PunkTorah

Independent Jewish Spirituality Online

Holiness Is Apparently Not A Gay Buddhist In Blue Jeans (Parshah Kedoshim)

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Closeup_of_copper_rivet_on_jeans

Many of my friends struggle with this week’s Torah portion because of one line:

And a man who lies with a male as one would with a woman both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon themselves (Lev. 20:13).

It’s interesting to note that none of my friends are having theological problems with wearing blue jeans (Lev. 19:19), falsifying weights and measures (Lev. 19:35) or cussing out their mothers and fathers (Lev. 20:9).

I support gay rights. I have tattoos. I’m not on an epic quest to vandalize my local Buddhist monastery a la Abraham’s idol smashing and I’m freaked out by any attempt to create a new Sanhedrin in Israel (or anywhere for that matter). That puts me in a certain camp of Jewish thinking that, at times, is referred to as Cafeteria Religion: someone who shamelessly picks-and-chooses what they want out of religion.

The tricky thing is that it is just so easy to pick and choose, when the Torah gives us so many options.

For example,holiness is not just a matter of following rules. It’s also a matter of having a pure heart, as the Torah tells us in this same portion:

Thou shalt not oppress thy neighbour…Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling-block before the blind…Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thy heart…thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself…if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not do him wrong…thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt (Lev 19:13-34).

It begs the questions: why do we struggle with one line of Torah about a sexual act, but don’t seem to be freaked out at all by the idea that we have to be one hundred percent selfless, loving all people as we love ourselves, treating everyone equally and never doing any harm to anyone, ever?

I think the answer is pretty  clear. The texts in Kedoshim which admonish what we think of as “homosexual” are texts to us, about the other. Those texts are about how others should live, and what our response to that should be. The loving texts of this same Torah portion speak to how we should treat others regardless of who they are. That’s a text that is completely about us.

It is easier to rally around an ideology that turns people into “its”, rather than an ideology that forces us to turn “its” into people. 

So what are you rallying around?

Adam Yauch’s Death Poses Jewish Question

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Adam Yauch, rapper in the pioneering hip-hop group the Beastie Boys, has died at the age of 48 from cancer. Yauch had been sick since 2009, after the discovery of a tumor in his salivary gland.

All over the internet, music fans are reposting articles about his tragic illness and death, as well as the incredible contribution he made to music and human rights, especially the cause of the Tibetan people.

And that’s where we hit a bump in the road: do we say Mourner’s Kaddish tonight for Adam, who left Judaism for Buddhism?

Some people believe “once a Jew, always a Jew” (see the Chabad picture above as evidence). But in the case of Yauch, is that really true? Yauch was definitely a Buddhist…and not in a meditate-then-drink-a-beer kind of way. He took it very seriously and frankly, in many circles, is know more for founding the Milarepa Fund than License To Ill.

Here at PunkTorah, we make a point of creating mourner’s kaddish YouTube videos when prominent Jewish people die. But in Yauch’s case, would that have been the right thing to do? Yauch was a Buddhist and we want to respect the fact that this is the spiritual path he took. We have no judgements of that. Would we then be judged if we made a YouTube video with the kaddish overlaying a simple hip hop beat? Would this be us Bible bashing Yauch’s choice to convert? We didn’t want to go there…so we wrote this article instead.

Either way, Yauch was an incredible musician, philanthropist and activist, and we send our condolences to his family. May his memory be a blessing.

Is Messianic Judaism Really That Bad?

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Recently, a friend of mine’s very young daughter told her class that her favorite holiday was Christmas. My friend was in a panic about it. It was like she failed as a Jewish parent.

But I would doubt that this kind of reaction would come from a Jewish parent if their son or daughter suddenly took an interest in Tibetan Buddhist meditation or started wearing healing Majick Crystals from the local New Age supply store. It seems that turning away from G-d is just a hobby until you start talking about your-personal-lord-and-savior and listening to Paramore and Anberlin.

So why are we OK with JuBus (Jewish Buddhist), Hin-Jews (Jewish Hindus) and the Jewnitarian Jewniversalists, but we freak out about Messianic Jews? Isn’t it all the same?

Idolatry is idolatry, whether it’s bowing down to a Buddha statue or wearing a crucifix around your neck. Jesus is really no different than Mohammed or Thor or anything else that doesn’t have the OU or Star-K symbol stamped on it. And nowhere in the Torah does it say, “thou shalt have no other gods before me, but L. Ron Hubbard is totally chill.”

So why the double standard? Just askin’.

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