Community and Society Archive
Welcome to Community and Society where you will find the latest thoughts and reflections by CLAL faculty and associates on the changing nature of community and society in America today. What are the challenges and opportunities these changes represent for the Jewish people in America at the dawn of a new century?
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Trembling Before God on Yom Kippur
By Steven
Greenberg
Every Yom
Kippur, gay Jews who attend services are faced with a dilemma. The dilemma is lost on those who show up for Kol
Nidre in the evening and Neila the following evening. Only those who essentially spend the whole day in
synagogue confront this pain. In the
afternoon service of Yom Kippur, the service of least attendance during the whole 24
hour-long marathon of prayer, the portion from Leviticus delineating the sexual
prohibitions is read.
Ever since
my homosexuality has been even quietly self-acknowledged, I cringed to hear my shame read
aloud on the Day of Atonement. The emotions
accompanying the reading have changed through the years.
At first, what I felt was guilt and contrition. Later, I felt a deep sadness for being caught up
in gay desire and I would petition heaven for understanding. At other times, I would sob in my corner seat of
the shul, acknowledging the pain of those verses upon my body and spirit. I have tried to connect myself with Jews of
countless ages, listening in shul to their deepest feelings of love and desire
turned abhorrent, ugly and sinful. Finally, listening has become, in addition to all else
I might feel, a protest.
During
this entire period, I never missed the afternoon service on Yom Kippur. Never did I leave the synagogue for this gut
wrenching reading. It never dawned upon me to
walk out. Over the years, I developed a sort of personal custom to stand up during the
reading. Since I have always spent Yom Kippur
in the seriously prayerful Orthodox environments, no one ever noticed that, wrapped in my kittel
(a white cotton robe worn all day on Yom Kippur and in which pious Jews are buried when
they die) and my tallit (prayer shawl) over my head, I stood up for a single
portion of a Torah reading, and cried. In
time, as my self-acceptance grew, the tears stopped and in their place was a stoic sense
of rising to hear the unfair accusations of a heavenly court upon me.
Yom Kippur
1996, I took my submission/protest one step further.
I decided that it was not enough to stand up.
I wanted to have the aliyah (to be called up to the Torah) for the
reading of those very verses. I arranged with
the shamos that I would have the proper aliyah and when it was time, I went
up to the bima in the center of the shul.
My heart was pounding as I climbed the steps to the table where the scroll
is read. I felt as if I was standing on the
top of a mountain in a thunderstorm. My head
was swirling as I looked out at the congregation seated around me. The men standing on each side of me at the podium
were intent on their jobs, oblivious to me. Before
me was the scroll.
It is hard
to express the feeling of standing before an open Torah scroll. The Torah scroll possesses the highest level of
sanctity of any object in a synagogue. If
dropped, the whole congregation must fast. To stand there before the scroll as it is
rolled open is both intensely intimate and public. I
have studied this scroll for years. On Simchat
Torah, I have danced with it. I kiss it
weekly as it passes through the congregation on Shabbat.
The plaintive and magisterial melody of the reading on Yom Kippur is both
ominous and comforting. I say the blessing,
the scroll is rolled opened and I, too, feel as if my arms have been rolled aside and my
heart is exposed.
I hold on
to the handles of the scroll for balance. I
am surprised. The words are poetry. The uncovering of nakedness repeats. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy
father’s wife, the nakedness of thy sister, the nakedness of thy daughter-in-law, the
nakedness of thy aunt. I am aware of the
power of this text on the Day of Atonement for all those sexually abused. On a day of healing, we cannot avoid confronting
how the intimacy of families can be turned into violence.
And then it comes: Thou shalt not lie with a male as one lies with
a woman; it is an abomination. To my
surprise, when it is read, I no longer feel pain or threat or even accusation. I feel
strangely empowered. In exposing myself to
this verse, it has become exposed to me. Standing
amid the congregation I feel the eyes of many upon me.
I am not looking at them, but at the scroll. And for the first time that I can remember, I feel
it looking back at me.
I have
come to understand that whatever those verses in Leviticus mean, they cannot be
truly understood without the testimonies of those bodies and souls that have been ripped
apart by them, who have suffered for years under their weight. Until our stories are told in the midst of
the learned, until the scholars discover that among their own flesh and blood, their own
students and teachers, their friends and colleagues are gay people whom they
love—until the countless gay people pushed out of our communities come home and stand
up in integrity and claim their place -- those verses will remain, dark and
indecipherable, or worse, an ongoing excuse for blind hatred.
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