February 25, 2010

“Out on the Bimah” is a remarkable opportunity to see the Jewish world from a fresh and, for many of us, unfamiliar perspective. Co-sponsored by The Jewish Journal and Hillside Memorial Park, the event brings together five gay and lesbian rabbis in conversation with Susan Freudenheim, managing editor of The Jewish Journal.  The event takes place at the Writers Guild Theatre in Beverly Hills on March 2, 2010, at 7:30 p.m.

Other voices in the same conversation can be heard in the pages of two books that approach the question of sexual identity in Judaism by approaching the Torah from opposite directions.  On one point only do these two books agree: “Turn it and turn it again,” the Pirke Avot puts it, “for everything is in it.”

The case for the open embrace of Jewish men and women of every sexual orientation is made in “Torah Queeries: Weekly Commentaries on the Hebrew Bible,” edited by Gregg Drinkwater, Rabbi Joshua Lesser and David Shneer with a foreword by Judith Plaskow (New York University Press: $29.95, 337 pages).

The book offers commentaries on 54 weekly Torah portions and six Jewish holidays, each one contributed by a gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgender or “straight-allied” writer, including some of the leading figures in contemporary Judaism, both straight and gay. The goal of “Torah Queeries,” as Jewish feminist historian Judith Plaskow puts it, is to establish the “Jewish legitimacy” of “formerly marginalized groups” by “enlarging the circle of former outsiders who now claim the authority to participate in the process of expounding on Torah and by demonstrating the fruitfulness of reading through queer lenses….”

A very different approach is taken by Arthur Goldberg in “Light in the Closet: Torah, Homosexuality and the Power to Change” (Red Heifer Press: $36.00, 600 pps.).  Goldberg is the co-founder of an organization called “Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality,” and he looks to some of the same Jewish texts that are studied in “Torah Queeries” for support in his mission of “help[ing] people affected by unwanted same-sex attractions.”

Goldberg rejects the spirit of tolerance that can be found in a book like “Torah Queeries,” and he argues that “the compass of right and wrong bequeathed to us by ancient wisdom” points only in the direction of heterosexuality.  “[T]he Torah . . . condemns the homosexual act as a to’eivah — an ‘abomination’ to Hashem (G-d),” and he offers “Torah-based resources” for “the Jew seeking liberation from his/her homosexual fantasies and arousals” and “for those gay and lesbian Jews struggling to free themselves from a lifestyle they know is inconsistent with their inner spiritual voices.”

Tragically, no real meeting of the minds is possible between these two kinds of Judaism. On one side are Jews who respect and celebrate the differences in sexual orientation that have always been a fact of life in human civilization and who seek to understand those differences by reference to Jewish texts: “Reading the Torah through a bent lens opens up new insights and allows the text to liberate rather than oppress,” explains David Shneer in “Torah Queeries.” 

On the other side are Jews for whom “tolerance” is itself a dirty word.  “The moral relativists, in league with the gay rights movement and the ‘politically correct’, have done much to hide or misrepresent the answers, to obfuscate the issues, and, indeed, to smear traditional religion — especially Judaism — as hostile and discriminatory toward homosexuals,” argues Goldberg in “Light in the Closet.” “By doing so, they have not only fed the new antisemitism and antireligionism, but, with tragic irony, have placed many of their own in situations of unbearable ambivalence, conflict, suffering and mortal danger…”

Arthur Goldberg will never convince Judith Plaskow that she is wrong, and I fear that Plaskow will never change Goldberg’s mind.  But I know what kind of Jew I am. For me, “Torah Queeries” glows with the compassion and lovingkindness, as well as the love of learning and the willingness to discuss and debate, that I regard as the enduring core values of Judaism and the keys to the survival of both Judaism and the Jewish people.

“We have, among other challenges and opportunities, the momentous task of understanding the contours of a society and its individual members who transcend binary gender identities,” writes Rachel Biale in her contribution to “Torah Queeries.” “Let us hope it will take less than forty years of wandering in the desert.”

To which I say: Amen.

Jonathan Kirsch, author of “The Harlot by the Side of the Road” and “The Woman Who Laughed at God,” is the book editor of The Jewish Journal. He can be reached at books@jewishjournal.com.

The Madoff family is looking for a name change and quite frankly, I don’t blame them.  “Morgan” would be the new name, according to HuffingtonPost.com.  But, my only issues is, where’s the Jew in Morgan?

If you’re a Jewish family and you’re forced to change your name, at least pick something that sounds Jewish.  Morganstein. Morganowitz. Schwartz. Stein. Berg. 

Anything but Morgan.  They’re stripping themselves of their Jewish identity as they baptize their surname.  I’m sure this community of online readers can do better and with that said…

Let the official Madoff family name suggestion begin (post your suggestions in comments)!

Madoff family changing name to ‘Morgan’ – Can you do better? Read More »

I met Mark Boal, the screenwriter and producer of “The Hurt Locker,” the day the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences determined that he would be one of four producers to receive a statuette should the movie win best picture on March 7.  (Check out our full profile of Boal and the film in the Journal’s Oscar issue on March 5.)  The film is certainly one of the best movies of the year, with nine Oscar nominations, tied with James Cameron’s “Avatar.”  The white-knuckle action thriller is the story of members of a bomb squad battling Iraqi insurgents and each other during some of the most dangerous days of the war in 2004.

Boal, who is Jewish, joked that the Journal story “is the single interview that will make my mother the happiest.”  He didn’t tell his mother where he was going, however, when he became the first reporter ever embedded with the Army’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit (a.k.a., the bomb squad), while working for Playboy in 2004.

There was more to worry about than being blown to bits by homemade devices cleverly hidden in a dead dog or a pile of detritus:  “When I got off the plane, [officials] asked me my blood type and my religious affiliation,” the 37-year-old writer-producer said.  “When I asked why, they said, ‘In case we have a funeral for you.’  And then they said, ‘Since you’re Jewish, you should really keep that under your hat because they behead Jews over here.’  And Daniel Pearl had just gone missing.”

So Boal didn’t advertise his Jewish background (in a “leftie, counterculture-y, sandals-wearing, granola-crunching” home in Greenwich Village) as he trekked about with the expert technicians who sometimes had to disarm explosives with just a pair of pliers.

His script incorporates the fear he himself felt during those harrowing weeks, and the psychology of the men he observed who had volunteered for the most dangerous job in the military.  The screenplay also realistically depicts what the soldiers called “The Lonely Walk:” The steps taken toward a roadside bomb. “They were literally walking toward the device that’s designed to kill you, and at a certain point it’s just you and the device; there’s nobody who can intervene,” Boal recalled.  “I think that really gets to the heart of the job.  It’s a very small club of people who have done it and only they can know what it feels like.  But to a man they talk about it being this experience of a lifetime, and something you just never forget, if you’ve done it once.  And to do it five or ten times a day is staggering.”

One tech told him about his mindset during The Walk:  “You kind of review people close to you, but the closer you get to the bomb, the more it becomes just this almost animal, existential kind of confrontation.”

Shooting the film, Boal’s solo screenwriting debut, in Jordan was safer than Iraq –Amman isn’t a war zone – although there were dangers about.  “I remember waking up in the morning and reading on the front page of the Times about how anti-American sentiment was really strong in this particular town,” he said.  Apparently an Al Qaeda bigwig was born there.  “And the interview was, the reporter sitting and having coffee with two guys who were just waxing with so much enthusiasm about how they wanted to kill some Americans, and I’m like, reading this and spitting out my coffee, because I had been in that neighborhood a couple of days before, scouting locations.  And so I thought, ‘OK, we have to be really careful here,’ and we were careful.  We tried to be very respectful of the local religion, and we shot during Ramadan, which is their holiest time, and that was complicated for the crew (a number of them were observant).

“But I found the Jordanians to be extremely professional and welcoming,” Boal added.  “I would shoot another movie there in a second.”

At times, the set seemed as chaotic as the film’s setting.  “We had cameras everywhere,” actor Jeremy Renner (who is nominated for an Oscar for his portrayal of the cocky but brilliant tech Sgt. William James) said in the movie’s production notes.  “We called them Ninja cameras, just hiding all over the place.  We never knew where anything was.  Barry (Ackroyd, the director of photography) was out there himself running around.  It was absolutely amazing seeing him run as fast as we did, carrying his camera down these dirty alleys full of syringes and kids throwing rocks and he always had a big smile on his face.  That inspired me.”

During some scenes, Renner wore the real, 90-pound Kevlar body suit techs don to disarm bombs.  “That sweat is real sweat.  Those tears are real tears of pain,” he said of his performance.  “[The suit is] heavy, it’s hot, it’s hard to move in, but it put me right in the moment.  Just the idea of getting into it – I wanted to dry heave whenever they said to suit up.”

“The Hurt Locker” includes cameos by Ralph Fiennes, Guy Pearce and David Morse, and is directed by Kathryn Bigelow, who will compete for the Oscar against her ex-husband, James Cameron.