Judaism and Homosexuality

Judaism and Homosexuality PDF Author: Chaim Rapoport
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
In light of modern changes in attitude regarding homosexuality and recent controversy surrounding government legislation, the author, a Rabbi, explores the Jewish stance on homosexuality. He combines an unswerving commitment to Jewish Law with a deep understanding of the philosophical and moral issues involved. He advocates the adoption of a fair and balanced perspective and attitude.

Judaism and Homosexuality

Judaism and Homosexuality PDF Author: Chaim Rapoport
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 274

Get Book

Book Description
In light of modern changes in attitude regarding homosexuality and recent controversy surrounding government legislation, the author, a Rabbi, explores the Jewish stance on homosexuality. He combines an unswerving commitment to Jewish Law with a deep understanding of the philosophical and moral issues involved. He advocates the adoption of a fair and balanced perspective and attitude.

Wrestling with God and Men

Wrestling with God and Men PDF Author: Steven Greenberg
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 0299190935
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
For millennia, two biblical verses have been understood to condemn sex between men as an act so abhorrent that it is punishable by death. Traditionally Orthodox Jews, believing the scripture to be the word of God, have rejected homosexuality in accordance with this interpretation. In 1999, Rabbi Steven Greenberg challenged this tradition when he became the first Orthodox rabbi ever to openly declare his homosexuality. Wrestling with God and Men is the product of Rabbi Greenberg’s ten-year struggle to reconcile his two warring identities. In this compelling and groundbreaking work, Greenberg challenges long held assumptions of scriptural interpretation and religious identity as he marks a path that is both responsible to human realities and deeply committed to God and Torah. Employing traditional rabbinic resources, Greenberg presents readers with surprising biblical interpretations of the creation story, the love of David and Jonathan, the destruction of Sodom, and the condemning verses of Leviticus. But Greenberg goes beyond the question of whether homosexuality is biblically acceptable to ask how such relationships can be sacred. In so doing, he draws on a wide array of nonscriptural texts to introduce readers to occasions of same-sex love in Talmudic narratives, medieval Jewish poetry and prose, and traditional Jewish case law literature. Ultimately, Greenberg argues that Orthodox communities must open up debate, dialogue, and discussion—precisely the foundation upon which Jewish law rests—to truly deal with the issue of homosexual love. This book will appeal not only to members of the Orthodox faith but to all religious people struggling to resolve their belief in the scriptures with a desire to make their communities more open and accepting to gay and lesbian members. 2005 Finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards, for Religion/Spirituality

Homosexuality, Transsexuality, Psychoanalysis and Traditional Judaism

Homosexuality, Transsexuality, Psychoanalysis and Traditional Judaism PDF Author: Alan Slomowitz
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351718487
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
Homosexuality, Transsexuality, Psychoanalysis and Traditional Judaism explores the often incommensurable and irreconcilable beliefs and understandings of sexuality and gender in the Orthodox Jewish community from psychoanalytic, rabbinic, feminist, and queer perspectives. The book explores how seemingly irreconcilable differences might be resolved. The book is divided into two separate but related sections. The first highlights the divide between the psychoanalytic, academic, and traditional Orthodox Jewish perspectives on sexual identity and orientation, and the acute psychic and social challenges faced by gay and lesbian members of the Orthodox Jewish world. The contributors ask us to engage with them in a dialogue that allows for authentic conversation. The second section focuses on gender identity, especially as experienced by the Orthodox transgender members of the community. It also highlights the divide between theories that see gender as fluid and traditional Judaism that sees gender as strictly binary. The contributors write about their views and experiences from both sides of the divide. They ask us to engage in true authentic dialogue about these complex and crucial emotional and religious challenges. Homosexuality, Transsexuality, Psychoanalysis and Traditional Judaism will be of great interest to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists as well as members and leaders of Jewish communities working with LGBTQ issues.

Queer Jews

Queer Jews PDF Author: David Shneer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317795059
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Queer Jews describes how queer Jews are changing Jewish American culture, creating communities and making room for themselves, as openly, unapologetically queer and Jewish. Combining political analysis and personal memoir, these essays explore the various ways queer Jews are creating new forms of Jewish communities and institutions, and demanding that Jewish communities become more inclusive.

Light in the Closet

Light in the Closet PDF Author: Arthur Goldberg
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780963147899
Category : Homosexuality
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The co-director of JONAH (Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality) argues that homosexuality is an illness that can be cured through practical steps based on the teachings of the Torah and the Talmud.

God vs. Gay?

God vs. Gay? PDF Author: Jay Michaelson
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807001473
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
A passionate argument for LGBTQ equality within religious communities—“a book for our times and a book for the ages” (EDGE) The myth that the Bible forbids homosexuality—the myth of “God versus Gay”—is behind some of the most divisive and painful conflicts of our day. In this provocative and game-changing book, scholar and activist Jay Michaelson shows that the Bible does not prohibit same-sex intimacy but does quite the opposite. In fact, the vast majority of the Bible’s teachings support the full equality and dignity of LGBTQ people, from the first flaw it finds in creation (“It is not good for a person to be alone”) to the way religious communities grow through reflection and conscience. Michaelson argues passionately for equality—not despite religion, but because of it. With close readings of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament, the latest data on the science of sexual orientation, and a sympathetic, accessible, and ecumenical approach to religious faith, Michaelson makes the case that sexual diversity is part of the beauty of nature. The recognition of same-sex families will strengthen, not threaten, the values religious people hold dear. Whatever your views on religion and sexual diversity, God vs. Gay is a plea for a more compassionate, informed conversation—and a first step toward creating one.

Queer Theory and the Jewish Question

Queer Theory and the Jewish Question PDF Author: Daniel Boyarin
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231508956
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 431

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Book Description
The essays in this volume boldly map the historically resonant intersections between Jewishness and queerness, between homophobia and anti-Semitism, and between queer theory and theorizations of Jewishness. With important essays by such well-known figures in queer and gender studies as Judith Butler, Daniel Boyarin, Marjorie Garber, Michael Moon, and Eve Sedgwick, this book is not so much interested in revealing—outing—"queer Jews" as it is in exploring the complex social arrangements and processes through which modern Jewish and homosexual identities emerged as traces of each other during the last two hundred years.

Lesbian Rabbis

Lesbian Rabbis PDF Author: Rebecca Trachtenberg Alpert
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 9780813529165
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
The office of rabbi is the most visible symbol of power and prestige in Jewish communities. Rabbis both interpret to their congregations the requirements of Jewish life and instruct congregants in how best to live this life. Lesbian Rabbis: The First Generation documents a monumental change in Jewish life as eighteen lesbian rabbis reflect on their experiences as trailblazers in Judaism's journey into an increasingly multicultural world. In frank and revealing essays, the contributors discuss their decisions to become rabbis and describe their experiences both at the seminaries and in their rabbinical positions. They also reflect on the dilemma whether to conceal or reveal their sexual identities to their congregants and superiors, or to serve specifically gay and lesbian congregations. The contributors consider the tensions between lesbian identity and Jewish identity, and inquire whether there are particularly "lesbian" readings of traditional texts. These essays also ask how the language of Jewish tradition touches the lives of lesbians and how lesbianism challenges traditional notions of the Jewish family. "'Today I am completely 'out' personally and professionally, and yet I have learned that the 'coming out' process never ends. Even today, I find myself in professional situations in which yet again I must reveal that I am a lesbian, yet again I must prove myself worthy of functioning professionally in the 'straight' world. I still encounter moments of awkwardness, some hostility, and some sense of exclusion as I negotiate the pathways of my professional life."-Rabbi Leila Gal Berner, from Lesbian Rabbis: The First Generation

Twice Blessed

Twice Blessed PDF Author: Christie Balka
Publisher: Beacon Press (MA)
ISBN:
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
Contributors include Rebecca T. Alpert, Martha A. Ackelsberg, Linda J. Holtzman, Judith Plaskow, and Evelyn Torton Beck.

German, Jew, Muslim, Gay

German, Jew, Muslim, Gay PDF Author: Marc David Baer
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231551789
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 211

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Book Description
Hugo Marcus (1880–1966) was a man of many names and many identities. Born a German Jew, he converted to Islam and took the name Hamid, becoming one of the most prominent Muslims in Germany prior to World War II. He was renamed Israel by the Nazis and sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp before escaping to Switzerland. He was a gay man who never called himself gay but fought for homosexual rights and wrote queer fiction under the pen name Hans Alienus during his decades of exile. In German, Jew, Muslim, Gay, Marc David Baer uses Marcus’s life and work to shed new light on a striking range of subjects, including German Jewish history and anti-Semitism, Islam in Europe, Muslim-Jewish relations, and the history of the gay rights struggle. Baer explores how Marcus created a unique synthesis of German, gay, and Muslim identity that positioned Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as an intellectual and spiritual model. Marcus’s life offers a new perspective on sexuality and on competing conceptions of gay identity in the multilayered world of interwar and postwar Europe. His unconventional story reveals new aspects of the interconnected histories of Jewish and Muslim individuals and communities, including Muslim responses to Nazism and Muslim experiences of the Holocaust. An intellectual biography of an exceptional yet little-known figure, German, Jew, Muslim, Gay illuminates the complexities of twentieth-century Europe’s religious, sexual, and cultural politics.