(May 10, 2012) …Well, I am likely this evening to conclude early, for two reasons: I have a wedding to attend and no weddings are more beautiful than Jewish one held outdoors at sunset in the spring or summer in the Promised Land.
Two, it has been blessedly quiet lately on war front with not only our immediate savage neighbors but their backers world-wide among the goyim, the nations of the world. But I cannot let the day go by without some response to the extraordinary, historic milestone in Washington, DC yesterday when the President of the United States of America came out in support of holy matrimony for Sodomites. Only time will tell, if at all, of the weird connection in his mind of the loss the day before in North Carolina of a referendum on this – what the Bible calls abomination – and the vote against what he just came out in support of. Now 32 states, I believe, have voted against this craziness, thank G-d, but Emir Barack Hussein is now in favor? What could he be thinking? Or has HaShem guided his mind in this direction to bring him down in November? Some seven years ago the ultra-Orthodox Shira Leibowitz Schmidt, who lives in Netanya, I think, penned a memorable column in JPost, an educational one in this regard. Citing the Midrash on Genesis, she pointed out that the Midrash there teaches that even though same-sex unions were widespread in the generation of the Great Flood, that generation was not blotted out from the world until people wrote marriage contracts for males and males, males and animals, thus legalizing such practices. Said the Midrash, “The Lord G-d is long-suffering for everything except for such behavior.” In other words, long-suffering even for same-sex unions. It was when people made them legal people stepped over the line. She also pointed to another Midrash in Vayikra/Leviticus which “differentiates conceptually between non-normative behavior itself and the more severe step of legalizing the non-normative behavior, with a reference to Leviticus 18:3 which prohibits the Jews from following the laws of the Canaanites in such matters as males marrying males. Indeed, there is a vast conceptual chasm between rejecting sodomy and tolerating it on the one hand, and legalizing it on the other. The Lord God is long suffering, even forgiving of those suffering powerful, non-normative urges to which they surrender, so long as these non-normative desires and behaviors remained non-normative. But when they are called normal, a line has been crossed. And in the matter of sodomy, there is nothing in the Chumash/the Five Books to compare to what may have been a massive hydrogen-bomb explosion over Sodom and Gomorrah, which story sends a message about abusing the G-d-given and G-d-like capability of human procreation. Man is no more like G-d than in his ability to create more men, and he must never abuse it. Rather, he must certainly never legalize abusing it, for the consequences are potentially catastrophically dire. Well as always, here’s Yosef Karduner. Leila tov miEretz Yisrael… |