Tyler’s Torah Thoughts for 26 Nisan, 5784 –Day 11 of Omer
Parsha ‘Aharei Mot – “After the death”: (Leviticus 16:1 – 18:30)
Seventh Portion: Leviticus 18:22-30

So I’ll confess. Today’s portion is tough. I’ve read it and re-read it. And I am having a hard time with it. Let’s just dig in and rip the band-aid off.

22You shall not lie down with a male, as with a woman: this is an abomination.

23And with no animal shall you cohabit, to become defiled by it. And a woman shall not stand in front of an animal to cohabit with it; this is depravity.

24You shall not defile yourselves by any of these things, for the nations, whom I am sending away from before you, have defiled themselves with all these things.

25And the land became defiled, and I visited its sin upon it, and the land vomited out its inhabitants.

26But as for you, you shall observe My statutes and My ordinances, and you shall not do like any of these abominations neither the native, nor the stranger who sojourns among you.

27For the people of the land who preceded you, did all of these abominations, and the land became defiled.

28And let the land not vomit you out for having defiled it, as it vomited out the nation that preceded you.

29For anyone who commits any of these abominations, the persons doing so shall be cut off from the midst of their people.

30And you shall observe My charge, not to commit any of the abominable practices that were done before you, and you shall not become defiled by them. I am the Lord your God.

So I read what I wrote two years ago. And I think it still resonates.  This is a hard passage, but I think this handles it quite nicely:

To review – the foundation of these passages are centered around not practicing the customs of when we were slaves in Egypt; and not following the practices of the people living in the promised land. The goal here is connection with Hashem. It’s relational.

We started looking at No sex with close family members. We went through yesterday what that meant. We looked above (parents) besides (sisters, brothers, etc) and below (children).

Culturally, a lot of these previous passages are in line with current moral standards of our society, especially in America. And we have to remember this is a key point. We don’t necessarily have a problem with these PREVIOUS parts of the portion because they line up with our current beliefs.

Then, we shift a bit and Hashem seems to say moving forward at this point of the journey, the Israelites should not do what Jacob did. In the sixth portion, verse 18:18 says don’t marry a woman and her sister.  That is EXACTLY what Jacob did.  The reason given by many rabbis for 18:18 for this – it would make them rivals. Even if you divorce one, you can’t marry the other in her lifetime.

Then, we talk about sex with a woman while menstruating. You can begin to see a shift in cultural practices today which are less in line with the Torah. It’s a little uncomfortable (in my opinion).

Then we talk about adultery – no sex with someone else’s wife.

Then we close with giving your kids to worship Molech.

Now we jump into todays portion:

“You must not lie down with a man, as one lies with a woman.”

Now. Let’s stop for a minute. We need to recognize culturally and historically in America specifically (and I’m sure other countries around the world I have zero personal experience living in) this passage has led to so much oppression, pain, and hurt.

I want to stop here. The Torah, the Bible, religion? Has been used to oppress people.

The Torah has been (in my opinion) a personal journey with Hashem.  No one is telling us what to do. The Torah exists for us to wrestle with it. But let’s keep going:

I go back to high school and reading the book “The Scarlet Letter.” And thinking how odd it was to live in a time where Adultery was so bad people were shunned for it. And yet, today, it’s not great, but it happens with such frequency there are entire shows (I remember watching the show “Cheaters”) devoted to it. We have pastors in churches who have committed adultery who are leading services.

NeverMind

How many people have sex with women on their period. We don’t talk about that passage a lot, do we?

And here – in this same section, we talk about a behavior; sex with someone with the same biological parts. And somehow THAT has become the thing we’ve held onto as a society being problematic.

And that is important context because human beings, created by Hashem, have lost jobs, been physically assaulted, and treated like crap in our society all because of this passage.

But if adultery, sex with a woman on her period and gay sex is all mentioned together; we must ask ourselves some hard questions. Why do we as a society treat these differently?

Stop. This is key.  If adultery, sex with a woman on her period, and gay sex are all mentioned together, WHY do we single only one out?

This isn’t the time to answer those questions by the way. It’s the time to talk about freedom and liberation from slavery. And to do that, we need to address the next line of the Torah.

“This is an abomination.”

And how we handle that line is going to impact how we handle the Torah portion we’ve been reading. Because there are a few options in front of us.

Option 1: all the previous mitzvahs listed are just “don’t do it” but a man laying down with a man? THAT is the abomination.

Option 2: all the previous mitzvahs AND a man laying down with a man are abominations.

Historically we’ve gone with option 1. Which is kind of interesting to a degree if you think about it. Don’t have sex with your dad or your aunt or your mom or your kids; but a man having sex with a man; THAT is an abomination? Interesting choice.

Especially because here’s a secret about the Torah that really isn’t a secret that you may not know; the Torah? No punctuation. And I’d argue in this context punctuation matters. Because If a man having sex with a man is on the same page as a man having sex with a woman on her period, or a man having sex with the sister of someone he’s already had sex with? Then life looks a smidge different today.

I’m hoping this makes sense.

In addition, if you look at the bookends of the section of the Torah – and we read what is about to come, the “this is an abomination” certainly feels like (in my opinion) to be the closure of a section of mitzvahs from Hashem.

Remember back to the beginning of the section. God tells us; “You should guard My suprarational commands (one’s that aren’t necessarily logical) and My rational laws which a man should do, and you will live by them in the next world, for I am God who is faithful to pay it forward.”

So the section starts out that these laws are about “the next world.” Which we’ve discussed from a Jewish contexts is about our souls. The basic question ; are we physical bodies with a soul inside, or are we infinite souls living inside a body for a time?

So; the idea of this section is that these mitzvahs are for our souls; and they are for “the next world.” So when we get to “This is an abomination.” What we are seeing is these things – adultery, sex with a woman on her Period, sex with a man if you are a man” are all going to impact our souls.

Now let’s stop here. If you don’t believe you have a soul, then these passages become meaningless to a degree. And I’m not going to impose my beliefs about the soul onto anyone else.

The Torah doesn’t say “judge” to us. There were actual judges that would judge. But we aren’t all called to judge. We are called to love. To heal the world. That’s not going to happen by chastising people that “miss the mark” on the Torah. Because that’s not how Torah works.

So let’s move forward. I think the next line is going to clarify even more.

Because now we are talking about sex with animals. And after THIS passage? The Torah calls it depravity. It is clear sex with animals is depravity- because the abomination line came first.

And in a Torah that we have read where there are ENTIRE sections where after every behavior is listed “you are ritually Impure” In this part of the Torah there is a long list of things – without any kind of “calling them something.” This leads me to believe the entire section is what Hashem is calling an abomination.

And you are about to see this even more reinforced. Because we have yet to learn what the consequence is for these “abominations” and depravity.”

Here’s the closing of the parsha:

“You must not defile yourselves by any of these things, for the nations whom I am sending away from you have defiled themselves with all these things. The land became defiled. I remembered its sin (bringing punishment) upon it, the land vomited out its inhabitants.”

But you will observe My suprarational commands and My rational commands, and you will not do any of these abominations-neither the native, nor the convert who lives among you.

The people of the land, who preceded you, did all of these abominations and the land became defiled. Let the land not vomit you out for having defiled it as it vomited out the nation that preceded you.

For if anyone commits any of these abominations, (both) the people (the man and the woman) who committed (the act) will be cut off from the midst of their people.

(The courts should) enforce My restrictions, not to commit any of the abominable practices that were done before you, and you will not become defiled by them.

(If you keep My laws then) I am God, your God.

So there you have it. Pretty clear the Torah lumps ALL of these things together as problematic. And the consequence wasn’t death. It was being cut off from the people.

Let’s be real here. Judaism as a faith is all about freedom. There is no forcing you to do what the Torah says. There are no “good Jews” and “bad Jews” only Jews.

And at the same time, if you want to walk away from that – there is freedom in that.

The judges of our time have judged poorly. We judge a man having sex with a man and are ready to cut them out of our communities – but a man having sex with a woman on her period? That’s none of our business. Neither is having sex with the sister of someone you’ve had sex with.

So instead of using these passages to judge OTHERS? How about we judge ourselves first?

The Talmud reinforces this idea and we will close with it:

“The Sages, aiming to highlight the pitfalls of arrogance, equated an arrogant man to one who has engaged in all forbidden relations. They learn this from our verse, which describes forbidden relations as an “abomination” and regarding arrogance it says, “Every haughty person is an abomination to God” (Proverbs 16:5). This common characterization, as an abomination, indicated to the Sages a relationship between the two sins.”

I’m so curious as to your thoughts on this. If you aren’t comfortable sharing publicly – please feel free to DM me. I’ll gladly discuss it with you.