Gay Love and Jewish Tradition

Sam Schulman is wrong; same-sex marriage is simple, sacred, and very Jewish indeed

By David Wolpe in Mosaic Magazine

The first same-sex marriage I conducted was between two women who had been together for nineteen years. They stood under the huppah with tears streaming down their faces.

We’ve come a long way. At one time, the rhetoric dominating the discourse on homosexuality among the gatekeepers of traditional Judaism was condemnatory at best, cruel at worst. In one of his milder statements, the great halakhic authority Rabbi Moshe Feinstein wrote in the 1970s: “To speak of a desire for homosexual intimacy is a contradiction in terms.” Few would make such a statement today. Let us be grateful for small mercies.

But now Sam Schulman has offered a streamlined denunciation not of homosexuality itself but of same-sex marriage. Despite some slightly snarky asides—about the Conservative movement’s approval of rabbinic officiation at such unions, Schulman writes: “looking upon their work, the rabbis found it very good”—his tone is measured and his argument cogent. Pointing out that kiddushin in the Jewish tradition mandates a procreative effort to build a Jewish family, he argues that, in this respect, marriage in Judaism is not viewed as a romantic alliance between two partners. Therefore, he concludes, same-sex marriage, whatever may be its mitigations and merits, is not Jewish marriage.

There are three distinct problems with this analysis: it ignores the Torah’s insights into human nature; it elides the rabbinic tradition and the realities of halakhic (legal) change; and it treats society as static.

Genesis begins by stating that we are all created in God’s image. Then the Torah tells us that it is not good to be alone; in fact, loneliness is the first thing the Bible calls “not good.” The coupling of these statements should give us pause; it suggests that the joining of two human beings cannot be an endeavor devoted solely to shoring up society. Humans were created singly (nivra adam y’hidi), the Mishnah emphasizes, because each of us contains an entire world.

Therefore, a utilitarian reading of creation—we are here in order to make more of us, or we are to get married solely in order to reproduce—is too simplistic for the depth of the Torah, or of human life. Rather, we are here to be joined to one another, solitudes in search of love. Procreation may be the first commandment, but it is emphatically not the first imperative.

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