Sometime before I came to Israel, I took on the custom of covering my head at, pretty much, all times. Sometimes I wear a kippah, sometimes a scarf wrapped in such a way that I hope it is obvious that what I am covering is the top of my head and not my hair. I have been doing this for about two years now.

The wearing of a kippah is a custom, not a law. It has been elevated in Orthodox communities to the status of law, but this is a relatively recent phenomenon. In the Talmud it says that Rabbi Huna, son of Rabbi Yehoshua, never walked more than 4 cubits without covering his head. There is also a story of Rav Nachman Bar Isaac whose mother was told by a stargazer that he was destined to become a thief, so she instructed him to always cover his head so that the fear of heaven should be instilled in him… and indeed one time the scarf that covered his head fell off, and he was seized by the urge to steal, and stole some dates from the tree under which he was sitting.

The custom of piety took on the status of law for some simply because it became ubiquitous among Jews at certain times, and ubiquitous customs in Judaism have this tendency to become laws. But there is nothing in the Torah or in the Talmud which suggests that everyone, all men, or even really anyone is legally bound by this custom.

So why do I do it?

There are a few reasons. Just as custom has a habit of becoming law in Judaism, there is a strong injunction in Jewish custom that one is to follow the custom of one’s father. In my father’s family, the custom is that one will cover his or her head when he or she is in a religious institution, saying or responding to a bracha, or studying classical Jewish texts. So I began covering my head at all times so that when I engaged in any of these activities, which were becoming much more frequent, I would be ready and not have to go fishing for a head covering. Also, putting on a headcovering when you begin to study and taking it off again when you finish, I feel, is more conspicuous than simply having the covering on by default, and not wishing to draw more attention to myself than is necessary is one motivation. That was my rationale.

Here’s a story.

One day I was on the subway on the way to work. This was a few years ago when I was still working in retail. I had a hat that I had bought at The Falcon Ridge Folk Festival. It was a green brimless cloth hat, one might call it a skullcap or a beanie. I used it at times as a kippah, when I was in shul or when I was studying, and when I bought it I thought “this would make a good kippah.” But when I wore it, I didn’t always think of it as a kippah. It was a hat. There was nothing particularly Jewish about it, it was sold to me by a non-Jew who almost certainly didn’t think of it as a kippah, and a lot of people who were at the festival that year bought similar hats and wore them without making any sort of religious statement. That day, I was wearing this hat because it was cool out. I was going to take it off when I got to work.

So there I am on the subway minding my own business, not really looking at anything or anyone in particular. Suddenly I hear a loud, not so friendly voice:

“Look! A woman rabbi!”

I look up and there is an Orthodox man with a black hat staring down at me. I regard him in bewilderment, saying nothing. He turns to the man next to him, also a black-hat Orthodox man and begins speaking, to him, but clearly for my benefit, about how ridiculous these Reform Jews are who think that women can be rabbis. “There’s no such thing as a woman rabbi!” He declares loudly as though his companion needed convincing. He continues on about Reform Jews pervert Judaism, serve lobster at bar mitzvahs, don’t know anything about anything, “and look… they think that women can be rabbis!” He continues this tirade for the entire 40 minute train ride, and I say nothing until he disappears the stop before mine.

At this point I take a deep breath and let it out.

I get off at the next stop, Union Square, and exit the train station. As I emerge from the stairwell to the street, I see the man. I had thought he’d gotten off the train at the previous stop and I have no idea how he is there. He spots me and points directly at me. “YOU!” He yells at me, “you’re a woman rabbi!” It sounds so much like a declaration, a proclamation. I’m not entirely certain what his purpose is… is he asking? Is he asserting?

Regardless, he needs to be set straight. I walk calmly up to him.

“I’m not a rabbi,” I say to him softly. “But I will be. Because of people like you.” And I walk off toward my store.

Were I put in the same situation again now, I don’t know that I would have given the same answer. Because the truth is I am not doing this for him or for people like him. I’m not doing this to rebel, to be anti-anything, to make a statement.

On the other hand, wearing a kippah is a statement, regardless of my intention. It is a statement because it is out of the ordinary for a woman to do so. For me to wear a kippah is to go against the grain which necessarily calls attention to me and necessarily makes a statement to those who take notice. The same is true for wearing tzitzit. And this is at least part of why when I am not in the Yeshiva, I tuck my tzitzit in and I wear something on my head which is not immediately recognizable as a kippah.

This is a constant struggle for me. Part of me dislikes the idea of making a statement at all. It feels as though my practice loses something the minute it becomes about making a statement. Like with hagbah… the second it stops being about the congregation and becomes about me, it becomes meaningless. At the same time, since I have no control over how people read the symbol, the only way that I can prevent it from being read as a statement is to be in hiding about it, which is problematic for a number of reasons. It is beneficial for me and for women like me for such symbols being visible on women to become more mainstream, and hiding the symbols prevents that from happening. It also does little to encourage other women to explore ideological full egalitarianism, and perpetuates the status quo sense of isolation and loneliness.

My general rule is that I wear the “potentially gender problematic” symbols visibly in contexts where there is hope of the people who see them receiving the potential challenge to their world view in a productive and useful way. That means that I will wear tzitzit out and sometimes a kippah-style kippah at The Yeshiva, at Masorti/Conservative and progressive congregations, in the English tutoring program I do with 4th 5th and 6th graders at the Reform shul, and at my choir. On the street or in an Orthodox congregation, I keep myself closeted until I have reason to out myself.

Not too long ago I accompanied my friend Rachel, an Israeli woman from my choir, to a shabbaton called “Shabbat Shetach,” a Jews in the Woods sort of event, though decidedly less crunchy, and consisting almost entirely of nominally Orthodox young Jews. After some internal debate, I made a decision to cover my head with a kippah rather than with a scarf, and to wear my tzitzit out. This was supposed to be a friendly environment where people get to know each other and bonds form between people. If I was going to be myself anywhere, it was here. My garb elicited many questions, about myself, about Conservative Judaism, about my Yeshiva… all productive, all constructive. The determining factor is how likely it is in any given context that I will be dismissed out of hand versus how likely it is that someone will come to me, genuinely curious, ask me “why,” and then care enough to hear the answer.

So, raise your pinky if you know what hagbah is.

For the rest of you:

Hagbah is when, after reading the Torah, the open scroll is lifted and turned so that the congregation can see the writing in the scroll.

This is hagbah.

When I was a kid, my dad would comment on the hagbah. He would say what the magbiah did right or wrong, what a good hagbah is supposed to look like, how many columns of text it is proper to show, etc. My father put into my mind that there was such a thing as a good hagbah, a well-done hagbah. He taught me to appreciate a good hagbah.

There’s a fellow here this year, a wonderful person named Alex who has become a very good friend of mine… he does a positively beautiful hagbah. He has impeccable form, graceful, unwavering, the words that come to mind when I see Alex do hagbah are “good lines!” Everyone sees it, even people who don’t know so much about what is a really well and properly done hagbah can appreciate that Alex’s hagbah is just beautiful.

Hagbah is traditionally a male honor. Well, traditionally all Torah-related honors are male honors. Hagbah remains overwhelmingly in the male sphere even in egalitarian communities.

Why? Because a Torah scroll is heavy.

On Rosh Hashannah of this year, I did hagbah for the first time.

It was something I’d long wanted to do but had no confidence that I could. I mean, I don’t think I’d ever seen a woman do it, generally I’d only seen strong men doing it, and heard many untried men express apprehension at the prospect of lifting that heavy book from far below its center of gravity, spread out with the threat of a 40-day fast hanging over the heads of the congregation should he falter.

Oh yeah… if you drop a Torah, everyone who witnesses the drop has to fast for 40 days. There are ways to be lenient about it, but it’s still a damn scary thought for the one doing the lifting.

But anyway, at the service that a group of us from the Yeshiva were leading at a chiloni (secular) Brazilian kibbutz, Reb Hillel beckoned that I should come forward for hagbah. Startled, I hesitated. He reassured me that I could do it, and briefly instructed me in the proper technique. I grasped the handles. I took a deep breath, bent my knees, and stood up.

Since then I do hagbah not infrequently at the Yeshiva. I am the only woman who does so. Alex does it more often than anyone. In egalitarian circles generally by default hagbah goes to a man and galilah (the rolling, tying and dressing of the scroll after hagbah) goes to a woman. I am one of the gabbaim at the Yeshiva, so I would like to be able to reverse that model when I can but it isn’t easy. I managed to convince one of the cantorial students (a class of 6 women this year) that she could do it, and I gave galilah to Alex. I like to give galilah to Alex when someone uncertain or doing it for the first time has hagbah, so that he’s on-hand for support in various ways. It felt so good to see Annelise lift that Torah.

It took some doing to convince them (and it is difficult to do so gracefully since honors like aliyot, hagbah and galilah are not something you ask for but which are given by the gabbai or rabbi [when the rabbi is also the gabbai]) but I recently became a regular magbihah at the synagogue next door where I daven when Yeshiva is not in session. The first time I did hagbah there was the first time many of those folks had ever seen a woman do the lift. Yesterday, we read from two scrolls. I had the first hagbah and Alex had the second. After services Alex and I hugged (as we always do when parting company) and one of the congregants asked, laughing, if there was a post-hagbah hug tradition.

My friend Nadav, an older (older = early 50s) Sabra (Sabra = native Israeli) who was so very pleased the first time he saw me do hagbah, pulled me aside and told me that I’d made him very happy. Why? Because I did the lift so gracefully, with no shaking or shuddering or wavering or dramatics, so smoothly and gracefully… and that I’d done it with the second heaviest Torah scroll in the shul… and with most of the wight on the left side, no less!

The heaviest was the one that Alex lifted.

It’s hard to describe what its like to do hagbah as a woman, or to see a woman doing hagbah. The word that comes immediately to mind is “empowering” but I tend to dislike those sorts of cliche feminist words. Cliches in general are bad. Feminism is good, but it’s important to keep perspective here. I’m not sure that Jewish practice should be used as a tool for empowerment in that way, especially personal empowerment. It’s not supposed to be about you but about the community. I guess that is really the point… getting up there and hearing murmurs of astonishment that *gasp* a woman is lifting the Torah(!) is not about people being impressed with me. If it were then I would have no interest in getting Annelise or any other woman to take hagbah… rather it is about broadening the community’s perspective, challenging assumptions which, in the egalitarian model anyway, need to be challenged. For those of us who feel themselves obligated in time-bound mitzvot and participate fully in public Jewish life, no area of that system of practice should be assumed by default to be out of bounds. Women can be physically strong too. And hagbah really has more to do with physics than with strength. Women can be rabbis, sure. That one seems so obvious to so many people. Women can and (in some circumstances, some women) should put on tefillin. That one seems so much less obvious to folks. That women can/should do hagbah… well, that’s just right out for so many people, when there is no reason that it should be.

This is the thing about feminism in Judaism altogether, really. I’ve heard far too many people shy away from or react negatively to being called feminists, especially in connection with Judaism, because their perception of feminism is of overlying “female empowerment” on our tradition… images of angry women putting on tefillin in front of old men and saying “whatcha gonna do about it?” come to mind. To my mind that’s not Judaism done right, and furthermore that’s not feminism done right. The kavanah (intention) cannot be about my empowerment. If empowerment comes about from the experience then bully for me, but once it becomes about me rather than being about the the connection of the kahal (congregation) to the Torah, then egalitarianism and feminism lose their meaning and their relevance.

My friend Jessica suggested a nice little drash on “v’zot haTorah” when a woman is doing hagbah… she remarked on the gendered form “zot,” meaning “this” in the feminine. I was confused. Zot is referring to the Torah which is feminine, I told her. No, no, I understand that, she said, but so is the woman doing hagbah. She is also zot. The whole scenario is zot. Zot haTorah. This too is Torah. For the egalitarian community, it is the very fact that this *is* something that we do and that we believe is permissible, women participating… it is Torah. Just like the rest of it. Pshita. Simple. And yet… so significant. The most powerful feminist statement to me is being able to not think twice about these things.

So yes. I am a woman. I hagbah. And you* can too.

*assuming a Jewish audience for this particular statement

When someone asks me “Why do you wear a tallit katan?” There are at least five questions they may potentially be asking.

1)Why would anyone do such a thing, ie, why is it done, stam?
2)Why do you deliberately wear a 4-cornered garment in order to put fringes on, when there is no requirement to have a 4-cornered garment in the first place?
3)Why do you choose to wear a tallit katan in light of the fact that most Conservative Jews don’t?
4)Why do you wear a tallit katan in light of the fact that you are a woman, and women have not traditionally worn this garment (whether or not this is to imply that a woman shouldn’t)?
5)Why would anyone do any mitzvot?

When I’m caught on the spot by this question, it is difficult to know how to answer. The person asking usually has a clear single meaning to their question, and is unaware that there are other possible meanings, especially if their meaning is number four… and usually it is. The problem is that my instinctual answer is to 2/3. The answer to 4 is an afterthought that should follow logically from 2 and 3, given that in egalitarian Judaism, women are not a different category of Jew from men, that is full participatory members of the covenantal people, who should in theory do the same things that they would be doing were they men. Why should women be full participatory members of the people is the underlying question and that is something that can’t be addressed adequately in a 10 minute conversation.

Why might a woman not be satisfied with the woman’s traditional separate role? For a variety of reasons:

It is marginal and marginalizing.

It assumes a hetero-normative paradigm.

It assumes definition of the self in relation to others and not independently.

It negates motivation for broad education.

It is inherently unequal and implies inherent inequality of the sexes.

It is inherently a role of invisibility. It includes no outward expression of observance or identity other than covering and hiding.

Etc. The list goes on and yes, it is informed by relatively recent social and scholarly developments with regards to gender paradigms. That is not a bad thing. I believe that the developments precipitated by, and that precipitated feminism and gender scholarship more accurately reflect our reality than the paradigm set up in the times of the rabbis and previously. What has changed? A lot. Birth control has a lot to do with it. The discovery in times of need (e.g. WWII) that women were able to do things previously not thought possible. Economics, the rise of the middle class, technology, and the resultant advent of leisure as a societal norm. The study of psychology. Free access to information and education. The changing realities of the world in which we live necessitated that women begin to view themselves as beings capable of roles outside the home which would previously have been unimaginable due simply to the structure of the family and the economics of home management. Chaza”l did not anticipate the reality in which we live today, which is why we have no precedent for halachic equality between men and women. In a previous age, to place the same obligations upon women as upon men would have been utterly disastrous. That is simply not the case today and it is more likely to be far more damaging to a woman, to the family, to the social dynamic, and to the community for women to continue to see themselves as limited to the roles they held in a bygone era. The woman of today is a fundamentally different kind of person than the woman of the age of Chaza”l.

So where do we draw the line? At biology.

To be continued, hopefully…

I’m gonna throw out chronology for a moment to post this:

That is smoke. I noticed it walking home from an all-day babysitting gig yesterday and it occurred to me that it might be important, so I took a picture.

And indeed it was, as I suspected it might be, related to this:

Yes, this is the Jerusalem gay pride parade, which I only got a glimpse of from a distance. My friend Lisa and I took her daughter and Uri who I was watching and we walked up Emek Refaim which was closed to traffic. There were soldiers and police everywhere. Seeing as how I was pushing a stroller I decided not to take pictures, but boy… there is something about seeing all those soldiers on the street.

Anyway, the smoke was, I suspect, the result of this:

While Jerusalem police prepared to protect the pride parade in the center of town Thursday afternoon, anti-parade protestors seeming decided to relocate their demonstrations. Less than an hour before the parade began, a number of protestors are suspected of having set fire to various spots in forests around the city.

So apparently the protest was more extensive than what Lisa and I experienced from our edge of the security which included chants of “Boosha! Boosha!” (Shame, shame) and “Yerushalayim Ir HaKodesh!” (Jerusalem is the Holy City) and a couple of signs (I only got a partial pic of one, front and back

Apparently there was also this:

Israeli police have arrested an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man who they say was planning to bomb a gay pride march in Jerusalem overnight.

An Israeli police spokesman said police found an explosive device in the man’s bag.

A man from the Conservative shul told me this morning that one of the news channels is completely ignoring it. *sigh*

Ending on a happier note, Lisa’s son Caleb aced his Karate test.

An email, sent off-list to someone on a Conservative Jewish mailing list regarding the legitimization of homosexuality and homosexual relations in Conservative Judaism. Person in question expresses dismay at the position I seem to be taking on-list, of arguing from a position of “no-choice” with regards to sexual orientation/attraction.
***

I agree with you 100%. But I do not know how to argue the position that I hold in my heart and mind… trying to do so always gets me in trouble debate-wise. As an aside, I myself am bisexual, and am not too enthusiastic about the day that may come when I fall in love with a woman and want to spend the rest of my life with her, but run into difficulty because of being out as bisexual and unwilling to dishonestly declare myself as having come out as a “lesbian” in order to plead “lack of choice.” As I have stated previously, I am not a halachic scholar and feel more than a little underqualified to argue halacha with folks here, most of whom are quite a bit older than I am and more studied. I’m not entirely convinced that there is a strictly halachic way to legitimize same-sex relations the way I would like to see them legitimized, without a radical reinterpretation of the root text (which I am willing to do, but can understand the reluctance of many Conservative Jews, and certainly of the Law Committee, to do so).

Another big part of the problem is the defining of the homosexual/non-heterosexual experience. Many gay folks of the strictly homosexual persuasion are perfectly content to argue, and to argue loudly, for lack of choice, even arguing from genetics (for which there is no scientific evidence as yet) and as such this has become largely the accepted premise in pro-gay circles. As someone who feels attraction for people on an individual and personal basis largely regardless of gender, I cannot accept this premise. I am willing to take a person at their word that they are incapable of feeling attraction for a certain sex, but obviously none of us knows what truly goes on in the hearts and minds of others. What I do feel to be a truth, though, is that a person’s orientation is more than just a simple choice. This is what I find to be so insulting about the kashrut analogy… I have a deep appreciation for the practice of kashrut and keep kosher myself… but I have known my whole life that it was a fairly simple matter to choose kashrut. The choosing may have deep ramifications for a person’s personality and identity and how they relate to themselves and the world around them… personally I believe that this is the primary reason for keeping kashrut, but we can discuss this later… but it is a simple choice.

Relationships are not as simple, and who one finds themselves attracted to or in love with is a much deeper and more complex matter. It used to be that relationships were sanctioned primarily as business deals, and that the sexual proclivities or love interests of the people involved were not of as great consequence in the initiation of the transaction as we now consider them to be (interestingly enough, I don’t hear anyone arguing that we should go back to match-making to solve these problems of love and attraction wreaking havoc with our halachic system). In our earliest history, where men had the choice to take multiple partners whereas only the woman was under significant sexual sanction, it was not, I imagine, considered problematic since the person of primary importance in the scenario had options for sexual satisfaction beyond the confines of a single life-partner, the need for true love and compatibility between married partners was less paramount than it must be in our largely monogamous paradigm.

Now that we largely accept a world view in which love and attraction and compatibility are considered primary in the choosing of a life-partner, matters of who one can enter into such a relationship with bear reexamination. The reexamination itself is not without precedent, since we have in our history the rabbinic banning of polygamy (something else that no one seems to be advocating the reinitiation of, interestingly enough… might solve some problems) but of course we all know that it is rabbinically easier to go from less restrictive to more restrictive… though the opposite is also not without precedent. The biggest problem is, I suppose, that darned slippery slope argument in which I have refused to engage. As I think I have stated before, each of the other sexual prohibitions which we uphold in Judaism have multiple halachic and extra-halachic reasons for maintaining them, and I see no way in which this will change anytime in the foreseeable future… but the fact that I cannot foresee the future does not mean much for a halachic argument… it is true that the same has been, and still could be said for homosexual relations.

The plain and painful truth is that I simply do not know how to argue it.

And honestly, this is part of why I want to go to rabbinical school… because I want to learn enough to frame my positions legitimately within the Jewish context.

It’s frustrating to know exactly what you want to do with your life and to not be ready to just go ahead and do it. Sometimes the desire just up and hits me like a Mack truck.

I want to be a rabbi because I want a life of study practice prayer and teaching. I want a life of arguments, of questions and of more questions. I want sweet disagreements and ephiphanic agreements. I want to sit in rooms full of books with a laptop and a notebook and pen and a friend/colleague and to just go at it until we come up with something brilliant or go home exhausted, or both. I want to read all the relevant materials and I want to talk out my ideas with mentors and students, friends and teachers and children. I want to find the applications. I want to implement the solutions. I want to be a part of it. I want to be in the thick of it. I don’t want to be a pajama pundit of Judaism.

I want very much to be a rabbi. Those who are concerned with my wellbeing often tell be that I don’t have to be a rabbi in order to do the things that I describe above. I don’t have to be a rabbi to teach, to study, to practice.

Don’t I, though? Can I do this as an academic? No question. But why should I? Why shouldn’t I seek recognition as a teacher and student of my religion within my religion rather than outside of it? Certain people ask me with incredulity why I would want to be a rabbi. Here, finally, is my answer. Why wouldn’t I? Everything that I want points to the rabbinate. The rabbinate is the Jewish academic body and I want to be a Jewish academic. There are other ways, yes, but why go around when you can go straight?

Well, of course the answer to that is that I can’t go straight because I’m not straight. I want to go to Rabbinical school at JTS. Right now I can’t because I’m gay. JTS has a policy of not admitting into the rabbinical school anyone who is openly homosexual and has not renounced homosexual practice in their lives. The policy is also one of “don’t ask, don’t tell” and as such many go through the school closeted with what may seem to be minimal hassle to an outside observer. Anyone who has been closeted for any period of time however knows what a hassle it is just to not be able to talk openly about your life the way straight people can, to kvell about a boyfriend or girlfriend or even mention them, to have to refer to your boyfriend/girlfriend lover or partner as your “friend” while everyone else goes around arms linked happily with their significant others… just not talking about it is harder than most people have ever imagined.

The next question I am usually asked is why I don’t simply go to HUC or RRC, schools which would be accepting of me as I am? For one thing, JTS is my background. It’s where my mother converted and where I went to Hebrew school to voluntarily and enthusiastically continue my Jewish education after my Bat Mitzvah. It’s where my teachers and mentors are. It’s where the great minds of my movement, the Jewish thinkers most influential in my life, Schechter, Frankel, Heschel, even Kaplan (though he and the movement broke later) all studied and taught. JTS is where the resources reside in which I desire to steep myself. I am theologically and philosophically and by practice a Conservative Jew. I am a child of the Conservative Movement and have no intention of leaving it simply because of my sexual orientation.

This is exactly why I’m so very excited about having recently met and connected with Rabbi Steven Greenberg. I had the good fortune to hear about the Tikkun Leil Shavuot at the JCC through Dor Chadash, a “resource-for-young-Jews” type organization which one of my coworkers told me about. I looked at the schedule and who should be on the list but Rabbi Steven Greenberg, who wrote the book Wrestling with God and Men, a book about reinterpreting the place of homosexuality within traditional Judaism, and my main resource in the writing of my undergraduate thesis. He is someone whom I had long admired both academically and personally. Needless to say, I went to hear his lecture session. He gave a talk on revelation and its reciprocal nature which I thought was positively brilliant. His teaching style is wonderful and his energy is contagious. I knew from the moment he opened his mouth that he was someone I wanted to know.

After the session ended he was cornered by a bunch of people who wanted to talk to him. I hung back the way I tend to do. He was finished with the last person and was about to turn away from me to go. I must have made a motion toward him or something because he turned back to me and said “Hi.” I was caught off guard. I told him that I’d wanted to meet him for a long time, that I wrote my undergrad thesis on gays in the Conservative Movement and that his book was invaluable to me, not just from a research standpoint, but in giving me reason to hope that there is a way to work out this issue without sacrificing legitimacy.

He told me that I could give him a call and we could meet for coffee to talk. I’m excited to have made this connection. I’m glad I waited those few minutes in the crowded hallway to talk to him. The one person whom I feel is sufficiently concerned with halachic legitimacy who is an advocate for us, and who has solutions in mind, and I’ve got him. An academic ally, if you will.

Eight or nine years ago I had a similar experience with Rabbi Neil Gillman in which he, after leading a discussion in my 10th grade theology seminar at Prozdor, asked if I’d like to meet with him on occasion to talk theology. It was Rabbi Gillman who started me down a road of exploration of Jewish thought and inquiry that has ultimately led me to my desire to enter into the rabbinate.

I am convinced that there is a place for me and that it lies within the tradition and not without it.

This Just In: Howard Dean is an Idiot.

“The Democratic Party platform from 2004 says marriage is between a man and a woman,” Dean said May 10 during a “700 Club” program hosted by conservative Christian leader Pat Robertson on his Christian Broadcasting Network.

Um… really? Actually… no.

“Howard Dean puts his foot in his mouth so often that he should open a pedicure wing in the DNC during his tenure,” Log Cabin Republicans President Patrick Guerriero said Wednesday. “Howard Dean’s positions on LGBT issues have changed more often than the weather in New England, where he’s from.”

Bwahahahahahaha!

(Via the venerable Insta.)

Someone in an LJ community asked how homosexual Jews resolve their homosexuality and teh clear halakhic prohibition against it. This was my response.
Read the rest of this entry »

Incidentally, this is the beginning of Pride Week. So be proud of who you are. Unless you are one of those unsavory characters who deserves to crawl about in the mud.

Kidding.

I have very mixed feelings about pride in general. It’s probably a result of my growing up in “liberal” New York, but I often feel that the whole visibility thing is simply redundant, the community aspect just another form of separatism and the whole idea just largely counter-productive.

But… but… I like rainbows!

Of course, being of non-identified orientation (generally understood as bisexual) there’s always that question of whether or not I even have cause or even right to brandish the rainbows. The symbol which used to mean diversity, and I guess still does in some circles, has been co-opted in large part by the strictly HOMO-*sex*ual crowd, the not quite so tolerant who suck their teeth at me and my ilk and say they need more *real* lesbians in their lives.

But what the hell. I like rainbows.

That and I’m blessed to be surrounded at this point in my life by positive queer role models of many stripes who have never made me feel like less of a person for who I am, who have never derided me, who tease me, yes, but no moreso than I do them, and all in fun and love… who take me and embrace me and love who I am. That’s what Pride is supposed to be about.

That and pretty rainbows. And hot androgynous chicks and cute effeminate men. *nod*

So for those who don’t have the time or whom I don’t want to read my thesis in it’s entirety, the crux of the whole argument is basically that the biblical prohibition against homosexuality outlined in Leviticus was essentially a prohibition against subjecting an equal to a humiliating position, namely, the position of a woman.

I draw on gender theorists and studies of power and sexuality in middle eastern culture to show that sexual relations were seen in the society which authored the Torah as inextricably tied to power, that dominance and humiliation were seen as inherent in the act.

Further, women being by definition the penetrated partner in licit sexual relations were therefore, also by definition, cast in the unfortunate but necessary position of a humiliated and therefore lower class. There is even a midrash which implies that this submissive position of women was an accident of the creation process and one that we pray one day to be rectified.

Combining this with Judith Butler’s theory that gender is not essential but performative, that is, that gender is not only expressed but comes into being when the defining characteristics of that gender are taken on, a whole mess is created which Judaism has simply been unable to deal with throughout most of its history except through the social and religious subjugation of women and the outright prohibition of male homosexuality. This also explains the prohibitions against displays of gender category confusion, dressing in the apparel of the “opposite” gender and also the lack of any biblical mention of female homosexuality.

What it all comes down to in the end is that if the Conservative movement can call itself egalitarian with regards to gender, can ordain women as rabbis, can count momen in a minyan, can recognize the legitemacy of women as witnesses, then there is no excuse for not acknowledging the equality of non-heterosexual individuals and the validity of same-gender relationships as they are all tied up in the same archaic and obsolete notions of…

Well, see, it gets complicated here. I didn’t go into this in my paper, but power and sexuality are not unconnected. Anyone with any connection to anything kinky or BDSM related will give you plenty of an earful about that. But it’s not inherent, it’s chosen. Now the next question to ask I suppose is whether or not BDSM must therefore be construed as biblically prohibited if my whole argument is built on the notion that the prohibition is in fact against using sex as an expression of power over an equal. I think it must be and I’m not sure how I feel about that.