D’var Torah
Shabbat shalom and thank you all so much for coming. I’m so glad I can share this moment with all of you. My friends, family, and community at HBT. The scroll I just read from is called the Torah. The Torah is the central text of the Jewish religion. It’s split into five books containing stories such as the creation of the universe, the garden of Eden, Noah’s ark, the escape from Egypt, and many others. What I just read however, was not one of those stories. Stories like what I just listed are mostly in the first and second books. My Torah portion was from the third book, Leviticus. Leviticus means “law of the priests” in hebrew. In other words, rules. SO MANY RULES.
Going into my d’var Torah preparation, I assumed, oh. It’s just a bunch of rules. This is gonna be really boring. And then it wasn’t. My portion is called Parashat Kedoshim. And while it is rules, there really was a lot to think about. There are rules I’ve got no opinion on, like the rule that says that should you plant a fruit bearing tree, you have to wait five years to harvest it which is like, yeah that makes sense, but I’m not a farmer or a gardener, so this doesn’t really affect me. There are rules like Shatnez, which are certain materials or seeds that cannot be combined. I’m a little mixed on these (pun intended) but it’s kind of because I don’t really get why it’s that important. There are rules that I really like, such as you shall not put a stumbling block before the blind. There are three levels of how you can interpret this rule. You can, one, take this at face value, interpreting it to literally mean that you shouldn’t trip a blind person. You could, two, dig a little deeper and find the message of be kind. Or you could, three, dig even deeper and see the message of don’t take advantage of weaknesses you know a person has. And there’s another rule that really resonates with me, which says that The strangers who reside with you shall be to you as your citizens; you shall love each one as yourself.
And then there are the bad rules. These are rules that make me ashamed to be Jewish. These are the rules that stop me in my tracks. And while there are some really messed up rules in my Torah portion, there’s one in particular that, for me, rises above the rest of them. You may have heard of it. It is an extremely homophobic verse. I wasn’t even sure whether or not to include it. It reaches a point of just being so awful that it’s hard to bear. But it’s something that needs to be talked about. I’m going to read it out loud now.
וְאִישׁ אֲשֶׁר יִשְׁכַּב אֶת־זָכָר מִשְׁכְּבֵי אִשָּׁה תּוֹעֵבָה עָשׂוּ שְׁנֵיהֶם מוֹת יוּמָתוּ דְּמֵיהֶם בָּֽם׃
“If a man lies with a male as one lies with a woman, the two of them have done an abhorrent thing; they shall be put to death—and they retain the bloodguilt.” (Chapter 20, verse 13.)
That is in the Torah. The Jewish people’s text of truth and righteousness. This central text, said to be written by God. It contains an incredibly homophobic verse.
This verse is used by Jews and Christians alike to justify homophobia. This verse is used as an excuse to deny people the right to be who they are. People use it as an excuse for something that is inexcusable.
Jewish tradition treats the Torah as this symbol of good. We have had it for thousands of years. But it has truly some horrible verses in it, which makes you wonder what to do!
The idea of rules is that they are made to be followed. But this doesn’t always work. Not all rules can be taken at face value, and this applies to Torah too. You cannot take the horrible verse I read earlier at face value. And that is true for so many other verses in the torah.
There is one way to deal with problematic verses that I’ll offer you today, and that is to fully ignore them. Like with the verse from before, just skipping over it. And there are synagogues that do this. Rather than reading the portions with this verse, and potentially other problematic verses, they read an alternative section of the Torah on those days.
Another thing you can do is find ways of reinterpreting verses. This is a great way to work with problematic verses. It allows a faith in God and the Torah, while also still allowing people to do the right thing. In fact, a scholar and writer from the 1700s called the Degel Machaneh Ephraim, wrote that we SHOULD be reinterpreting the Torah. He says:
“Thus for every generation and its interpreters, they complete the Torah. Because the Torah is interpreted in each and every generation according to what that very generation needs. God enlightens the eyes of each generation’s sages [to interpret] the holy Torah in accord with the root of the soul of that generation.”
The Torah is a living document. The scroll itself does not change, but our interpretations of it do, and since that’s how we see Torah, the Torah is always changing. But still, how can my generation interpret this homophobic verse? And I think the answer is, we can’t!
There is no interpretation that can justify how this verse has been used historically, nor can it justify what it says. So this is what I and people like me do. We see the problematic verses. We acknowledge them. We know that they are there. But we reject them. There is a famous quote from Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, who founded Reconstructionist Judaism: “The past has a vote, but not a veto.” He’s saying that the Torah and Jewish traditions should have a say in what we do, but not full control over it, I personally really agree with this. In fact, the Reconstructionist movement chose not to follow rules in the Torah leading to so many barriers being broken. Reconstructionism was the first jewish movement to have a Bat Mitzvah and the first to have an LGBTQIAP+ Rabbi. We shouldn’t put so much faith in the Torah, because the Torah is not always deserving of our faith. And this may be easy for me to say because I am agnostic, which means that my relationship with god is kind of complicated. The way I see it, it’s like a small child who has just learned that their parents are wrong about something. To the child, the parents are great, mighty beings who must know everything. That moment you find out they are wrong can take a second to comprehend. You may even respond, “they’re my parents, of course they’re right!” But maybe as you grow older, you may realize they were wrong, and they could be right most of the time, but nobody is right all of the time. I would say the same might be true of Torah and God.
Someone asked while I was preparing my D’var Torah, and wrestling with this verse, if we should take an exacto knife to the Torah and cut out this verse. I said no, because the Torah is flawed, just like humanity, but you don’t go around getting rid of people you don’t like. Because the truth of the matter is that the Torah is flawed. And while there are methods to deal with it, at the end of the day, this is what’s in there. The Torah is beautiful. It has so many truly amazing parts in it. But there are also less amazing parts. And no matter what we do, the bad verses will always be in there. And people will always use those verses to do harm. And that is why we must outshine the bad. We need to deal with Torah’s flaws each in our own way, and when we are ready, fight the harm caused by them. So I challenge you to find how you deal with these flaws. Find what works for you. Figure out what you need to do for you to come to peace with the Torah. And when you do, help others find what works for them. And together, we may not be able to fix the Torah, but we can rise above the flaws and work to make Judaism, and the world, better for all of us.
I’d like to thank Mom and Dad for doing so much for me throughout this entire process. I know how much went into this day. I’d like to thank my brother, Jesse, for being a good sport throughout all of this. I’d like to thank Nana and Grandpa for supporting me and Nana especially for taking me to services. I’d like to thank Oma and Opa for buying me a tallit, and for an amazing day out. I’d like to thank my tutor Missie, for making sure that I knew exactly what I was doing today. You have made sure that I do the best I can and I am so grateful. I’d like to thank Ashley Adams for ____. Rabbi Noyo, for all her advice throughout this process, and for her help writing this speech. I’d like to thank Rabbi Barbara, for being an amazing Rabbi throughout all of my childhood. I have learned so much for you. I’d like to thank all the people who participated in today’s service. I’d like to thank my Hebrew school classmates for being with me all these years, y’all are great. I’d like to thank all the people that traveled from near and far to celebrate today with me, and I’d like to thank all of you for coming. Shabbat shalom.