the opportunity to engage and to relate to the sources today, particularly during Yom sacrificial service. Kippur when the Seder HaAvodah serves as For modern Jews, sacrifice was anath- the climax of the entire sacrificial system. ema; those ancient forms of worship seemed The language of these sources expresses vital primitive and outmoded. The notion that ideas about relationship, closeness and God is to be found in one central place was distance, gift-giving, and the connection be- objectionable. The burning of animals in tween human behavior and God’s willing- service to God seemed unnecessarily cruel. ness to abide among us. The language of the Temple and sacrifice, We need new approaches to reclaim these which could have lent itself so easily to difficult texts. Although Temple and sacrifice metaphor, art, and poetry, disappeared, and have long ceased to exist, the imaginative, in- the vast number of sources that were rooted terpretive, and linguistic influence of these in such language were cut off. We need these texts can indeed last forever. Sorting Sins: When the Law Stays the Same and Everything Else Changes Steven Greenberg t has long been the claim of the Orthodox tus of Shabbat and its violation needed to be Icommunity that Jewish law does not or understood in a different light. Important or- should not change to accord itself with the thodox poskim (halakhic decisors) insisted that times. Among certain Jews, since the early Sabbath violators not be classified and treated 19th century, all new things are considered a as idolaters or gentiles whose touch disquali- priori forbidden. fied wine or whose testimony or participation Despite this oft-repeated and historically in a minyan no longer counted. While no Or- questionable insistence on formal continuity, thodox rabbi permitted driving a car on the there are ways that prohibitions of sinful be- Sabbath, many turned a blind eye to those havior can remain on the books unchanged in members who lived beyond walking distance their form, and still be wholly transformed in and who preferred to drive to shul rather than their social effect. By shifting the over-arching sit at home. Rabbi Steven Greenberg is category under which a prohibition falls, it can The laws of the Sabbath had not changed, director of the CLAL remain in force while being entirely changed but the social significance of their violation Diversity Project and a in regard to its meaning and application. had. From a primary marker of corporate Jew- Senior Teaching Fellow at Perhaps the most dramatic and com- ish identity, a weekly acquiescence to the sov- CLAL (National Jewish monplace example of this categorical shift is ereignty of the Creator, it became a ritual Center for Learning and in regard to the observance of the Sabbath. expression of piety that only a certain minor- Leadership). He is the Upon a handful of verses that prohibit cre- ity of Jews observed. Profaning the Sabbath, first openly gay Orthodox ative work, the rabbis constructed an exten- once associated with idolatry and apostasy, be- rabbi and a founder of sive, vast, and intricate array of rules for the came an unfortunate religious failing. the Jerusalem Open observance of the Sabbath. For most of Jew- A similar sort of halakhic categorical shift House, a GLBT commu- can be seen in regard to homosexuality. Evi- nity center. In 2004 he ish history, the violation of the Sabbath, es- finished a decade-long pecially in public, was an act that could dence for this can be found in both the Con- book project, titled, remove a Jew from his or her community. servative and the Orthodox communities. Wrestling with God and Jews who were known to publicly violate the In December of 2006, the Law Committee Men: Homosexuality in Sabbath were considered halakhically as gen- of the Rabbinical Assembly, which determines the Jewish Tradition, tiles. The communal response to violation was matters of halakhah for Conservative Jews, which won the 2005 a form of excommunication. voted to accept two contradictory legal argu- Koret Jewish Book Award As Jews were welcomed into the nation ments on the issue of homosexuality. Rabbi for Philosophy and states of Europe as full citizens, and later, Joel Roth repeated his long held halakhic con- Thought. when questions about the use of electricity, tention that there is no room for acceptance of gay relationships and no legitimacy to the September 2008 the invention of the automobile, and finally Tishrei 5769 the growth of suburban living made the link notion of an openly gay rabbi. A lenient teshu- To subscribe: 877-568-SHMA between traditional Sabbath observance and vah (responsum) was offered by Rabbis Daniel www.shma.com Jewish identity functionally untenable, the sta- Nevins, Elliot Dorff, and David Reisner that 14 permits gay relationships and the celebration need to understand and empathize with the of commitment ceremonies, and supports the experience of lesbian and gay Orthodox Jews ordination of gay and lesbian rabbis. However, and their families. this ruling did hold on to a single prohibition Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Weinrib, the former Ex- in regard to sex between men. Men are not ecutive Vice President of the Orthodox Union, permitted to engage in anal intercourse ac- spoke in New York recently at an event billed cording to this responsum. This seeming hair- as “Orthodoxy responds to Homosexuality.” splitting on sexual practice has its roots in the Not surprisingly, it drew a relatively large crowd law. The rabbis of the Talmud did not con- including a sizable showing from the city’s sider any other sexual act between men to be small but growing pool of religious gay Jews. a formal violation of the law. The biblical-level Rabbi Weinrib demonstrated during the violation demanded specificity, so for a person evening that he and much of the community to have violated any of the sexual crimes, pen- he represents are aptly described as in-be- etrative intercourse was considered necessary. tween categories. In this intricate dance, the rabbis of the While he insisted that the Torah’s view on Conservative movement have essentially taken homosexuality is “clear, unambiguous, terse, what was for centuries deemed a moral crime, and absolute,” he called upon the Orthodox a cardinal sin located in the same chapter as adultery, incest, and bestiality, and shaped it as This form of re-categorization has the a ritual infraction. Surely they would not coun- advantage of holding on to core norms while tenance adulterous relationships or the mar- riage of siblings so long as they committed to recalibrating their meaning and application avoid penetrative intercourse. But sex between to changing circumstances. men is now understood differently. The pro- found shifts in American society around the community to particularly empathize with the meaning and expression of same-sex desire situation of the gay person attempting to re- has turned what was once considered an ugly main faithful to the Torah. This is a dramatic and even disgusting moral depravity, into a move away from Rabbi Moshe Feinstein’s rul- matter of disposition. ings in the 1960s and 1970s that marked ho- In halakhic language, the recent ruling mosexuality as a demonic urge to rebel has simply removed homosexual relations be- against God. While maintaining Orthodoxy’s tween men (lesbian relations are not men- “eternal law,” Rabbi Weinrib insisted upon tioned in the Torah) from the category of compassion and understanding. arayot, sexual crimes described biblically as un- On the other hand, Rabbi Weinrib ex- covering of nakedness. The law has become de- pressed strong support for the proposed con- tached from associations with incest, adultery, stitutional amendment to protect traditional and bestiality and is tied instead to the laws of marriage. He and other Orthodox leaders niddah, the ritual prohibition of sex during have portrayed homosexual relations as suffi- menstruation. Intercourse with a menstruat- ciently threatening to the sanctity of the ing woman, which is included in the same family and the fabric of society that the gov- chapter of Leviticus, is not punishable by a ernment ought to deprive gay couples of the human court and has long been a matter of social and economic benefits that help to personal piety. Moving homosexual love from make marriage and family work. This political a cosmic threat and a moral scourge to a stance portrays homosexuality as a profound largely private matter of religiosity retains the moral threat to be fought. prohibition, but shapes an entirely new set of And yet, despite his position on civil mar- social responses to same-sex couples. riage, Weinrib continued to insist that he did A similar, categorical shift can be seen in not consider gay people to be morally com- the Orthodox community. While Orthodoxy promised by definition. In fact, he said that he has not overhauled its basic attitude toward would have no qualms about inviting a gay homosexuality, over the past few years one can couple to his home on Shabbat and even giv- discern a growing movement in the commu- ing them a room to share. September 2008 nity from castigation to compassion. A num- While the move toward compassion is wel- Tishrei 5769 ber of books and articles over the past five come, it can be confusing for gay Jews when To subscribe: 877-568-SHMA years have focused creative attention upon the these conflicting conceptual frames of homo- www.shma.com 15 sexuality are expressed simultaneously. The path from either of these, I still find them call for empathy seems to reach toward a view both very important to consider. of homosexuality as a fixed and unchosen as- Many liberal Jews understandably will pre- pect of the personality which, if expressed in fer a cleaner and perhaps more honest rejection particular sexual behaviors, is at worst, a reli- of halakhic norms when they conflict with their gious failing.