Exclusion to welcome: 25 years of the Orthodox policy on gays
(right) with Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef, the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel in 2016
pute concerning Rabbi Joseph Dweck which has been deeply divisive and damaging for our community”.
It was for the executive of the SPSC to “appropriately examine the broad range of issues which have arisen, whilst giving Rabbi Dweck the opportunity to address all matters directly and they must try to do this away from the glare of publicity which has already proved so harmful”. He called on “all concerned to approach this issue with all due sensitivity and dignity, and to exercise responsible leadership in the best interests of the Jewish community”.
The dispute over Rabbi Dweck has been fuelled by vitriolic attacks on him from abroad which have been broadcast on social media.
This week he announced that he was pulling out of his annual summer engagement in New Jersey as scholar-in-residence of the Sephardi Community Alliance because of the controversy.
In a letter to SPSC members on Wednesday, Sabah Zubeida, its Parnas Presidente (chairman), said “a great deal of the criticism has been based on misunderstandings, some deliberate and some not.
“However, Rabbi Dweck accepts that some of the criticism is justified and needs to be addressed within the wider rabbinical world.”
He included a statement from Rabbi Dweck, which welcomed “the fact that I am able to work with the wider rabbinic community to clarify my halachic teachings and I feel it is important that this process takes place.
“The continuing activity of our Sephardi Beth Din is of the utmost importance to me and I will step aside while we resolve the matter.”
Mr Zubeida said Rabbi Dweck continued to “enjoy the full support of the Board and our community and we all look forward to a resolution of this issue to mutual satisfaction”.
SOCIETY’S GROWING acceptance of homosexuality has posed a challenge to traditional religions, including Judaism.
In 1992, then Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks encountered controversy over the exclusion of the Jewish Lesbian and Gay Helpline from a communal charity walkabout he organised.
The helpline, a spokesman for his office commented, “presented an alternative lifestyle which we don’t accept. We know that some people feel that they are inclined that way but we draw the line at institutionalising it.”
The following year, his predecessor Lord Jakobovits, provoked outrage after he expressed support for the (hypothetical) idea of using gene therapy to prevent a homosexual orientation.
A decade later, attitudes within Orthodoxy had begun to shift, crystallised in a book by Lord Sacks’s medical ethics adviser, Rabbi Chaim Rapoport. While making clear that Judaism could not accept sexual relations between members of the samesex, it advocated greater empathy for gay people and their inclusion in mainstream communities.
In his preface to the book, Lord Sacks said that, while the Torah asked a person with a homosexual disposition to “suppress or sublimate it”, what homosexual Jews needed was “compassion, sympathy, empathy, understanding”. Homophobia was “absolutely forbidden”. A few years later, in 2012, the Chief Rabbi and his Beth Din came under fire from a group of prominent Jewish individuals for opposing the introduction of same-sex marriage in the UK on the grounds that it undermined the traditional notion of marriage. Both Liberal and Reform now perform same-sex marriages, while Masorti has introduced shutafut (partnership) ceremonies for gay couples. Lord Sacks’s successor, Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, when asked about the issue in an interview before taking office the following year, responded: “We have a very clear biblical definition of marriage, which is the union of one man and one woman and through that we value traditional family life. “But I would like to reiterate our genuine sentiment to every single Jewish man and woman, you have a home in our synagogues and we will make you feel comfortable, regardless of who you are.”
Since then, when Rabbi Mirvis has spoken publicly on the subject, it has generally been to condemn homophobia.