Guns, Gays & God: A redefinition of kashrut by searching for what is inside the camp and what is outside.

This week’s Torah reading (parasha) has two of my favorite passages. Well, favorite might not really be the best word. Maybe two passages which I find remarkably intriguing and interesting that they wound up in the same parasha.

The first passage is that of Nadav and Avihu – two sons of Aaron, the high priest. Two young men, nephews to Moses. So overwhelmingly excited by their recent ordination into the priesthood, they brought a foreign fire – one not commanded by God – to the altar. As a result of their chutzpah, their renovation, their innovation, their foreign thinking, they got torched. Their souls were sucked out of their nostrils in a fashion reminiscent of an Indiana Jones movie. They were carried out of the camp by their brothers and no one was allowed to mourn their death.

The second passage is that of the kosher laws – well, really the kosher creatures that we can and cannot consume. Flying things, four legged creatures, insects, sea-life – all are mentioned and given the label of kosher (fit, appropriate) or tamei/toeyvah (unclean/abomination).

I have always liked this juxtaposition because they both seem to speak to each other. The foreign fire of Nadav and Avihu took these brothers out of the camp and so too, our eating like the other nations of the world prevents us from staying within our tribal enclave. Indeed, our eating habits are not just reflections of our ancestors’ feelings about healthy eating but they were a means to define by gastronomy who was in and who was out of the camp.

But over the centuries – particularly the last two – our relaxation of the kosher laws is readily apparent. As the orthodox deepen their strictures, resulting in the definition of certain products as kosher that are not even edible (dishwashing soap, sponges…) most of the Reform Jewish world hardly knows from kashrut – or really cares much – but if you ask most Reform Jews about organic meat, fair-trade chocolate or gluten-free beer, you will pretty readily receive a nod of understanding and approval.

While many in the orthodox camp are deeply consumed with matters related to kashrut, I think the better use of our ethical and moral compass is to consider what you have heard me discuss before: eco-kashrut. This means paying attention to labels that indicate the nature of the food we are eating: where it is grown, how it is grown, the packaging, the shipping, the wages earned by the workers … That a rabbi declared the product kosher is nearly meaningless if the workers were subject to horrible conditions or if pesticides and hormones used in production were harmful to the environment and the consumers.

But actually – tonight, I want to focus less on food and more on this issue of our people’s moral compass and how Torah can direct us to our true north. We are watching – and have been for quite some time now – our country torn apart by three topics which are probably the key determinants for most people at the ballot box: Guns, Gays, and God. While this may be a political hotspot for me to enter, it is no more dangerous than Nadav and Avihu walking up to the altar with a foreign fire. While rabbis have been taken out for addressing such matters, I can tell you my intention is not to divide but merely to set these three “issues” into a framework we can understand: a liberal, progressive read on the Torah.

Let’s start first with Guns. Needless to say, there is no mention of guns in the Torah. Nor is there any mention of the Second Amendment. But we do have a commandment not to murder found just a matter of verses before a commandment which permits us to strike down someone who has broken into our home. We have the commandment not to stand by our neighbor’s blood while also the obligation rabbinically not to sell someone with ill-intent a weapon of violence. Gun-control in our country should focus on the safety of the population and worry less about restricting people’s ‘right to bear arms’. Very few in the gun-control community want to prevent any arms from bearing arms. The gun-control advocates are advocating for the well-being and safety of students at schools, shoppers at the mall, police officers patrolling our streets and highways. Gun control means what it is called: control of guns…not elimination of guns. We have watched not only shocking murders at schools and work-places but thousands die every year. THOUSANDS. There were 26 innocent young lives – children – who died at Sandy Hook Elementary last December. Over 3,000 more individuals have died in this country in the last four months since that senseless tragedy. The argument is not over someone keeping a gun at home for when the burglar arrives or guns at home to enjoy weekend hunting. The discussion needs to be about who can get what. The discussion needs to be about where and when are armaments available, and what is legally permissible to sell, purchase, and own. This is not brain surgery. It is a moral commandment.

Gays. I once sat with a non-Jewish colleague – a minister – who looked me right in the eye and told me that gays are not allowed – and don’t exist – in his congregation. They don’t exist. Uh-huh, I nodded. “And what happens when someone tells you they are gay?” “I tell them they are wrong – and they need to change their choice.” “Uh-huh. How do you feel about shellfish?” I asked. “What?” I repeated the question. “What does that have to do with anything?” “Do you eat it?” “Of course.” “Did you know it’s an abomination before the Lord?” Silence. He didn’t want to speak any further. And we have not spoken much since.

For many years, I have maintained a position that I would be willing to perform a commitment ceremony for a gay couple, should they want to be married. I was not sure what that ceremony would look like but that it would necessarily need to look different given the nature of the union. I’ve changed my mind. Why would it look different? Two Jewish men – or two Jewish women – who want to get married – to celebrate their holy commitment to and with one another? Who am I to do anything but serve as the same m’sadeir (organizer) of the chuppah as I would for a heterosexual couple. My dear friend and colleague, Rev. Kelly Carpenter of Green Street UMC, has taken a bold and wonderful position with his congregation. The congregation has requested that he refrain from holding marriage ceremonies and signing state licenses for straight couples until the UMC changes its position. That being said, he will perform wedding ceremonies for his members (gay or straight) – just not in the sanctuary of Green Street. What a brilliant, bold, appropriate – dare I say: KOSHER – move. This is a moral commandment to bring in – rather than exclude.

If our country is going to be defined by who is in and who is out, then let me come out and say: Let’s bring people in. Let’s create a community where it is safe to be gay and it is safe to go to school. It is safe to be in synagogue and even safer when we walk out. It should be safe to stand in line at the County Courthouse to get a marriage license and it should be safe to enter a mosque, temple, shrine, or whatever holy house. We need a country in which it is safe for two men to hold hands publicly and it is safe to deny, justify, discuss, celebrate the third in my list of topics: God. Yes, I did say ‘deny’.

What is done in the name of God must make God really angry. If you believe in that kind of God. I believe in man and I believe in woman. I believe God is inside of every man and every woman, every kosher and every non-kosher animal. I believe God is in and throughout Creation. So because God is in those things and I relate to those things, then I am relating – we are relating – we are finding and experiencing God all the time. And God is good. All the time. So we have to make sure that God is good by being good to one another. Godly. What is it that God asks of us, after all? “To love compassion, to do justice, and to walk humbly before God (in other words: with each other).” Thank you Micah for that quote.

I don’t eat certain kinds of sea-life and four-legged animals and winged-creatures and I love my neighbor as myself and (at times, radically) pursue justice not just because the Bible tells me so but because these things are commandments in the Torah. But I also use the Torah to justify the ends that I believe God wants us to reach. The naysayers will use their proof-texts. Which one of us will be Nadav and Avihu and get carried out of the camp – torched by the fire of God? Which one of us will be the devoted cousins to carry the fallen? Who among us will be silenced lest we try to mourn?

The debates are raging all around us – the time has come for us to make a statement. My statements are clear on these issues: Guns need to be controlled. Gays need to be allowed to be open and in the same camp as the rest of us. And only then – when we create safety, for one and all – will the third issue be resolved because we will see one another genuinely as children of God. And then God will be One and God’s name shall be One, because WE will be One.