LGBTQ+ and Halachic Change
This past week, a young man from the Atlanta Orthodox community, a recent alumnus of Yeshiva University, committed suicide. According to newspaper reports: “Many believe — based on their conversations with [Herschel] Siegel, his social media posts and their own experiences — that Siegel had considered that there may have been no place for him as a gay man in the Orthodox community where he grew up and attended college…In an Instagram post from March that has circulated widely after his death, he wrote about how the word ‘abomination’ in a Torah portion brought up trauma for him as a gay man within the Orthodox community” (Jerusalem Post, May 6, 2023). Whether his death was primarily attributable to mental illness or being gay in the Orthodox community, or some combination of those and other factors, when such things happen in our community it must call us, the Talmud adjures, “To examine our actions (Brachot 5a).”
Observant religious communities are, by and large, insular ones, which encourage and reward conformity. Thus the more one does not fit in, whether due to background, identity, or some other factor, the harder it is to feel at home. Kesher Israel, as a community, makes a strong effort to welcome all Jews: those who are more religious and less; those who have different backgrounds; different shades of skin; who are physically or mentally abled or disabled; the old and the young; and even the non-Jewish along with those who are Jewish. (Though halacha limits the extent to which women or non-Jews may participate in leading the prayer services, we try to find other leadership venues for them so that that double standard is not a barrier to them being embraced as full leaders and participants in the community). Thus, it is not hard for us to welcome those who are LGBTQ+. But we must ask ourselves if, in this case, communal welcoming is enough.
Rabbi Nason Tzvi Finkel of Slabodka, one of the great Mussar Rabbis, teaches that we are obligated by the Torah to be sensitive to even the unconscious societal pain experienced by others (Ohr Hatzafon, Kovno, 1928). The way to do this, I think, is to imagine ourselves in their shoes, as it says in Pirkei Avot (2:4): “do not judge your friend until you have been in their place”.
So what would it feel like to be gay in the Orthodox community? Would we feel alienated when hearing the Torah portion two weeks ago which labels the act of homosexual male intercourse an abomination? Or would we say to ourselves: “Yes, the Torah calls it a ‘toeva’ (abomination), but the Torah also calls idolatry (Deut. 17:4), eating non-kosher animals (Deut. 14:4), remarrying one’s wife after divorcing her (Deut. 24:4), and the owning of unjust weights and measures (Prov. 20:10) by the same term?”
Would we watch our friends in the Orthodox community getting married and wonder how we might have a Jewish family? Would we give up hope on not being alone, on having children and observing Jewish life as a family? Or would we say to ourselves: “Why couldn't we have a ceremony purely to celebrate establishing an observant family together?” Would we fear that the local day school would not accept our children as they might the children of an intermarried Jewish woman and non-Jewish man? Would we see only untraversable roadblocks? Would the only choice be loneliness within the community, or amputation of it? Or would we assume we can retain our Orthodox community and live life with a family and children?
While halachic change might be impossible and something we, in the shoes of gay Orthodox Jews, would not want to compromise ourselves, would we assume that cultural and attitudinal shift is impossible? Or would we look back 30 years ago to the days when women’s prayer groups, which are common today in mainstream Modern Orthodox shuls, were forbidden and practiced only in the most liberal of Orthodox synagogues? When Rav Hershel Schachter, (Tze’i Lach Be'ikvei Ha-tzon, pp. 22; 36) said: “It seems that these practices [women’s prayer groups] are halachically prohibited for a number of reasons…”. And in the 1980s, Israeli religious philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz declared: “The question of women and Judaism is more crucial than all the political problems of the people and its state. Failure to deal with it seriously threatens the viability of the Judaism of Torah and Mitzvot (commandments) in the contemporary world” (Feminism and Heresy: The Construction of a Jewish Metanarrative, Adam S. Ferziger).
The gauntlet has been thrown down before Modern Orthodox communities to think deeply, mercifully, and informed by halacha and Jewish thought as to what the culture of such communities is to be regarding our friends and fellow congregants who are LGBTQ+.
