Rabbi Joseph Dweck, leadership, homosexuality and halachah

The question of homosexuality, which has engulfed the Sephardi community, is an issue that there is no hiding from. Sooner or later, all Orthodox communities will have to come to terms with reality.

The beautiful thing about the Jewish religion is its ability to survive through the ages. When put to task on historical dilemmas of the day, such as slavery, abortion and capital punishment, the legislators have always found ways to adapt.

Our ancestors never made the error of avoiding these challenges. Instead, they developed a process of rabbinic innovation which allowed them to engineer practical solutions within an existing legal framework.

Israel’s Sephardi Chief Rabbi warned his followers to distance themselves from these “distorted opinions and attitudes” regarding homosexuality. Although he is entitled to his view, he comes across as an ideologue who is scared to confront reality. It is the duty of Orthodox rabbinic authorities to ensure that Judaism is subject to intellectual scrutiny; not from a historical perspective, but a moral one. This is the key to the religion’s survival.

Alistair Ludlow,

Leeds

As soon as Rabbi Joseph Dweck gives a well-reasoned, well-resourced and well-argued dvar torah on Torah attitudes to homosexuality, he is attacked from all over the Sephardi world.

Everyone knows that we Jews have different opinions about everything (just open any page of the Talmud for proof of this) and we have a fine tradition of expressing opposing views with passion and force. But to attack Rabbi Dweck personally, to accuse him of “complete heresy” and “rejecting the Torah” is a disgrace.

Rabbi Dweck is a breath of fresh air in Anglo Jewry and the Sephardi community are lucky to have such an inspiring caring and Orthodox man as their leader. If the Sephardi world does not want Rabbi Dweck, we Ashkenazi Jews would be delighted to have him.

Gary Phillips,

London NW8

I hope to shine a new perspective onto the matter of accepting gay people in the community.

For most people, their sexuality is simply which gender they are attracted to. For a lot of men struggling with same sex attraction, it touches on something much deeper…

To understand how, we can’t underestimate the power of an emotion like inadequacy, rejection or fear. Some people’s misunderstandings around the issue make a lot of people struggling with ssa [same sex attraction] feel different, fearful or rejected in the community where they belong.

The resulting emotional pressure progressively dominates everything else in the human mind, stealing the head-space from their valued relationships, academic capabilities and social life, until it internally takes hold of them completely. Hence, we aren’t just talking about their sex drive, we are talking about their very life.

If we as a community can make sure that people don’t feel alienated when it comes to this matter, think of how much value we can add to their futures and how much pain we are potentially sparing them, simply by telling them they are equal. Same sex attraction should never evolve into emotional darkness. It’s dangerous in every sense.

Rabbi Dweck’s courage is removing the sting of gay inadequacy from the community, and replacing it with love, acceptance and equality, purely on a passionate human level. He’s creating a safer environment for the next struggler