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Thursday, November 10, 2011
ISRAEL: ALTERNATIVE RELIGIOUS WEDDINGS ALLOWED TO CONTINUE: Jewish Telegraph Agency
reports: An organization of Modern Orthodox rabbis that performs alternative religious wedding ceremonies for non-religious couples can continue to register the couples. more Labels: Israel, Judaism, Marriage, Orthodox Judaism, religion Wednesday, October 05, 2011
A NEW DAWN FOR "SUNRISE, SUNSET" AT SAME-SEX WEDDINGS: Playbill
reports: One of the most common things in the world happened on Oct. 1 in Tappan, NY. "Sunrise, Sunset" was performed at a wedding. more Labels: culture, gay marriage, gender, heteronormativity, Judaism, religion Tuesday, August 02, 2011
Conservative Rabbis Disagree on Same-Sex Marriage: New York Times
reports: Though he approves of New York State’s new law allowing same-sex marriage, Rabbi Allan Schranz of the Sutton Place Synagogue, a Conservative congregation in Manhattan, will not officiate at a wedding ceremony for same-sex couples, pointing out that his reasons, though partly rooted in Jewish traditions, are mostly rooted in his personal traditions. more Labels: Conservative Judaism, culture, gay marriage, Judaism, Marriage, New York, religion Monday, April 25, 2011
KIRYAS JOEL, NY, LANDS DISTINCTION AS NATION'S POOREST PLACE: NYTimes
feature: The poorest place in the United States is not a dusty Texas border town, a hollow in Appalachia, a remote Indian reservation or a blighted urban neighborhood. It has no slums or homeless people. No one who lives there is shabbily dressed or has to go hungry. Crime is virtually nonexistent. more Labels: class, culture, economics, family size, Hasidic Judaism, Judaism, New York, Orthodox Judaism, poverty, religion, weddings Thursday, January 06, 2011
Protesters Seek Woman's Religious Divorce: NYTimes
reports: This should have been a good New Year’s for Aharon Friedman, a 34-year-old tax counsel for the Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee. He spent time with his 3-year-old daughter, and could have been thinking about the influence he will have starting Wednesday, when his boss, Representative Dave Camp of Michigan, becomes chairman of the powerful tax-writing committee. more Labels: custody, divorce, Judaism, men, religion, remarriage, women Wednesday, December 29, 2010
INTERNATIONAL ADOPTIONS CHANGING FACE, IDENTITY OF AMERICAN JUDAISM: Religion News Service
reports: Like so many Jewish women, Anne Suissa pursued her education and career with gusto, earning degrees from Cornell and MIT and going on to manage 27 people at the U.S. Department of Transportation. more (see also here) Labels: adoption, culture, demographics, feminism, Judaism, religion Wednesday, December 08, 2010
IS IT CONSTITUTIONAL FOR NEW YORK TO CRIMINALIZE CLERGY'S PERFORMING WEDDING WITH NO CIVIL LICENSE FOR COUPLES?: Howard Friedman
at the Religion Clause blog: A Forward article published last week raises the question of the constitutionality of New York's Domestic Relations Law, Sec. 17, which makes it a misdemeanor for any clergy member to "solemnize or presume to solemnize any marriage between any parties without a license being presented ... or with knowledge that either party is legally incompetent to contract matrimony." The article reports on the case of Yehuda Semel, who obtained a Jewish religious divorce from his wife. However their civil divorce proceedings are still pending in the courts. Nevertheless, Semel has married another woman in a religious ceremony without obtaining a civil marriage license. Most rabbis oppose performing a religious marriage ceremony where there has not been a civil divorce. Commentators argue, however, that it is a violation of the 1st Amendment for the state to make it illegal for a rabbi to perform a purely religious ceremony. It was not unusual before a 1983 change in the Social Security Law that preserved benefits for widows who remarry, for rabbis to perform a religious ceremony for a couple otherwise eligible to marry but who did not obtain a civil marriage license to avoid the woman's loss of her Social Security benefits. There was a Yiddish phrase for that type of marriage-- stile chupa (a "quiet marriage"). link Labels: family policy, Judaism, law, Marriage, religion, religious liberty Thursday, July 22, 2010
GUILTY PLEASURES: RELIGION AND SEX AMONG AMERICAN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS: Roger Friedland with Paolo Gardinali
at the Huffington Post: ... In 2008 and 2009 we asked close to a thousand students, mostly freshmen and sophomores, at the University of California, Santa Barbara, to tell us about their sex lives. In this anonymous web-based survey we also asked them to which religious denomination they belonged. Almost everybody who claims to belong to a religion also believes in God. A lot of students -- just shy of a third -- don't identify with any religion. But just because somebody doesn't belong does not mean they don't believe. About a quarter of those unaffiliated nonetheless believe in God. Most commonly, they believe in a higher, ordering power or cosmic force, but not God, not the big Who. True atheists are a tiny minority in the sample -- about eight percent. more Labels: abortion, Catholic Church, Christianity, contraception, culture, Judaism, premarital sex, religion, sex, universities Wednesday, June 09, 2010
INTERFAITH MARRIAGES ARE RISING FAST, BUT THEY'RE FAILING FAST TOO: Naomi Shaefer Riley
in the Washington Post: ...The Reyes-Shapiro divorce is about as ugly as the end of a marriage can get. Some of the sparring is an example of the bad ways people act when a union unravels. But the fight over Ela's religion illustrates the particular hardships and poor track record of interfaith marriages: They fail at higher rates than same-faith marriages. But couples don't want to hear that, and no one really wants to tell them. more Labels: Catholic Church, Christianity, culture, divorce, Judaism, Marriage, religion Thursday, May 27, 2010
THE MEANING OF (GESTATING) LIFE: Book review
in Books and Culture: "What's the book about?" more Labels: abortion, culture, Israel, Japan, Judaism, motherhood, pregnancy Monday, April 05, 2010
BATTLE OF THE BABIES: Caspar Melville
in the New Humanist: Whenever demography is the subject a panicky headline usually follows. Generally these take the form of anxieties about overpopulation. “Are there just too many people in the world?” asks Johann Hari in the Independent. “The World’s population is still exploding,” confirms the Optimum Population Trust (patron David Attenborough). Though equally they could be about the opposite. “Is Europe Dying?” queries Catholic apologist George Weigel (before answering his own question: “The brute fact is that Europe is depopulating itself”). “Falling birth rate is killing Europe says Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks” is the Guardian’s offering. To these hysterical headlines let’s add another, especially for you secular folk: with birth rates of seven babies per women fundamentalists will take over the world. And here is the kicker: it’s all secularism’s fault. more Labels: Amish/Mennonites, culture, demographics, Europe, Israel, Judaism, religion Tuesday, March 02, 2010
MASS MEDIA: Dahlia Lithwick
in Slate: Joseph Reyes, an Afghanistan war veteran and second-year law student, converted to Judaism when he married Rebecca Shapiro in 2004. When they split up in 2008, Rebecca won primary custody of their daughter, and Joseph got regular visitation. The couple had allegedly agreed to raise their child Jewish, but Joseph, seeking to expose his 3-year-old to his Catholic faith, had her baptized last November. When she learned that her daughter had been baptized without her consent, Rebecca obtained a temporary restraining order in December 2009, forbidding Joseph from "exposing Ela Reyes to another religion other than the Jewish religion during his visitation." In January of this year, Reyes again took Ela to Mass at Holy Name Cathedral, with a local TV news crew in tow. His ex-wife's lawyers demanded he be held in criminal contempt—with a maximum punishment of six months in prison. more Labels: Catholic Church, children, custody, divorce, Judaism, religion Friday, February 26, 2010
ISRAELI LAWMAKERS DEFEAT CIVIL MARRIAGE BILL: JTA
reports: A bill that allows civil marriage in Israel to couples who could not be married by the rabbinate failed by a large margin in its initial reading. more Labels: Israel, Judaism, Marriage, religion Monday, February 22, 2010
GOD SAID MULTIPLY, AND DID SHE EVER: NY Times
obituary: WHEN Yitta Schwartz died last month at 93, she left behind 15 children, more than 200 grandchildren and so many great- and great-great-grandchildren that, by her family’s count, she could claim perhaps 2,000 living descendants. more Labels: children, family size, Judaism, religion Sunday, May 31, 2009
Two National Rabbinic Groups Issue Religious Ban on Voting for Pro-Homosexual Agenda Politicians: Press release
states: In light of recent developments in the ongoing push to legislate a Federal Hate Crimes Bill in Congress and same gender marriage legislation in New York and other states, Rabbi Yehuda Levin, spokesman for the 65 year old Orthodox Jewish national Rabbinic organization Rabbinical Alliance of America, surrounded by Rabbis, issued a religious ban on voting for any politician or office holder who supports any aspect of the homosexual political agenda. more Labels: gay marriage, homosexuality, Judaism, religion Thursday, April 24, 2008
Don't vote your conscience on marriage
By David Benkof DavidBenkof@aol.com I've been corresponding with a liberal Jewish supporter of same-sex marriage. He recently wrote me that he expects me and all other Orthodox Jews to support "equal civil rights for all citizens" with regard to marriage, even if our religious beliefs cause us not to extend those rights in our religious communities. First off, I do support equal civil rights for all citizens. Gay men and lesbians can and do get married - to members of the opposite sex. I was once gay-identified, and I hope to marry someday. But marriage is by definition a union of a man and a woman. A gay person cannot marry a same-sex person, just as he cannot marry a tomato. Both kinds of unions are completely alien to the longstanding understanding of what marriage is. Furthermore, my religion teaches me that same-sex marriage is immoral, and calls upon me to fight it. But because my correspondent disagrees, he can demand that I vote against my conscience? I thought this was a democracy. Liberal Jews have often expressed the opinion that prayer has no place in public schools. Well, what if I told one of them that I expect him to support a constitutional amendment guaranteeing "equal civil rights for all citizens" to pray in school if they so desire - even if his personal beliefs cause him not to choose to pray in school himself? The two situations are precisely parallel. Tuesday, April 22, 2008
What's morally wrong with "What's morally wrong with homosexuality?"
By David Benkof DavidBenkof@aol.com Dr. John Corvino's talk, "What's Morally Wrong with Homosexuality," has been canceled by Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Michigan (a Catholic school) and the same talk has been rescheduled for tomorrow night at the Fountain Street Church. Corvino has been giving versions of this talk in many venues over the last decade, challenging his listeners to articulate exactly what - if anything - is morally wrong with gay sex and gay relationships. He has quick, thoughtful comebacks to many of the standard answers ("It's harmful," for example, and "It's unnatural.") I've read some of Corvino's arguments at the Independent Gay Forum Web site, and I admire the fact that Corvino acknowledges that decent, intelligent people can disagree on moral issues relating to homosexuality. However, I must say that Corvino's approach could never convince an Orthodox Jew like me. First off, I should make it clear that Orthodox Judaism does not believe that homosexuality (as a set of attractions or an orientation) is itself immoral. Gay sex and gay marriages, however, are considered immoral. Corvino's approach to morality is similar to Descartes' approach to reality - one can sit alone in a room and think hard about morality and figure out what's moral and what isn't. Judaism rejects this approach. Instead, we believe that morality comes from G-d - as revealed in His written Torah (the five books of Moses) and oral Torah (codified in the Talmud and elaborated in other rabbinic texts). Exactly which kinds of intimacy are moral and immoral - and between whom - are spelled out in this legal corpus. Virtually all sexual contact between males, and much sexual contact betwen females is forbidden, and same-sex marriages are rejected for both Jews and non-Jews. Now, Corvino could probably sit in his room and come up with lots of reasons that aspects of Judaism are "immoral" while things Judaism rejects are actually "moral." He could claim that it is never OK to perform elective surgery without the patient's consent - and infant circumcision, the very sign of G-d's covenant, would be out. He could rail against G-d's commandment that the Jewish people annihilate the Amalekites (a people we no longer can identify) and claim that genocide is "always immoral." He could claim that even though Jewish methods of slaughtering are clearly humane, newer methods actually cause less pain and therefore kosher slaughter is immoral. And he could argue (as he has) that gay sex makes certain people happy, and it therefore must be moral. The problem is, Corvino is not divine. We may think we've figured out why certain behaviors are moral or immoral, and even find some of G-d's moral calculus to be frankly troubling. But we are moral dwarves compared to the infinite wisdom and goodness of the creator of the universe. One rabbi has compared the situation to a young child who is perplexed as to why his mother would allow the doctor to inject him with painful needles. But parents know that inoculations, while painful, are essential to a child's well-being. Similarly, we may feel that for us, avoiding gay sex is painful and it may even seem "immoral," but G-d knows better than we do what is best for us. I doubt that anything written above will change the mind of anyone who isn't an Orthodox Jew. And I have no idea to what extent the argument I'm making applies to religious Catholics, Protestants, or Muslims. It's even possible that Dr. Corvino doesn't really have a beef with Orthodox Jews, since none of his arguments seem to address people like me. But I think it's important to point out that for some of us who believe that gay sex is immoral, Corvino's clever ripostes and well-rehearsed arguments are pretty much beside the point. Labels: homosexuality, Judaism, morality Monday, April 21, 2008
What's Next - Jews for Meat Equality?
By David Benkof DavidBenkof@aol.com A California organization known as Jews for Marriage Equality has been getting some attention lately, including this article (which does not bother to interview a single Jewish opponent of same-sex marriage) in the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles. Jews for Marriage Equality makes about as much as sense as Jews for Meat Equality pushing for equal treatment of pork alongside beef, chicken, and lamb as foods approved for Jewish consumption. The evidence from Jewish texts is overwhelming that Judaism opposes - and G-d opposes - same-sex marriage, both between Jews but also in the wider society. (See below.) Nonetheless, Jewish proponents of same-sex marriage tend to reject the notion that a Jew can legitimately oppose same-sex marriage - and they certainly never acknowledge that theirs is a revolutionary position with little precedent in Jewish history and thought. When they do discuss traditional Jewish perspectives on sexuality and marriage, their comments are generally misrepresentations - if not outright lies. For example, the Jews For Marriage Equality brochure states that only "the most liberal" Orthodox Jews will "concede" that gay Jews are, in fact, Jews. This ludicrous statement has no basis in fact. All Orthodox Jews agree that anyone of any sexuality who has a Jewish mother or who has converted to Judaism according to Jewish law is Jewish. Two years ago, a coalition of eight Bay Area groups sponsored an event at a gay temple in San Francisco called "Smashing the Glass: Jewish Perspectives on Marriage Equality." There were nine speakers, not a single one of whom favors Judaism's longstanding position that marriage is by definition a union of a man and a woman. The event displayed as much chutzpah as an event called "Jewish Perspectives on Circumcision" with speakers who all argue that circumcision is immoral and therefore un-Jewish because it involves the genital mutilation of a child without his consent. Another example is the Web site Gay Marriage: Civil Right or Civil Wrong which wanted someone to explain Orthodox opposition to same-sex marriage. So whom did they ask - a local Chabad rabbi? A representative of some major Orthodox institution? An openly LGBT person like me who believes in and practices Orthodox Judaism? No. They asked Cantor David Berger, the openly gay Reform cantor of New York's main gay synagogue. And virtually everything he said about Orthodoxy was incorrect. It's like asking a radical feminist to explain why the Catholic Church opposes abortion. Or inviting Jesse Jackson to justify why the Republican Party opposes racial preferences. Berger makes five mistakes about Orthodox Judaism in just three paragraphs: 1) He claims that the Torah's prohibition of a specific type of gay sex has "been expanded in traditional Jewish law" into "a general prohibition on homosexuality." Nonsense. I know of no Jewish source or recognized authority who considers not just acts but also same-sex attractions or gay/lesbian orientations to be prohibited. There are many Jews with such attractions and orientations who follow Jewish law and are welcomed and cherished members of the Orthodox community. 2) He claims that the Torah's prohibition on gay relations "applies only to Jews.... Non Jews are neither obligated by this law nor may they be punished for violating it." False. The prohibitions against the act sometimes called "buggery" and against same-sex marriage are "Noahide" commandments. Those are laws that apply to every human being, whether Jewish or not. 3) Berger claims that state-sanctioned marriage "is not a Jewish legal category." Wrong. One of the Noahide laws prohibits adultery. If Judaism considered non-Jews in civil marriages to not really be married, then how could they commit adultery? Of course Orthodox Judaism considers non-Jews married by the state to be actually married. 4) He claims, with no evidence, that Orthodox Jewish families and schools teach "rampant homophobia" to Jewish children. Huh? In the vast majority of Orthodox homes and schools, homosexuality is not discussed at all - positively or negatively. Orthodox children are nowhere systematically taught to fear or hate gay people. True, Orthodox Jews instill the importance of channeling sexuality into the marital (male-female) bond. That is a longstanding Jewish value. But homophobia? No. 5) He rejects the "easy" notion that Orthodox Jews are against same-sex marriage because of the Torah, and writes that "the real answer" relates to "the nature of Orthodox Jewish culture, community, and education." In other words, there can be no genuine Jewish objections to same-sex marriage, only ignorant opinions based on fear or hate. So when we point to verses in the Torah (especially Genesis and Leviticus) and sections of the Talmud (especially Chullin and Kiddushin) that uphold traditional Jewish bedroom and family life, those are only smokescreens for the real reason we don't support Berger's radical stance - our irrational prejudices. One of the many problems with this last argument is that Orthodox Jews who are not homophobic still reject same-sex marriage. I'm one example. Another is the well-known iconoclastic Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who has many pro-gay stances. Rabbi Boteach is nonetheless firm in his opposition to both Jewish and civil same-sex marriages. Or take Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, who usually votes with the Democrats. He has sponsored gay-rights bills and adopted many gay causes. But as an Orthodox Jew, he opposes same-sex marriage. Does Berger believe Boteach, Lieberman, and me are all homophobic? The fact is, the Talmud criticizes Babylonian society for violating nearly all the Noahide commandments - yet praises it for at least observing three such strictures, one of which forbids same-sex marriages. Orthodox Jews believe that the Talmud, as part of the Oral Law, ultimately comes from G-d. Thus Judaism's position - and G-d's position, we believe - is that same-sex marriages are wrong even for non-Jews. Now, I realize that non-Orthodox people have the right in a free society to disagree. But when they pretend theirs is the only Jewish position, and when they lie about Orthodox Jewish beliefs regarding family and bedroom life, they're not playing fair. Many liberal Jews have decried the "Abortion Counseling Centers" run by pro-life people who discuss all options with pregnant women - except abortion. An evening spotlighting "Jewish Perspectives on Marriage Equality" that includes only voices that are hostile to the centuries-long Jewish position on marriage is just as deceptive. The Web sites, publications, and organizations described above, and similar ones, should include at least one Orthodox person whenever they want honest discussions on Jewish views on sexuality and the family. My E-mail address is above, and there are many other Orthodox people - clergy and lay, straight and gay - who would be qualified to join in. |
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