Unscrolled, Acharei Mot-Kedoshim: Finding the God

During my weekly Torah study session with my mostly non-religious Jewish family, I often find myself in the position of apologist — making the case that what we are reading is not as strange, problematic or dull as it may seem, but rather is reasonable, spiritual and deeply relevant.

This is not always an easy case to make. By way of example, look no farther than last week’s parashah — Tazria-Metzora — which detailed the laws of menstrual impurity and contained long, prescriptive chapters for dealing with an individual stricken with skin disease.

Exasperated, my father announced: “I don’t know why we’re reading this. I don’t see how reading this will make me a better man.” He thought a minute and then added. “But I’ll wait until I read your column to pass judgement. You always manage to see the God in it.”

Indeed, I do. But not without effort and not without the abounding and unconditional love for Torah that I bring with me to my learning. With this as my starting point, I come to the text not as an unbiased reader but rather as a parent gazing at his child, enamored of the good and perhaps a little too ready to make excuses for the bad.

But what I am I to do with Parashat Acharei Mot-Kedoshim? Surely, when we read it together during this week’s Torah study, my family will look to me to fulfill my usual role of apologizer, contextualizer and justifier. But in the case of this particular parashah, when we come to the line “Do not lie with a male the lyings of woman; it is an abhorrence,” will I be up to the job?

When we come to the line “Do not lie with a male the lyings of woman; it is an abhorrence,” will I be up to the job?

Even as one who has dedicated his life to Judaism and Torah study, I still sometimes feel — on account of this verse — that I am a second-class citizen among the Jews. There are Jewish spaces in which I am not welcome. There are those who think it is absurd that a gay man would dare to become a rabbi. There are Jews for whom my life is seen not as an enactment of Torah but rather as an affront to Torah.

Beyond the personal pain that this verse has caused me, however, I must also acknowledge the countless souls, Jewish and gentile alike, that have been extinguished too soon because of this pasuk. They have been murdered. They have been tortured. They have been psychologically pushed past their limits. They have been forced to live out on the streets. They have been harassed, called perverts, forced into lives of silent sorrow.

In the light of this, it seems absurd to continue staring at these lines and looking for the “God in it,” as my father put it. But as difficult as it is, that is exactly what I do each year when this parashah comes along.

One cannot pour more wine into a glass than it will hold. The divine flow of revelation is boundless, but humans are limited in our capacity to see the world through God’s eyes. Our expressions of revelation — in our holiest texts — bear witness not only to the light of God but also to the darkness of our own narrow vision, our biases and our prejudices.

Thankfully for us, God gave us also the oral Torah — a whisper on the wind, brought to life whenever Jews convene over Torah to speak it into existence, to study it closely and to find God in it. This, I believe, is Judaism’s greatest asset: exegesis as a spiritual practice — interpretation as devotion.

Such a thing requires an act of faith — faith that even pasukim that seem hateful to us have their origins in love. They were written in the attempt to make the world a holy place, which is so clearly the underlying ethos of this week’s parashah.

With that belief as our starting point, our task becomes clear: to understand, to find the God, to guide the words back to their holy origins in love with a gentle and forgiving outreached hand.

Matthew Schultz is the author of the essay collection “What Came Before” (2020). He is a rabbinical student at Hebrew College in Newton, Massachusetts.