Judaism and Homosexuality: A Brief History

[Frelund]

The Jewish people have had a far more complicated relationship with
homosexuality than the outright ban in Leviticus implies.

Let us begin at the very beginning of the Kingdom of Judah, with King
David, who many suspect was gay. Or at least bisexual.

Genesis of Genesis: Where did the biblical story of Creation come from?
Who really wrote the biblical books of Kings and the prophets?
Israeli software supports theory that Bible was written by multiple
authors
This view is based on just two verses, in the Book of Samuel, which could
be interpreted as showing that David's relationship with Jonathan ran
deeper than mere friendship.

When the two first meet, the Bible tells us: "The soul of Jonathan was
knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul" (1
Samuel 18:1), and later, when Jonathan is killed, David laments, saying:
“I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou
been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women” (2
Samuel 1:26).

Conservative commentators reject anything but a platonic interpretation,
arguing that the chosen king of Judah could not conceivably have loved
Jonathan physically, since homosexuality was already banned by Jewish Law.

This argument doesn’t seem to hold. Various verses in the Book of Kings
and elsewhere in the Bible seem to indicate that not only was
homosexuality tolerated during the First Temple period — it was typical
cultic behavior among the ancient Israelites at the time.

"And there were also sodomites in the land: and they did according to all
the abominations of the nations which the Lord cast out before the
children of Israel" (1 Kings 14:24), the Bible says of the reign of King
Rehoboam, grandson of King David. These “sodomites,” as the King James
Bible has it, were male and female sacred prostitutes: men and women who
reside in temples and have sex with patrons as a form of deity worship.

We should not be surprised that worship through sacred prostitutes was
practiced in ancient Israel some 2700 years ago. It seems to have been
ubiquitous in the ancient Near East, among the Canaanite cultures, and in
the cultures of Mesopotamia.

Based on what the writings of these neighbors of Israel, we may surmise
that the male temple prostitutes of Jerusalem were probably dressed in
women’s clothing, and may have been castrated.

Whether sacred prostitutes were plied in the name of Yahweh or his "wife"
Asherah, who were widely worshipped together at the time, is not known.

So the Bible tells us that sacred prostitution was practiced in First
Temple-era Judah. The question is when the practice was stamped out.

The Bible tells us that too. In the Book of Kings, we learn that early in
the reign of King Josiah, at the very end of the First Temple period, a
sacred book was found in the Temple, and that Josiah based his reform of
the Yahweh cult on it.

Scholars believe the book was an early version of Deuteronomy, which
explicitly bans sacred prostitution.

The sentence in 2 Deuteronomy 23:17 is traditionally translated as: “There
shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel, nor a sodomite of the sons
of Israel”. However, the translation is not accurate. The words rendered
as “whore” and “sodomite” are the female and male versions of the Hebrew
word for sacred prostitute (qedesha and qedosh).

Either way, this verse led Josiah to ”break down the houses of the
sodomites, that were by the house of the Lord" (2 Kings 23:7).

These verses (and a few others) indicate that the men of ancient Judah not
only engaged in homosexual sex, but that they may have even done so in the
Temple itself. If so, it doesn’t seem unthinkable that David and Jonathan
were more than just friends.

Total ban on anal sex

Deuteronomy does not ban homosexuality, only sacred prostitution. So the
question is, when was sex among men banned?

We cannot know with accuracy. The ban only appears in two verses, both in
the same section of Leviticus (18:22 and 20:13). Most scholars believe
these verses were written either during the Babylonian Exile or during the
early Second Temple period, so sometime during the 6th to the 4th century
BCE (2600 to 2400 years ago), but when exactly in this period, we do not
know.

Nor can we know what led to this prohibition. Some speculate that it was
an expansion on the ban on sacred prostitution. Others think it was an
effort to limit contact between Jews and gentiles, but the fact is no-one
knows.

Whatever the reason and whenever it was decreed, once it was codified in
Leviticus, it became Jewish law. But does this mean that ancient Jews
stopped engaging in homosexuality?

Probably not. From the end of the 4th century BCE, and later under the
Romans, Jews found themselves living in cultures that practiced
homosexuality between men and boys as a norm.

The question is how tolerant the rabbis were of these practices. This
turns out to be a very difficult question to answer.

The all-important book of Jewish Law, the Talmud, contains statements to
the effect that anal sex among men causes solar eclipses (Sukkah 29a) and
earthquakes (Jerusalem Talmud, Berachot 13:3), but also distinguishes
between two forms of pederasty — anal sex that warrants a penalty of death
by stoning, and homosexual sex that doesn’t involve penetration, about
which the rabbis were more lenient (Niddah 13b). Oddly, to say the least,
Jewish Law does not explicitly ban sex with boys under the age of nine
(Talmud,Yevamot 51b, and Maimonides' Mishneh Torah, Biah 1:14, where he
adds that in his opinion, the men should be flogged).

In his book “Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture” (1993), the
historian Daniel Boyarin applies somewhat creative interpretations of
rabbinic texts, that lead him to the conclusion that in late antiquity,
Jews engaged in homosexuality openly, albeit without anal sex. For
example, Boyarin cites the relationship between Rabbi Johanan bar Nappaha
and his student Resh Lakish recounted in Bava Metzia 84a as an example of
homosexuality among rabbis.

While his readings are interesting and this Talmud page is unquestionably
weird, it doesn’t seem plausible that homosexuality was openly practiced
among the rabbis, especially in light of the fact that the rabbis
permitted men to share a bed — notwithstanding the warning of Rabbi Judah
that this would lead to illicit sex — because “Jews were not suspect of
such acts” (Tosefta Kiddushin 5:10). This probably means that male
homosexuality was uncommon among Jews in Late Antiquity around 1700 years
ago, or at least was practiced in secret.

But things were about to change, as the pagan world gave way to the two
great religions of Christianity and Islam, both of which followed
Judaism's lead and banned homosexuality.

Homoerotic poetry and persecution

In Europe, the church actively persecuted homosexuals. But in the Arab
world, homosexuality was tolerated, and the practice of older men having
sex with teenagers and boys that had been common in the Greek and Roman
world remained common, despite the explicit ban in the Quran (e.g., 4:16).

This differential between the two cultures found expression in the Jewish
communities living among them. In European rabbinic writing, there is
barely a reference to homosexuality until modern times, while the writings
of Jews living in the Arab world are replete with mentions of the
practice.

The great Jewish poets of Muslim Spain, including Solomon ibn Gabirol,
Samuel ibn Naghrillah and Judah Halevi, wrote homoerotic poetry. How
common the practice was can be learned from Joseph Karo’s important book
of Jewish Law, the Shulchan Aruch (Safed, 1563), in which he writes: “In
these generations, which are filled with licentiousness, one should avoid
sleeping with a male.”

What Rabbi Karo is saying is that while the rabbis permitted co-sleeping
because “Jews were not suspect of such acts,” in his day, this was no
longer the case. His followers say explicitly: “The writer wrote this
because in his country this sin was common.”

In his article “Sodomy in Ottoman Jewish society” (“Zion,” 2001), Yaron
Ben-Na’eh provides many mentions of homosexuality among Jewish men. One
example from a Greek town near Saloniki, from the year 1561, will suffice:
“David bar Nissim came and gave testimony how last summer he was walking
in a town and he saw that Moshko with a guy which was having homosexual
sex with him, and when they saw him they ran away in separate directions
with their pants undone.”

'Homosexuality' as a social artifact

It seems homosexuality has been part of life throughout Jewish history.
Yet Hebrew had no word for “homosexual,” only words to describe homosexual
acts.

The reason for this is that homosexuality is a social construct, an idea
invented in the second half of the 19th century, in the German speaking
world, as shown by French philosopher Michel Foucault in his seminal book
“The History of Sexuality” (1976). It was in Germany that the first gay
and lesbian activists appeared, the first academic and popular gay
journals were first published, and the first institute for the research of
sexuality was first established.

In short, it was in Germany a century and a half ago that the modern gay
identity was born. It is not surprising then that the words “homosexual”
and its counterpart “heterosexual” were first coined in German in 1868,
and spread to the rest of the world's languages.

In Palestine of the early 20th century, this new German social construct
of homosexual identity collided with the common Mediterranean practice of
sex among men and boys, on top of which, Anglo and Slavic notions held
sodomy to be a grave sin and a crime. And with the establishment of the
British Mandate in Palestine came its anti-sodomy laws.

Technically, the law, modeled on the English Common Law, prohibited anal
and oral sex, whether with man or woman, but from the outset it was both
interpreted and applied as a law against homosexuality. Hebrew newspapers
of the time report on men, mostly Arabs and Jews from the Arab world,
being prosecuted on sodomy charges, nearly always with teens and boys.

Sometimes the children were punished too. The reports do not mention
"homosexuality," if only because the term had not become common yet.

Meanwhile, in Palestine

The handful of sexologists trained in Germany who settled in Palestine and
opened practices did know the term. But they seem to have had a difficult
time applying it to the sexual practices they found in Palestine.

In 1940, the sexologist Dr. Abraham Matmon was interviewed on the subject
of homosexuality in Tel Aviv by a local paper. There were two kinds of
homosexuality in Palestine, he said: “In the East this scourge is very
common, but it is mostly sodomy. Pure cases of homosexuality are very rare
in the East, in my opinion. Most of the cases are sodomy cases of
corruption and licentiousness, especially with teenagers.”

On the other hand with regard to “pure homosexuality,” he said: “Just a
few years ago this scourge was totally uncommon among Jews. Among
Ashkenazi Jews I only saw a few rare cases, but these were of completely
degenerate families (families of psychopaths) and were mostly cases of
pure homosexuality...I believe that in this country only a small number of
cases are of pure homosexuality. Most of them are clearly morally corrupt”
(quoted from “A Common Scourge is the East: Descriptions of Homosexuality
in the Hebrew Press during the British Mandate, Ofri Ilani, “Zemanim” 131,
2015).

When the mandate ended, the State of Israel adopted, among others, its
sodomy law.. But a few years later, in 1953, Attorney General Haim Cohen
(who was born and raised in the liberal Germany of the early 20th century)
instructed the prosecution not to prosecute offenders on sodomy charges,
and a few years later, in 1956, he instructed the police not to
investigate cases of sodomy either.

Due to these directives Israel became quite liberal in its treatment of
homosexuals compared to the world during the 1950s and early 1960s.
However, homosexuality remained technically illegal and therefore
underground. Also, the police could harass homosexuals, even if trials did
not ensue.

Come the 60s, Western nations began to legalize homosexuality. The Civil
Rights Movement's drive to abolish sodomy laws in the United States was
reported in Israeli newspapers, and a liberalized attitude towards
homosexuality began to proliferate in Israeli society, through cinema,
television, literature and other media.

In 1975, the first association for the promotion of gay rights was
established in Israel, and in 1979, gay rights activists held their first
demonstration in Tel Aviv. Eventually, in 1988, Israel abolished its
sodomy laws.

During the 1990s, Israeli society began to view homosexuality in a more
positive light, especially after studies began to appear in 1992
indicating that homosexuality was not a preference: gay men are born that
way. The fact that homosexuality could be now practiced openly led
Israelis to the gradual realization that gay men were not “perverts” or
“criminals” but normal members of society; that played its part as well.

Los Angeles presents: The world's first gay synagogue

In the United States, Reform Judaism had been embracing of homosexuality
at least since 1972, when the movement accepted the Beth Chayim Chadashim
congregation of Los Angeles — the world’s first gay synagogue — into its
fold.

In 1977, the Central Conference of American Rabbis called on state
government to legalize homosexuality, and in 1990 the Reform Movement
officially announced homosexuals were accepted as equal members.

The Conservative Movement was slower to accept homosexuality, only
changing its policy in 2006.

Orthodox Judaism has not changed its policy, and still views
homosexuality, or at least anal sex, among men as a grave sin, since the
Bible explicitly says so.

As for lesbians, Jewish law has ignored homosexuality among women, with
the exception of a passage in the Talmud banning it because it could lead
women to have illicit sex with men. Nor has Israeli law ever banned sex
among women. And it is interesting to note that European languages had
terms for lesbians before the 19th century, which may indicate that
lesbianism as a social construct existed before homosexuality.

Click the alert icon to follow topics:

Israel gay pride

Gay Jews

Gay Israel

Gay Middle East

Jewish culture

Jewish World

https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/.premium.MAGAZINE-judaism-and-
homosexuality-a-brief-history-1.5390687