Shabbat Shalom and welcome to Judeo Talk. The Torah portion for this week is Parsha Acharei-Kedoshim, Leviticus 16:1-20:27.

This parsha is famous, or rather infamous, for containing the first proscription against homosexuality. Perhaps no passage in the entire Torah has been more politicized than the single line prohibiting men from laying with other men as they would lay with women.

Concerning this, there are two points I would like to make. First of all, it's not just the anti-gay activist groups who twist the context of this ruling. I have heard ill-informed arguments for the meaning of this passage on both sides of the debate. Anti-gay groups use it as a justification for anti-gay laws in our ideally secular society (itself something of a non-sequitur) while gay rights groups pick apart the exact language of the law. The passage itself refers to the contended act as "an abomination", a term that is applied to varying degrees of crimes according to the Torah, some of them as seemingly minor as planting one's crops incorrectly.

As always, Bible study driven by a political agenda really misses the point entirely. The culprit for this misunderstanding, like just about every other skewed attempt at exegesis, is lack of context. First there is the context of the passage within its given portion. The second half of Acharei-Kedoshim is all about sexual propriety. There is a long list of people we as Jews are not supposed to be around while naked, all of them being members of our families or our neighbors' spouses. In short, people with whom we shouldn't be having sex. The parsha also clearly prohibits sexual acts with animals. Like so many other thematically cohesive codes of law in the Torah, this parsha is aiming for order and simplicity. Remember that the Israelites at this point are people who have never governed themselves before. Their laws need to be clear and easy to follow. Giving them nuanced rules with room for interpretation would be akin to asking a class of 4th graders to interpret modern tort law.

The other and more vital context of this or of any passage in the Torah is time. These are not laws floating in the ether, they are guidelines for a new and fragile people. In the ancient world, a nation rose and fell by its population. Without enough workers, soldiers or farmers the society would quickly fall to outside control. The Israelites at this point are comparatively few in number and constantly facing the threat of foreign conquest. Laws like the sexual directives in Leviticus aren't designed to oppress people, they're designed to ensure a steady growth of population.

As I have written many times before, it is extremely important to ask why the Torah says what it says. This text must be approached with reason if it is to be a positive force in the modern world. This document is supposed to be the foundation of monotheistic morality. It grew out of a disenfranchised people's desire to escape the arbitrary cruelty of an endless procession of kings. To reduce Torah to dogma, to hold it so high that no one can actually read the words inside, is to invite new arbitrary cruelty, although one that is centered in common people instead of those who would govern them. This makes for a society that is permanently self-oppressed.