I got to thinking about the portion of Torah read today by Ryan Greenwald at his Bar Mitzvah. Our Torah Study group studied it earlier with Rabbi Young who just returned from a trip to Israel where he was leader of a class of 8th graders. This subject is not narrative but specifics about what is permitted and what is not. It need not be said that “THE LORD” is the source for most of the text but most of the commentary was supplied by the Adult students in the Ruach class before Ryan’s Bar Mitzvah. The topic is one that drips with the morality that roils the present political atmosphere. A perennial topic is: the Dasn’t Do’s.
The week before, we got into specifics about human genitalia. Needless to say the subject was delicately tip-toed around as well as confronted face to face. But, segueing last week to this week was the kind of thing most study groups can handle with one hand tied behind their backs. It is not particularly hard in our society to deal with reasons for not doing things and for being compelled to do others. We help those in need and fight against intolerance and bad social behavior which causes distress in others. Blaming God or praising God for things which happen or do not happen are human behaviors. The Torah text provides a baseline for a conversation that goes on continually in most God-oriented societies trying to stay away from the proscribed and heading for the approved social requirements.
It is interesting that some groups get down to the basic Ten Commandments and stay there. Others are selective about specifics and build a whole power structure to control abortion which is not mentioned in the Bible. They move on to prohibitions of homosexual behavior but do not seek to find in the Bible any notion that this is not a natural proclivity for some people. There are the types who think that, while unnatural, homosexuality is curable like a disease. Others believe it can be controlled by education. The Dasn’t Do of man with man and woman with woman is central to some political platforms. The Dasn’t Do of human with animal follows but no one makes political capital out of this. The age thing comes in here and we are titillated by stories of teachers (mostly men with biddable girls) but unusually present here in Florida have been the cases of female teachers with young boys. Our society seems preoccupied with what goes on in private in the bedroom.
What is most disturbing about Church dogma which requires Priests to be “chaste” is that so many are not. The answer here is that the Church is wrong and chastity is not a natural state. Sexual activity is dogma in the “OLD” Testament but there are all kinds of limitations placed on where and when. We do not know if Jesus was chaste but many have spent their lives in imitation of his “example”.
It is clear that we should mind our P’s and Q’s but also the Dasn’t Do’s.