Is this the only voice that the devoutly religious can bring to the political sphere? We know that it isn’t. When Isaiah brought his voice to the political sphere for example, he spoke neither of God’s demand that we utilize military force to uproot idolaters, nor of the need to insure that our womenfolk are properly chaste. He spoke instead about how the widows and orphans can’t get justice, how small landowners are being forced off their land by the larger, more powerful owners, and how the elite political class is too self-absorbed in material pleasure to care or even know. He spoke of the urgent need to fill the world with knowledge of God so that warfare would become obsolete. He cautioned against reflexively seeking military solutions to all threats, emphasizing that the nation’s security will ultimately be determined by its pursuit of social righteousness and its consciousness of God. 

There is no shortage, tragically, of evils in today’s world.  Every devoutly religious person is undoubtedly moved by and concerned about the fact that 15 million American children live in poverty, that 40 % of minority students nationally aren’t graduating high school. Every devoutly religious person can’t help but be horrified at the rape and killing of women and children in the Congo or in Southern Sudan, or by the carnage created by the drug wars just south of our border – drug wars funded by drug consumption here at home. Wouldn’t it be inspiring if these issues were the ones most that were central to the platforms of our devoutly religious politicians? Which is not at all to say that the defense of our homeland, the thwarting of terrorism and the promotion of a sexual ethic that honors sacred relationships, are not vitally important issues as well. But they occupy just a portion of what the religious person sees when he looks out at the world and the people who live inhabit it.

I am a devoutly religious person.  And I believe that our deepest religious values should inform our political views. And I am befuddled and disturbed by the fact that our leaders who wear their religion on their sleeves, exhaust their passions on our military challenges abroad and birth-control pills at home. The world awaits the expression of America’s deep historical religious passions for justice, compassion, and peace for all humankind.

 Halachikly – and more than just halachikly – Purim isn’t Yom Tov. The arrival of Purim does not terminate a shiva or a shloshim that is in progress, the way that the arrival of a Yom Tov does.  And the Halacha concerning the mourner and the Purim Seuda is actually rather unworked out, with opinions ranging the gamut. This is very different from Yom Tov meals, which even a mourner is to enjoy in the company of family and friends. There’s clearly a fundamental difference between the nature of the joy of Yom Tov, and the nature of the joy of Purim.

 This difference is expressed in another way as well. Purim features this very unusual encouragement toward drunkenness, raucous noisemaking, and the wearing of masks and costumes, none of which are associated with the joy of Yom Tov. Which leaves us asking, “What exactly IS Purim? And what exactly are we doing when we celebrate it? “

 I remember once hearing a theory, quoted in the name of Rabbi Soloveitchik, which explained the distinction between the joy of Yom Tov and the joy Purim. The joy of Yom Tov – ideally at least – is organic, naturally occurring. On the anniversary of our redemption from slavery, or on the anniversary of the Revelation, or as we sit beneath the schach, and celebrate the plenty with which we’ve been blessed, the joy wells up within us, organically, almost irrepressibly. “And you shall rejoice on your festivals” is as much a description of what will be, as it is a command.   And when this organic state of joy collides for someone with his or her personal state of mourning, the Halacha presumes that one of them must step aside for the other.  And by halachik tradition, it is the mourning that yields, and the joy that is given expression. This is also the reason that there’s no need to artificially manufacture joy on Yom Tov through wearing outlandish costumes or imbibing intoxicating amounts of drink. The joy is there; it’s in the glow on everyone’s faces as they recite Kiddush at the Seder, or sit down at the table that first night in the Sukkah

 But the nature of Purim, the joy of Purim, is entirely different. This was first expressed in the Talmud, which notes that we don’t recite Hallel on Purim. Why was Purim not a day of Hallel?  Because on the day after the great victory over our foes, we woke up to find ourselves still in Shushan, still ruled the “great fool”, as the Sages delicately refer to Achashverosh. We knew that the next Haman could already be waiting in the wings. We had dodged a bullet this time, but there was no guarantee that there wasn’t going to be a next time.

 As my friend Joelle Keene put in a 1997 column in the short-lived but much-beloved Jewish Voice of Greater Los Angeles,

 “On Purim we are giddy the way people are giddy after narrowly escaping a car crash, or following a biopsy that came back normal. Contained in that kind of relief is the freshly irrefutable evidence that we’re terribly, terribly vulnerable. In Shushan, a whole community came within a hair’s breadth of annihilation. Next time we may not be so lucky, and in other places and times, we haven’t been.”

 Purim does not generate organic, naturally-occurring joy. As such, there is no head-on emotional collision between Purim and mourning, There is no need for mourning to give way. The two will co-exist, awkwardly perhaps, but without pushing one another off the table. And this is why Purim is characterized by noisemaking, costume-wearing and even drinking. We need to consciously manufacture the joy, to work ourselves up into a state of celebration, to employ external stimulants to bring us into the Yom Tov proclaimed by Esther and Mordechai – the Yom Tov beneath whose surface vulnerability stubbornly lurks.

 But if this is so, what is the point of celebrating Purim at all? Why push ourselves to feel a state of joy? The answer, I think, is that Purim is a metaphor for life. And life must be celebrated.

 I won’t ever forget what seemed at the time to be an unremarkable visit to 7/11 a little over a decade ago. Our older boys (12 and 8 at the time) were negotiating loudly and insistently with my wife over what size Slurpees that were entitled to, all while she holding our infant, who was crying. I was standing at the cash register looking exasperated, doing all I could to contain myself as I said, “two medium Slurpees, please”. The man at the cash register looked up at me and without even a hint of sarcasm said, “You are a very lucky man”.   Six words out of the mouth of a stranger. The best “mussar shmooes” I have received in my life.

 Purim’s gift was not liberation from slavery, or the hearing of God’s voice from atop the mountain. Purim’s gift was not the recapturing of the Temple from the hands of Antiouchus and the Syrian-Greeks. Purim’s gift was simply giving people a new lease on their ordinary, everyday lives. The upshot of the Purim story was that the Jews of Persia were given the renewed opportunity to go to work and to derive the satisfaction that their work brought to them, to experience the warmth of friendship, and the intimacy of family. They were given the gift of more days of ordinary, everyday life. It’s true that when our alarm clock rings at 6:30 AM at the beginning of another ordinary day, we aren’t usually possessed of irrepressible, Yom Tov-like joy. But on the 14^th of Adar many years ago we realized that we would do well to find a way to celebrate the blessing of ordinary days. And we understood that if we are unable to arouse ourselves to celebrate ordinary living, than we are probably not really living at all.

 This is the reason that we work so hard to rejoice on Purim. This is what we are doing when we celebrate the day.  And yes, the ways we celebrate Purim are over the top, an extreme effort at generating joy. But that’s because we need for Purim to echo through a whole year of ordinary, regular days, till Purim comes round to remind us again.

Jewish law does prohibit abortion on demand. Not because it regards a fetus as a human being, rather because it sees a fetus as representing potential life.  Though this distinction may seem subtle, it carries enormous legal implications. Jewish Law not only permits but actually mandates abortion in a situation in which a fetus is  (unwittingly of course) threatening the life of its mother. This is directed by the same principle that mandates that Shabbat be violated when life is in in danger. In Maimonides’ words, “the laws of the Torah were not given to inflict vengeance on the world, rather [to bring] compassion, kindness and peace to the world. (Laws of Shabbat 2:3)”.  Nor is the halachik discussion about abortion  limited to cases in which the threat to a mother’s life is physical, with numerous authorities also regarding the prospect of severe emotional or psychological trauma as grounds for abortion.

 And the issue is actually bigger than abortion per se. Jewish law bestows virtually no legal status at all upon fertilized embryos that are not implanted in a mother’s womb. This is why the Orthodox community has always been vocally in favor utilizing such embryos for stem cell research (See for example the statement of the Rabbinical Council of America’s statement  -http://www.rabbis.org/news/article.cfm?id=100553 ). While stem cell research is not as hot an issue as it was a few years ago, its return to research prominence – or the emergence of another, similar technology – is not at all unlikely.

Jewish Law also stands at odds with Senator Santorum’s anti-regulation approach to the relationship between humankind and the Earth. Judaism’s legal approach is defined by the tension between the Torah’s dueling directives that we  subdue the Earth (Genesis, Chapter 1) and simultaneously guard over it (Chapter 2). We are thus directed for example, to take full advantage of the earth’s fertility, and are simultaneously prohibited to needlessly destroy fruit-bearing trees. We are permitted to use animals for purposes of work and food, but we are prohibited to cause them physical or emotional distress (even muzzling an animal while it is threshing grain is prohibited by the Torah), or to drive a species toward extinction (see Nachmanides to Deuteronomy 22:6, regarding the  requirement to shoo away a mother bird before taking its young). The Talmud (Brachot 35a) charges us with the obligation to  navigate the tension between “the  Earth and it fullness are God’s” and “the Earth He gave to the sons of man”. We strive for balance, recognizing that we are at all times both  “subduers” and “guardians”.  In the words of the Midrash, “At the time when G-d created Adam, He took him around the trees of the Garden of Eden, and He said to him, ‘Look at My works, how beautiful and praiseworthy they are! Everything that I created, I created for you; take care that you do not damage and destroy My world, for if you damage it, there is no one to repair it afterwards! (Kohellet Rabbah 7)

On issues like feminism and even homosexuality Judaism’s worldview  is more sophisticated, nuanced and wiser than Senator Santorum’s is. The two should never be confused for one another.

Unfortunately  the Journal story omitted a significant portion of the classical halachik discussion on this issue, the portion that applies normative halachik leniencies to the bug issue. For the sake then of expanding the parameters of the discussion in the ‘hood, I offer the following brief points (you are invited to check the Bnai David – Judea bulletin over the next several Shabbatot for the fuller discussion at www.bnaidavid.com):

(1)   We are forbidden to eat bugs that are big enough to be seen by the naked eye.  And leafy vegetables that tend to have bugs on them at least 10% of the time, need to be checked. On this, Orthodox rabbis truly are unequivocal. What’s the checking procedure? To quote the  Star-K website, “Make a complete leaf by leaf inspection, checking both sides of the leaf. Wash off any insects prior to use.” Pretty straightforward.

(2)   Bugs that are not on the surface of leaves, but which are lodged inside the florets of broccoli for example, are by Torah law, deemed insignificant (“batel”) as they occupy less than 1/60^th of the broccoli’s total mass. There is however, a potential complication introduced by rabbinic law, which generally regards any complete organic unit (like a bug for example) as being resistant to the laws of “insignificance”. Thus the possibility that embedded bugs too must be removed.

(3)   However, Rabbi Moshe Heinemann, the Star-K’s rabbinic administrator explained in a 2007 article, why the laws of insignificance pertain to embedded bugs nonetheless. There is a reasonable chance, he points out, that any given head of broccoli may contain no bugs at all, which is to say that the presence of embedded bugs is a “safek” (doubtful). And as a general halachik principle, we only refrain from  rabbinicaly prohibited items when they are certainly present, but when they are only possibly present, we rule leniently. In Rabbi Heinemann’s words, “[in] cluster vegetables, where parasites hide themselves in the vegetable’s florets and we cannot see them through visual inspection, the halacha postulates that we can take a lenient position and assume that the florets are insect-free”.

(4)   He continues that it is nonetheless “proper” (perhaps to insure that we’re not dealing with an unusually heavily-infested head) that the Star-K’s checking procedure be used, which involves the following fairly simple steps: “Agitate florets in a white bowl of clean water. Examine the water to see that it is insect-free. If insects are found, you may re-do this procedure up to three times in total. If there are still insects, the whole batch must be discarded. If the water is insect-free, look over florets to see if any insects are visible on the tops and stems. If no insects are noticed you may use the vegetable.” Again, pretty simple and straightforward.

(5)   Rabbi Heinemann was far from the first to rule leniently on these matters. Rabbi Yechiel Michel Epstein, in his classic halachik work Aruch HaShulchan identifies three additional reasons why bugs that are embedded in vegetables need not be checked for or removed (at all). One of the three reasons is that the rabbinic stringency concerning complete organic units was never meant to apply to items that people find repulsive (like eating bugs for example)

Of paramount significance is Rabbi Epstein’s motivation for seeking leniencies in this area. He observed that the religious Jews of his day routinely ate vegetables, only removing the bugs that were visible on the surface. “And it is unthinkable to suggest”, he says, “that the people of Israel (“Clal Yisrael”) are all stumbling with regard to this prohibition.., and it is proper therefore to search [for leniency] in their merit.” And he concludes his discussion by saying, “and God will judge us meritoriously, just as we are bringing merit to the people of Israel”

It is this spirit, the halachik authority taking responsibility both for the law, and for the people, that has sadly fallen out of today’s bug conversation, warping much of  the contemporary rabbinic approach.

 Please do follow up with your own rabbi with further questions, but the general approach outlined above, is a solid halachik framework.

In a remarkable 1976 responsum he wrote bluntly about what he perceived to be the effort to extend the women’s liberation movement from the political and social spheres into the religious. He opened by reasserting the fact that women are exempt from a particular well-known set of mitzvot, and that this exemption is rooted both in Divine wisdom, and in the practical wisdom of the rabbis, who deemed it unrealistic and unfair to expect that these mitzvot be observed by those who bear primary responsibility for the raising of children and the daily running of the household. Rav Moshe branded any effort to change this halachik exemption as being both futile and rebellious, even going so far as to say that were a woman to perform a mitzva from which she is exempt not out of religious desire rather in the effort to undermine the exemption, that this would not constitute a mitzva act at all.

But Rav Moshe didn’t end there. He concluded the responsum with a lengthy paragraph in which he demonstrated that he accepted the core of feminism’s moral claim, regarding it as consistent with classical Jewish teaching.

“… [the exemption] is not a result of the fact that women possess a lower spiritual rank than men. For with regard to holiness, they are equal…And with regard to the obligation to honor a spouse, we find that the obligation applies from husband to wife, and from wife to husband without any distinction… There is no degradation of women’s honor [in the tradition]…”

Equal holiness, worth, dignity, and humanity. This is the essence of the feminist moral claim.

In the lead article of the Summer 2002 issue of Tradition, Orthodox attorney Marc Stern   challenged the mainstream Orthodox community over its habitual denunciations of feminism. First, on the grounds of intellectual dishonesty, as so much of the community has enthusiastically embraced many of feminism’s outcomes, including  high educational standards for girls, hands-on involvement of fathers in raising their children, the expectation of equal pay for equal work, and the zero tolerance for sexual harassment in the workplace. He notes that none of his readers would want to see these developments rolled back.  And then second, on the grounds that the resistance of feminism has exacted a religious price. In Stern’s words,

“In all too many communities shiurim for women are infantile outpourings of primitive and unreflective emotion, as if women were incapable of understanding anything more complex. Talented women have been lost to the Orthodox community [as a result]. The fight for equality has not yet been won, even within the realms of what is without question halachikly acceptable. How many shul have been built in the last generation that reflect a concern for… the ability of women to feel as if they are participants in the davening?”

Religious costs are indeed incurred through resisting feminism’s fundamental claim.  To the costs  Stern mentioned we also add the fact that many Orthodox rabbis still refuse to utilize the halachik pre-nuptial agreement intended to save women from becoming agunot, that women who do become agunot sometimes receive shoddy treatment at the hands of Dayanim and the members of their own  communities. And the reality that in many day schools serving the mainstream Orthodox community boys and girls still do not enjoy the same Jewish studies curriculum. The rejection of feminism’s central claim comes at a religious cost.

The extreme manifestation of this of course is the zealous suppression of women in the public sphere that has become mainstream Haredi religious behavior. Their well-known policies of seating women in the back of the bus, eliminating women’s pictures from public view, and requiring that women not appear in public ceremonies even to accept their own governmental awards, do not stem from halachik analysis, rather from precisely the kind of repressive chauvinism that the feminist movement aimed to root out.  The halachik analysis had already been done, again by Rav Moshe, who years ago had addressed a question posed by a man who feared taking the subway to work, where the crowded conditions invariably brought about physical contact with female commuters. Rav Moshe ruled that,  

“There is no prohibition to come into contact with [women under these circumstances] since it is not done in an affectionate manner. Similarly there is no prohibition to sit next to a woman when there is no other place available. And if a particular man knows that this will bring about lustful thoughts … he needs to fight against these thoughts by distracting himself and thinking about words of Torah.”

What sort of mindset simply dismisses this kind of straightforward halachik thinking in favor of making women disappear? One that stems directly from the rejection of the basic moral claim that women possess the same humanity, dignity and stature as men, and that they are not simply objects that populate a male world. And what a price has been paid for this rejection.  A disfigurement of Torah observance, and an international desecration of God’s name.

There will always be morally anchored movements and ideas that will emerge from outside our immediate four cubits. And as a religious communities, we will do much better by explicitly taking them in rather than by rejecting them. Taking them in doesn’t and shouldn’t mean surrendering all other religious values with which they may come into conflict. It means admitting them into the constellation of religious values that together determine normative religious behavior. The other important ideas out there now are democracy, and human egalitarianism – the recognition that all people of all types possess equal human dignity and worth. And these two are also facing resistance or rejection in various Orthodox quarters, with the costs already expressing themselves. Now, more than ever, we need to stand up unapologetically, and affirm with urgency the religious value of morally compelling ideas. The reward will be great.

It is a tragedy because the Haredi community has for many decades been an inspiration for Jews from all walks of Jewish life. We have all heard and been moved by the stories of extraordinary chesed (kindness) and self-sacrifice, piety and God-fearing-ness that are commonplace in the Haredi community. There can be no question that the profound appreciation Torah study that has sprouted day schools, yeshivot and Kollels all over the Jewish landscape is in large measure the result of Haredi dedication to this sacred activity. And yes, the importance of personal and sexual modesty has been upheld and taught to us by the Haredi community. Despite their philosophical or practical differences with Haredim, Jews of all kinds have been motivated, inspired and moved by the Haredi commitment to core Jewish religious values. 

These days are likely dwindling however, as the Haredi community is, and projects the image of being, something much less wholesome. At this juncture, how many non-Haredi Jewish teenagers, to choose the relevant demographic, are associating Haredi Judaism with piety and fear of God? What associations, tragically, are the ones that the term “Haredi” is now most likely to elicit? The spiritual unraveling of the Haredi community will create a vacuum of inspiration and religious role-modeling of enormous and frightening proportion. 

Whether we are prepared for it or not, the modern Orthodox community (in all its many shades and forms), bears the obligation to step up and fill this void. We can no longer be content to carve out our own religious lives, and bear responsibility only for our own families and communities. We need to pick up the fallen torch, and be the models of piety, Torah study, and self-sacrifice that Jews everywhere need to see, admire, and be inspired by. This shouldn’t be a stretch for us. As Orthodox Jews, we are already committed to all of these values. And we have the additional strengths of also being committed to the ways of peace and mutual-respect, to positive engagement with the world around us, and to seeing the good in modern society. Now more than ever, we need to be true to our Modern orthodox values, as the mantle of broader Jewish inspiration is falling to us.

The Federal government has begun the slow process of determining whether or not there ought to be national laws regarding cellphone use while driving. All of us who are committed to living according to Halacha need not wait for a government decision. The verdict is already in.

The halachik analysis of this issue proceeds in a very linear fashion, beginning in the classical discussion concerning unintentional murder. The Torah, as we read just recently, commands that we create cities of refuge for people who have unintentionally taken the life of another person. By fleeing to the city of refuge, the one who unintentionally took the life is protected from the impassioned wrath of the “blood-avenger” (the kinsman of the victim). In addition to being protected, he also will be paying for his act, as he will remain confined to the city of refuge until the High Priest dies.

 In its analysis of this passage from the Torah, the Talmud makes it clear that not all unintentional murder is the same. (For a quick summary of the Talmud’s discussion, see Maimonides’ code, Laws of the Murderer, Chapter 6). Sometimes the death of the victim is truly the result of a freak accident. In this case, the person who caused the accident does not flee to the city of refuge. In the eyes of the law, he is completely innocent. On the other end of the spectrum, there is the instance in which again, there was no intention to kill anyone, but the person who caused the death of the other acted with such carelessness and recklessness, that his actions are classified as “approaching the intentional”. This person as well does not flee to a city of refuge. To quote Maimonides (paragraph 4):

            There is also the case of one who kills unintentionally, but his act approaches the intentional, as it involves an act of negligence, or is in an instance in which he should have been cautious but was not. He does not flee to the city of refuge for his sin is too great to be atoned for through his exile… Therefore if the blood avenger finds and kills him, he (the blood avenger) is exempt form punishment.

             Putting aside for a moment any uncomfortable feelings we may have about the law of the blood avenger, the larger point concerning the perpetrator’s act is clear. To cause the death of another through an act of gross negligence – albeit unintentionally and without any premeditation – is categorized as a “great sin”, one which legally approaches intentional murder.

           What do we know about the likelihood of a driver causing a car accident when he or she is speaking on a cellphone (not to mention texting)?  As reported in the NY Times on July 19, the likelihood that a driver holding and talking on a cellphone will crash, is equal to that of a driver whose blood alcohol level is .08 percent – the legal definition of driving while intoxicated. As the Times article put it, “drivers using phone are four times as likely to cause a crash as other drivers”. The article goes on to quote a Harvard study estimating that cellphone distraction causes thousand of deaths, and hundreds of thousands of injuries per year. The potential for committing a “great sin” is astonishingly high.  And the research is not showing that using a hands-free phone significantly reduces this potential either.

 As halachikly observant Jews, we go to great lengths to lower our risk of sinning. We do not climb trees on Shabbat lest we inadvertently violate Shabbat by breaking a branch. Many of us do not eat corn or beans on Pesach; lest we come to eat inadvertently eat chametz. On the first day of Rosh Hashana this year, we will actually set aside the Biblical mitzva of blowing shofar, lest we inadvertently carry the shofar through the public domain, thus violating the Shabbat. It is self-evident that our system demands that we not drive while distracted by our cellphone, lest we, God forbid, God forbid, inadvertently injure or kill someone. It’s that straightforward.

If for no other reason though, do it for Margalit bat Miriam.   

It is shameful that the Ministry of Religious Services has been trying to shut Tzohar down.
(You can learn more about Tzohar at tzohar.org and about the IRF at http://internationalrabbinicfellowship.org/ )

IRF STATEMENT IN SUPPORT OF TZOHAR
The International Rabbinical Fellowship calls upon the Chief Rabbinate of the State of Israel to permit the rabbis of the Tzohar rabbinical organization to continue registering marriages and conducting weddings in the State of Israel as has been the practice for the last decade.
The wedding initiative under the auspices of Tzohar has allowed thousands of Israeli couples, who might have opted for non-halakhic avenues, to marry under the wedding canopy according to the laws of Moses and Israel. Furthermore, it has brought many more to greater love for Torah and the commandments and respect and appreciation for tradition in the spirit of “Her Ways are ways of Gentleness and all he paths are peaceful”. The important work of Tzohar is a Kiddush Hashem, a sanctification of God’s name, which should be strengthened and supported.
Tzohar’s wedding project has also been a tremendous resource for many couples from here in the United States and other areas of the Golah looking to celebrate their weddings in the Jewish state.  Many of these couples would not have had the opportunity to create as joyous and meaningful a wedding were it not for the work of Tzohar.
We call upon the political and rabbinic establishment in Israel to ease this process and not put up more roadblocks that cause dissention and create difficulties for those who would avail themselves of this avenue of Huppah and Kiddushin.   We include in this ensuring the right of every Israeli citizen to register for weddings in the municipality of their choosing regardless of residency.

On that page, the moral propriety of compromise is hotly debated. Rabbi Eliezer the son of Rabbi Yose the Galilean maintains that it is forbidden to broker a compromise. “He who brokers compromise thus offends, for it is written…. ‘For judgment is God’s’. And so Moses’s motto was: Let the law cut through the mountain.”  According to Rabbi Eliezer, unbending commitments to truth and principle  are essential to a person’s integrity and fidelity to God. 

 But the Talmudic discussion doesn’t end with Rabbi Eliezer and Moses. “Aaron, however, loved peace and pursued peace and made peace between man and man.”  From Aaron’s example Rabbi Joshua son of Korha derived that, “brokering a compromise is a meritorious act, for it is written, ‘Execute the judgment of truth and peace in your gates’.   What is that kind of justice which coexists with peace?  This is compromise.”

“The halacha”, the Talmud concludes, “is in agreement with Rabbi Joshua son of Korha”. 

It’s not that truth and principle aren’t valued by the Talmud. Of course they are. And it’s not that ideological commitments aren’t deemed important by the Talmud. They are as well. It’s rather that in this world which God created, a world filled with unique human individuals who will invariably and healthfully disagree profoundly about essential matters, peace and life are simply impossible without humane, righteously motivated compromise. This is not a news flash. Every family knows it.  And our Congress used to know it too.

And while we’re offering Talmudic advice to the not-yet-existent Super-Duper Committee, let’s throw in the familiar words of Hillel.  “If I don’t look out for myself, who will look out for me? But if I am only looking out for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?”

This wedding ceremony raises a serious question for the part of the Modern Orthodox community in which I live. The question is not about whether we should recognize the ceremony as being religiously significant. We obviously do not and cannot.  The formal religious partnering of two men or two women is unalterably contrary to both the law and the spirit of the Torah and the Halacha, and an Orthodox gay marriage ceremony is as hopeless a misnomer as an Orthodox intermarriage is. How we assess the religious significance of the ceremony is clear-cut and simple.

 The question that it raises rather, is whether we should continue to publicly speak about Orthodoxy and homosexuality in the nuanced way that we have been speaking about it over the past several years. I hope that you are by now familiar with the “Statement of Principles” http://statementofprinciplesnya.blogspot.com/ in which many Modern Orthodox rabbis and teachers affirmed the importance of being inclusive of, and sensitive to the challenges of gays and lesbians within the Orthodox community, even as we recognize that Halacha views same-sex sexual interactions as prohibited.  This is indeed a highly-nuanced position. So much so, that our shul hosted a major event last summer whose purpose was to explore what exactly this all means in real life. (And we were pleased to have Rabbi Greenberg participate in that discussion.) But when I read about the wedding, I wondered to myself whether our nuanced approach had unwittingly contributed to the erosion of the halachik standard, whether we had created the impression that the values of sensitivity and inclusion must ultimately trump the law. I asked myself whether with regard to this issue, nuanced discussion simply couldn’t be heard.   

 As I thought the question through, I came to the conclusion that despite these legitimate questions, our nuanced public discussion must go on. The essential premise of the discussion, that the religious prohibition on homosexual sex must not be turned into a justification for demeaning, embarrassing or harassing gays and lesbians, is still as true as ever. The central idea that gays and lesbians who desire to daven and perform mitzvot should be welcomed into the community of davening and mitzvot, still makes sound religious sense. I do think that last week’s wedding compels us to think more – and to talk more explicitly – about the point at which inclusion begins to send a misleading message. And I do think that we must take even greater care now to not be naïve in our deliberations. But I also believe that any decision to abandon our nuanced discussion would be a decision to abandon many cherished members of our community. It is our responsibility to them to carefully forge ahead.