Gay Musmach Speaks at Yeshiva Student's Apartment
By Jonathan Rubin
May 22, 2000
On Sunday May 14th, a provocative lecture entitled "Orthodoxy and Homosexual Orientation" was held in the Washington Heights area sponsored by The Jerusalem Open House. The event, which was not endorsed by Yeshiva University's Roshei Yeshiva or administrators, evoked a great deal of commotion on Yeshiva Campus.
Due to the extreme fervor exhibited by Mordechai Levovitz, a YC student who painstakingly plastered the YU campus with signs announcing the upcoming lecture, news of the lecture attracted even more attention than the event itself. Many students were taken aback by the zeal that Levovitz displayed in ensuring that news of the lecture spread; specially reinforced staples and a plethora of tape surrounded the signs that Levovitz wished to remain attached to dormitory and school-wide bulletin boards. Heated debate and arguments ensued as Levovitz desperately tried to hang up the signs without attracting too much attention. Levovitz, who claims to have encountered flagrant acts of prejudice and hate from fellow students, would have liked to see his peers concentrate more on being sympathetic and less hateful.
Rabbi Steven Greenberg, who spearheaded the evening's lecture, is considered by many to be the first Orthodox gay rabbi to "come out of the closet." Levovitz suggested that Greenberg's openness holds the potential to change the face of Modern Orthodoxy. "Rabbi Greenberg gives us the reality check," Levovitz commented, "[that] homosexuality does exist within the the Orthodox community, and Greenberg takes the substantial Frum halachic approach."
Greenberg, who was raised in a conservative household, did not admit that he was gay until the age of 28. Greenberg began learning with an orthodox rabbi at the age of 15 and slowly found himself "thrilled by the sprawling rabbinic arguments, the imaginative plays on words, and the demand for meaning everywhere." He attended Yeshiva University as an undergraduate where he received a B.A. in philosophy and then as a rabbinical student in the RIETS Semicha program. Greenberg, who was ordained in 1983, refers to his time in RIETS as "sailing upstream." He recalls that period in his life as being focused on "trying to make it work. I was so motivated for a family and children and a life -- for being part of the flow of humanity, which is so appealing." In retrospect, he looks back upon that time in his life with deep regret. "It's a center of real hurt in my life that it didn't work out that way. But that hurt doesn't justify a life of deep, deep self-deception and deception of others."
Greenberg, at the age of 20 studied at Yeshiva Har Etzion outside of Jerusalem, where he began to grapple with the "foggy idea" of his homosexuality. He later became "beset with an increased attraction" to a fellow student in the yeshiva. Greenberg, who can't pinpoint the exact moment at which he realized that he was gay, remembers his childhood and teenage years being spotted with confusing emotions and sensations. In an article that appeared in Tikkun magazine, Greenberg addressed the Biblical prohibitions against male homosexual acts found in Leviticus, which describes such behavior as an abomination and punishable by death. He admits that, "for the present, I have no plausible halachic method of interpreting this text in a manner that permits homosexual sex." As a traditionalist, Rabbi Greenberg wrote, "I hesitate to overturn cultural norms in a flurry of revolutionary zeal." Instead, he writes, "I am committed to a slower and more cautious process of change, which must always begin internally."
YU student Yishai Fleischer questioned Rabbi Greenberg's logic and apparent disregard for biblical text. Greenberg responded by quoting the verse from Leviticus 18:23, "Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman, it is an abhorrence." Greenberg was adamantly reluctant to lay out the specifics of his arguments without the benefit of several hours of laying the background that leads to his conclusions. In rather vague fashion, Greenberg explained that says that he is "attempting to demonstrate this verse is more interesting and ambiguous than a simple, superficial reading would suggest."
While living in Israel, Greenberg decided to come out publicly in the Israeli national daily newspaper, Ma'ariv. He timed the article to coincide with the early March opening of the Jerusalem Open House, the first community center for gays and lesbians in Jerusalem, which he helped found.
The mission of the Jerusalem Open House (JOH) is to "make it possible for the city's gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals to live their lives openly and freely, without fear of oppression." The New Israel Fund supports the JOH, which has its headquarters located at 7 Ben Yehudah Street. Jerry Levinson is the founder-director of the Open House, Jerusalem's first gay and lesbian community center. Since the grand opening of the center, Levinson has been increasingly active in Jerusalem's gay community. Levinson claims that approximately 10 percent of the religious and ultra-orthodox population is gay, and that his organization attempts to "grapple with issues of Orthodox religion, particularly Judaism, and gay orientation."
Greenberg is a few months away from completing a book that, along with telling his personal story, explores what he believes is the Torah's puzzling attitude toward homosexuality. "I want to tell the Orthodox community that they can't ignore the lives of people living among them whom they love. Until they are willing to listen to the testimony of gay and lesbian Orthodox Jews -- people who are observant of Torah and the mitzvoth -- they cannot know what the halachic outcome will be. Whatever arguments that might be made for or against gay and lesbian inclusion can only be made through ongoing learning with gay and lesbian Jews who are asked to bring the reality of their lives into the conversation," Greenberg concluded.
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