Quest

David Walsh

Leviticus 18:22, “Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman; it is an abhorrence” – This one sentence from the Torah has caused debate, heartache, and controversy for thousands of years, but it is only in the last few decades after much activism, argument and reinterpretation that some movements in Judaism, notably the progressive ones, have found an accommodation which allows gay Jews to be able to live a Jewish life, as recognised by a community without foregoing their homosexuality as either a ‘lifestyle’ or an ‘identity’. The same, however, cannot be said for Orthodox movements.

Jews of non-Orthodox persuasions, be they Reform, Liberal, Masorti (Conservative) or Reconstructionalist may have pointed differences between them, and yet they all have one basic belief in common. It is generally accepted that the Torah was not neatly transmitted in a packaged form from the heavens as the infallible ‘Word of God’ but was rather the beautiful result of divine inspiration, debate and the experiences of the Jewish people at the time. The key issue here being that the Torah is very much of its time, steeped in the culture and society within which it was created. It is within this context that many progressive Jews have explained away seemingly prohibitive verses with allegedly relate to homosexual behaviour, in much the same way as other practices have been abandoned over the past few thousand years. Read more…