moths among the whisperings

Mesorah and Making Room: A Journey to Womenâs Spiritual Leadership

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 20:40:02 -0400

Mesorah and Making Room: A Journey to Womenâs Spiritual Leadership:

“Today, the debate revolving around women’s ordination is not halakhic but rather sociological.”

myadventuresinoddity: moths among the whisperings: How are the various Jewish denominations dealing...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 15:38:14 -0400

moths among the whisperings: How are the various Jewish denominations dealing with the issue of homosexuality, gay marriage, and gay ordination?

raeliz:

myadventuresinoddity:

Specifically, the conservative movement? I’m aware of the Orthodox and Reform/Reconstructionist positions (roughly).

The problem with this question is that even the movements aren’t monoliths. Technically, all three liberal denominations of Judaisms ordain LGBTQ…

Thanks for the info! Do you have any other resources on homosexuality within Judaism?

Also, theologically, how does Judaism deal with the Levitical prohibitions? (I realize, like you said, the various movements aren’t monolithic, so there won’t be one single way to address the issue theologically).

Okay, so first of all, I am not a theological or halakhic authority. (Halakha is Jewish law). If you want a better/more authoritative answer, ask a rabbi, or someone with a PhD or divinity degree. So all of what I’m about to say comes from my my own personal understanding and study of the topic. (I grew up in a Reform congregation, and now I consider myself pluralistic, and my practice & theology tends to be some cross of Reconstructionist and Conservative.)

That being said, there are numerous ways that different communities deal with the Leviticus prohibition. For example, Reform Judaism’s basic theology is that the Torah is a living document and that our understanding of biblical (and rabbinic) law* needs to adapt over time. So, it’s no longer a relevant prohibition. Reform Judaism is all about accepting or rejecting certain laws based on your personal beliefs (though I have what to say about the Reform movement’s ability to educate people, that’s another post for another time).

Some communities believe that human dignity is the most important value in the Torah and that trumps any law regarding homosexual acts. For example, that’s one of the reasons that Conservative Judaism started performing same-sex wedding ceremonies. They acknowledged that same-sex couples existed in the community and felt it was more important to dignify those relationships through ritual and commitment than to ritually exclude them from the community.

Academics (including religious academics; Judaism is a religion that’s all about studying and being academic) are also asking serious questions about what Lev 18:22 really means. The Torah is a documents that was written in a very specific socio-historic context. This is true even if you think God wrote it. There are serious academic theories that posit it’s not so much about male-male sex as it is adult-child same-sex “relationships” that may have existed in surrounding pagan communities; i.e., that it’s more a prohibition against rape than consensual same-sex sex. Also, there is a discussion that this prohibition is more about women as property and that men cannot be property as women are (this is something that comes up in the Conservative same-sex wedding ceremony, where the kiddushin, the part of the ceremony where the man acquires the woman, is left out of same-sex ceremonies). We actually had a thread about this awhile ago that you can check out/all the posts that I made are viewable on my LGBTQ tag (though I don’t know who you are/what your level of Jewish study is, and this thread uses a lot of in-language).

You should check out the organizations Keshet, Nehirim, JQYouth, and Eshel. They’re all LGBTQ Jewish organizations from across the religious spectrum focusing on different things, like building community, working for inclusion, etc., and they all have lots of resources on the issue.

[*Biblical law = Tanakh = Torah, Prophets, Writings (the law part really comes from Torah); Rabbinic Law = Talmud, which consists of rabbinic discourse and commentary on the Torah, and also commentary on commentary]

How are the various Jewish denominations dealing with the issue of homosexuality, gay marriage, and gay ordination?

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 08:51:00 -0400

myadventuresinoddity:

Specifically, the conservative movement? I’m aware of the Orthodox and Reform/Reconstructionist positions (roughly).

The problem with this question is that even the movements aren’t monoliths. Technically, all three liberal denominations of Judaisms ordain LGBTQ clergy and perform LGBTQ weddings and accept LGBTQ families - although trans* issues are often not addressed.

But each congregation will be different. I know Conservative Jews who don’t keep kosher and I know Conservative Jews who are as halakhically observant as [Modern] Orthodox Jews. There are even single Conservative congregations whose members run that whole spectrum.

If you really want to know the answer to this question, you have to look at the individual community. That’s the philosophical answer. If you’re looking for a practical answer, I would turn to Keshet’s Equality Guide. You can search for synagogues, individual clergy, community organizations, etc. by denomination (or not), by zip code.

Did someone send me an ask? I had a notification but nothing was there :(

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 12:36:46 -0400

Did someone send me an ask? I had a notification but nothing was there :(

So I’m taking this online graduate course on Jewish education and omg people are so....

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 23:32:00 -0400

So I’m taking this online graduate course on Jewish education and omg people are so. stupid.

Like, during the Introductions postings, everyone was like, “I’m in the last class for my master’s” and I was seriously intimidated because I haven’t even started my masters but like

If I respond to a question about mimetic v. transformative education by talking about how important transformative education is for college students who need to be imbued with the tools to to form their own communities after college and after the safety/structure of campus life is missing,

don’t ask me to elaborate by claiming that ~students will hopefully have the tools to create community for themselves~

Also like

how am I supposed to “respond” to people’s posts if all they do is literally summarize the text

like how

dirtydisneyconfessions: ok dude, i know you wanna fuck the granny queen from a bugs life, we’ve...

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 17:24:01 -0400

dirtydisneyconfessions:

ok dude, i know you wanna fuck the granny queen from a bugs life, we’ve gotten your confession 385 fucking times, we get it, you love fucking old wrinkly ass ants, stop fucking submitting it.

Elvira.

okay but dirtydisneyconfessions once published a confession that read “i wank to the thought of belle getting raped by gaston” so I’m pretty sure that they don’t have the moral high ground here

npr: Dudes in capes, dudes in cars, dudes in space. In many...

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 17:08:05 -0400

npr:

Dudes in capes, dudes in cars, dudes in space. In many parts of the country right now, if you want to go to see a movie in the theater and see a current movie about a woman — any story about any woman that isn’t a documentary or a cartoon — you can’t. Where did all the women go? At The Movies, The Women Are Gone : Monkey See

Photo: iStockphoto.com

feministinthekitchen: fancycake: racialicious: A little extra...

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 08:44:39 -0400

feministinthekitchen:

fancycake:

racialicious:

A little extra for your Thursday, Racializens.

omfg

oh fuck yes

drownedinblissfulconfusion: —Vassar College Library

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 18:12:22 -0400

drownedinblissfulconfusion:

—Vassar College Library

"working"

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 17:59:07 -0400

me: oh
my
god
http://gawker.com/dont-live-life-without-knowing-m-night-shyamalan-wrot-512830179
Arielle: i saw that
me: no mention of course that it's a 90s take on my fair lady/pygmalion
Arielle: not everyone is a lit nerd
me: omg that's a total known fact
Arielle: yes
for intelligent people
most people are not intelligent
me: it is literally the second sentence on the wikipedia page
i think even gawker idiots can manage to wikipedia
Arielle: yes
but that doesn't mean they do
me: really? what else do gawker employees do all day then? is that not their job
i mean honestly
it's GAWKER

Queen Akiko and her manservant, Dai || Art on Ice Japan 2013...

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 17:26:26 -0400

Queen Akiko and her manservant, Dai || Art on Ice Japan 2013 [x]

jothelibrarian: Pretty medieval manuscript of the day is a leaf...

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 13:52:12 -0400

jothelibrarian:

Pretty medieval manuscript of the day is a leaf from a twelfth century gradual.

Image source: Porrentruy, Bibliothèque cantonale jurassienne, Ms. 18: Gradual. Creative Commons licensed by ecodices via Flickr.

"It starts with Women Off [sic?] the Wall, now it’s this mashigas, . Next week it will be a female..."

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 16:04:14 -0400

“It starts with Women Off [sic?] the Wall, now it’s this mashigas, . Next week it will be a female Chief Rabbi. Maybe Mashiach is also a female.”

- a literal baby (via lazersilberstein)

#bitch she might be

lollapulizer replied to your post: Tebow to the Patriots! Tebow to the Patriots!… I know it’s...

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 08:44:33 -0400

lollapulizer replied to your post: Tebow to the Patriots! Tebow to the Patriots!…

I know it’s the whole NY/Boston thing for you, but I would have been so much happier if no one would sign him.

Wait, why? Aren’t you a Redskins fan?

Knowing It vs Knowing You

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 21:40:06 -0400

racismschool:

It is unreasonable to expect to know everything about any given subject. Especially a subject as intricate and ever socially changing as racism. Knowing everything about this particular topic is an unreasonable expectation to put on yourself or anyone else.

It’s the knowing what you know that makes you who and yes, what you are.

You didn’t know that things A, B and C were racist? Okay, that doesn’t make you a bad person. You made a claim. That claim was called both false and racist. You say that it wasn’t. Then, (because you refuse to do your own homework) demand that someone link you to an explanation as to why your claim is false and racist…that does make you a bad person.

In the second scenario, your intent may not have been to be racist or to lie. You believed what you said to be accurate. The problem here is that your intent is in the ignorance. Why did you believe you were right if you knew, for a fact, that you’d done zero research BEFORE making your claim? What reason did you have to believe that your “Truth” was well, true?

The thing is, even at this stage, many people will give you the benefit of the doubt. You’ll still have people that come out of the woodwork to say, “They didn’t mean it THAT way.” Even if we put the statement of “Intent is not magical” to the side for a second, it’s not just your false and racist claim, it’s your unwavering need to double down on that claim. You believe your statement is correct, based on zero research and when you’re called on it, you don’t just stand by your comment, you also decide that everyone that points out your ignorance is mean, overly sensitive and to easily offended. It MUST be them. Based on absolutely nothing, you believe that you’re right.

detenebrate: Edward, the Black Prince is granted Aquitaine by...

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 19:47:25 -0400

detenebrate:

Edward, the Black Prince is granted Aquitaine by his father King Edward III. (Initial letter “E” of miniature, 1390; British Library, shelfmark- Cotton MS Nero D VI, f.31)

Tebow to the Patriots! Tebow to the Patriots! Tebow to the Patriots! This has been the most amazing...

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 18:52:40 -0400

Tebow to the Patriots! Tebow to the Patriots! Tebow to the Patriots!

This has been the most amazing day.

Parashat Chukkat: Clean/Unclean | Keshet - My Jewish Learning

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 17:12:16 -0400

Parashat Chukkat: Clean/Unclean | Keshet - My Jewish Learning:

“Immediately after the discussion of the red heifer ritual, Miriam dies. This is the first time we have heard of her since she challenged her brother Moses’ leadership and was stricken with tzara’at. Miriam herself is a repressed entity: a prophetess-priestess whose existence is literally exiled outside the camp. Her death is passed over briefly, without the long mourning period that will be decreed for her brother Aaron only a few verses later. Nor is her burial place noted. A midrash claims that Moses and Aaron bury Miriam in the middle of the night (Yalkut Shimoni Mas’ei 787), presumably to save group morale, or perhaps to preserve her modesty. This midrash draws attention to the strange silence regarding Miriam’s death. Shouldn’t the rescuer of Moses by the Nile, and the dancer of hope by the Sea of Reeds, be remembered? Yet Miriam, a woman who is a leader and a challenger of the status quo, becomes tamei in death: even her memory is exiled, excluded, repressed.

Yet the repressed always returns. After Miriam’s death, the people clamor for water, complaining: “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to bring us to this terrible place, a seedless place without a fig or a vine or a pomegranate, without even water to drink?” (Numbers 20:5) The fig, the vine, and the pomegranate are all symbols of the feminine (as when the Psalmist says: “your wife shall be a fruitful vine inside your house”; Psalm 128:3). So is water itself: the patriarchs tend to meet their future wives by wells, and it is women who float Moses on the Nile.

In Numbers, the people are subconsciously complaining about the loss of Miriam and of feminine leadership. A rabbinic midrash claims that the people have no water because the “well of Miriam,” a mysterious well that wanders with the people through the desert, has disappeared (BabylonianTalmud, Taanit 9a, Bava Metzia 17a, Shabbat 35a). This midrash also seems to indicate that the loss of Miriam is sublimated in the people’s thirst. Moses responds angrily to the people’s complaints, snapping: “Listen, you rebels, shall we get water for you out of this rock?” The word rebels, morim, is spelled the same as Miriam. Moses has made a Freudian slip, letting us know that he too is thinking of Miriam, even though he never mentions her again. Moses strikes the rock, and the waters pour out — Miriam, the woman of water, is freed from her hiding place and once again courses among the people. The waters of the rock are even named Merivah (quarrel), a word which can be read as “miri bah,” or “Miri(yam) is in it.” Like the waters of the red heifer, the waters flowing from the rock reintegrate Miriam into the consciousness of the people.

The existence of queer members of the Jewish tribe is often repressed. The Bible categorizes male homosexual sex acts as tamei, to’evah, impure. Female homosexuality and other forms of sexual diversity are not even mentioned — like Miriam’s burial place, they are erased by the text. The erasure lasts for millennia, through Talmudic, medieval, and even much of modern times. This repression, like Leviticus’s repression of death and the double-edged power of fertility, arises out of fear of the unknown. In the face of this fear, how do we reintegrate queer experience into the sacred center of our people? How do we move from categories of rejection, tolerance, or acceptance of the outsider to a vision of the whole? How do we transform tamei into tahor?

The waters of the red heifer and the waters of Miriam are keys to reintegration: they remind us that the repressed returns, and that our truths inevitably must arise into consciousness. We help this process when we let our truths flow together with the truths of the Torah even when that seems contradictory. In this way, we can explore where our experience fits, rather than immediately judging it as inside or outside. When we are in the mode of contradiction, we are forced to choose between tamei and tahor, between the perspective of the outsider and the perspective of the insider. When we let go of the contradictions and allow ourselves to embody multiple truths, we become insider/outsider. We can approach the Torah as healers, bringing together elements long considered sacred with those that have been feared as eerie or pushed aside as marginal. We can crack open the monolithic rock and let the multiplicity of waters flow free.”

WORLDS BOSTON 2016

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 16:00:00 -0400

WORLDS

BOSTON

2016

leanin: Happy 50th Anniversary of the Equal Pay Act! (sort of)....

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 14:48:28 -0400

leanin:

Happy 50th Anniversary of the Equal Pay Act! (sort of). Here are some sobering visuals: For every dollar earned by a white man in America, a white woman earns 77 cents, a black woman earns 69 cents, and a Latina woman earns 57 cents. (Infographic by the lovely Emily Nemens for LeanIn.Org.)

moths among the whisperings

Mesorah and Making Room: A Journey to Womenâs Spiritual Leadership

myadventuresinoddity: moths among the whisperings: How are the various Jewish denominations dealing...

How are the various Jewish denominations dealing with the issue of homosexuality, gay marriage, and gay ordination?

Did someone send me an ask? I had a notification but nothing was there :(

So I’m taking this online graduate course on Jewish education and omg people are so....

dirtydisneyconfessions: ok dude, i know you wanna fuck the granny queen from a bugs life, we’ve...

npr: Dudes in capes, dudes in cars, dudes in space. In many...

feministinthekitchen: fancycake: racialicious: A little extra...

drownedinblissfulconfusion: —Vassar College Library

"working"

Queen Akiko and her manservant, Dai || Art on Ice Japan 2013...

jothelibrarian: Pretty medieval manuscript of the day is a leaf...

"It starts with Women Off [sic?] the Wall, now it’s this mashigas, . Next week it will be a female..."

lollapulizer replied to your post: Tebow to the Patriots! Tebow to the Patriots!… I know it’s...

Knowing It vs Knowing You

detenebrate: Edward, the Black Prince is granted Aquitaine by...

Tebow to the Patriots! Tebow to the Patriots! Tebow to the Patriots! This has been the most amazing...

Parashat Chukkat: Clean/Unclean | Keshet - My Jewish Learning

WORLDS BOSTON 2016

leanin: Happy 50th Anniversary of the Equal Pay Act! (sort of)....

Mesorah and Making Room: A Journey to Womenâs Spiritual Leadership