Let’s Queer the Jewish Legal Tradition

by Amram Altzman for Newvoices.com

I had the honor of speaking at the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance’s Voices of Change conference last week, where I, only for a day, became a high school student once again and spoke on a panel about navigating relationships and sexuality in high school as a feminist. While speaking, the topic of Shemirut Negi’ah, or the rabbinic prohibition of members of one sex touching members of the other sex, came up. It was there and then that I realized how abandoned I felt by the guidelines that dictate the movement with which, at least on a theological level, I identify.

To be sure, I’ve felt some sort of separation between myself and the Orthodox world since I came out of the closet over two years ago (something that has been chronicled in New Voices), and I always felt somewhat abandoned by the Orthodox community. However, that separation between myself and Orthodoxy became even more pronounced as a result of speaking at the conference.

To be clear: I spent about fifteen whole minutes being shomer negi’ah when I was in sixth grade, and then promptly stopped — at the time, for no apparent reason. Since then, I’ve never really looked back, and do not regret my decision.

However, in starting to seriously think about issues like this, I’ve come to truly understand just how much of the Jewish legal tradition — the same tradition that I was taught was timeless, applied to me, and that, as a “Good Jew,” I was charged with protecting and transmitting to the next generation — no longer applied to me. Given the fact that the rabbis who wrote the Talmud, the basis for the whole genres of legal literature that came after it, could not fathom two members of the same gender entering a lasting, romantic relationship and raising children, and that homosexual acts (or, at the very least, male homosexual acts) are biblically prohibited, there was never any need to include such discussions in the Talmud.

Thus, according to the strictest interpretations of rabbinic literature, if I wanted to obey the letter of the law, I would be barred from physical contact with women, but not from men. And, given the fact that I am queer, this seems horribly backward.

While I’m not about to become shomer negi’ah right now, the fact of the matter is that the Modern Orthodox community has started looking past the biblical prohibition that, in the past, meant that LGBTQ people could not remain part of the Modern Orthodox community. Halakhah, or Jewish law, however, has stayed behind.

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Memorial To Gay Shoah Victims Inaugurated In Tel Aviv Park

Steve Lipman for The Jewish Week

A municipal-funded memorial to gay victims of the Holocaust, both Jews and non-Jews, was inaugurated on Tuesday in Tel Aviv’s Meir Park, according to Haaretz. It is the country’s first.

The memorial in front of a community center is the creation of attorney Eran Lev, an activist in the gay community who was a city councilman for Meretz. “It’s important to me that people understand that persecution of gay people was not the usual story of the Holocaust that we know from the final solution, and from the Wannsee Conference,” he told Haaretz. “This is a different story, more modest, but still an important one. It’s important that people in Israel know that the Nazis persecuted others as well, not because they were Jews, but because they were gay.”

The memorial consists of three triangles – the symbol of the gay community, Haaretz reported. On each a sentence is written in Hebrew, English and German: “In memory of those persecuted by the Nazi regime for their sexual orientation and gender identity.”

An inscription states that special steps were taken against gay people and that “according to Nazi ideology, homosexuality was considered harmful to ‘public health.’ The Gestapo had a special unit to fight 
homosexuals and the ‘Center for the Fighting of Homosexuality and Abortions’ kept a secret file on about 100,000 homosexuals.”

An estimated 15,000 gay people in the Third Reich were sent to concentration camps and more than half were murdered.

In historic move Habayit Hayehudi to support bill granting tax breaks to same-sex parents

Religiously-oriented party, which set forward two proposals to solve inconsistencies while staving off de facto recognition of same-sex couples, says wording of final law will be different.

By Jonathan Lis for Haaretz

Habayit Hayehudi yesterday decided to support a bill that would grant tax exemptions to same-sex parents, after vehemently trying to topple the bill with a compromise draft of its own. The bill, sponsored by Yesh Atid MK Adi Kol, will be brought for a preliminary vote in the Knesset on Wednesdau.

The proposal grants same-sex parents the same tax credits for children that are given to heterosexual parents. Habayit Hayehudi fears that Yesh Atid’s proposal may be viewed by courts as de facto recognition of same-sex couples by the Knesset. Therefore, the party had insisted that the discriminatory tax law be rectified by a special amendment in the tax code, rather than through legislation.

Habayit Hayehudi sources said late Tuesday that although the original draft would be the one brought before the Knesset on Wednesday, the wording would be changed in the future before the next vote, and would be based on an understanding of principles that would be reached in the future between the two sides.

At present, half the tax credit points for married couples for a child up to the age of 18 are granted to the wife only. That means that homosexual couples are not eligible for the credit, which in 2013 amounted to up to NIS 2,616 a year per child.

Habayit Hayehudi’s first proposal stipulated that the half point granted until now to mothers be divided equally between the two parents, regardless of their gender.

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Religious Leaders' Quotes On LGBT People, Gay Marriage, And Homosexuality

For the Huff Post

"Who am I to judge a gay person of goodwill who seeks the Lord?" said Pope Francis, a statement that many other religious leaders would do well to pay attention to.

Some already have.

Watch a slideshow of sometimes surprising roundup of religious leaders who have made positive statements about LGBT individuals here:

 

A 1980s Gay Boy and his Jewish Bubbes

In Alvin Orloff's novel Gutterboys—written in 2004, but set in the punk fever of the early 1980s—Jeremy Rabinowitz is a shy 19-year-old Jewish kid desperate to fit in with the gay Manhattan avant-garde....or to just find a boyfriend who'll love him forever. Unfortunately, the best he can manage is to sneak into dance clubs with his (regrettably female) best friend, Lizzie, the lead singer of a New Wave band.

Gutterboys has all the workings of a standard fish-out-of-water story, but for a single supernatural element. Watching over him, and constantly manifesting on his shoulders, are the ghosts of Jeremy's two Jewish grandmothers: Gramma Bea is a proper Englishwoman. Meanwhile, Nana Leah is a fiercely traditional Russian Communist babushka. Each has her own hangups: Leah has issues with Jeremy's budding homosexuality, and Bea lectures Jeremy on his punk lifestyle: "Your behavior last night was atrocious. Really, drinking straight out of the bottle!"

Jeremy's quests prove fruitless almost without exception, but there's an honest joy in watching him endure them, strengthening his shell and growing as a person. In the almost-entirely male world of gay Manhattan, Jeremy's strongest friendships, and his most enduring ones, are with the women in his life.

- Matthue Roth for Jewniverse