(no subject)

[sophiaserpentia]

A couple of times, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach has written on Beliefnet about homosexuality in the Bible -- declaring that it is a religious sin, and not a moral or ethical sin -- making it just as sinful as, say, eating shellfish.

Basically what this means is that it is not inherently wrong, it is just something that Jews, as they observe the rules and laws of their religious teachings, are supposed to avoid.

This has some interesting ramifications. For example, it may have the effect of making Reform Judaism more tolerant of gays and lesbians in general, but LESS tolerant of gays and lesbians who are practicing Jews.

Secondly, one is tempted to ask what benefit one has from adhering to codes or laws that one knows are "religious" vs. ethical -- IOW if they serve mainly to identify the Jewish community, isn't this an arbitrary and stylized distinction that has little inherent meaning?

Comments

[herbalgrrl.livejournal.com]

more over, it posits that a group has the authority to make its members feel *wrong* for behavior that is ethical-- which , to my mind, makes the group illogical at best & unethical itself at worst.

[azaz-al.livejournal.com]

It sounds almost like an issue of cultural identity, much like the wearing of yarmulkes and side curls - this serves no practical purpose other than to identify the person as Jewish, much in the way that two opposing football teams wear differing uniforms for easy identification. This made sense in a small society perpetually at war with its neighbors. It also encourages that groupthink, pep rally type of feeling which inevitably goes along with a group membership. Someone who dresses in the colors of the opposing team is committing a sin against the spirit of the group and its attempt to stand out as seperate from surropunding society, and such behaviors are harshly punished in most if not all groups, by stining, shunning, jail, etc.
This, oddly enough, seems to go along with the other topic you posted today. Or maybe not so odd - they both have to do with issues of sin or right vs. wrong, good vs. evil.

Jewish concept of Law

[seraphimsigrist.livejournal.com]

First anyone looking over our shoulders should
not suppose this, nor of course should you, as my
own thought on these questions... But perhaps it
is worth to say that an Orthodox Jewish idea
(I say "an" because people may differ but I think
it is a fairly deeply thought sense of that idea)
is that the Law is not always for an apparant reason
but because these are tracks of the movement of things
above as reflected here and are to be followed in
effect not because they are the "right way or the wrong
way but the army way"...this adherance to the paths
of the supernal is for the Jew and not for all...
there are places where this thought strains and to my
sense breaks down, nor do I know that Orthodox(as
distinct from Reform Jews) would addopt a distinction
of morality and law, it sounds like a fellow attempting
to be pc and faithful to his thought at the same time which
can lead to breakdowns of order...
but this just to point up a perhaps Kabbalistically sound
(again saying as in another context I did what the
likutei amrim tanya observes that even the tree of life
is but an image and a dream) distinction of the paths
above reflected here and the merely rationally moral.

and again this is to express as I understand it a Jewish
thought rather than my own,
+Seraphim.

shellfish

[weishaupt.livejournal.com]

You know, this is exactly what's wrong these days. People are becoming degenerate and far too accepting of the abomination that is shellfish. There isn't a doubt in my mind that all worldly ills can be traced to this disgusting modern permissiveness.

[ladyoscar.livejournal.com]

In the New Testament, Acts 21: 20-26, there's text to the effect that Jewish are supposed to follow Jewish law, but Gentile Christians are only supposed to "abstain from meat sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from fornication."

So in some fundamentalist churches today, Gentiles who themselves don't follow Jewish law have been known to require converted Jews to do so. Nice.

This also explains why conservative Christians believe why Jewish law relating to homosexuality is relevant to Gentiles and that relating to shellfish is not, as homosexuality qualifies as "fornication", i.e., sexual immorality.

But I don't think it would occur to the average conservative Gentile Christians to have a problem with rare steaks or check to make sure that the chicken that provided the drumsticks wasn't strangled...

Personally I think the prohibition on homosexuality probably originally had to do with discouraging forms of sex that did not produce children within the patriarchal extended family structure, just as many dietary laws appear to have originated for health reasons.