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

April 20, 2014 by Patrick Beaulier

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?

Filed Under: Jewish Text (Torah/Haftarah/Talmud), LGBTQ & Women, Random (Feelin' Lucky?) Tagged With: convert to judaism, darshan yeshiva, gay jews, Holiness Is Apparently Not A Gay Buddhist In Blue Jeans (Parshat Kedoshim), jewish buddhist, jubu, judaism and homosexuality, kadosh, kedoshim, lgbt jews, online conversion, patrick "aleph" beaulier, patrick aleph, punktorah, rabbi beaulier, rabbi patrick aleph beaulier, selflessness, this week's torah portion

Digging Wells: Parshat Toldot (by Alison Laichter)

October 27, 2013 by Patrick Beaulier

Digging-in

This week’s Torah portion is Toldot. About a year ago, I was on a meditation retreat led by Rabbis Jeff Roth and Sheila Peltz Weinberg. Sheila gave an amazing drash on Toldot during the retreat, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot ever since. She related the parsha to Jewish contemplative practice, and it felt like she was speaking directly to me about why I practice Jewish meditation and not some other form of spirituality, and I wanted to share it with you.

Judaism, thankfully, has some lasting and beautiful structures: Torah, prayers, holidays, mitzvot, etc. Our task seems to be to take these structures seriously, but lightly. We have so many precedents in our history of going deep inside ourselves (see: Zohar, Hasidut), and also looking outside of ourselves and beyond our structures for insight, perspective, challenges (see: Maimonides, the entire Jewish meditation movement). So, we’re held by these structures, but for sustainability, survival, and in the spirit of learning and growing as individuals and as a people, we have to be open and find what works.

This week, we are reading Toldot. Jacob and Esau are born after fighting each other inside their mother, Rebecca, and Isaac re-digs the ancestral wells in search of water. Sheila’s interpretation of the digging of wells is what I’d like to share.

Isaac is digging the wells of Abraham, finding along the way contention, conflict, and then rehovot, spaciousness. In digging the wells, all of which lead to water, Isaac goes through a lot, eventually getting to a place of non-adversarial flowing waters… The question comes up: “why not skip all of that contention and conflict and just dig new wells?” Sheila’s answer was threefold: “1. There’s water there!, 2. We know where they are!, and 3. They are our wells!”

This is part of our spiritual path. We know there are deep insights within Jewish practice and study, we have the structures at our disposal, and maybe more importantly, it’s ours! When teaching Jewish meditation, I am always asked about what is Jewish about meditation. There are lots of ways to answer this, and I usually simply say that it’s my understanding that if I bring my whole self and my whole heart to my spiritual practice, and I’m Jewish, then my practice is Jewish.

Even when I considered myself Buddhist and wasn’t so interested in being Jewish, I said the shehechianu when I saw the Himalayas for the first time. I realized at some point, along my meditation path, that I speak Buddhist fluently, but when I practice Jewish meditation, it feels like I’m speaking my native tongue. Many people who come to the JMC talk about how they have felt an ache of connection, that they feel at home in a Jewish context, and that they’ve been looking for a way to connect their spiritual seeking and Judaism through meditation. This story of Isaac digging wells resonates with me, because often I find myself in conflict and contention with my Jewish roots and contemporary interpretations and even the idea of God, but this feels like the right path, and this is my well, and I’m thirsty.

This week’s dvar comes from Alison Laichter

Filed Under: Jewish Text (Torah/Haftarah/Talmud) Tagged With: Alison Laichter, brooklyn, convert to judaism, convert to judaism online, darshan yeshiva, Digging Wells: Parshat Toldot, Jewish Meditation Center, jewish-buddhism, jubu, online conversion, parshas toldos, patrick "aleph" beaulier, patrick aleph, punktorah, rabbi beaulier, rabbi patrick aleph beaulier, This week's D'var

Adam Yauch’s Death Poses Jewish Question

May 4, 2012 by Patrick Beaulier

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.

Filed Under: Jewish Media Reviews Tagged With: adam yauch, adam yauch dead, beastie boys, Chabad, darshan yeshiva, jewbu, jewish buddhist, jubu, letters to a buddhist jew, milarepa fund, mourners kaddish, patrick "aleph" beaulier, patrick aleph, punktorah, rabbi beaulier, rabbi patrick aleph beaulier, rolling stone, tibetan

Is Messianic Judaism Really That Bad?

July 6, 2011 by Patrick Beaulier

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’.

Filed Under: Community Member Blogs Tagged With: convert to judaism, convert to judaism online, darshan yeshiva, hinju, jewish buddhist, jews for jesus, jubu, messianic jews, online conversion, patrick "aleph" beaulier, patrick aleph, punktorah, rabbi beaulier, rabbi patrick aleph beaulier

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