Show compassion

BRITAIN’S most senior Sephardi rabbi, Rabbi Joseph Dweck, has been under intense scrutiny since he dared to suggest that aspects of the feminist revolution and greater social acceptance of homosexuality were a “fantastic development for humanity”.

He was merely articulating what most people feel today. It is 50 years since homosexuality has been a criminal offence in Britain. It is incredible now to accept that it took until 1967 for this country to overturn such a brutal, archaic law.

In Jewish law, however, same-sex relations are taboo. Some rabbis still suggest that homosexuality is an illness that can be cured. That view belongs in the Victorian era or even earlier. Jews of all persuasions, male and female, are gay, but the ultra-Orthodox fear “coming out” because of the extreme repercussions of becoming pariahs in their communities and of being cast out by their families.

Rabbi Dweck has been vilified and humiliatingly forced to seek forgiveness and submit his lectures for scrutiny by other rabbis. His crime? To make a compassionate statement.

Will Orthodox Jewry continue indefinitely to stigmatise those who are gay and brand them as “sick”? Will it fail to recognise that there are desperately unhappy people within its midst who have been driven to desperate measures?

Forcing them underground to conduct clandestine relationships, or driving them out of the community and ultimately to abandon Judaism, is scarcely a satisfactory solution.

The “problem” will not disappear. It is high time our rabbis attempted to resolve a very distressing situation. Halachic solutions seem to be achievable in so many other areas of Judaism to make observance (and life) more bearable.

Judaism is a compassionate faith, but one section of the community is being treated with anything but compassion and understanding.