Reading Parshas Arayos (Homosexuality, Sex Change) With Current Events

Letter to A Friend: The Parasha Is Even More Relevant Today

This entry was posted on April 29, 2019, in original.

(Watch and listen here.)

Dear *****,

As you are aware, this most recent scandal was foreseen by many of us. I am mostly in agreement with the author of this article, although I would also like to make it clear that I have nothing necessarily against Open Orthodoxy. As you know, as the father of many daughters, I am slightly sympathetic to those women who may want an expanded role in communal involvement, and that I believe that that there are halachic grounds for doing so, perhaps even for allowing them into leadership roles, as I have written about earlier. It so happens that where I tend to live there is little demand for such things among the women, and my wife is exceptionally traditional, so I have no reason to personally get involved in such matters. But I do believe that the tolerance of homosexuality among certain circles is surprisingly foolish. As the sages say, “even the Sadducees concede the matter,” that sometimes there are Torah principles that are so clear, even those who deny the authority of the Oral Torah and the sages agree that something is as it is. The ordination of women or the impossibility thereof is not explicit in scripture or even the Talmud or the codes, so at least between us, it is clear that if a scholar were to claim that women could serve as Rabbis, we would not write him off. However, the practice-of-homosexuality issue is entirely different. Even today’s Karaites know that there is no room for it within Judaism. Similarly, those Jews who are knowledgable enough of Judaism and disrespectful enough to poke fun at it realize the obvious incompatibility. This is where, I believe, their downfall has started and where it will ultimately end, and, believe it or not, all of this was alluded to in the coming parashiyot the Jewish world is currently reading.

…

Secondly, why, among all the other Torah prohibitions, are the forbidden relations connected to the two cultures that had the most profound influences on our people at that time? Keeping kosher, for example, and the laws of ritual purity are distinctly Jewish and practical, yet the Torah does not stress that we should keep those laws in contrast to the practices of our Egyptian former overlords and the Canaanites. It seems that the forbidden relations and the laws against idolatry and its accouterments are the only ones that we were specifically and repeatedly bidden to not pick up from our gentile neighbors. Why? Because these are the sinful facets of their cultures that, unfortunately again, are the easiest to adopt from them. We both know that it is not a  coincidence that the phenomenon of Jewish “Orthodox leadership” accepting the infiltration of homosexuality is in a time and place which accepts the entirety of the LGBT political agenda. As I wrote about last month, religion and politics should not mix, and we are aware of those rabbis who miraculously seem to agree entirely with the conservative political platform, but on the left it has gotten out of control. The Torah was very clear here: the forbidden relations are part and parcel of their cultures, and if you are not vigilant, it will also become part of yours. And notice that the Torah does stress the capital punishments for the forbidden relations as much as it emphasizes the historical and societal consequences for us as a people. (See also Nahmanides’s entire commentary to this chapter; he concludes with a reason as to why the forbidden relations are capital crimes, whereas kashruth and ritual purity are not.) Indeed, many modern researchers have pointed out that a stage of sexual permissibility, especially of homosexuality, is a harbinger of societal disintegration and collapse, and it is already happening in the West.

Thirdly, the list of forbidden relations occurs in both Aharei Moth and Q’doshim, making the latter seemingly redundant. Why the redundancy?

The first list is prefaced with the injunction to not be like the Canaanites and Egyptians. The second is prefaced with the command for us to be uniquely holy Jews.

…

And then there was this:

In an exceptional move, 56 Orthodox rabbis published a letter of support for Osher Band, a 15-year-old transgender girl from Ashkelon who hasn’t gone to school for more than six months because of violence and threats to her life by other students.

Like everything that emerges from the festering abscess that is Haaretz, take the entire article and the original letter with a cup of salt, if you can stomach these celebrations of carnal sin.
Note how these fellows love to constantly be identified as “Orthodox,” although you and I never have a need to broadcast that we are Orthodox, because they are always up to something decidedly not Orthodox. Methinks the lady doth protest too much. The sages said that members of the Sanhedrin should be sharp enough to bring 150 arguments for the purity of the sheretz, but they certainly did not believe that any potential sage could, Heaven forbid, actually rule as a matter of practical halacha that indeed a rat is pure. But look what they have done.
Note how they write to this poor young man using the Hebrew feminine case. Note how they were more than happy to make what should have been a private letter public in order to virtue-signal. Note how their entire position with regard to this issue is entirely in line with modern, Western, (im)moral sensibilities. This is not a coincidence.
What should be done with such a young man? Well, let’s consider the high schools of the Metro New York area of twenty years ago with which we are familiar. Would any of the boys’ high schools, like YUHSB and TABC, have been able to handle a student prancing around dressed like an (immodest) adolescent women? Would any of the girls’ schools, like Central or SKA, have been able to do so either? Or what about the mixed schools, like Frisch or Ramaz? I find it less than surprising he was harassed by his peers wherever he was in school. Kids can be cruel, and there is no justification for their behavior, and we need to educate them to be kinder, but let’s face it: peer pressure is a natural force that is there to keep the naturally developing social structure in order. Kids detect the abnormal, and when imposed on them in order to force a change within their own naturally comfortable system, they push back. And, just so that we are clear, there is no leniency that exists within the halacha for a young man to dress as a woman, no matter how strongly he feels that he is one. Osher Rand needs sympathy and help. He does not need encouragement, especially from self-proclaimed religious authorities. Both will ultimately be harmful to him and his peers, and no school should have to destroy itself and its students in order to indulge his delusions.
But, and this is written in an attempt to try to give them the benefit of the doubt, I believe that they were compelled to write this letter because they suffer from the same malady that torments this poor young man: The obsessive belief, instigated by their drowning in a perverse and pervasive culture, that they are what they are not, and the intolerable demand that others fully accept their delusion despite all the evidence to the contrary and despite the severe harm it inflicts on the members of society.

I pray that this serves as a wake up call for our Jewish brethren in America.

From Avraham Ben Yehuda, here.

Some other articles:

  1. Women in the Military? It All Depends on the GOAL of the Military!
  2. Keeping Torah and Mitzvoth: Do Our “Feelings” Matter?
  3. DON’T LAUGH: Will Kollel Lead to Polygyny?
  4. Why Does Nobody Ask Halachic She’eilos About Sex?
  5. Chafetz Chaim on ‘One Who Teaches His Daughter Torah…’

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