When
anyone other than a mathematician uses the word “true” my
suspicion is piqued. Only mathematicians, whose claims concern abstract
concepts of their own devising based on objects they have defined, can with
assurance make a truth claim. Therefore, when I saw the headline in a recent
issue of The Forward, “How Gil Steinlauf Chose
‘Personal Torah’ Over One True One,” I could feel a wave of
revulsion washing over me. Here we go again. Someone claiming a lock on the
meaning of Torah, with an absolute claim to interpret its import for everyone
else. Rabbi Avi Shafran’s
article is a pit bull attack on the decision of a prominent Washington, DC area
rabbi and his wife (also a rabbi) to divorce after 20 years of marriage and
three children because he recognizes and accepts that he is gay.
Rabbi
Shafran zeroed in on Rabbi Steinlauf’s words, “I have no
choice but to live with the reality, or personal Torah, of my life.” Kol ha-kavod to Rabbi
Steinlauf for the courage and integrity to remind us that Torah is ours, a
living and animating path to being in relationship with the One Who breathed
the universe into being and Who sewed compassion and righteousness into the
fabric of our souls—if
only we would take them out and exercise them regularly. Rabbi Shafran pays lip
service to compassion, with these words: “I hurt for the wife and I hurt for
the children.” For me,
they ring hollow given that Rabbi Safran fully expects that a gay man should
remain for the rest of his life with his heterosexual wife, or endure a
celibate existence. For Rabbi Shafran, being a gay man is simply a “challenge” to be met and overcome. “That he
seems to be giving up on his challenge at this point is, to me, a tragedy, for
his wife, for his family and, ultimately, for himself.” Really? Seriously? And has he taken
even a moment to consider the position Rabbi Steinlauf’s wife is
in?
For many,
Halakhah is a handbook of immutable laws downloaded straight from heaven,
requiring no further interpretation than the ancients and medievals provide. I
disagree. I believe that Halakhah is not a fixed, rigid set of laws and
regulations, but a fluid process of examining life in light of Torah values and
modern, changing exigencies to find ways to live a life of Jewish integrity.
Halakhah is process and therefore it evolves with time. As science
advances, we incorporate its findings into our understanding of the world. As
technology and ethics expand, we incorporate the questions they raise into the
process. That is why throughout our history, rabbinic authorities have
interpreted Torah differently for differently communities and for different
individuals’ situations. I have written before
about the Torah’s
remarkable lack of concern about homosexuality, particularly in light of the
obsession evident among later thinkers.[1] In the
face of overwhelming scientific and psychological evidence that homosexuality
is not a choice any more than heterosexuality is a choice, there are
still voices singing the same medieval tune.
Rabbi
Steinlauf deftly quotes the Talmud (Yoma 72b) which teaches: “Rabbah
said: Any scholar whose inside does not match his outside is no scholar…” to
explain why he must live who he truly is, as God created him: a gay man. Rabbi
Shafran manages to reverse that teaching for his purposes, attributing the
novel inversion to his teacher, to say that the outside form or shell of life
is what matters—to
live as Rabbi Shafran believes God requires—and one must make one’s inside
conform. This, of course, is absurd. A gay person cannot make himself a
heterosexual, yet apparently Rabbi Shafran still, in 2014, holds out
such a hope. Here’s
how he phrased this outrageous assertion: “A Jew…is to create an ‘outside’—a lived
life—that is
consonant with the Torah’s laws;
and then to work, perhaps over an entire lifetime, to bring his “inside” into
synchrony with that outward, Torah-centered life.”
The
hasidic master, Rabbi Menachem Nachum Twerski of Chernoble (1730–1787),
commenting on the opening verse of Torah in parshat Bereishit,
בְּרֵאשִׁית,
בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים,
אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם,
וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ. וְהָאָרֶץ,
הָיְתָה תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ
In
the beginning, as God created the heavens and the earth, earth was formless and
void… (Genesis 1:1-2)
refers to
the famous midrash that tells us that reishit means Torah and teaches
that God used Torah as the blueprint for Creation.[2] The
Chernobler rebbe comments:
It
was through Torah, called ראשית דרכו/the beginning of His way (Proverbs
8:22). All things were created by means of Torah, and the power of the Creator
remains within the created. Thus Torah’s
power is present in each thing, in all the worlds, and within the human being.
Of this Scripture says, This is the Torah: a person (Numbers 19:14), as
will be explained. Torah and the blessed Holy One are one. Thus the life of God
is present in each thing. You give life to them all (Nehemiah 9:6). God
reduced Himself to the lowest rung; a portion of divinity above was placed
within the darkness of matter. The whole point was that those lowly rungs be
uplifted, so that there be a greater light that emerges from darkness
(Ecclesiastes 2:13)…
God is
both implicitly and explicitly in everything in the world. Put another way:
everything is within God.
Since
it is the Torah within all things that gives them life, we should pay attention
not to their corporeal form but to their inner selves. The wise man has eyes
in his head (Ecclesiastes 2:14). The Zohar (3:187a) asks on this verse: “Where
then should one’s eyes be?” The
verse rather means that the wise person’s
eyes are fixed on the head. Look at the “head” of
each thing. Where does it come from? Who is its root? This is the meaning of בראשית/with
Torah—it was through Torah that heaven and earth
came to be, they and all within them. Thus our sages taught that the particle את in
this verse is there to include all that was to be born of heaven and earth (Bereishit Rabbah
1:14).
The
Chernobler rebbe wisely asks us to look beyond the surface, at the essence of
things. We are all manifestations of God—whether male or female, whether
heterosexual, homosexual, transgendered, or queer—it is how the Torah (the great Wisdom
that brought the world into being and guided evolution) designed us. Behind
everything is the One. A narrow and bigoted application of Torah that lacks
genuine compassion, and holds on for dear life to an antiquated understanding
of the fullness and diversity of humanity is not “True” Torah.
Devoid of the Chernobler rebbe’s profound understanding of the deep
structure of the universe and our place in the economy of Creation, it hardly stands up as Torah at all, but rather
as an attempt to buttress a sadly common prejudice.
As a
community, we reach consensus on some things, not on others. As time goes on,
consensus, practice, and understanding change. It has always been this way. Our
goal should be to live a Jewish life of integrity and compassion, embracing the
life-giving values that pervade Torah, and championing the Rabbis’ understanding that Halakhah is a
process of study, exploration, and decision-making, not a hard-and-fast
rulebook. Each of us is a personal, individual Torah, and the process of
learning, assimilating, and explicating Torah cannot be anything but personal.
© Rabbi
Amy Scheinerman
[2] R. Menachem and R. Yehoshua b. Levi said in the name of R.
Levi: A builder requires six things: water, earth, timber, stones, canes, and
iron. And even if yon say, He is wealthy and does not need canes, yet he surely
requires a measuring rod, as it is written, And a measuring reed in his hand
(Ezekiel 40:3). Thus the Torah preceded [the creation of the world] by these
six things, viz., kedem ('the first'), mei-az ('of old'), me-olam
('from everlasting'), mei-rosh ('from the beginning '), and mekadmin
(' or ever '), which counts as two. (Bereishit Rabbah 1:8)
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