Leviticus

Holy jab a moving experience

We’re celebrating at our house. I’ve gotten my first AstraZeneca vaccination “jab.” I’ve got a sore arm and felt droopy afterwards, but I’m thrilled to have finally gotten access.

As a pragmatic, 40-something Gen X-er, I had to wait my turn. Then I rushed to get an appointment. In the Manitoba social media world, we heard others complain that the system was difficult to navigate. The deadpan reply from our cohort was something like, “Guess you’ve never had to get up early to try to register your kids for swim lessons.” In a place where resources like, say, vaccination or indoor pool swim lesson spots, are very limited, we’ve learned to negotiate systems that were not designed for our needs or to be welcoming.

This big event for 40-somethings in several Canadian provinces happened to coincide with the Torah portion of Acharei Mot-Kedoshim, Leviticus 16:1-20:27. This big double parashah (portion) covers a lot, including what it means to be holy. In some cases, it might mean “to be prepared.”

It’s also the portion that encourages us to “Love your neighbour as yourself” and Leviticus 19:34 reads, “The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I the Lord am your God.”

The Torah is, sort of, a holiness how-to guide of its time, and some of the issues may no longer be everyday things for many. However, the pandemic forces us to be prepared for simple things like wearing a mask during a shopping outing. Add in more complex things, like obtaining access to that coveted vaccination, too. It’s interesting that the weekly parashah topics like preparation, holiness, loving neighbours and caring for strangers all came up at once.

The nurse who gave me my jab had worked in the COVID wards. She exuded calm as she went through her vaccine script. She made the moment feel monumental and holy while preparing me. When I thanked her, she said how great it was to be part of this effort to keep so many others healthy and safe after experiencing the suffering in the hospitals.

As I sat in the doctor’s waiting room for my 15 minutes after the jab, I thought about this. Masking up, getting vaccinated and social distancing are all ways that we show love for one another right now. Those actions are so powerful that I’m affronted and sad whenever someone demonstrates as an anti-masker, doesn’t wear a mask or even spits in public. Indeed, that means he doesn’t love his neighbour enough.

While I waited, it was a quiet. Yo-Yo Ma wasn’t serenading others on his cello in the clinic or anything like that. Instead, I turned and congratulated a stranger, a man who had also just gotten his shot. It was an oddly affirming moment. He had a spouse with an immune condition. Like me, he had kids learning at home. At first glance, I might have felt apprehensive chatting – he was heavily inked with tattoos and intimidating. Still, the love we both felt towards the universe for this opportunity and to those who also cared so much that we’d rushed to get vaccinated, was tender and transformative.

While I’d been able to get my shot, alas, Manitoba, and other parts of Canada seem to be quickly losing their battle to outrun the third wave. Vaccines can’t get into arms fast enough. Yet, as I read the news, there are also multiple reports of moments where people are taking care of strangers. In North Dakota, there’s now a pop-up Moderna vaccination site at a rest stop. They managed to vaccinate 62 truck drivers from Manitoba the first day. This was such a gift to our province, which hasn’t chosen to prioritize these essential workers.

In Montana, the Blackfeet Nation has invited Albertans to cross the border (with permission) to get vaccinated on their reservation. They were able to use up expiring vaccines on both strangers and Indigenous relatives who lived across the international border.

Many Jewish people have reported on social media that they recited the Shehecheyanu or the slightly more complicated “bathroom prayer,” which thanks G-d for the miraculous workings of our bodies. I uttered a silent prayer of my own, too.

It was also a chance to appreciate the kindness of strangers who looked after me. The doctor stuck his head in to ask if I had any questions. The nurse and I had a deep conversation – about illness, death, birth and our struggles as parents – in our few minutes together before and after the vaccine. Like so many who’ve been mostly social distancing and staying at home, these nurturing interactions have been few and far between this year.

I must admit, when we stream services on Shabbat at home, I’m not standing up much. I’m not on my tiptoes as we would in synagogue when we sing the Kedusha – the part where we say, “Holy, Holy,” and try to ease ourselves up closer to heaven and to the angels. Preparing oneself and trying to be holy is, for all of us, a process, but I felt just a little more prepared after what I experienced this week.

If you’re anxious about needles, don’t worry. My kids looked at my arm and I don’t have a “hole” there!

I feel like my vaccination experience captured a snapshot of how we can all strive to be more prepared. It’s an opportunity to love our neighbours, care for the stranger and, maybe, in the process, become a bit closer to heaven and more holy.

Joanne Seiff has written regularly for CBC Manitoba and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. Check her out on Instagram @yrnspinner or at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.

Goats out in the wilderness

Let’s talk about goats. When I was doing research for my book Fiber Gathering, about U.S. fibre festivals, which attract thousands of people, I learned lots about goats. But what do goats, which produce milk, fibre and meat, have to do with Judaism?

In Leviticus, we read precise descriptions of the high priests’ clothing. One may scoff about the details, but I bet you’re wearing clothes. In many Torah portions, Jews think a lot about textiles. (If you don’t, you should! You’d be cold without clothes.)

We read rigid rules for sacrifice, how we should eat and how we should behave in terms of intimacy towards our partners and family. This is also the text that includes the most discriminatory and misunderstood interpretations of homosexuality.

Like any good Jewish parent, the Almighty offers us strict guidelines in Leviticus. There are things we should and shouldn’t do. However, there’s also an acknowledgement of our humanity. We make mistakes. There are times when we won’t understand how to behave, so here, too, is a Temple sacrifice procedure. This forgiveness process turns into part of our modern Yom Kippur service. We learn how Aaron makes a sacrifice to atone for the “strange fire” that his sons, Nadav and Abihu, brought to G-d and how they were killed for it. Part of Aaron’s prescribed ritual includes sending a goat named Azazel out into the wilderness. The goat carries away the people’s sins, and it lives.

My husband, a biologist, struggled a bit with this but felt comforted that, of all the domesticated animals to be cast out, goats could survive in the wilderness. I remembered the goat cheese we ate at the Taos Fibre Festival in New Mexico. We met the farmer who raised the goats and made cheese. He told us how he lived off the grid. He had to drive hours on a dirt road just to get to his mailbox, and several hours farther to get to town.

Every day, his goats are sent out into the desert to forage along with their guard dogs. Some shepherds keep dogs, others use donkeys or llamas to protect their flocks. This man described how his goats were free range and how they returned each night. He milked these goats and his cheese varied according to where they had grazed and the season. It was truly “wild” cheese – and most of his goats did fine, despite the desert predators.

While we try to follow rules, we are also aware that things change in our world. Like the goats, we are susceptible to danger. A recent JTA article (Jewish Telegraphic Agency) pointed out ways that congregations are preparing for “the next Pittsburgh” by changing the ways congregations protect themselves. The first 911 call in Pittsburgh came from the Sabbath-observant rabbi, who was persuaded the year before to carry a cellphone for emergency use. In the Poway shooting, Steve Vaus, Poway’s mayor, indicated that congregants acted quickly, using training they had received right after the murders in Pittsburgh.

A few years ago, I heard an upsetting story about our responses to potential danger. One day, a religious man was praying when the congregation’s alarm went off. He was concentrating. Although he knew how to shut off the alarm, he didn’t stop praying to silence it. A woman who worked at the shul lived nearby, heard the alarm and came running to help. Perhaps she wasn’t perfectly dressed (according to her community’s standard). She wasn’t calm – but she took her responsibilities seriously and rushed towards the emergency to help. Later, the praying man belittled the woman for being flustered and for not dressing properly. He didn’t acknowledge her speed and bravery. When she ran, she didn’t know it was a false alarm. She made herself vulnerable for the sake of her community.

I didn’t witness that “false” alarm, nor was I there when people acted bravely during the Pittsburgh or the Poway tragedies. However, we must read these situations critically, in the same way we read Leviticus. We continue to face conflicts and emergencies. Along with the rigid everyday humdrum, there’s a vulnerability that we face in the wilderness (the world).

Some feel Leviticus’s rigidity can make us wary of making mistakes or of finding solace in religion. Others suggest these rules create life’s order. We are all different. Yet, we must all cope with changes, surprises and danger. We might get cold in our environment and need to know what to wear. We might be surprised or do the wrong thing in the midst of prayer. We face danger. We are truly vulnerable out there in the world and before G-d, just like the goats.

Parents, like goatherds, have to trust that, after we offer our kids structure and skills, they will make it out there and come home again. We have to hope that our children and congregations will be sturdy and flexible enough when danger arises.

In Leviticus, the goat, Azazel, bore our sins and was alive and at risk. In a sense, we are those goats. We seek divine rules and structure, while at the same time coping with a world that requires us to think critically, adapt and be ready for whatever may happen next. It’s a wilderness out there. We must think on our feet.

I applaud those leaders who run towards the danger as Lori Gilbert Kaye, z’l, did, risking everything, and who follow the spirit rather than the letter of the law. Pittsburgh’s Rabbi Jeffrey Myers saved lives because he made an emergency cellphone call. Our religious traditions evolve. We no longer make sacrifices at the Temple. It’s important to reconsider our habits at many other occasions other than just Yom Kippur.

I’ve been belittled sometimes because I write about knitting. Yet, we wear clothes. According to Leviticus, that’s important. Also important? Being vulnerable to both the Divine, and to change. I keep that goat-in-the-wilderness image alive. We can meet these real-life challenges if we open up our minds to what’s really out there, bring a guard dog and avoid embracing rigid biases.

A need for ethical guidelines

This time of year, we read Torah portions in the Book of Leviticus. It’s full of information about how to do sacrifices at the Temple in Jerusalem. It’s a good reminder – things have changed in the Jewish world, haven’t they? Perhaps we don’t need details for how to do a sin offering, an offering of well-being or for first fruits? Then again, maybe we do.

Huh? No, I don’t mean we need to learn to kill animals to sacrifice them. However, the rituals described in Leviticus have become guidelines for other things we do. For instance, it’s common to make a donation to a synagogue in honour of someone, or to express gratitude for a return to good health, a success at work or a family celebration. There are modern interpretations for some of these rituals, including the need to do something to repair things when feeling guilt or after committing a sin.

Parts of Leviticus offer us good metaphors … reminders that we can apply to other things in Jewish life.

I receive an email newsletter from the Jewish news organization JTA. One of the articles that popped up was about fundraising: “Women in Jewish fundraising say harassment is pervasive.” I followed the link. It turns out that fundraisers for Jewish organizations and in the nonprofit world are mostly women.

Donors? You guessed it, are predominantly men. Just like in other parts of the #MeToo professional world, many Jewish fundraisers have tolerated widespread harassment in order to do their jobs. If you don’t bring in the money, it’s hard to keep your fundraising job. These fundraisers have told hair-raising tales of stalking, requests for dates or sexual favours and dangling professional opportunities “if only” the woman professional would “cooperate.”

Most of us don’t want to imagine that one’s body has to be part of a professional encounter in the fundraising arena, unless perhaps your wife, daughter, mother or sister is a sex worker (and Jewish tradition has plenty of those. Read the Bible for more on that). Imagine if your daughter, recently graduated from university, went to lunch for her job at a Jewish nonprofit. A grey-haired man sat next to her, put his chequebook down, stuck his hand up her thigh under the table, and let her know that there would be more money to come if she just went out with him.

Disgusting? Yes. These days, there are laws that say both men and women deserve the same fair pay for their work and freedom from harassment on the job.

Oh, come on, some say – this doesn’t happen in the Jewish world. Well, it does. Jews can be alcoholics, drug addicts, adulterers, criminals and more. We are people. People aren’t perfect. We commit sin, and feel guilty. (Remember those Temple sacrifices?)

The sad part is that, in many ways, we groom children to be cooperative, to respect adults in their community, to listen and obey us even if they don’t know everyone’s name. This grooming, particularly for girls, starts young. This sometimes results in bad things happening. Young women tolerate a lot before they realize something bad happened and they should complain.

As someone who used to teach full-time (and a mom), I see things that make me scared in this regard. Imagine free-range preschoolers and elementary schoolers, left to roam in a Jewish community building without adequate parental supervision. Adults offer them candy or encourage them to find their parents, but no one leads them directly to the children’s activity or to their parents. Never mind the potential for accidents or getting into mischief … worse happens.

This situation is ripe for a predator to step in with candy and lure a child away. This is how horrible, life-altering, illegal things happen to children. When I mentioned this concern aloud, the response was: “Oh, kids roam around. It’s always been this way.” Really? Thank goodness that, in Jewish tradition, we evolve and change. Even the most traditional among us don’t do sacrifices anymore. We no longer sweep childhood sexual abuse under the rug. We no longer think it is OK for women to earn less, or that they must tolerate sexual harassment on the job. We no longer think it is OK for male donors to expect they can get away with this, if only they write a big cheque.

The key to changing a culture that allows sexual predation is in Leviticus, too. The instructions for sacrifice are well laid out and clear to follow. There’s a set of steps and a ritual to each one. In the JTA article written by Debra Nussbaum Cohen, she outlines some of the new efforts to make organizational and structural change to these interactions between funders and donors. This includes laying out ethical guidelines when it comes to sexual harassment and abuse, specifically addressing the power imbalance between fundraisers, who solicit donations to keep their jobs, and funders, who hold the purse strings.

Judaism has plenty to offer when it comes to respecting someone’s body, modesty and personal space. If we know the rules to appropriate behaviour, we recognize that we can do a lot to make modern environments safer and more ethical. We also must be aware that harassing fundraisers (who happen to be women), paying our Jewish professionals (who are often women) inadequately, or failing to provide our children Jewish “safe” spaces are not acceptable ways to behave as Jews.

If Jewish tradition alone doesn’t matter to some? Many of these behaviours are also illegal. We may mourn the loss of the Temple and pray for its return. However, I vote to exchange Leviticus’s ritual steps for bloody sacrifice with those ethical behavioural guidelines for donations that emerged from the rabbinic age. We can ritualize good behaviour around tzedakah (charity) instead.

Joanne Seiff writes regularly for CBC Manitoba and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. See more about her at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.

Complexities of human sexuality

Some people still act as if same-sex attraction were a crime or, at least, an abomination and ought, therefore, not be tolerated. Russia, for example, recently announced that it will not permit any of its orphaned children to be adopted by people living in jurisdictions recognizing homophilic marriages, thereby ensuring that they will not end up in any of the more liberal democracies, including Canada. Perhaps this is based on the supposition that homosexual adoptive parents will somehow transmit their sexual preference to their charges, although there is no evidence that such attraction is a learned behavior, nor, indeed, that it is inherited. And, in either case, why should it be anathematized? It evidently does not harm consenting adults and becomes a crime only if we insist that it is.

For as long as there has been human heterosexuality, there has also been homosexuality. Overwhelming psychological and historical evidence demonstrates that same-sex attraction has been a consistent feature of human society, going back at least to the earliest days of antiquity, and that it harms no one who does not, somehow, insist on being “harmed.” The only people who may suffer are homosexuals themselves who, if they live in a bigoted environment, often have to conceal their sexuality or face expressions of disapproval, including imprisonment and violence, especially if they are men; female homosexuality seems more widely accepted.

There is no mention of homosexuality in the Christian Testament. The Jewish Testament, while decrying homosexuality between men, makes no mention of sexual attraction between women, which certainly existed.

God’s destruction of Sodom was allegedly a consequence of what is described as its “depravity,” (Genesis 13:10) interpreted as sodomy, a word still appearing in some criminal codes and defined as “the unnatural sex acts between two men.” (This became the basis for a criminal indictment in the notorious 1896 trial of Oscar Wilde, which my 1929 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica describes as “moral obliquity.) But Sodom was more likely destroyed because it was notoriously inhospitable to strangers, its sole survivor being Lot, the city’s only cordial resident. (And his wife, who shortly thereafter turns into a pillar of salt because she disobeyed God’s order by looking backward at the doomed city. As a side note, while Lot exhibited remarkable concern for his male guests, that evidently did not extend to his daughters, whom he offered to the mob.)

Leviticus is more explicit. In 18:22, it states: “Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind; it is an abomination.” This inveighing against homosexuality was likely occasioned not by presumed morality, but rather as a consequence of a far more important remonstrance, viz., “Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28), a demographic imperative necessitated by competition among various peoples, some of them more numerous than the Israelites, in the Fertile Crescent of Canaan. The “sin” of Onan (Genesis 38:9), for example, has been interpreted as not being simply that he cast his semen on the ground in coitus interruptus with Tamar, his widowed former sister-in-law, but that he subverted God’s command to “be fruitful and multiply.”

Much effort has gone into uncovering the underlying causes/motivation(s) for homosexuality. Theories have ranged widely, yet none has adequately explained same-sex attraction in spite of its apparent inevitability among persons of both genders, its long history, and its observed appearance in non-human species.

Much effort has gone into uncovering the underlying causes/motivation(s) for homosexuality. Theories have ranged widely, yet none has adequately explained same-sex attraction in spite of its apparent inevitability among persons of both genders, its long history, and its observed appearance in non-human species. Moreover, there may not be a single cause, but rather a constellation, perhaps including social, hormonal, genetic and environmental factors and, furthermore, one ought not assume that explanations for male homosexuality, no matter how cogent, can be extended to female homosexuality (lesbianism). To place this in perspective, the causes of heterosexuality, while it is evidently the norm and can result in progeny, are also not clear, although convention, conditioning and an impulse toward parenthood must be counted prominently among them.

In our current more-accepting environment, many homosexuals have “come out of the closet.” But we may never know the full extent of homosexuality because in disapproving social-cultural environments, even its self-acknowledgement may be difficult. Indeed, in many jurisdictions, homosexual behavior is still criminal, although its practitioners are rarely indicted. Far more common is that suspected homosexuals, especially men, have been the targets of blackmail, violence and murder. Even when the public is more tolerant, there is no uniform level of acceptance, so often homosexual relations are still clandestine for fear of the reaction of relatives, employers, fellow workers and others, including heterosexual spouses. “Coming out” by formerly “closet homosexuals” is still a life-changing and challenging experience. Consequently, public homosexual behavior still is dependent on local acceptability. What is permitted, for example, in Vancouver or Tel Aviv, may precipitate expressions of disapproval elsewhere.

It is estimated that exclusively homosexual men constitute about five percent of the male population, with approximately twice that number being occasionally homosexual. From an anatomic, physiologic, genetic or endocrine point of view, homosexuality offers no reliable markers. It is neither entirely genetic nor developmental in origin. The level of gender-related hormone production in most homosexuals does not differ significantly from that of heterosexuals and, ordinarily, male and female homosexuals, in their usual behavior and appearance, can be indistinguishable from their heterosexual peers or, on the contrary, they may, in the case of males, become “queens,” or of females, “butch.” Indeed, who has not speculated on what life might have been like, had he or she been of the opposite gender? (Interestingly, all human fetuses start out with external genitalia apparently female. While there are no proven instances of parthenogenesis – the development without spermatozoa of a complete embryo – among people, it can occur in other mammals.)

To offer additional revealing commentary on the idiosyncrasies of human sexual behavior, approximately 270 days after every nighttime power outage lasting a few hours, there is almost invariably a small but significant blip in the number of babies born in the affected area.

To offer additional revealing commentary on the idiosyncrasies of human sexual behavior, approximately 270 days after every nighttime power outage lasting a few hours, there is almost invariably a small but significant blip in the number of babies born in the affected area. Evidently, when it comes to TV versus sex, the data suggest that the former is frequently preferred.

However, our culture, if not obsessed with sex, is obviously mindful of it. Advertisers certainly have discovered that sex sells. “Sexy” has now become an adjective that defines anything from form-fitting or revealing clothes to a more permissive tax bill. It usually implores us to be more attractive (“sexy”) by the profligate and indiscriminate purchase and use of a great variety of products. In any case, any mention or hint of sex, almost without fail, attracts attention.

Sexual intimacy plays a prominent role in the way men and women relate to one another and, to be complete, the way women relate to women and men to men. The desire for sexual intimacy can arise from many sources – the release of sexual tension (a large factor in adolescence and youth), an expression of love, reassurance of one’s sexual attraction and capability and, since we live in a largely competitive society, to keep up with the purported national average. People being as variegated as they are, there are any number of other conceivable reasons and their combinations. So, while the heterosexual form of sexual intimacy is predominant (and the only one that can now give rise to progeny), finding the reasons can be difficult because, as is the case in uncovering the motivation for any human activity, although the final common pathway can be an objective behavior, the impulses for it are never in the singular, and may be arcane, derivative and complex.

It is clear that traditional Judaism does not approve of homosexuality, although congregations, individual Jews and rabbis may have a more accepting and realistic approach. Yet, the Talmud has the virtue of candor, suggesting, for example, frequencies, according to profession, of (heterosexual) intercourse, something quite unimaginable in Christian commentary, especially when one considers the Catholic priestly vow of chastity and that the preeminent female in Christianity is considered a virgin, even after the birth of Jesus’ younger sibling(s).

When it comes to all (non-coerced) sexual behavior, former prime minister Pierre Trudeau cogently declared that “the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation.” It’s a sensible sentiment also expressed, in pithier form and broader terms, by Jimmy Durante, a popular madcap comedian of the 1930s and ’40s, known affectionately as “The Schnozz” because of his prominent proboscis: “Leave da peepul,” he vigorously intoned, “da hell alone!”

Eugene Kaellis has a doctorate in biochemical endocrinology. He is the author of several publications, including Making Jews, on the theme of the current basic problem of Diaspora Jewry, which is available from lulu.com.