Defending Marriage

A couple of weeks ago, while I was in Israel, the news came that the DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) had been defeated in the US and thus it has become legal for same-sex marriage to take place in NY state, among other places. It was deemed unconstitutional to describe marriage as possible only between a man and a woman. Many people rejoiced at this verdict, and I read of couples rushing to have their union legalised, and some who raced to have their marriage solemnised under the chuppah, including a Jewish lesbian couple who had been together for decades. They were, as one would imagine, elated.

It was the chuppah thing that brought me up short. And next, the lovely Rabbi David Wolpe, of Sinai Temple, Los Angeles, has stated that he would be open to officiating at same-sex weddings.
OK. Well, considering that many of his congregants are of Persian origin, and pretty reactionary in their politics and religious observance, I thought that was possibly a brave or even foolish stance to take. But that's not my problem.

In Australia, our recently deposed Prime Minister is unmarried, living in a de facto relationship with her male partner of many years. In the cabinet is a lesbian Finance minister who is married to her female partner with whom she has a child. So this sort of stuff has been fairly high profile over the past few years. In my own practice in Breastfeeding Medicine, I have assisted several lesbian couples to breastfeed successfully. I also, when taking a medical history, no longer use the word 'husband' when I ask about the health of the patient's spouse; rather, I ask about the partner. Because some women are married and some are not, and some are single mothers, and you know, I don't get shocked and I didn't come down with the last rain shower. I mean, if the patient is a Haredi woman with a hat on top of a sheytel on her head, I will say 'husband'- tradition. But generally in Australia,  everyone calls everyone 'mate' - G'day, mate! How ya doing, mate! Watch out, mate!- everyone is your mate, except for the person you mate with- that's your partner.
And de facto couples, or common law families, or whatever you like to call them, are fully entitled to the same legal rights as a married couple; property rights, inheritance, insurance, child custody, the whole deck of cards. Because it's about the Law, not about religion.

So I think that people in a same sex relationship of several years, or whatever the legal equivalent of a de facto relationship demands, should also be entitled to these same legal rights. I think that individuals, no matter what their sexual orientation, are entitled to the protection of the Law.

So, if same sex-marriage means that you go off to the registry office or you sit in front of a lawyer or a legal celebrant, and you sign marriage documents, and you exchange rings or gifts or what-have-you, and then you have a party with your friends afterwards- well, why not. Be happy.

Yet, this isn't enough, it seems. No. Many same-sex couple want their union not only recognised and supported by law and by secular society; they want religious recognition also. The minister, the priest, the rabbi, the chuppah, the whole nine yards. And here's where I say no.

Because, Rabbi Wolpe notwithstanding, the chuppah is a sacred place and it is not about a political statement or a personal desire. The chuppah, and I guess I am also talking about the holy sacrament of marriage, which takes in other religions, is indeed about the union in the eyes of G-d of a man and a woman. Because the Torah makes it quite clear about male homosexuality being unacceptable in G-d's eyes, and nobody has a right to try to turn these words and twist them into another meaning. Granted, lesbianism isn't as harshly dealt with as male homosexuality as there is no wastage of semen (which is why masturbation is also a sin) but it is referred to in the Talmud as 'Ta-avat Mitzrayim', the lust of Egypt, and is not condoned. (The chuppah is also, by the way, not a place for mixed marriages either; take note, Chelsea Clinton and numerous others, and whatever 'Rabbi' married you. But I wish you happiness.)

The dream of every Jewish parent who knows anything about being Jewish, is to take your child under the chuppah to be wed to a Jewish member of the opposite sex. Having stood under the chuppah with six of my children, I can attest to the power of the ceremony and how meaningful it is. To see that same-sex couples wish to appropriate it is deeply offensive to me. It is taking a thousand and more years of tradition and custom and Jewish continuity and struggle, and suborning it to a personal desire or a political statement, and I have every right to be offended at this, without some troll labelling me a homophobe. As for the ministers of religion who are happy to jump aboard, well, I'm sure you can guess what I think about that, gentle readers.

It's all early days yet, but where there is marriage, there is also divorce. The statistics at the moment show that same-sex marriages are less likely to break up than traditional marriages, but these statistics are not that meaningful as there hasn't even been a '7-year-itch' scenario yet. So the people who use these bogus figures to say how this shows that same-sex couples love each other more, are idiots. People are people and there will be good relationships and toxic ones, good spouses and abusive ones, and let's not play games here. I also wonder about legalities like consummation or non-consummation of marriage, and what constitutes adultery, or other grounds for divorce etc, but I'm sure the clever lawyers will work something out.

Now, you may have noticed that I have written a whole piece on same-sex marriage without using the word 'gay'. This is deliberate, as the word 'gay' nowadays seems to not include female couples, so I think it is discriminatory! But deep down, I am also upset at the appropriation of a wonderful word which was so useful in describing a certain kind of happiness and joy, so that kids now would snigger at the words to the old song about 'kookaburra sitting in the old gum tree, merry merry king of the bush is he, laugh, kookaburra, laugh, kookaburra, gay your life must be.'

The other word I don't like being swiped by the same-sex male relationship, is 'husband'. The word means 'manager' (eg to husband one's resources, or animal husbandry) and when a homosexual man refers to his 'husband', I think that he is just showing off. As I said earlier, here in Australia, we use 'partner' anyway, so what's wrong with that? Or 'spouse', a perfectly gender-neutral word describing a partner in marriage. Lesbians' use of 'wife' is less annoying, as the word 'wife' just means 'woman' (eg 'midwife', meaning one who is with a woman in childbirth, or fishwife or housewife.) But 'spouse' would still work here too, even if 'gay' doesn't anymore. (I know these are picayune details, but it's my blog and I can talk about what annoys me, no matter how small.)

So, please, same-sex couples, legalise your union if you wish, live in safety and freedom, be in love and happy, and may your lives together be wonderful. But don't expect religious people, myself included, to be happy at the travesty you wish to make of our religious customs and traditions.

A Confluence of Sorrow

Tonight is Tisha B'Av and I was in shul tonight sitting on the floor listening to the horrors described in Eicha, Lamentations. As I said last year, fasting and praying in commemoration of the Destruction of the Temples and the loss of Jerusalem really brings home the historic link that we Jews have with Israel and Jerusalem. It is a tragedy that many Jews just don't know what Tisha B'Av is and, by corollary, do not understand this link. The fact is that the Jewish People are the Children of Israel in every sense of the phrase, and we are the indigenous people of the land. You do not mourn the loss of something for 2,000 years as a form of, what, propaganda or marketing. It is deep and true and real, and if all Jews in the diaspora AND in Israel knew this, well, Moshiach would have come by now. 

Anyway. After the reading, there were two speakers, both Holocaust survivors, both in their 80's. One was my father-in-law Nathan Werdiger. 

The first speaker, originally from Romania, told his story of being rounded up and sent to forced labour camps, escape, recapture, Auschwitz and survival. He recounted how his sister refused to flee until the Vishnitzer Rebbe told them to; and then the Rebbe himself fled with a 'select group of Hasidim' and tens of thousands of his followers were abandoned, most perishing at the hands of the Nazi murderers. 

After the war, he fled Judaism and lived in Kalgoorlie, a gold mining town, for 30 years. He pledged never to marry and have children as he could not countenance the thought of bringing children into such a world. On a recent visit to Melbourne he saw a Shul and entered it for whatever reason, was warmly welcomed by the Chabad rabbi and now has returned to Judaism. 

My father-in-law told his story; forced labour in Auschwitz, working as a slave for IG Farben, witnessing hangings of fellow Jewish slaves for trivial offences, starvation, disease; participating in a Kol Nidrei service after dark in the bunkroom, weeping for the beauty of remembered Yom Kippur services, fasting -fasting! In Auschwitz!- for what turned into 2 days due to collective punishment by the Nazi kommandant ; Death march to Buchenwald; being liberated close to death, pulled off a pile of corpses by his one surviving brother hours before the Americans arrived,  being nursed back to health, learning how to walk again, 4 years in a Davos sanatorium; failing the medical to go to the US to be with his brother but being sponsored by a cousin to come to Australia. It is impossible, he said, to convey the absolute hell of the camps; and he is right. There are no words in any language to convey the depths and extremes of these experiences, not to a listener who hasn't been there himself. 

But my father-in-law took a different turn from the other speaker. Despite all that he experienced, he held on to his Judaism. He married and created a family which now numbers over 100 souls. He dragged himself out of the ashes of the Holocaust and he chose Life. 

I never ever presume to judge a survivor; nobody can. I don't know how anyone could ever function in any way after such experiences. But I know that I am grateful that Nathan Werdiger chose to live. 

It's Tisha B'Av. We Jews have experienced unspeakable tragedies throughout history, many linked with this day and many only because of our Judaism. We are still here. We are the descendants of the survivors who chose Life. 

Moshiach hasn't come yet and I don't know what it will take; but we wait to be redeemed and returned to our home in Eretz Yisrael. We will be redeemed. We will return. 

Am Yisrael Chai. 

LIKE TALKING TO A WALL

So by now you may have heard about the unseemly behaviors which took place at the Kotel on Rosh Chodesh Av. The Women of the Wall, in their tens, wanted to have their Rosh Chodesh services in their tallitot and kippot, in some cases, Tefillin, and the Women FOR the Wall, Orthodox women, got there first, in their many hundreds, and packed the women's section where they prayed quietly and traditionally. Except for one woman with a whistle, who was trying to disrupt the WOW - I can only guess that she blew the whistle to drown out the voices of women singing, this saving the men the trouble. The WOW group were blocked from reaching the Kotel itself by the numbers of orthodox sem girls and women. One WOW participant, a rabbi, wrote how she was jeered when she pleaded with some girls to put a kvittel in the Wall to pray for the health of a friend recently diagnosed with breast cancer; she was very upset. 

And it is indeed, all very upsetting. During the 3 weeks, beginning of the 9 days of mourning which commemorate the destruction of the Temple, at the same very site, Jews fighting Jews. 2,000 years ago, they all would have been dead as each other, slaughtered and enslaved by Romans. Or 60 years ago, by the Nazis. You can say that about any Jew-on-Jew fight. And of course, irony of ironies, the Temples were destroyed because of Sinat Chinam, or baseless hatred. 

I am in two minds about WOW. Part of me feels that, since the Kotel is for all Jews, the WOW should just be left alone to wear their cute little tallitot etc and just do their own thing; but a large part of me feels that  they are a bunch of attention seekers. WOW- even the acronym is an attention grabber. (WOTW would be more accurate but it lacks the -excuse me- wow factor.)

Because I truly feel that this brand of Judaism is inauthentic. That's how I feel about Reform Judaism. I'm sorry if I offend fellow Jews, and I know that I do, but you can't begin to imagine how offensive are some of the 'reforms' of Reform Judaism to me and other Orthodox Jews. Declaring in 1984, for example, that patrilineage is an acceptable decider of Jewish identity rather than the thousands of years of matrilineage. Not to mention conversions, divorce, observance (or not) of basic Jewish mitzvot such as Shabbat, Kashrut, Mikveh. The result is muddying of the water of Jewish identity and, as we see in the US, astronomical rates of intermarriage and assimilation. So excuse my not believing in pluralism too much. 

So the various media picked up on the battle of the Wall and it all looked awful, a Shunda, ugly haredi women blowing whistles and picking on the WOW ladies in their fetching garb etc. Of course it was a total beat up, and if you want to know what really happened, go the The Real Jerusalem Streets, Sharon Altshul's terrific photoblog, and see.  http://rjstreets.com/2013/07/09/rosh-chodesh-av-at-the-western-wall/

The other thing about WOW is that they want it all. They won't stop. They want to have reading from the Torah at the Kotel, they want to sing and dance and pray and wear Tefillin, and they want everybody to smile and clap and chant with them, and support everything they say and do. It doesn't bother them that the vast majority of Jewish women, observant or not, have no desire at all to do this. We observant women feel that we have enough 'feminine' mitzvot to do, and we feel that these are important enough, considering that they underpin the observance of Judaism, that we need not demean them by declaring that the only way to go is like the men. Public prayer, tefillin, kippah, tallit, reading from the Torah, etc. This reminds me of 70's feminism where you could only be a true feminist by behaving like men and rejecting any traditional feminine role. 'Essentialism', the idea that men and women are fundamentally different, was mocked. And that all worked out well, hey? 

If a group decided that they would express their Judaism by, say, jumping on pogo sticks, (and stranger things than this have occurred in the history of religious observance) and then took their pogo sticks to the Kotel to jump in pure religious zeal and ecstasy, there would be two lots of upset people: those who were bumped and those who were outraged and affronted, feeling that they and their hundreds of years of Mesorah, tradition, were being mocked. And then, what if the pogo jumpers went to the Law and insisted that they have their own little spot, right there, right at the wall. And the Law agreed! So as to protect both the jumpers and the non-jumpers. How sweet! How infuriating for the rest. 

At the Kotel, nobody minds when non-Jews come and pray or stick bits of paper containing prayers into the wall, or if women wear clothing that is not what a religious person would wear, as long as the boundaries aren't pushed too far. In the plaza, groups of people sing and dance- non Jews, secular Jews, mixed groups of men and women dancing the hora, religious groups, whatever. Nobody cares. No Haredim are punching people up or insisting that everyone behaves in a Haredi way, merely in a respectful way. 

The WOW are kidding themselves if they think that they are all so kumbaya and represent all that is good in Judaism, and everyone who is not with them must be against them and a meanie.  Most people don't care or are amused or bemused. But many worshippers are offended, and I believe, with good reason. Mind you, this doesn't give them the right to a slap-down. 

During this last week before the fast day of Tisha B'Av, let's try to tolerate each other, even if we can't love each other. But let's also try not to get up each others' noses. And may the righteous Moshiach redeem us and end our exile. Amen. 

PS If you want to pray for the recovery of a sick friend, by the way, sticking a kvittel in the Kotel is a pretty infantile way of doing it, in my opinion. Say Tehillim, give Tzedakah, do a mitzvah. You don't need the kvittel or the Kotel for that, Rabbi.