Q&A: Separating the Torah’s Ideas from the Circumstances of the Time
Separating the Torah’s Ideas from the Circumstances of the Time
Question
During basic training I was with a guy from Ma’ale Gilboa who told me that today same-sex relations should be permitted. I told him there is an explicit verse—what do you do with that? So he said that just as “an eye for an eye” is interpreted non-literally, so too in this case. He said that in the Torah one has to identify the underlying idea and distinguish it from the temporary circumstances of the period in which the Torah was given. For example, it is not the Torah’s ideal that women should not inherit; in the reality of that time that is how it fit. And similarly regarding the institution of slavery, and likewise regarding the status of women in general, and also regarding same-sex relations today.
What do you say?
Answer
That is certainly possible (see my article on enlightened idol worship and change in Jewish law). But one has to propose a reasonable interpretation. In what you quoted there was only a declaration, not an interpretation. I even have a few such suggestions, but this is not the place.
Discussion on Answer
These are not really concrete proposals, but rather possible constructions (interpretive setups) that could lead to permission. For example, one could suggest that the Torah prohibits only a case where the act is driven by lust and not by an innate orientation.
Some halakhic decisors assume there is no such phenomenon and that this is a matter of urges (Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, for example). Meaning, according to his view, if there is a prohibition then by definition this cannot be a natural orientation (very strange in my humble opinion). In any case, based on his assumption one could now flip the coin and say that if we have become convinced that this is an orientation, then that is not what the Torah prohibited.
But this is only a suggestion. One would need to examine whether there are other such examples in Jewish law, and try to look for proofs or indications for this interpretation.
One should add here the Talmud in Kiddushin 82a, which permits two young men to sleep in one bed, because “the Jewish people were not suspected of male homosexual intercourse.” We see that at least in the view of the Sages, the situation was that homosexuality was not found among Jews. It is also clear that they saw this as an urge and not as an orientation, and from here it is reasonable to interpret the prohibition as a prohibition of lustful impulse, and perhaps there is room to exclude those with such an orientation from the prohibition.
It should be noted that this appears as Jewish law in Maimonides and the Shulchan Arukh, meaning that this perception still existed in the modern period as well.
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I tried to send this as a question to the Rabbi but I wasn’t able to.
Does the Rabbi mean that he has several suggestions for permitting the matter of same-sex relations?