You may have seen the news about Yishai Schlissel: he stabbed marchers during Jerusalem’s LGBT parade in 2005, served 10 years and did it again as soon as he got out. He stabbed six people at last week’s parade including 16yo Shira Banki who died of her wounds.
This has sparked a strong response from both within Israel and Jewish communities around the world. This is great and the more Jewish groups can marginalise such overt, violent homophobia the better. However, that the Jewish tradition has loads of homophobic teachings, I’m disturbed at the fact that almost all Jewish organisations are in denial about this. It’s one thing to say that murdering people for being LGBT goes completely against your interpretation of Judaism. It’s another thing to say that it’s something ategorically opposed by “The Jewish Tradition”.
That would be a lie.
The Torah condemns male homosexuality as a capital offence. While liberal Judaism (and Christianity) tend to interpret this to refer to idolatrous sex work in the Temple, the Jewish sages on whose teachings much of the modern religion is built had a different interpretation: that of absolute condemnation. There are too many teachings to go into, if you want more details I suggest you consult Dr Google. If Jewish groups disagree with the sages that’s great, but these teachings are there. The vast majority of Jewish groups these days don’t use these horrible teachings as a springboard to stab people. But there ARE plenty of Jewish groups who use these teachings to engage in shunning, disowning LGBT children and more. Denying this aspect of the Jewish tradition throws the victims of these abuses under the bus.
Among the chareidi (aka “ultra-Orthodox”) world that Schlissel hailed from, there’s been genuine disagreement about the stabbing. Apparently posters have been put up both praising and condemning the stabbings. Even Reform synagogues read Parsha Pinchas from the Torah every year, a passage that praises Pinchas’s zealotry in killing prince Zimri and his Midianite paramour while they were in the act and averting YHWH’s wrath. In communities such as my old high school, this was not even considered something to give a blushing defence of, it was just a given that this was good.
My old high school also put out a statement to its alumni about the stabbing, here are excerpts from the rabbi’s message.
Everyday someone, somewhere, commits a heinous crime. Last week, however, was different. In the heart of our homeland and masked in religious garb, an insane zealot stabbed participants of a Gay Pride Parade, killing an innocent Jewish teenager, and another firebombed a home, killing an innocent Palestinian toddler.
In addition to the throwing victims of religiously-motivated homophobic abuse under the bus (below), the rabbi tosses in people with mental illness for good measure. A man who stabs LGBT people or kills a Palestinian toddler must be insane. Right?
As proud Jews, this should shock us to our very core. How do people kill in the name of the God of life? How do they discriminate against parts of humanity in the name of the God of all of humanity?…On Shabbat we read the Ten Commandments, where the crime of murder is spelled out in no uncertain terms.
Is he genuinely puzzled about how people can kill in YHWH’s name when a good 2/3 of the Torah is spent praising people for killing in YHWH’s name? Not addressing the homophobic passages head-on is cowardly and half-assed; but of course this would undermine the whole narrative of the Torah’s moral superiority.
Yesterday…students sponsored the sharing of flowers, songs and good deeds to one another, with all proceeds going to Save a Child’s Heart (SACH), an Israeli based charity that provides pediatric cardiac care for children from developing countries…It is our sincere hope that we can offer a more powerful Jewish message than the growing global extremism, playing our part in healing the fractured world around us.
These activities are great but this just ignores the systemic problems tension. The school’s community is still focussed around reading, following and treasuring a book that in no uncertain terms says that Schlissel was a mensch. Without directly addressing the problematic aspects of Judaism, homophobia in the wider Jewish community will be much harder to eradicate. Including in communities genuinely horrified at the stabbing.
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