Judaism and Homosexuality: An Authentic Orthodox View

by Rabbi Chaim Rapoport

In light of modern changes in attitude regarding homosexuality, and recent controversy surrounding Government legislation, Orthodox Rabbi Chaim Rapoport, Chief Medical Advisor in the Cabinet of the Chief Rabbi of Great Britain and the Commonwealth, explores the Jewish stance on homosexuality. Rabbi Rapoport combines an unswerving commitment to Jewish Law, teachings and values with a balanced, understanding perspective that has, arguably, been lacking among many in the Orthodox Jewish establishment. This work represents a milestone in understanding an issue at the heart of a great deal of debate, not to mention prejudice and discrimination. It will undoubtedly be a vehicle for future discussion and will serve as a brick in the wall of an increasingly harmonious World Jewish Community. The book combines clearly written prose for instant and easy access with exhaustive endnotes for all those who wish to explore the issue further. Judaism and Homosexuality is the first word on Orthodox attitudes to homosexuality, and will be a 'must have' on the desk of all professionals who find themselves in positions of guidance with the Jewish community.

Genres: Judaism, Queer, Nonfiction, Jewish

231 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2004

Reviews

[Bogi Takács]

I read this for work :)

(Note that I am queer, trans and formerly Orthodox, still quite traditionally observant, also married in a very much non-straight marriage.)

tl;dr summary: the author is trying very hard to resolve the unresolvable situation that Jewish law is against homosexual acts - especially, but not exclusively, related to gay men - but most gay people are actually nice and sometimes they are religious, too? (Not really a spoiler: the situation is not resolved.)

The author does reject many misinformed arguments against gay people that Orthodox Jews sometimes bring, like that gay men MUST be promiscuous. There are some poskim quoted who had rather unfathomable positions, like R' Feinstein who could not conceive of the fact that gay sex is pleasurable, and compared it (adversely) to eating a fly or gnat. ???? (This is on page 28.) The author discards these arguments, also with some bafflement. ("seems to fly in the face of much empirical evidence to the contrary" - p29)

VERY importantly, the author does state that conversion therapy usually doesn't work and can be harmful. Trying to get straight-married usually doesn't go well either. The only halachic conclusion is that gay men should not have sex, but, there's not really any wiggle room there. R' Rapoport tries realllllly hard to come up with things gay men should do instead - sometimes it gets a bit weird, like they should do fundraising because they are more able to travel since they don't have children. (...I guess the assumption is that if a gay person gets married, has children, then divorces, the children go to the other partner...?)

There are brief tangents of infertility and/or intersex variations and often kind of like 'no one complains about halachic restrictions related to THOSE' where I was like, but, but BUT!! That bothers me too! (I left Orthodoxy before I was in a queer relationship, so those affected my experience of Orthodoxy even more than being queer.) There is basically no discussion of trans issues though.

The author says that if one does not consider halachah binding in an Orthodox fashion, then any Jewish religious position against gay people is very hypocritical and can only be implicitly motivated by secular bigotry. I think many representatives of other denominations did eventually end up realizing that, but this book was published in 2004. (I have been both to very queer-friendly and very queer-unfriendly Masorti/Conservative shuls, much more recently. So things definitely take time to percolate.)

But the author also rejects the argument that queer Jews should just go to non-Orthodox congregations, though admittedly that wouldn't be very much what one would expect to hear from an Orthodox rabbi - yet there have been Orthodox positions like that (as the author mentions), though often in response to private sheilot and not big public declarations, I guess? It also wouldn't reflect very well on Orthodox people that they are OK with congregants driving to shul on Shabbat but not with congregants being gay. (R' Rapoport does say that this is the current situation, and I agree with that.)

So, um. This book was actually a positive surprise to me in some ways, but it's probably not going to be very helpful for most queer Orthodox people, though it might be helpful for Orthodox people who are not queer at all, to examine their prejudices as not necessarily rooted in halachah. The language is quite old-fashioned too, with lots of "practicing homosexual".

Source of the book: University of Kansas, Watson library

[Tamar · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a book written in 2004, this was surprisingly well done. Rabbi Rapoport is thorough, honest, and compassionate.