I just received the new issue of the Jewish Quarterly (London) with a new article of mine in it. (With other interesting material as well, of course.) Unfortunately, I doubt anyone in this country has heard of it, and their web site is sorely lacking. Please buy the new issue (Spring 2004, Number 193), but failing that, here's my piece.

New York’s Jews, religious and secular: Some unwelcome questions

The most popular synagogues in Manhattan are those that bestride the bounds of denominational identity with verve, creativity, or brazenness – or out of sheer necessity, because they have no other choice. Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, the “gay shul,” is liturgically too traditional for the Reform movement, and too homosexual for the Conservatives. B’nai Jeshurun, which packs hundreds of single young worshippers on Friday nights into the sanctuary it shares with a church on the Upper West Side, is definitely not Orthodox (look your best for the attractive davener next to you), and, since it uses musical instruments at the Shabbat service, can’t be Conservative either.

Then there are the grass-roots mini-minyanim which have sprung up so that like-minded young people can find friendly faces to daven among. Perhaps the oldest of such minyanim, Kehilat Orach Eliezer (KOE), is an Orthodox prayer group meeting on Saturday mornings and holidays, which seems to tremble chronically on the edge of schism and ideological transformation, too liberal for other established Orthodox synagogues and too conservative for the other smaller groups that have sprung up. For example, Kehilat Hadar, a minyan of some hundred attendees, coming together regularly in temporary quarters, is marked by liturgical conservatism and a love of singing. Darchei Noam is a minyan that calls itself Orthodox, and indeed there is separate seating at its services – but its extensive women’s participation would be out of place at most Orthodox synagogues. Kol Zimrah, a minyan that takes its inspiration from the Reconstructionist and Chavurah movements, is another newcomer to this scene, not to mention a couple of other such groups in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

Why do so many twenty- and thirty-somethings find a need to daven outside the strictures of organized, denominationally centered synagogue life? What does this say about Jewish life in New York, both among religious Jews and among those still hardy and independent-minded enough to identify themselves as secular?

There are two reasons for the mini-minyans, one prosaic and one philosophical. The first is demographic homogeneity. Many of these new prayer groups are frequented by twenty- and thirtysomethings who prefer to socialize – and to pray, sing, and enjoy a kiddush – with those of similar age and marital status. Anyone over the age of thirty-five who attends such a “demo-homo” minyan will often feel out of place, not because the daveners themselves are unfriendly, but because they are not in the in-group. But what will happen to those currently active in such mini-minyanim in five or ten years, when they are either older and married, or, worse still in the Upper West Side taxonomy, older and unmarried? Will they still feel comfortable presiding over a second-generation, newly arrived crop of fresh-faced, Conservadox Ivy League graduates?

But there is a more charitable explanation for this phenomenon. Committed, intelligent young New Yorkers are more and more coming to find that the institutional orientation of American Judaism does not overlap with their own interests and commitments. Luckily for them, New York is preserving its reputation as a sort of laboratory, where beakers of young Jews, bubbling away in dark, hip corners, produce innovative substance that can be exported to the rest of the country.

Each of the large denominations has justified its existence to the present day on the basis of a handful of issues. The Reform movement liberated its members from the yoke of halachah, only to refashion that yoke according to the individual will, and then, most recently, to place that new yoke over its own necks, a la Sinai, with communal consent. But where do social action and the ethical imperative, the highest and irreplaceable mitzvot of Reform Judaism, fit in this new rightward tilt? The institutions of Modern Orthodoxy came out of an urge to prove the success of strict halachic practice within the framework of modern American life. But neither the strict halachists (who are attracted to the fundamentalist Orthodox groups of Brooklyn), nor the adherents of modern scholarly-intellectual practice (who are splitting off into their own minyanim and seminaries) are satisfied with the trends of their movements. Will there be a modern Orthodoxy in fifty years? And the monkey in the middle, Conservative Judaism, is having its strength sheared from it by Reform on the left and Orthodoxy on the right; egalitarianism, the burning issue of Conservatism’s 80s and 90s, is now taken for granted even by the movement’s neighbors on both sides. Is there a Conservative passion left for the next millennium that will not consume the bush planted by Schechter and Heschel?

It goes without saying that many lay Jews are not proficient in the inside-baseball differences that characterize Jewish interdenominational squabbling – after all, it’s pretty late in the century, and somewhat late in American Jewish life, to blame the widely recognized American Jewish apathy and ignorance on one particular group of Jews. But many involved New York Jews go one step farther: their flexibility and experimentation in matters doctrinal, halachic, and cultural are precisely at those junctures where organizations and institutions have planted red flags. They walk across the minefield not even looking at the danger signs. So Maimonides’ thirteen principles, the authorship of the Torah, and the binding nature of mitzvot are topics freely discussed by Orthodox and non-Orthodox scholars at a number of forums. Recognition of intermarried couples and of homosexual relationships, a danger zone for the Conservative movement, is approached more and more often, albeit quite gingerly and only in lay organizations. And the Reform leadership, seemingly heedless of a disconnect with the membership such as is bedeviling the Conservatives, is inching ever closer to an appreciation, if not a binding understanding of halachah.

If committed, religiously observant New York Jews don’t respect the denominational boundaries of the last fifty years, how can they be pinned down? While their principles vary, of course, one can try to summarize their approach. Institutions require strict divisions between “in” and “out” – an intermarried Jew must be thrown out because there is a chance that his or her spouse might find their way into the community, which would then, ipso facto, no longer be Jewish, or at least be less so. The truth, individuals and communities know, is somewhat more complicated, because those intermarried couples who bother to associate with a Jewish community are often more committed than couples in which both members are Jewish. This explains why New York’s Jewish cultural institutions, which play the role of venues for ideas that synagogues cannot entertain without unlooked-for repercussions, provide myriad discussion and support groups – not to combat intermarriage, as Jewish communal leaders would characterize the main goal of American Jewry, but to integrate such couples into the larger community.

At the same time that denominational boundaries are being crossed, the influence of two very large, nearly homogeneous communities is strongly felt. The fact that most Jews are to be found under the influence of one or both of these groups will determine to what extent post-denominational Judaism will succeed in the city. On the one hand, fundamentalist ultra-Orthodoxy, a group notable both for its internal power struggles (one would not be amiss in classifying Brooklyn Chasidim, for example, as three, six, or even ten “denominations”) and for its sociocultural homogeneity, like a giant mini-minyan. On the other hand are the Jewish secularists, who would probably not acknowledge, even if it were pointed out to them, their affinity with both Eastern European and Israeli mass-market, urban Jewish cultures.

Most of the Brooklyn ultra-Orthodox, though not all, are Chasidim, and many of the Chasidim, though again not all, are Yiddish-speaking. Though their oft-proclaimed adherence to the traditions of their ancestors occasions much admiring or scornful comment about the “shtetls [sic] in Brooklyn,” such statements betray an ignorance of the thoroughgoing yet disciplined innovation that is the source of these communities’ energy. Mass communication, popular culture, best-selling merchandise, rock-star personalities: the success of the Chasidim in creating a new culture on American soil, and their ability to convince themselves and others of their absolute fealty to the “old ways,” owes everything to these modern phenomena. At the same time, however, the uniquely Chasidic home-family nexus made possible by these modern walls of Yiddish (or merely English-language ultra-Orthodox) mass communication and consumption is also liable to be influenced precisely by the accoutrements of modernity that have made it possible. Chasidic rebbeim, for example, are ever more frequently inveighing against the influx of non-Chasidim into their communities, and the use of the Internet to popularize extra-fundamentalist tendencies. These troublesome tendencies, however, are either already used by the Chasidim or are about to enter their repertoire.

Surprisingly, then, the ultra-Orthodox communities of New York, who the city’s other Jews view with a mixture of fascination, envy, and trepidation, are confronting the same problems as the by now well-established, even traditional, American Jewish denominations. Institutional success leads to cooptation of the institution’s elements by those who would not have been originally allowed inside the tent, at the same time that looser boundaries of definition give rise to the fear that the institution will lose its native constituency. Add to this that Brooklyn’s Chasidic population is growing the fastest of any New York Jewish population (and therefore of any group of American Jews), and the question for New York Jews is obvious: if the Chasidim maintain their bloc, how will that affect the rest of us? And, by the same token, what can we expect if the Chasidim fragment, as has happened in other historical circumstances?

There are a number of Jews in New York who will understandably complain at being left out of the above summary. They call themselves by a variety of names – “just Jewish,” “cultural Jews,” “secular Jews” – but what they aren’t is clearer than what they are. They neither attend synagogue regularly, nor participate frequently in religious ritual, nor involve themselves in the minutiae of traditional observance. What, then, does a cultural or secular Jew do in New York? All manner of things, because New York is possibly the only city in the world where a non-religious, Jewish cultural diet can be pursued twenty-four hours a day, six (or even seven) days a week. Flyers and schedules for concerts (from Jewish hip-hop to klezmer to folk-inflected classical), lectures, classes, discussions, art exhibits, theater, readings, etc., etc., lie thick as manna upon the Manhattan ground.

Though it was only in the twentieth century, in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, that Jewish secularism became a live option, it has quickly become the modus operandi that feels most familiar to the Jewish urban dweller. Early in the twenty-first century, however, it appears that such an option cannot live on for long as an independent choice on the committed Jew’s menu. This observation is made with regret, for a counterbalance is sorely needed to the tendency of American Jews to see their Jewish life as primarily “Judaism” – a religion bled dry of extra-legal content found somewhere between Protestantism and Catholicism. However, Jewish culturalism (if one can call it that) suffers not just from this Americanizing tendency, but the very assimilating nature of urban cultural life. That is, the questions cultural Jews have to answer include not only the same one that all Jewish religious denominations have to answer: what makes their Jewish life different and valuable in comparison to other groups? As they produce and consume an enviably rich and varied cultural output, Jews who identify themselves predominantly with non-religious Jewish culture must ask themselves: what makes their cultural life Jewish? If the denominations find it difficult to deal with their one question, rare is the cultural Jew who bothers to answer both. Let’s hope, for the sake of Gotham’s Jews, that they forthrightly discuss these matters across their picket fences, subway lines, and bagel counters.

The alluring Shabbes siren

Any first-hand reports on the high-volume music made by the Sabbath klaxon of Yeshiva Toras Emes Kamenitz?

Mango for lunch

This fruit is so fleshy as to be almost fleyshik.

If you think I'm writing off-topic, the mango bears a close relation to Indian food.

And perhaps you wonder where the word came from? I did.

The OED to the rescue!

< Portuguese manga (early 16th cent.) < a Dravidian word such as Kodagu mage, Malayalam ma, or Tamil mky mango, perh. via Malay mangga (which may itself, however, be < Portuguese). Portuguese manga also Middle French manga (1540), French mangue, mengue (1604), whence the appearance of the last 2 forms in the work cited in quot. 1678 at sense 2. The origin of the -o ending is not clear: Dutch and Spanish mango are < English.

The first occurrence of the word in a European language appears to be in a passage referring to Calicut (Kozhikode), and is therefore prob. < a Dravidian language:

1510 L. DI VARTHEMA Itin. f. lviiv, Se troua quiui anchora unaltro fructo che se chiama Amba, el pede suo se chiama Manga.

Its first recorded occurrence in certain languages, e.g. post-classical Latin (1511) and French (1540) (both as manga), appears to be in translations of this text. The relevant passage was not translated into English but may have had an indirect influence.

Breaking news
From The Times (London), Friday, Jun 3, 1785; pg. 2; Issue 136; col A
(Thanks to Language Hat for alerting us to the limited-time-only free access to the archives of the Times and a wealth of other material.)

FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE.

Yesterday arrived the Mail from France.
Vienna, May 11.

To prevent in Gallicia [sic] the confusion frequently occasioned in contracts, from the uniformity of the Jewish names, his Imperial Majesty has ordered, that for the future the Jews shall take family names, to which shall be joined the names of their fathers; but that they may place before these distinctive names any others they shall choose to adopt.

How to remember

Often it's not clear to me what people mean when they talk about remembering the Holocaust. I'm not sure of much, but I do know that any commemoration or attempt at understanding has to take many approaches. Here's what my reading list (or, for the tradition-minded, seder limud) was for today. (Needless to say, I didn't get to even a small fraction of it this year.)

Telling the story: Geheymshtot, an epic poem by Abraham Sutzkever. Ruth Wisse says of this poem, and another epic in Sutzkever's oeuvre:

The enormity of the history to which he bore witness inspired Sutzkever to write epic poems as well as lyrics. The narrative poem Geheymshtot (Secret Town, 1945-47), in several hundred stanzas of amphibrach tetrameter, depicts a symbolic ten survivors who hide in the sewers beneath Vilna. The epic poem Gaystike Erd (Spiritual Soil) commemorates the arrival of Sutzkever with his wife and infant daughter in Eretz Yisrael aboard the ship Patria. In each work, a constellation of dramatic personages represents the human and ideological variety of Jews who share a common fate -- the crucible of destruction in the one case, and the reclamation of national sovereignty in the other.

Understanding the events: Among the hundreds of works witnessing the Holocaust that one could spend a lifetime studying, there are two I would like to read sooner rather than later: Togbukh fun Vilner Geto (The Diary of the Vilna Ghetto), by Herman Kruk, a new translation of which is available; and Emanuel Ringelblum's Togbukh fun Varshever Geto (Diary of the Warsaw Ghetto).

Prayer: The siddur of the Masorti (Conservative) movement in Israel, "Ve'Ani Tefilati," has an insert for Yom Ha'Shoah. I'm not a hundred percent sure I agree with the theology, but I included it in my davening this year. (The insertion used to be available on the Web, but no longer, it seems. Instead there's a dvar Torah on the connection between parshes Shemini and Yom Ha'Shoah.) Here's the text, to be inserted in the berachah "Al ha'tsadikim":

נחם, ד´ אלוקינו, את עמך ישראל, שארית הפליטה, אוד מוצל מאאש, כי בשבת אבותינו בטח בגלותם קם עליהם שונא אכזר מכל, גוי עז פנים אשר לא ישא פנים לזקן ונער לא יחון. ואמר: "לכו ונכחידם מגוי ולא יזכר שם ישראל עוד." לבי לבי עם חלליהם, מעי מעי על חלליהם – ומאנה ופשי להנחם. עלי היו כולנה. ועף-על-פי-כן ולמרות הכל, נצח ישראל לא ישקר.

Just as one tells and retells the Exodus from Egypt in many different ways, so must one tell and retell the anti-redemption, the abandonment.

Postscript: It appears that David Roskies' Nightwords: A Liturgy on the Holocaust is available on-line. I'm not sure why, copyright-wise, but I'm not tzadik enough not to take advantage of it.

Post-postscript: The Warsaw Ghetto Web site, in Hebrew, is a mass of sobering detail.

How to Speak Yeshivish

A friend of mine is a linguist researching Orthodox Jewish English, or what a layperson like me can call Yeshivish. Most of the features she's listed are neither new nor surprising, but what a linguist (like any scientist) does is to empirically back up phenomena and classify them in a systematic way. I think this is the first list I've seen that does that for "frumspeak."

Distinctive features of Orthodox Jewish English
Sarah Bunin Benor
4/11/04

Orthodox Jewish English: English used by Orthodox Jews with distinctive features in several areas, mostly influences from Yiddish, Hebrew, and Aramaic:
1. Lexicon
2. Phonology
3. Syntax/semantics/pragmatics
4. Discourse markers
5. Prosody
6. Subtractive features

Lexicon
Many loan words from Yiddish, Hebrew, and Aramaic (500-2500 depending on speaker, audience, topic, setting)

A rabbi teaching a co-ed class on Hilchos Pesach:
“The mitzvah of the matzah by the seder should be- We’re machmir, it’s a chumra to have shmura mishas haketsira, that the wheat that is harvested for peysach should be already watched from the time...”

A 19-year-old man from California learning Gemora with his younger brother:
“[begin chanting intonation] Whenever you’re shaych, then you can be an eyd; whenever you’re not, you’re not [end chanting intonation]. So why does Rashi say-? That’s cause dina d’malchusa dina. It’s because they’re- even if not dina d’malchusa dina, Rashi says later cause al din hu nitstavu bney noyach. The goyim are shaych to dinim; they’re not shaych to gitin. That’s why it’s good.”

Phonology
Frequent /t/ release/aspiration where general American English would use glottal stop or flap
1. at the end of words (right, not)
2. between vowels/liquids and syllabic [n] (certain, button)
3. between vowels (humanity, spirituality)

Final devoicing (wrong[k], bird[t])

Non-raising of pre-nasal /ae/

Syntax, semantics, pragmatics
Modal constructions
1. Would: If you would have seen it, you would have believed it.
2. Should: I want that you should get her number.
3. Could: I could do that.

Phrasal verbs:
give over ‘communicate, impart’
< Yiddish geb iber
speak out ‘say aloud, utter’
< Yiddish red oys
tell over ‘recount, retell, tell [a story]’
< Yiddish dertseyl iber

Prepositions: “by”
1. at [a location/structure]: “by the mikvah (‘ritual bath’),” “by the table” “by the restaurant,” “by the bus station”
2. at the house of: “Are you eating by Rabbi Fischer?” “I’ll stay by them.”
3. with, among: “By Chabad, it’s different,” “Things they’ve seen by their parents,” “By us, monarchy, unity did not mean individuals losing their individuality.”
4. according to the opinion of, in the mind of: “Who’s Reb Yehuda holding by?” “I pasken (‘rule halachically’) by him.”
5. at [an event, time of year], on (coincidence): “If you have children by the seder (‘Passover ceremony’),” “by the rehearsal,” “by Pesach (‘Passover’)”

Prepositions: “to”
1. You should come to us for Shabbos.
2. I went to Rivka.

“Hold”
1. hold/halt (‘be located in one’s religious observance’): “Who am I to judge where they’re holding religiously?” “Where are you holding?”
2. hold/halt (‘be located in a text’): “Where are we holding?” “We’re holding here.”
3. hold/halt (‘opine, practice’): “He holds that, if it goes out, you don’t have to relight it.” “The shul holds like that.” “He holds like Reb Yochanan.”
4. hold by/halt bay (‘accept, believe in’): “We don’t hold by the eruv.” “If you hold by Reb Aron,...”
5. hold by/halt bay (‘be on the verge of’): “With all that handshaking, I guess they’re holding by an agreement” (Weiser 1995:37).

Other words with semantic/pragmatic influences from Yiddish:
1. bring (‘cite as part of an argument’ < breng): “examples brought by Rav Hirsh”
2. learn (‘study traditional texts’ < lern): “Are we going to learn next week?”
3. be well (‘take care’, used to end a conversation < zay gezunt): “OK, be well.”

Extra connective “so”:
“If I see someone who’s using the wrong language, so I’ll realize that they’re just becoming frum (‘religious’).”
“Since we don’t have a Temple nowadays, so we don’t do that.”
“Since they were here early, so they can start now.”

Tense: progressive
“I’m a BT fifteen years, and I don’t say that” (‘I have been a BT’)
“I know someone who’s already frum for 20 years” (‘who’s been religious’).

Word order:
Post-verbal adverbial phrases
“You’ll be stuck studying all day Torah.”
“I was able to pick up pretty well the lingo.”
“If it’s warping, it’s for sure kosher.”

Word order:
Fronting / Y-movement
“180 days worth of party he has there.”
“This word I didn’t know.”

Verb-first: narrative sequentiality (in classroom settings)
“We said before that that the mitzvah is from sunset til ... the feet leave the marketplace. Asks the Gemora, how much time is that? In other words, how much time is that til the feet leave the marketplace? How much time? Said Raba, ...”

Preposition dropping (***):
1. Her bus gets in *** 10:15. (FFB woman)
2. *** Chol hamoed (‘down time between the holiest days of a long holiday’) I’m not going to work, bli neder (‘without a vow’).
3. Next year *** Tisha b’Av (‘Ninth of Av holiday’), we will have another one.
4. I’m already frum (‘religious’) *** 20 years.
5. What are you doing *** Sukkos (‘Feast of Tabernacles’)?

Discourse markers
Navigating Gemora study:
1. Zogt di gemora
2. Zogt di gemora vayter
3. Zogt rashi

Inside
“Let’s go inside”; “Why don’t you read inside”
Outside
“We’ll talk outside”
In other words
Over here
Over there

Markers of praise:
1. Oh!
2. Psshhhh!

Hesitation click from Israeli Hebrew:
“But sometimes it’s more- [click] I don’t know how to explain it.”
“Boys are more- [click] boys are more interested in that kind of thing.”

Prosody
Chanting intonation – text reading, translation (underline = higher pitch, italics = lower pitch)
“Kagon she’oyrach shtey hashuros min hamizrach u’mayriv - The length of the two rows, it was from east to west.”

Chanting intonation in discussions about the text, esp. if-then sentences
“He says that had they not been rushed out of Egypt, they would have made their matzas in Egypt itself.”

High-falling pitch boundary: dramatic point
1. “And they should be, and they are, done together.”
2. “By saying that, that would make other groups feel uncomfortable.”
3. “Years back, they would have maybe just had one video... So now, they make it a point to make ... two videos.”

Rise-fall intonation: laid-back attitude
1. “As I was becoming frum, I got more interested in it.”
2. “If you’re going to the store, get me some milk.”

Rise-fall “whatever” – dismissive
1. “Somehow it just leaks out [that someone is a BT]. Whatever, it’s not the worst thing.”
2. “He was, whatever, not that frum.”

Speech rate: sometimes faster?

Subtractive features
Less loshon hora (‘gossip’)
Less obscenity
Less slang

Horseradish Report 5764 (from a friend)

I wept.

If you insist on the full connoisseur's report: Vintage 5764 from the Chateau d'Mullen is the result of firm, fresh fruit. The bouquet is startlingly arresting. With a beguilingly titanium core, the aroma is pugilistic. Devastatingly acidic aroma. Sensations of battery acid give way to a nuclear confiture in the mouth; ripe and full. Accents of earth, fire and arsenic followed by a crippling finish. Suggested accompaniment: gefilte fish and slivovitz by the mugful.

Perhaps it will age well. I'm not.

Israel and Yiddish

Robert Rosenberg's review in the Forward of Aharon Megged's Foiglman, a novel about a Yiddish poet in Israel, is not bad. The last paragraph, though, cries out for a bit of the old context sauce.

"A poet's homeland is his language," laments Foiglman toward the end of this brief, complex book. But this is too pat. A poet has no homeland: Language is but a small, wooden boat carrying one across the water. Yiddish was shattered beneath the perfect storm of Hitler, Nazism and hatred of the Jews — not by the resurgence of Hebrew, though that rebirth was accompanied by all the contradictory love and hatred of two siblings vying for their parents' love. The poignancy of "Foiglman" lies in its portrait of a castaway hanging onto the bow of that shattered vessel by the skin of his teeth, and the remorse it evokes in us, the onlookers, as we peer helplessly from the safety of shore.

Poignancy? Sure, I can go for that. Unfortunately, though, the truth about the shattering of Yiddish is even more depressing. Though Hitler's blow was determinative ("perfect storm," connoting an act of God, is certainly a strange description of the Final Solution), the post-war decline of Yiddish was aided by Yiddish-hating Jews themselves. None other than the government of Israel participated in the elimination of Yiddish culture. I'm not talking about the assimilation common to all transcultural ("melting pot") nationalisms, but about shuttering of publishing houses, laws designed to discourage Yiddish publishing, and silent acquiescence in gangs' destruction of Yiddish newspaper kiosks.

So the real story is not poignant, but tragic. Poignant is leaving your lover at the train station in Paris. Tragic is the mistakes made by your own people. Tragic is Jewish.

The yahrzeit of Daphne Merkin's father

I hope that Ms. Merkin's father rests in peace, and that her rich, detailed memories of him, versified in this week's Forward, are for a blessing.

Poetically speaking, however, sodden sentimentality does not make up for a lack of novelty. "The dead are so gone"! At the risk of violating de mortuis nihil nisi bonum, or (in Jewish) akharey mos kedoshim emor, perhaps we can Merkinize other poems:

April is so the cruellest month.
I am so the emperor of ice cream.
And I, so their sexton slave!

Or perhaps:

So holy, so holy, so holy is the Lord of Hosts,
The whole earth is so filled with His glory.

Language curiosities

I.

The Southwest terminal at LAX has something they're calling a Security Queue. Is this (a) some misguided attempt at European style, or (b) some new sort of people-moving strategy which is not sufficiently distinguished by the word "line"? E.g., is a "queue" (in LAX usage) more labyrinthine than a line?

Anyone out there seen this usage before in the U.S.?

II.

An acquaintance was telling a story about "those Chasidics." I think I've heard this usage before but never really noticed it. Is this modeled on any other English words? Do we say, for example (and lehavdil), "paralytics"? "Democratics"? (Yes, I know it's mistaken. But once I hear a mistake a few dozen times I start getting interested in the why of it.)

III.

For your participatory, or nit-picking, pleasure, a probably-incomplete list of two-letter Hebrew/Loshn-Koydesh palindromes. Have I missed any? (Their rough meanings, in order: roof, breast, hook, moved, nostril ring [see last week's parasha], God's name, the letter mem, was silent [in piyut only, I think], six, was joyful, under- or sub-.)

גג

דד

וו

זז

חח

יי

מם

סס

שש

שׂשׂ

תּתּ

Big in Haaretz

Well, mentioned in one article. I'm not chiloni (secular), though.

Dueling Musings

My bar-plugta (sparring partner, one could say), the lovely, talented, and pseudonymous Simcha, has supercommented my comments on R. Simcha Roth's paper on homosexuality. I'll address the most interesting of them here. (On the Orthodox internet, and perhaps in learned journals as well, I don't know, it has become the practice to qualify the designation "rabbi," lest one unwittingly extend legitimacy to suspect ideologies or practices. I find this objectionable, to say the least, so I can't let it go without comment. Where does such qualification stop? Certainly there are those in the Orthodox community who would prefer to label any Yeshiva University-ordained rabbi with YUR, and any more liberal musmach with, say, YCTR. Perhaps we should cut to the chase and label any given member of the Jewish clergy either OR or TR -- "our rabbi" or "their rabbi"?)

CR. Artson claims that the homosexual relationships in the ancient world, and the ones which the rabbis addressed, were unequal and abusive. There were no "constitutional homosexuals" who had equal, loving relationships and, therefore, neither the Torah nor the rabbis could have prohibited something that did not exist at the time.

I find this argument flawed for a number of reasons:

1. This assumes that the prohibition in the Torah was written by humans to address their contemporary world. I deny this because I believe that the Torah was written by God and addresses the world on many levels, at least one of them being eternal. Even those who believe that the Torah was only written under Divine inspiration and not dictated by God, would still agree that the Torah addresses more than just the contemporary ancient world. God can address relationships that did not exist at that time.

As far as the authorship of the Torah goes, I hold both A and B. That is, the Torah was written by humans to address their contemporary world, and it was written by God, addressing the world on many levels (some of them eternal). These propositions are by no means contradictory! I reject the (ostensible) compromise of "only written under Divine inspiration and not dictated by God," since this formulation is (a) banal, (b) inexact, and (c) lacking in any recognition of the mysterium tremendum which must accompany any discussion of the relationship between God and Torah. Matter-of-fact catechisms must not be the stuff of modern Jewish theology.

Can God address relationships that did not exist at the time of the Torah? To the extent that such a thing can be directly predicated of God, I say, "Sure, why not?" The only problem is showing that God does address, via the prohibition in Leviticus, these currently existing relationships. That is, we need to see where the Gemara addresses loving homosexual couples. Onward!

2. Even if loving homosexual relationships did not exist in the ancient world, the rabbis were renownedfor their creativity and imagination. If they could conceive of such a relationship, then perhaps they were prohibiting it as well. CR. Artson has entirely failed to prove that the rabbis never addressed such a relationship.

Surely R' Simcha knows that לא ראינו אינו ראיה -- negative proof does not constitute proof. The rabbis were creative, imaginative, brilliant men, but neither superhuman nor superhistorical. To expect them to have addressed such a relationship is asking of them these qualities.

3. There is an explicit and oft-quoted source that contradicts CR. Artson’s entire thesis. The Gemara in Hullin (92a-b) quotes Ulla (late 3rd, early 4th cen.) who praises the ancient nations for not writing a ketuvah, a marriage contract, for homosexuals. Similarly, the midrash Bereshit Rabbah (26:5) relates: "Rav Huna [said] in the name of Rav Yosef: ‘The generation of the flood was not obliterated until they wrote marriage contracts for males and animals.’" Marriages - loving, mutual relationships - between two men were conceivable to the rabbis of the Talmud and were unequivocally opposed by them. (See CR. Joel Roth’s paper on the subject, p. 7 on this subject.)

My answer to this is the following:

Nah.

Let's go to the tape. RJR brings three sources quoted by R. Bradley Artson, saying that RBA "misinterprets all three." It is Rabbi Roth, I fear, who misinterprets. We'll take the sources in order.

1. The Gemara in Hullin attributes to Ulla the statement that the Noachides "do not write a ketubbah for a male." (Although I haven't read RBA's teshuvah, I assume he holds that Ulla's statement can be interpreted to mean that committed homosexual relationships were unknown to the Rabbis, or at least to Ulla. I'm not sure how strong this support is. However, RJR's dimissal, as we'll see outside this parenthesis, is equally uncogent.) RJR quarrels with RBA's translation of Rashi's commentary on the passage. The relevant phrase in Rashi is "אע"פ שחשודין למשכב זכור ומייחדין להם זכר לתשמישן", which RJR translates as "Even though they are suspect to engage in homosexual behavior and designate a male as their partner". (I've already mentioned my problems with the equation of mishkav zakhur and "homosexual behavior.") RJR quarrels with RBA on the latter's translation of מייחדין (meyakhedin, from the root yakhed, or "separate") as "sequester." RJR prefers "designate." I think he is correct. Where RJR slips is translating תשמישן (tashmishan) as "their partner." Unless I'm gravely mistaken, it seems clear that tashmish is used here, as it is frequently in the rest of rabbinic literature, to mean sex. Rendering the word as "partner" lets RJR indulge in a conjectural digression, according to which the Rabbis knew of loving homosexual partners but refused to extend to them a ketubbah, i.e. legitimacy. But it is a lot less of a stretch, I think, to explain that Rashi's commentary is referring to those who choose certain men as sexual partners -- much closer to the way that heterosexuals today wrongly understood homosexuality, i.e., as a serial pairing of man with man, rather than a possible foundation for loving relationships.
How Ulla's statement itself applies is a separate matter; I'm concerned here with its use by RJR.

2. In a passage from Genesis Rabbah, the following statement is attributed to Rabbi Huna in the name of Rabbi Joseph: "The generation of the flood was not obliterated from the world until they wrote marriage contracts form males and beasts." RJR again takes issue with RBA's interpretation of the Greek-derived word (גמומסיות) that's central to the passage. He claims the term is a positive one, while RBA, for his part, sees the term as pejorative. Again, I haven't read RBA's teshuvah, but the claims attributed to him by RJR are indeed unconvincing. RJR's interpretation, however, also begs the question. He calls the term "positive," translating it as "marriage contracts" or "wedding songs." However, he does not support these translations with any parallel uses of the word in the Rabbinic literature, nor is it clear to the reader whether this word is, in fact, being used in mocking fashion. RJR needs to do more work here to support his assertion. (In passing, one should mention that characterizing "wedding songs" as tout court "positive" does not take account of the Rabbis' ambivalent attitude, to say the least, toward non-Jewish wedding celebrations. There are even explicit halachic rulings against wedding songs.)

3. The final passage is from Sifra: "I [God] have forbidden only those practices which they and their ancestors have established. And what did they do? A man would marry a man and a woman marry a woman, a man would marry a woman and her daughter, and a woman would be married to two men."

RJR correctly points out (presumably in objection to RBA's approach) that "there is no way to read this passage as implying only lustful, non-supportive, loveless relationships." But that is not what RJR needs to show. He needs to prove that the passage implies supportive, loving relationships in these categories -- which is not the same thing at all. It might be, for example, that the Rabbis knew of loving relationships in the other enumerated categories, but that does not imply that the same reason can be applied to all categories together.

Thus, in my opinion, even if CR. Artson’s methodology was valid - which I do not concede - he has not proven his point. Furthermore, CRS. Roth has not proven his point in the traditional halakhic realm. So we are left with a conservative, strict approach.

I disagree with the dismissal of RSR's teshuvah. I think he succeeds in narrowly defining the strict halachic prohibition and applying it in a compassionate way to gays and lesbians. His many errors, I think, do not undermine the basic thrust of his argument. I have not yet read RBA's teshuvah.

With all due respect, R' Simcha, you (and those agreeing with you) are left with a conservative, strict approach because you see fit to interpret the sources differently. That does not mean that the conservative, strict approach is the only possible or legitimate one. To put it another way, you are willing to assume that today's gays and lesbians fall into the category of mishkav zakhur as understood by Leviticus and the rabbis. I am not willing to make such an assumption, but you can, of course, follow the opinions of your rabbis. Eylu ve-eylu.

There is something else here that needs to be said, in the spirit of rendering explicit what has been up to now been only implicit. Halacha is directly related to morality, and we need to have convincing moral and ritual reasons for our halachot. Even if the rabbis knew of loving homosexual relationships, which I strongly doubt, it does not follow that their moral reasoning, and therefore their halachic approach, is one we should adopt.

Unanswered Quandaries of Jewish Bioethics

My latest for the Forward. Comments, anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

The Tabloid Cat

Di Kats der Payats in dem Post!

Comments on R Simcha Roth's teshuvah
or: Conservosexuality IV: Bride of Conservosexuality

A friend of mine wishes to comment on R. Simcha Roth's teshuvah. I disagree with most of his comments, particularly his final judgment that RSR's teshuvah does not sufficiently justify permitting homosexual activity. Others I agree with. I'll detail my comments later, but for now I'll let my friend speak unimpeded.

Postscript: At long last, my comments on his comments (and so on, and so on). His original comments are in italics.

Dear Sholem,

On your blog you raised the issue of halakhah and homosexuality, pointing readers to the papers of Rs. Simcha and Joel Roth on the subject. Allow me to respond to some significant deficiencies I found in R. Simchah Roth’s paper. I am just looking at Part 1 of his paper and I am intentionally focusing on the dry legal aspects because that is what interests me and because I have no pastoral obligations or experience. I do not pretend that such issues are unimportant because, in real life, they are probably most important.

The legal aspects are vitally important, and I thank you for focusing on them. However, I want to point out in passing that "dry legal aspects" are inseparable from "pastoral obligations." The posek both serves and elevates his community. Part of the reason RSR's teshuvah is more convincing, though not necessarily better argued, than RJR's, is that he clearly understands the psychological realities of homosexual life -- realities that bear directly on legal issues (see below for my response to your comment on ones). That is, RJR chooses to bring the scientific evidence of psychologists who hold that homosexuality can be "cured" -- psychologists who are not held in high regard in the scientific community. RJR does this not (only) because he lacks compassion in this case, but because he is failing to correctly understand the metzius, the lay of the land -- surely a requirement for any posek.

This impression of mine was strengthened by a speech of RJR at the 2003 Biennial Convention of the United Synagogue for Conservative Judaism, excerpted in the magazine United Synagogue Review. There he clambers to new heights of disingenuousness:

"It is the popular wisdom in the world that homosexuality cannot be successfully or even moderately successfully treated, and perhaps this is true. I do know that there are organizations and schools of therapy which claim to have at least some, and sometimes great, success. I don't know where the truth lies, or whether there is only one possible truth about this matter, but this much I wish to say. It is yet within my not so distant memory that the westerm medical world rejected such types of treatment as acupuncture and herbal remedies, yet these are now part of the normal arsenal of medical treatments. I urge halakhically committed gay Jews not to reject the possibility that the severity of the halakhic demand of celibacy might be somewhat or significantly mitigated by some modes of therapy and treatment. Since the halakhic prohibition stands irrespective of whether there is treatment possible or not, there is little to be lost in giving a chance to treatment for which claims of marked success are made and attested."

In other words, RJR is comparing acupuncture, which, despite its use by millions of Chinese over thousands of years, is still viewed with suspicion by many physicians ("part of the normal arsenal" is a great exaggeration), to the marginal research of a handful of psychiatric eccentircs, which is widely scorned and definitely nowhere near "great[ly]
success[ful]", let alone "attested." One must breathe quite deeply at such heights of willful denial.

Page 7: “Rabbi Aharon Feldman in Jerusalem tells a story about the Brisker Rav.” In footnote 33, Roth misidentifies the Brisker Rav as Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik rather than his son, R. Yitzhak Ze’ev Soloveitchik, who is widely referred to as the Brisker Rav.

A fair correction, certainly!

Page 8: “Women are not obligated to marry and procreate.” Roth is correct that women are not obligated to procreate and his prooftext from Mishneh Torah is right on target. However, he fails to distinguish between an obligation to marry and an obligation to procreate. Rambam lists them separately in Sefer Ha-Mitzvot (positive commandments 212 and 213) and only regarding procreation does he say that women are not obligated. The Sefer Ha-Hinukh follows suit (commandments 1 and 552). Nevertheless, it is quite likely that a lesbian is exempt from the obligation to marry.

I might quibble with this were my memory of the relevant sugyot more reliable. However, I remember learning in the Gemara that the obligation of marriage is explicitly connected to the obligation to procreate. In any case, this point is not very closely connected to Roth's main argument.

Page 12: “This requirement does not seem to have been strictly enforced in talmudic times.” Roth states that the prohibition against fondling and kissing was not enforced in the times of the Talmud and brings proof from a story about Ulla who reportedly kissed his sisters on their hands. Even according to the original version of the story, that he kissed them on their chests (surely Roth recognizes that there is more to a woman’s chest than merely her breasts, especially when dealing with young girls), Roth fails to distinguish between non-sexual contact – she-lo be-derekh hibah – and sexual contact. The story about Ulla is a proof that non-sexual contact, such as handshaking, is permissible. It implies nothing about touching that sexually stimulates.

I think you make three claims here. First, you imply that according to the original version of the story (more correctly put, I think, a parallel version), Ulla kissed his sisters on their chests. I believe that the word in Aramaic means "bosoms," and it's glossed this way in a number of sources I have on hand. Whether you choose to gloss it this way, the fact remains that many scholars understand the kissing to have been on the girls' bosoms. Secondly, you characterize the story as "a proof that non-sexual contact, such as handshaking, is permissible." I think this is too broadly put. If I understand the passages correctly (in Avodah Zarah and in Shabbat), the story is brought first, and then, in the context of another beraita, reinterpreted as a proof for the permissibility of non-sexual contact. In a broader understanding of the sugya, however, the story is quite clearly sexual. See, for example, the sexually-themed aggadita in AZ, the context for the story there. In general, to say that the story "implies nothing about touching that sexually stimulates" is not true, I think. Certainly, in the immediate legal context to which the story is put, your claim is defensible. In the broader context of the sugya, however, the story is definitely concerned with such touching. (In passing, I should note my impression that Tosfos, in tractate Shabbat, understand the story's relevance differently than does Rashi, where your statement seems to be derived from. However, this too is not central to the discussion.)

Pages 12-13: “Someone who is under constraint is not required to fulfill a mitzvah at all” Roth correctly cites R. Yosef Engel as stating that there is no sinful act for an anus. This is also the view of R. Chaim Soloveitchik as cited by his student R. Baruch Ber Leibowitz in his novellae to Ketuvot. However, this is not an undisputed matter. No less an authority than R. Akiva Eiger disputes the entire idea, as clarified by R. Elchanan Wasserman in his Kovetz Shiurim. This is a very complex and difficult matter that cannot be stated matter-of-factly.

This is a fault of Roth's style, which is more popular and didactic than technical. I agree that he would have improved his argument by examining ones in a more detailed fashion, though I imagine you and I differ on the approach he should have taken. See below for further discussion of this point.

Page 13: “Pedophilia and kleptomania (and so forth) are recognized psychological disorders… homosexuality is not a pathological condition of the psyche” So what? It is a distinction but distinctions are only meaningful if they are relevant to the topic of discussion. Roth quoted R. Reuven Kimmelman as arguing that kleptomaniacs are anus to sin just like homosexuals are anus to sin. Roth responds that the reasons for the ones are different but fails to explain why that difference is significant. At the end of the day, regardless of the cause of the psychological duress, both kleptomaniacs and homosexuals are anussim. Therefore, according to Roth’s reasoning, kleptomaniacs do not sin when they steal. I find that to be a fatal flaw in his approach.

Again, Roth's style leads him into thickets of unclarity or outright misstatement. Let me try to read his writing a bit more actively (as today's scholarly lingo has it). (Keep in mind that what follows is sadly uncontaminated by a detailed understanding of ones as a halachic category. I look forward to being enlightened by you on the topic!) One is onus if he does not have access to the set of behavioral choices that are available to the fully functioning person. It is important, then, to distinguish between the colloquial and clinical senses of a term like "kleptomaniac." According to various on-line sources (I don't have a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual at hand), kleptomania, for example, is distinguished by the following features:

Recurrent failure to resist impulses to steal objects that are not needed for personal use or for their monetary value
Increasing sense of tension immediately before committing the theft
Pleasure, gratification, or relief at the time of committing the theft
Stealing not committed to express anger or vengeance and is not in response to a delusion or a hallucination

The precise diagnostic categories aren't relevant. The point I want to make is that there is quite a difference between the layperson's casual understanding of "kleptomania" and the clinical use of the term. Thus, in a significant way, a person with a diagnosis of kleptomania is, in fact, not liable for his theft -- he has a condition, in this case, a pathology, which renders the normal set of choices unavailable to him.

What is the connection between kleptomania and homosexuality? It's an a fortiori argument. If we (should) recognize kleptomania as substantive ones, how much the more so should we recognize homosexuality as a non-pathological compulsion, an entire category of relationships which by its very nature is not to be understood in the same way as heterosexuality! That is to say: the verse in Leviticus (and Rabbinic legislation up to the present day) use the category "lying with a man as one lies with a woman." Not only is the definition of this category unclear, RSR points out that one could live in a committed homosexual relationship while at the same time avoiding the behavior with Chazal understand as "lying with a man." More to the point, the use of the terms "gay/homosexual" and "lesbian" are terminologically inapposite when referring to the halachic literature. Gay, lesbian -- man dekhar shmey? Who of the past decisors ever heard of such a thing? These romantic, social, and sexual categories are new, not corresponding to Leviticus.

Page 13: “But halakhah does not discriminate against left-handed people because they have a natural and non-pathological condition…” But it does. A left-handed cohen is considered to be defective and may not perform the avodah. Halakhah also discriminates against people with bad voices, who should not be appointed as permanent Hazzanim; kohanim with deformed hands, who may not recite the priestly blessing in the synagogue; men who cannot grow beards, who are not considered to be fully adult until they reach the age of twenty; etc. etc.

My halachic erudition (what there is of it!) is not as great as yours. I am aware of these laws, but don't remember their wording. In any case, if I'm not mistaken, they are all to be found in the Shulchan Aruch. However, I would be very surprised if these halachot were actively followed today. This does not mean that they are automatically abrogated, or that I reject the general authority of the Shulchan Aruch. But the differences in our halachic philosophies should be clearly recognized here. I do not understand the Shulchan Aruch as a Written Torah to be changelessly followed, nor can I refuse to recognize a strong and meaningful connection between the practice of a community and the halachot that dwell with it. Discrimination against certain sexual practices, if those are indeed what are referred to by the verse in Leviticus and the Rabbinic tradition, are to be countenanced as the legitimate expression of the halachic system. However, as I say above, homosexuality, as a possible route to monogamous sexual, romantic, and emotional life, was not recognized as such in those stages of the tradition. A new category is needed, for the simple reason that when we refer today to homosexuality, we are not merely referring to sexual practices, but to familial and emotional ties.

Page 15: “Rava states that the human male must always be held to be in control of his sexual behavior… today, any male – straight or gay – will vouch for the fact that he can have an erection even at moments that cause him the most embarrassment” Roth totally misses the point. According to Rava, ones can only apply to actual, physical restraint. If a man is extremely attracted to a forbidden woman, something that Rava surely would acknowledge as possible, he may not claim that he was forced by his passion to sleep with her. Rava added that, in addition to the inability to claim attraction as duress, a man also may not claim physical duress. This totally undermines Roth’s argument that attraction is a form of duress. If it were, then even a heterosexual man would be able to claim such ones for, e.g., sleeping with a married woman to whom he is extremely attracted. (As an aside, it is highly problematic from an historical perspective to claim that Rava ignored the possibility of an unintentional erection. I can think of a number of possible explanations, but something this obvious would certainly not have eluded him.)

Agreed.

Page 17: “I strongly suspect that in all segments of Conservative Jewish society masturbation is not looked upon as an unforgivable sin, under any circumstances” A rabbi must teach halakhah even if it is ignored. There is a difference between overlooking a common sin and permitting it.

Agreed. However, I wish to point out that, historically speaking, the "active" status of certain halachot, that is, the extent to which they are actively considered by poskim, is definitely dependent on the attitude towards them in the community.

Page 17: “Apart from the gay person there is no one in the whole breadth of compassionate Jewish life to whom halakhah, as heretofore interpreted says, ‘you may never, ever, under any circumstances, find legitimate sexual expression and enjoy physical love’.” This is untrue. First, there is the agunah. Roth addresses this by stating that the Conservative movement has adopted solutions to solve the problem. I’m not sure that they solve every type of agunah problem but it does not matter for this discussion. Since I reject the various Conservative attempts as insufficient, I see his categorical statement as incorrect. A woman whose husband simply disappears may never touch another person sexually for the rest of her life. A woman whose husband adamantly refuses to give her a get may also never do so. She might have a glimmer of hope, which is more than a homosexual has, but I assure you that it will not appease her one bit. She is no less deserving of our sympathy and tears than a homosexual. Furthermore, I have male friends who have already given up on ever marrying. They know that they will die as virgins. Is it their choice to be single? I hope that we can be more mature than blame the “single’s problem” on people being too choosy. They have tried but not succeeded and have given up. Some are socially awkward, others are so uniquely situated that they cannot find someone similar enough to marry and others are simply unattractive on various level, none of which is their fault. The bottom line is that they will never, ever have sex in their lives. I have sympathy for them, and I wonder how they can do it. But I would not distort the Torah and permit non-marital sex out of pity for them. The Torah is too important to be treated that way.

I stand with you against distortion of the Torah! I think, though, that we might disagree on what such distortion entails. The examples you cite, though poignant, are not germane. The fact of the matter is this: homosexuals, as recognized today, are not failed heterosexuals. They are not men and women who have come to the conclusion, as Woody Allen's joke has it, that seeing people of the same sex would double their chances of a date on Saturday night. No indeed. Let me repeat yet again that homosexuals are members of a different, and heretofore halachically unrecognized category. The Torah is not distorted by recognizing this reality - rather, we are faithful to the pshat of the verse by respecting the gulf that separates "mishkav zakhur" from the gays and lesbians of today.

Page 17: “The alternative to condoning some homosexual acts is to condemn the observant gay person to a life without any possibility of expression of physical love” Here, Roth sets two extreme positions and demands that we choose either the compassionate one or the ruthless one. He neglects the statements from Orthodox rabbis with which he started the paper that try to navigate a third way, namely state that such acts are sins but in private counseling sessions work with the homosexual person to minimize the sins and find ways to live as healthily and religiously as possible. A homosexual who can contain his needs is a tzadik. A homosexual who cannot is not a tzadik. I can live knowing that I am not a tzadik and I see no need to distort the Torah so that someone else need not feel guilty. I know religiously oriented people who fully believe that they must observe Shabbat but feel that it is so great a restriction on their lives that they will never be able to do it. So they live their lives knowing that they are not perfect. Never do they demand that a rabbi state that their actions are permissible. They know that what they are doing is wrong but they feel compelled to do it. This is, indeed, standard in many segments of the Sephardic community.

I disagree that acknowledgment of homosexual relationships, a social creature not recognized (or indeed recognizable!) by past halachic generations, constitutes distortion of the Torah. To desecrate Shabbat is wholly different, from a religious and indeed a Jewish point of view, than the establishment of a loving homosexual relationship, though it be not at all contiguous with the Torah's or Talmud's definitions of "lying with a man" or (in the lesbian case) "two women rubbing up against each other." Are these phrases really to be equated with today's gays and lesbians?

Page 18: “It is surely more laudable to adopt the path of ko’ah de-hetera adif” Here is what I have written on the margins of my copy of this paper: Augh!!! This talmudic saying is not a praise of leniencies. It is a statement that the burden of proof on someone being lenient is greater than on someone who is being stringent. Therefore, someone who reaches that state of having sufficient proof to be lenient must have a very strong case.

Surely, if I may be melamed zkhus, Roth is here using the phrase as a melitzah, or rhetorical flourish. I cannot believe that he is the first rabbi to use the phrase in a looser sense than that found in the Gemara.

Pages 18-19: “You would not be aiding or encouraging him in his wrongdoing if he were going to do it anyway” This is a complicated matter and Roth glossed over an entire issue. Lifnei iver only applies to someone who cannot otherwise sin. However, there is still a rabbinic prohibition of mesaye’a yedei ov’rei aveirah. Roth ignores it. R. Moshe Feinstein and others jump through hoops in order to come to their conclusions in their specific cases. Roth ignores those issues, explicitly discussed in the responsa he cites, and fails to explain why mesaye’a does not apply to homosexual acts. It could be that his conclusion is still correct, but he needs to address this complex issue.

Agreed. If one views current, committed homosexual relationships as ipso facto sinful, your point is correct. As you have gathered by now, I disagree with the premise.

Page 19: “We have already demonstrated that there is ample room for accommodation to their special needs through halakhically condoning them” Roth explained earlier that we have to allow homosexuals to perform certain sins. Now he is claiming that his earlier logic proved that they are not sins at all. Condoning is not permitting.

In conclusion, R. Simchah Roth has failed to provide a sound halakhic reasoning to permit any form of homosexual activity. Both fondling and intercourse remain prohibited, despite our profound sympathy for the disadvantaged homosexual. How, exactly, to counsel individuals – when to tell them to fight their desires and when to instruct them on how to minimize their sins – is a very important pastoral issue that I am insufficiently qualified to address. However, I will add another halakhic issue – the largest problem I had with the R. Joel Roth’s paper. R. Joel Roth argues on pages 5-6 of his unnumbered paper that homoerotic fantasies are permissible as long as they do not lead to homosexual activity. He rightly contends that the discussion of hirhur is complex but states, “What is important to note is that the avoidance of hirhur is a desideratum, not a legal requirement. One must attempt to avoid hirhur, but is not legally liable for failure.” These two sentences are very different and, I believe, only the second is accurate. Hirhur – sexual fantasizing – is prohibited explicitly in the Talmud (Ketuvot 46a) and codes (Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Issurei Bi’ah 21:5; Shulhan Arukh, Even Ha-Ezer 23:3). Both a heterosexual and a homosexual man must try to avoid sexual fantasies, even if complete success is impossible. This includes avoiding suggestive films and situations that will likely lead to such fantasies. Indeed, someone who fights his battle on the realm of thoughts will find that he is much less prone to more severe sins than otherwise.

With regard to hirhurim, I'm not sure I agree with your last claims. Nor am I sure that hirhurim can be so glibly equated with sexual fantasizing, which I understand as a much broader category. However, with regard to the strigency of the prohbitions against hirhurim, I will acknowledge your greater erudition and not quibble on the matter, although I think I would have something to say (given greater space and time) on the importance of recognizing differences in stringency and importance among different halachot.

With regard to your conclusion, I must say that your comments have helped me to a deeper understanding of the deficiencies in RSR's teshuvah. However, the conclusion I draw is different from yours. How so? I think Roth should have framed his approach to homosexuality more broadly. Any treatment of homosexuality according to an Orthodox understanding of halachah will founder on the central paradox, which is the following: Halachah is not only, or not primarily codified law, but case law. However, case law can only be rendered by those who fully understand the deficiencies and advantages of the codified law. Halachah with regard to homosexuality can never be other than what it is now, say the Orthodox. This is, of course, true to their way of thinking, because the halachah as codified is never (or only very glacially) changed, and acrobatic hoop-jumping and back-flips are executed with impressive regularity to maintain that stasis. What is the halachah about homosexuality? Look in the Shulchan Aruch. There it is forbidden. Therefore, it is and will always be forbidden, and committed homosexual relationships are always to be understood in the narrow terms of Levitically prohibited cultic sex acts. QED. This is where case law -- teshuvot, psakim -- come in. When RSR, in his teshuvah, brought the opinions of those Orthodox poskim who encourage their questioners not to relinquish their status within the community, I gave a short little laugh of scorn, thinking that Roth was appealing to the "authority of the Orthodox" (as we too often do in the Conservative movement). But, again to give him the benefit of the doubt, he might have been doing this for another reason: to show that halachic case law is moving in a direction that recognizes the inapposite terminology and categorical incompleteness of previous generations' codified halachah.

I trust that my comments here will be seen as a confrontation with difficult halakhic concepts and not stereotyped as a homophobic response of hiding behing legalisms.

Sincerely,

An Anonymous Friend

Of course! And I hope that, in return, my flexibility will not automatically be characterized as a distortion of the Torah.

Kol-tuv,

A Non-Anonymous Friend

"We petty men walk under his huge legs and peep about"

The Bard is in the house.

Waugh! Waugh! Waugh!

Hear that? No, that's not someone from "Peanuts," it's the Z.Sh.B. Patented Bad Poetry Foghorn. It's been sounding for the past several days on account of Henri Cole's "To The Forty-Third President," which takes up precious bandwidth in the new issue of The New Yorker. (Not available on-line. And a good thing, too.) Its faults include, but are not limited to, the Sin of Thematicity. (Don't write about "paper clips," "dogs," "my mother's perfume," "Why Bush is Bad," or anything else that can be summed up in a sentence. If it can be summed up in a sentence, do so, and skip the poem.) We also get Cole's favorite closure, a strange animal excreting something off in the forest. It's a poem not to be missed, if only to remind oneself that Homer (and Gluck, and Cole) do sometime slumber.

Meanwhile, here's a cracking good poem from the same pen. (Taken from Slate.)

Crows in Evening Glow

The terrible glorious crows are convening again,
swooping into the area with triumphant caws,
plunging with demon black wings from utility poles,
kicking and pecking a neighbor's kittens.
Wearing the plaid shirt that was my father's plaid shirt,
I throw a tarp over a pile of clear pink
hemorrhaging garbage bags. See a crow,
take three steps back. Three crows cried,
someone has died. Go home, Crows! I holler,
My black-lipped daddy is gone. Poor crows,
perplexing as men, nobody is listening
to their tired signals, not even the mother,
with blue drooping breast, nursing a newborn
under a red maple with a nest.

Henri Cole's new collection, Middle Earth, appeared last year. He is poet-in-residence at Smith College.

And on another topic . . .

I am, in dilatory fashion, putting together a response to R' Anonymous Friend's comments on R' Simcha Roth's homosexuality teshuvah. Suffice it to say, in the meantime, that I disagree with RAF. But stay tuned! I'll have them up soon.

To Kill, Destroy, and Annihilate*

This Purim note is written stone-cold sober, since the author will do his Slivovitz drinking at tomorrow's banquet. Any stylistic or grammatical errors are due to the writer's native intelligence.

The Book of Esther? Dark comedy -- maybe the darkest. We get murder, both the one-on-one variety and wartime slaughter, attempted rape (leaving aside Ahasuerus's droit de seigneur masquerading as comparative perfume testing), and a whole lot more, with drunkenness the very least of it. Behind it all, the machinations of a hideously incompetent monarchy, which can't manage to rescind an order for genocide even after the king's recognized his mistake. So what's to celebrate? Or, more to the point, why do I celebrate?

I see the moral imperfection, and I cringe at the way we clawed and slew our way to survival. If only things had ended differently -- better a revealed miracle, less Godly grandeur, and more peaceful resolution! But the story turned out the right way at least in one particular: a people was saved. An ending so simple, even in the midst of such bloody complication, is a cause for joy. And because we don't hesitate to tell such bloody tales of vengeance about ourselves, perhaps we can save ourselves in more moral ways, "in these days, at this time."

*A phrase from the Purim liturgy.

In the temple of dairy eats, II

The Mother-Wife, the Daughter, the Father-Husband, and the Aunt were eating today at B&H. The sandaled, hair-netted, and ungloved soup-maker, the sturdy older woman I wrote about earlier, sat on a stool at the counter and watched us, in a not unfriendly way, as we ate happily at our table. As we were about to leave, the woman came up to us and started talking to Celeste. (Oops. Sorry for the style shift. I mean, Mother-Wife.)

She was talking to us, I figured out, in Polish. From my knowledge of Russian and a liberal dollop of context, I caught the words for "nose," "breathing," and "chin." What she meant, therefore, was any one of the following:

A. The baby's nose is pressed against the mother's chest, so that she (Blanca) will suffocate.

B. The baby's nose is pressed against the mother's chest, and her (Blanca's) nose will get squashed, flaring out unattractively and ruining any future friendships or romances.

C. The baby can only breathe through her nose. Since her nose is pressed etc., the air will come up into her sinuses and [something or other which I couldn't figure out].

I managed to remember how to say "thank you" in Polish, and did so. We were grateful for the soup-maker's concern, though I'm still not sure what she meant. Blanca (i.e. Daughter) seems happy.

I went home by myself on the bus, and while I was reading my book, thought I heard the bus driver talking to himself. After a few minutes I figured out that, thank goodness, this was not the case. Rather, he was only cursing at other drivers in a loud voice.

Trenton Makes, The World Takes*

San Francisco Marries, the Rest of the Country [except for New Paltz?] Tarries
Washington Proposes, New York Disposes
Rome Crucifies, Hollywood Indignifies

Make your own!

*Why was I in Trenton, you ask? Just passing through on the way to and from this conference, which I'm writing an article about now.