Original Torah: Ancient Words in a Modern Light

I’m a Jew not in search of an adjective -R’ A. J. Heschel

Wednesday, May 3, 2006

Reinterpreting Leviticus 18:6, 20:13

This pristine example of midrash halakha essentially argues with great erudition that the verses we normally understand to prohibit man on man sex actually prohibit both men and women from having incestuous, adulterous, or bestial relationships. It’s a brilliant exposition, yet it leaves me with two different problems.
  • One, is that this is probably not what the Torah meant, since it’s redundant. However, as the original meaning of the text was not paramount to the Rabbis, I can let it slide.
  • Two, BZ learns from the categories of the list that the topic is incestuous or adulterous relationships. However, the list also includes bestiality, sex with a menstruant, and leaves out the man’s daughter, nieces, and wife of his mother’s brother.
  • In context, the verse is bookended by prohibitions of being like the following nations 18:1-4 and 20:22-26. I would need to be convinced that the Torah approved of non-incestuous same-sex relationships. Whether this impacts on his midrash I have not yet decided.

In any case, bravo on a brilliant understanding of the text using classical methods.
Mah Rabu:

Likewise, Leviticus 18:22 (by way of the kelal ufrat uchlal that we have explained above) constructs the prototype that mishkevei ishah refers specifically the incestuous and adulterous relationships of the sort listed in Leviticus 18, so that Leviticus 20:13 can also be understood to refer only to these categories of same-sex relationships.
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posted by OJ at 8:46 pm  

Wednesday, May 3, 2006

Darfur Rally

General Anna makes a good point at the Darfur rally that in general, it’s not safe to make generalizations. It always drives me nuts when people describe a group I belong to with a subgroup.

For example, when I went to the Israel rally in DC a couple of years ago, a speaker stated that the Palestinians felt pain. A bunch of people booed. I was upset at them, but neither cheered nor made other noise. The news reported that the crowd booed the speaker. I just wished the speaker had given us something to cheer for so we could be heard, too. It made Jews look bad.
Live the Questions:

I have two rules for rallies that I’d like to introduce here, based on two unfortunate parts of the Darfur rally.

Rule One:
A rally speaker should check in with other consituencies before invoking them.

One of the rabbis who spoke at the rally went on and on about the “historic Black-Jewish partnership for social justice,” and spoke as if there were an unbroken connection between Rabbi Heschel marching in 1965 and today. Now, I am extremely proud of the contributions Jews made to the civil rights movement as freedom riders, as voter-registration activists during the Summer of Freedom, as leaders who lent their voices to the struggle. However, we haven’t really stuck our necks out for the African-American community very much since then. So invoking the “historic Black-Jewish partnership for social justice” feels downright disrespectful.

posted by OJ at 6:16 pm  

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