Pretty (Fun), Witty (It Was), and Gay (Couldn't Resist)

A few weeks ago there was an event at the Center for Conservative Judaism celebrating the second anniversary of JTS's decision to accept openly gay rabbinical students. (For the funniest Freudian picture you've ever seen, check out the New York Times's article last year commemorating the first anniversary.) In case you're keeping track, it was a group of JTS rabbinical students living in Israel last year who tried to plan a celebration at Machon Schechter that ended up spiraling out of control and resulting, ultimately, in the American Jewish University (AJU - gesuntheit) (formerly the University of Judaism) pulling out of a partnership with Machon Schechter and sending their rabbinical students (beginning next fall) to the Conservative Yeshiva.

The event, which was relatively well attended (maybe a little less than 100 people) consisted of two speakers, Amichai Lau-Lavie and Chaim Elbaum, and the screening of a 30-minute-ish short movie called ואהבת, "And Thou Shalt Love."

Amichai, a dear friend of JAR (and future מסדר קידושין) and former employer of mine on a research project, is the founder of Storahtelling and a current Mandel Fellow in Jewish Education (formerly [and still?] the Jerusalem Fellows program). He spoke first about his experiences and shared with us two powerful anecdotes (which, unfortunately, I'm not remembering as well as I would have had I written this when I should have, a few weeks ago).

Amichai was part of a conversation with Rick Warren a few years ago, where the prominent pastor (whom I've written about positively on this blog, here) was asked a question about why he believes that God (Jesus) loves all people and forgives all but hates homosexuals. Warren responded with, as it were, a version of the positivist response of which Joel Roth is so fond: "My hands are tied; that's what the Bible says." Amichai said that the mood in the room was to accept Warren's throw-away response. For whatever reason (those who know Amichai can guess as to the reasons) Amichai wouldn't have it, and so asked it again: "Why does God not love me?" To which Warren responded, "Of course God loves you." "But I'm gay." (There may have been a punchline to the story but, if there was, it's lost to my memory.)

The second story involved Amichai trying to donate blood to מגן דוד אדום in Jerusalem a few months ago. Before he could donate, he filled out the lengthy questionnaire, including the question "Have you had sex with a man since 1978?" To which he responded, "yes." When he went to turn the form in, he asked the woman behind the desk, and she told him it was better he not give at all. "But," he told her, "this form says that even if the blood is not used for donations it will be used for science." "Yeah," she told him, "but that's not true - they just throw it out." Amichai then explained to her how he could produce his documentation that he is HIV negative but, of course, she couldn't do anything about that. He told us that he made it clear to her that he was not upset with her; she, of course, had done nothing wrong. He concluded by stating the obvious: no one wants tainted blood in the system; but what if the blood is not tainted? Isn't there a way to account for that?

Before I get into the movie itself, which was really enjoyable, I'll segue into where Amichai's second anecdote brought me: the irony of sitting in an event "celebrating" JTS for accepting rabbinical students when the ass-backwards (pun, actually, not intended) Dorff, Nevins, Reisner (that's right, DNR - which should be everyone's philosophy towards replicating their approach) teshuvah is on the books (which I've previously skewered here). In other words, the same sex act that makes Amichai ineligible for donating blood would also make him ineligible for being a student at JTS's Rabbinical School (whose dean is now Rabbi Nevins), just as eating shrimp, cheeseburgers, or driving on Shabbat would. Doesn't that seem a little preposterous? To me, this undermines much of the so-called "progress" that's been made, and makes celebrating JTS for intellectual hypocrisy and bad legislation (not to mention their unwillingness and/or inability to actually account for what their policy might look like when they graduate openly gay students in a few years) less than ideal.

I asked a question version of the last paragraph (in fewer words, I hope) to Amichai and Chaim. The room was a bit astir (I tend to have that impact on audiences when I ask a question), but both gay men seemed to dodge the question. If I recall correctly, Amichai responded with an "at least we're in; let's be happy for what we have" approach, and Chaim, pretty much unaware of the politics and background to my question, seemed to respond relatively naively. Part of his response, it seemed, emerged from an understanding of the halachah (which I believe he articulated as his actual ideal understanding of the halachah) that the פסוק outlaws a single act, not the lifestyle surrounding that act. It seemed, from what he said, that he might believe that, were he not to engage in anal sex with his partner (not sure about other sex), then he wouldn't be in violation of the halachah, but that if he did have anal sex, he would be committing the תועבה. (If I may grossly compare across contexts, it was almost like hearing an African American in the Jim Crow '20s argue that even though he's dumber than most white men, even stupid white men can vote, so why can't he?)

I was also struck during this part of the conversation (if not before) by an overwhelming sense of wanting to protect my students as, I imagine, a parent wants to protect their children. This is a metaphor I have implicitly, at least, explored in my thoughts on a pedagogy of unconditional love, and it is one that bears heavily on my own thoughts, as an educator, in issues like intellectual dishonesty (especially in the teaching of Myth and religious guidance), gender dynamics, and sexuality. I assume that, quite often, some of my educational instincts are actually blinded by my harking back to my relationships with the vast majority of campers in the four עדות with which I worked closely at camp. How do you prepare all children for a world in which homosexuality as what it is, when you believe deeply that homosexuality is not a choice and that, even if it were, you love your students for being able to make choices?

On to the movie, before returning to some of the questions and answers post-movie.

Chaim attended an arts school for דתי students called מעלה. The school, founded in 1989, has created a track into Israel's dramatic world (mostly for filmmakers and producers) for children who grew up observant (practically unheard of in Israel's performing arts industry). Each student in the four-year program produces and directs a final project.

Chaim realized, at the point in his schooling when he needed to announce his final project, that he had two options: to quite school and move into something like dentistry (his example), or to engage with his homosexuality in film and, therefore, come out to his class. When asked how people reacted to him coming out of the closet (his classmates were the first people he ever told), he said that a number of the girls started crying - whether those were tears of sadness for the difficult lifestyle ahead of him or tears of jealousy because he was now off the market, he did divulge.

The movie is a really well-crafted story of a yeshiva student struggling with his homosexuality. The film does a great job - and, I think, an even-handed job - of depicting the "normative" homoeroticism of a yeshiva environment as חברותא partners hold hands to make a point, get in each other's faces on an argument, and dance together. The movie also does a great job of utilizing classical text well, including the almost over-the-top incident where the protagonist and his חברותא, who has just returned from army service for a break, learn the subtly pornographic סוגיא of ריש לקיש and רבי יוחנן swimming together in the Jordan. The major vein of textual interpretation is the ברכת כהנים, a blessing of peace (וישם לך שלום) given in love (לברך את עמו ישראל באהבה). Great movie - worth watching in educational settings and as triggers for conversations in the Jewish community. (And, I am quite sure, unavailable for purchase.)

In one of the questions after the film, Chaim responded - and this was quite moving for the audience, you heard audible gasps - that the movie was not meant to show a(n unrequited) love affair between the two yeshiva students, but a (mutual) love affair between the protagonist and God. In addition to striking a powerful, Heschelian tone for the JTS-y audience, the notion itself is an idea that feels good to contemplate both emotionally and intellectually, a statement that brought us back to Rick Warren's "God loves everyone but gays" and one that helps to frame, I think, all of our struggles with who we really are.

At the very end of the session, Chaim finally called on an individual in the audience who had had their hand up from the very beginning. In a fascinating triple-twist, this person, who for the previous hour had been "invisible" to the speakers in the room who passed over him/her again and again in taking questions, was courageous enough to describe his/her double-invisibility to the Jewish community, as a bisexual and a halachically-committed, serious-minded Conservative Jew. The תשובות passed by the CJLS which allowed JTS to accept homosexuals, made it quite clear that, for them, bisexuality indicated a fluid sexuality of choice and that the ideal (and only acceptable) choice was a heterosexual lifestyle. This after watching a movie where a young man struggles with an essential part of who he is but cannot speak its name (a little Voldermort-y); is an anonymous caller to a help line for religious Israelis struggling with sexual identity and, near the end of the movie, finally gives his real name to the voice on the other end of the phone, only to hear from this "therapist," "it doesn't matter who you are;" and a movie in which the antagonist - God - is never seen. Impact.

I close with Chayim's dream. When asked what his dream of a future was, he said it was to walk hand-in-hand with the Chief Rabbi of Israel during the Gay Pride parade in Jerusalem, because homosexuals are not outlawed by הלכה.

Chayim's dream, as JTS's policy, seems to begin implicitly acknowledging what Rick Warren has been unable to: ואהבת is meant as both a subjective and objective experience for humanity in our relationship with God (though Judaism's שמע only highlights the subjective, and Christianity tends to only emphasize the objective), and that means accepting people for who they are (as is highlighted by the Prophets' embrace of the widow and orphan and modern-day Christianity's forgiveness of murderers' and would-be assassins) as we accept God for who God is (Auschwitz-, cancer-, and tsunami-enabler if not enacter). What both Chayim and JTS seem to ignore (and of what, I imagine, Rick Warren might be all too aware) is that the love for the other ought to be accompanied by an avenue for which that love to be expressed in pragmatic, lived (וחי בהם) terms, terms that allow for the "accepted" person to live his life. Amichai is there - and has left a halachic framework for an aggadic, anti-denominational worldview. May others follow.