Download Torah, Rabbinic Interpretation and Growth By Rabbi Arthur Waskow

Torah, Rabbinic Interpretation and Growth
By Rabbi Arthur Waskow
In discussions of how we, in the modern era, respond to and wrestle with parts of Torah that
appear unethical to us in today’s society, I often assert that I think that, like the Rabbis, we
need occasionally out of our larger sense of Torah to nullify some of these particular aspects.
Specifically I do this, and urge others to do it, in regard to same-sex sexual relationships.
I give the Rabbis’ nullification of the “rebellious son” as a precedent in point. Whereas the
Torah commands that the “rebellious son” should be stoned to death, the Rabbis as a whole
had ruled this case out of existence.
Now I perfectly well know that the Rabbis did what I now believe even more strongly was this
“nullification” by using the midrashic method. I have no difficulty, either philosophically or
technically, doing the same thing to the “Toevah” p’sukim about male homosexuality. I have no
trouble acknowledging that I am moved to do this precisely because my moral and ethical
sense, FORMED BY THE TORAH AS A WHOLE, prohibits me from treating male or female sexual
relationships as per se toevah or z’nut, in any different way from heterosexual relationships.
But, please note that, I believe my approach is taught by the Torah as a whole. Morevover,
there is one very powerful but partly concealed aspect of Torah that for me in our generation is
extremely important. That is my sense that the Torah KNOWS AND INTENDS that the human
race, including the Jewish people, has a collective life cycle and that the halakha that applies
during different eras in this collective life-cycle may well be different.
The clearest assertion of this in traditionally accepted Jewish circles is Rambam’s assertion that
animal sacrifice is commanded only to help us grow up, and that when we are more fully
conscious it would become (and did become) unnecessary. No longer halakha. There are also
strong hints of this in Prophetic and Kabbalistic texts which have been formative for me.
In my view, the halakha of separate roles for women and men as such (not e.g. for “care-givers/
community creators” as distinct from “activist energizers/ do-ers/ makers”) was a stage in the
evolution of the human race and the Jewish people. So was the fear of homosexuality. So was
the requirement to be fruitful, multiply, fill up the earth, and subdue it.
All of these I regard as now in the process of being outgrown—the last because it has been
fulfilled, to the degree that any more effort toward fulfilling it will topple the entire structure of
Torah, human civilization, and the planetary web of life within which the human race evolved.
And I regard that out-growing as deeply involved in the outgrowing in the other spheres.
That is, I think the accomplishment of “filling and subduing the earth” radically changes our
sexual ethics and with it the outlook on sex and gender that went along with that (I believe
historically conditioned, like animal sacrifice) mitzvah. I believe that the human race, including
the Jewish people, has reached a crisis point in our entire species-history. I believe that Torah
expected we would reach such a point, though it was of course difficult to perceive how and
describe precisely what to do, since the folks who wrote Torah down were living within the
great era of “fill up the earth and subdue it” and had difficulty seeing beyoind it—just as a a
three-year-old would have trouble explaining the halakaha of living as an adult.
I BELIEVE THAT THIS SENSE OF THE GROWING-UP OF THE HUMAN RACE AND THE JEWISH
PEOPLE IS ENCODED IN TORAH. I BELIEVE THAT JUDAISM IS NOT ENCASED FOR ALL TIME
WITHIN “RABBINIC JUDAISM,” ANY MORE THAN IT WAS/ IS WITHIN LEVITICUS. I BELIEVE THAT
LEVITICUS AND THE REST OF BIBLICAL JUDAISM, AS WELL AS RABBINIC JUDAISM, WILL
CONTINUE – FOREVER – TO BE RELEVANT TO THE CONTINUING GROWTH OF THE JEWISH
PEOPLE AND OF TORAH, BUT NOT DELIMITING.
So I ground all of my seeming innovations in the sense that we too, and our Torah, are “Ehyeh
asher ehyeh” – constantly becoming – and that we can discern, as Rambam did, what it means
to “grow up” – what we keep, what we drop, and even what we add. I believe that God and
Torah have always also believed this. So I reject the notion that I am applying some other
standard than Torah when I try to develop our ethics – indeed, I would say a NON -“RABBINIC”
HALAKHA – for our lives.