despite some odd exceptions in biblical and rabbinical literature, (Jeremiah is told by God to stay single, Ben Azzai, one of the greatest of the Mishnaic teachers, remains a bachelor by choice), even celibacy was frowned upon. Part of this opposition was no doubt based on a response to the cultural environment – pagan in the biblical era, Christian in the rabbinic one. But despite major shifts in sociological contexts, the ban against homosexuality was rigidly enforced throughout the centuries. Whilst in other areas the rabbis often showed great flexibility and understanding, this particular area remained off-limits"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/aug/09/gay-orthodox-judaism-rabbis
“Yossi,” written and directed by Eytan Fox, opens Friday, January 25 at the Angelika Film Center (18 W. Houston St., at Mercer Street). For information, call (212) 995-2570 or go to www.angelikafilmcenter.com.“I wanted to revisit myself, on a personal level and on an artistic, professional level,” Fox said. “I think the form I chose for ‘Yossi’ seemed better [for] today. I think Yossi, his life, his energy, the way he and his life are conducted suits this better.“When we made the first film, I wanted to do something rough and documentary-style. This film looks more self-aware, formalistic. It’s more grown-up, more adult. As a filmmaker I have different films inside of me. This was right for me now. I’m better filmmaker than I was when I started and I’m a smarter, more aware person than I was.”
"Question: According to Jewish law, how should a person react to homosexual feelings? Do homosexuals fit into the Jewish community?"http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/663504/jewish/Do-Homosexuals-Fit-into-the-Jewish-Community.htm
"Swartz, who suffered from chronic depression, hung himself from a window with a leather belt after learning that his latest effort to reduce his sentence had been rebuffed — a fact Ortiz now denies. He is now the second hacker pursued by Heymann and Ortiz to have taken his own life.
Swartz’s case raises serious questions not only about prosecutorial overreach and the overly vague nature of computer crimes legislation. It also forces us to ask how we as a society approach the issue of copyright infringement — particularly whether the weight to which we give the economic interests of copyright cartels should be greater than our obligation to educate society and improve ourselves by making scholarship openly accessible."
"A taller mechitzah with one-way glass might prevent these easily distracted men from glimpsing a woman’s face and (shudder) possibly even fully-clothed shoulders over the top of the mechitzah. But the dimness of this glass would also make it more difficult for women to see what is happening on the men’s side. And it would certainly more fully segregate women, boxing them into a space that may serve men’s interests but certainly does nothing to enhance women’s experiences."One-Way Mirror Mechitzah Proposed at Kotel – The Sisterhood – Forward.com
"While attention remains focused on the election of a new Knesset and the formation of a new government, the battle over another election — for Israel’s Chief Rabbinate — is just heating up. These elections, too, have far-reaching ramifications for the American Jewish community and for the well-being of Israel."Read more: http://forward.com/articles/169602/israels-other-impending-election/?p=all#ixzz2IfLw4rp7
Check out this argument. Rabbi Herzfeld first argues that the Torah prohibits homosexual conduct and that, accordingly, gay marriage should not be institutionalized within Orthodox Judaism. He goes on, however, to argue in favor of changing U.S. civil law to permit same-sex marriage, on the grounds that Jewish law and civil law are two different things, and on the grounds of basic fairness to gay and lesbian people and couples."Shmuel Herzfeld, who is the rabbi of Washington, D.C.’s National Synagogue and graduated from Y.U.’s high school in 1992, is one of those who have publicly complained about the investigation.
Herzfeld said he spoke to Karen Seymour, the lawyer leading the Sullivan & Cromwell team, by telephone on December 26. Herzfeld said he had in mind the report commissioned by Pennsylvania State University in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky abuse scandal when he spoke to Seymour.
In the Penn State case, Louis Freeh, a former head of the FBI, was given access to university employees and board members. Although some said that the Freeh report had its flaws, it was seen as a breakthrough in transparency and in an institution’s willingness to confront errors in judgment.
But Herzfeld said he was dismayed when Seymour told him that her report might be delivered to the Y.U. board orally rather than in writing. He said he was even more alarmed when Seymour said that unlike the Freeh report, which was disseminated publicly the same day it was presented to the board, she “could not say whether… the board would release the report to the public.”
Herzfeld said he has spoken to former Y.U. high school students who say they were abused but are fearful “that what they tell the investigator will not be given a proper hearing.” So Herzfeld sent a letter, signed by 18 Y.U. high school alumni, to the chairman of the university’s board on January 3, asking that the investigation follow the blueprint laid out by the Freeh report. By January 8, the chairman, Henry Kressel, a managing director at a private equity firm in Manhattan, had not responded."
“If the synagogue only attracts people from other Orthodox congregations, it will have failed its mission,” according to Kestenbaum. Success will be measured, he asserted, by whether it can bring in and appeal to people “who otherwise aren’t spending their Shabbat at services.”
That’s precisely how Lincoln Square grew from a small Conservative congregation meeting in a nearby Lincoln Towers apartment in the mid-1960s into the most talked-about and popular Orthodox congregation in the city, if not the country.The man most responsible for that transformation was a then-baby-faced 23-year-old Yeshiva University-trained rabbi, Steven (now Shlomo) Riskin, whose innovative and dynamic teachings and warm personality attracted hundreds of young people to services and weeknight lectures and classes."
"We cannot, and should not, allow ourselves to believe that we are a perfect community, or special in ways that others are not. What we can do-– and should do– is aspire to be different, and hopefully better. We will always have our members who are struggling with the same issues as everyone else. That should not surprise us. But the truest measure of who we are as a community should be how we relate to them, and their sense of being in exile. Isolating them by pretending they’re not there just makes their situation that much more painful. We can, and must, be better than that."
"We don’t want customers. We want trusted and loyal stakeholders. But we have to show our own worthiness as institutions. And if you think this isn’t Jewish, think again. We practically invented customer service. Look back at the Abraham stories of kindness. Lesson: Be kind to strangers. One day they may just become your angels.Imagine, for a moment, that your Jewish institution — fill in the blank — is about to merge with Nordstrom’s. What would be different? Sometimes we’re a Ritz-Carlton people stuck in Motel 6 packaging. We can do better. We must."
"I don’t think there are easy answers to these and many other such “gray area” cases, and I struggle with a response, not only as a journalist but simply as a member of the Jewish community.We’ve come a long way in the last dozen years in terms of awareness of abuse. But we still have a long way to go in thinking first of the victims and potential future victims, and in being a confident and responsible community rather than one fearful and insecure.In the end it’s not about “airing our dirty laundry in public.” It’s about cleaning it, and keeping it clean."
"Shmuel Herzfeld, who is the rabbi of Washington, D.C.’s National Synagogue and graduated from Y.U.’s high school in 1992, is one of those who have publicly complained about the investigation.Herzfeld said he spoke to Karen Seymour, the lawyer leading the Sullivan & Cromwell team, by telephone on December 26. Herzfeld said he had in mind the report commissioned by Pennsylvania State University in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky abuse scandal when he spoke to Seymour.In the Penn State case, Louis Freeh, a former head of the FBI, was given access to university employees and board members. Although some said that the Freeh report had its flaws, it was seen as a breakthrough in transparency and in an institution’s willingness to confront errors in judgment.But Herzfeld said he was dismayed when Seymour told him that her report might be delivered to the Y.U. board orally rather than in writing. He said he was even more alarmed when Seymour said that unlike the Freeh report, which was disseminated publicly the same day it was presented to the board, she “could not say whether… the board would release the report to the public.”Herzfeld said he has spoken to former Y.U. high school students who say they were abused but are fearful “that what they tell the investigator will not be given a proper hearing.” So Herzfeld sent a letter, signed by 18 Y.U. high school alumni, to the chairman of the university’s board on January 3, asking that the investigation follow the blueprint laid out by the Freeh report. By January 8, the chairman, Henry Kressel, a managing director at a private equity firm in Manhattan, had not responded."
"Trembling Before G-d has gone way beyond what any of us ever dreamed or imagined and the work with the film to impact social change continues. Orthodox GLBT organizations are thriving -- JQY, Eshel, GLYDSA, Bat-Kol, Havruta and Temicha for Orthodox parents of GLBT people.
And the struggle of films to make change is ongoing especially on the issues of faith and sexuality in the 21st century. In the past year, Macky Alston has taken his film, Love Free or Die, about Bishop Gene Robinson, to churches across the country. And this tradition will be carried on by God Loves Uganda, premiering at Sundance this month, about the evangelical movement in Uganda's attempt to eliminate "sexual sin" and convert Ugandans to fundamentalist Christianity. The fight and the impact continues..."
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| Rav Aaron Lichtenstein |
Haaretz: 12/28/12 by Daniella Peled- A new grant from the UK Heritage Lottery Fund will allow the gay
Jewish community to research, record and archive its colorful roots. |
| Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks of the UK |
