Customer Reviews

Wrestling with God and Men: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition

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"Wrestling with God and Men" is the most erudite, compelling, and utterly satisfying book on homosexuality in religion that I've ever read. Rabbi Greenberg weaves the scholarship of our ancestors into a glorious tapestry, demonstrating not just the fact of homosexuality within the fabric of Judaism, but the more fundamental necessity of this inclusion.

Rabbi Greenberg would seem to prefer we believe that he is like "Daniel the Tailor", the champion of the oppressed, who challenged his Rabbis for failing to balance their jurisprudence and values with the biblical concern for justice and fairness. (Greenberg, pg 212). However his holy scholarship suggests that Rabbi Greenberg is more like Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, former chief rabbi of Israel, who invited "Jews everywhere to return to their ancestral land and restore their ancient spirit" (Greenberg, pg 242).

In all likelihood, this book could not have been written in any other age. It needed the living experiences of an openly-gay Rabbinic mind to realize an honest gay perspective and approach to our sacred texts.

If you are considering buying this book, please buy several copies and donate them to your local Hillel, Chabad, Yeshiva and Shul. All people who are "wrestling with god" should read this book!

It was Shakespeare who said, "To thy own self be true," but it was Rabbi Steven Greenberg who made this his mantra. As a (...)of the Jewish faith, I have wrestled with God and men, both figuritively and literally. Rabbi Greenberg's eloquant writing is equally compassionate and thought provoking. It is comfort; a warm glass of milk or a soft blanket, if you will. I feel more at ease being a (...)Jew after having read this book. I feel more at peace and more comfortable in this world. Buy this book and share it with those you love.

This book, while it may not be perfect or without some hesitencies and perhaps weaknesses, breaks important ground and is a work of courage. It should be read for that reason alone. It is a start that others can build on.

Just recently, I heard a prominent New Testment scholar speak in a seminar at a church on the vital, indeed pressing need for Christians to revist the entire question of the claimed biblical condemation of same-sex relationships. His arguments were very much anchored - not on theology - but on mistakes in interpretation of biblical words and phrases, based ultimately on flawed linguistic and (a)cultural misinterpretations. The parallels with Rabbi Greenberg's stuggle struck me; and all the more more so, when I saw the host Baptist church has a seminar WITH Rabbi Greenberg scheduled for November!

We must openly and honestly reconsider religious positions on the topic of homsexuality, and never has the time been more ripe for doing so. This is very appropriate to consider from several viewpoints, and yet another fruitful area for open and honest sharing of insights between Jewish and Christian communities. I believe OUR God - our common, one God - is first and foremost a God of infinite love, and that human love, betweeen two people, goes beyond mere or simple sexual orientation, that it is precious (as all love is) to our God.

Read the book; review the questions; and God bless all who do so with honesty and caring.

If you are a Christian, you may think that an Orthodox Jewish rabbi comes from such a different way of approaching our shared Scripture
that little would result from a lot of effort. Think again! This remarkable book is captivating from beginning to end and filled with
innumberable insights that grace virtually every page. Along the way, you may, as I discovered, come away with a whole new appreciation for Orthodox Judaism.
It s one thing to find a helpful book. It s quite another to find one helpful and delightful to read. Here are a couple of sentences worth mulling over: "Gayness is no more an automatic intentional rejection of procreation than is straightness a sworn promise of it." And, "Nature is a text that can say almost anything we want it to say while appearing to have said nothing but what is evident." Both of these statements
are found on the same page. This man can turn a phrase.
After quoting from a letter from a near-suicidal gay Orthodox Jew, (a feature familiar to many pastors and their gay parishioners) Rabbi Greenberg states his purpose for writing the book. "For the sake of this young man and many men and women very much like him, the first goal of this book is to demonstrate that, contrary to the
assumptions of many liberal and traditional Jews, an argument can be made in defense of gay relatioships from within the canon of traditional Jewish textual resources. What this man needs is not permission to have sex with men. That is hardly enough. What he needs is a way to envision a life of love, intimacy, and commitment with a man in the context of a religiously alive Orthodox community. The task of writing on this topic is to make a path that is responsible to these human realities and deeply
commit to God and Torah."
To reach his goal, Rabbi Greenberg divided his book into four sections. In Sacred Texts, he explores the biblical stories of Adam and Eve, Sodom and Gomorrah, and Leviticus that continue to shape Westen civilization s sexual ethics and gender identities. His discussion of the first not good of creation, Adams lonliness, and how God went about overcoming it, is worth the price of the book.
In Evidence, our rabbi surveys the positive ways in which the stories of Jonathan and David, Ruth and Naomi, and rabinnical stories
associated with gay themes have been treated up through the Middle Ages. He finds within the Jewish conversation what many Christian observers also found in this period, a lack of horror regarding same-sex love that we moderns are so possessed by.
The concluding chapter of this section involves the very unJewish notion that asking Why? is forbidden regarding Leviticus 18 and 20.
To ask is to open up the necessity for justifying one's answer, a slippery slope, indeed.
In Rationales, he returns to the fundamental prohibition posed in Leviticus, and asks the forbidden question, Why? What is
particularly problematic, immoral, or offensive about male-male intercourse in the first place? And why is female-female sex not a
concern? His critiques of arguments based on reproduction, social disruption, category confusion, and humiliation and violence, are
among the best, with original thinking in each case. This slope may be slippery, but it is ultimately freeing; and we are all the better for
sliding down it with him.
The concluding section, Conversations, offers a model for synagogues to welcome gay and lesbian people that is consistent with Orthodoxy and considerate of all concerned. It can almost be taken whole into Christian congregations seeking to find their way into inclusiveness, as well.
Conventional wisdom says that each of us has a book in us. In Rabbi Greenberg s case, I hope there is a library-full to come.

Many books have been published on the topic of homosexuality in the Hebrew Scriptures, as well as the Christian New Testament. While all of them contribute to a greater understanding of this topic in a compassionate and supportive way, nevertheless, Greenberg's book stands out in a pre-eminent way for its deep reverence, and its passionate love for God's Word. Not only does he offer the scholarship we usually find in Jewish and Christian circles about specific biblical passages; he also delves into the classical rabbinical argumentations found in the biblical commentaries, which I have not seen elsewhere. He is not shy about the sometimes shocking ways homosexuality was benignly treated among a people whose theological and social priorities were the family, and procreation. This is a daring, provocative book; but Greenberg's explanations and arguments are extremely well-nuanced and carefully laid out. It is exciting to discover a book like this. Highly recommended.

IT IS WITH GREAT JOY THAT I SALUTE RABBI STEVEN GREENBERG ON HIS MILESTONE OF "COMING OUT" AND ALSO ON WRITING THE BOOK: WRESTLING WITH GOD AND MEN. HAVING THE GUTS TO CONFRONT TRADITIONAL RELIGION WITH A SUBJECT MATTER LOATHED BY SO MANY IS MORE THAN UPLIFTING, IT IS SALVATION.

THE BOOK IS WELL WRITTEN, WARM, INTRIGUING, NOTWITHSTANDING SCHOLARLY. IT CREATES A SAFE HAVEN FOR JEWS (AND OTHERS) WHO MUST RECONCILE HOMOSEXUALITY WITH FAITH, BOTH BEING INTEGRAL TO THEIR EXISTENCE. ECHOING RABBI GREENBERG... HOW CAN GOD CREATE GAYS, AND THEN DOOM THEM? FOR MANY INDIVIDUALS, HOMOSEXUALITY IS NOT A CHOICE, NOR IS THEIR INTENSE FAITH. IT SEEMS LIKE AFTER 3,300 YEARS OF JUDAISM, THE TIME IS RIPE FOR NEW BEGINNINGS, NEW DIALOGUES, INCLUSIVE RELIGION. THIS BOOK IS PERHAPS "THE BIBLE" FOR THOSE INDIVIDUALS STRUGGLING TO MAKE SENSE OF SEXUAL ORIENTATION AND FAITH IN OUR CONDEMNATORY WORLD.

AT LAST, DIGNITY FOR TRADITIONAL JEWS!

The book was in excellent quality and was extreely helpful in writing my paper and educating me in the subject area.

Wrestling with God and Men provides an excellent, well researched, and ballanced study of the issues of homosexuality and traditional Biblical law. In traditional Jewish scholarly form, he gives more time and respect to dissenting oppinions. Ultimately, his argument comes down to a lament over the death of Halacha. Until the enlightenment in the 19th century, the Halacha was a process by which matters were brought to reason before the Law (Bible or Torah). Essentially, the Halacha was a set of rules for change management that allowed an ancient Torah to respond to a never ending succession of modern changes to our human understanding of G_d's world. Modern Orthodox Judaism declared this process closed in response to the enlightenment and, in essence, killed Halacha. As a result, all his study and analysis is pointless because there is no longer a process for reviewing this (or any other) question before the law. Homosexuality is one of many questions that we struggle with today. The Torah (Bible) can provide guidance to help us make sense of these questions, whether or not we agree with those insights. Rabbi Greenberg provides a well documented, ballanced, scholarly analysis of some important insights the Torah provides to help us come to terms with this issue without telling the reader what to conclude.

The task of trying to reconcile preconceived ideas about sexuality and religion is not an easy one. Rabbi Steven Greenberg tackles these with great respect to both Judaism and also his own sexuality. As an orthodox Jew myself, I have always struggled with the feeling that too many of my co-religionists look for problems rather than solutions, and it is gratifying that Rabbi Greenberg has taken the latter approach to this thorny issue.

Wrestling with God and Men gives some special insights to texts that I thought I knew well and I think should be accessible even outside of Orthodox or even Jewish circles. However, I think it is of most important for Orthodox Jews to take the time to read this book - no matter what their opinion on homosexuality and Judaism may be, in the same way that they should also view Trembling Before God - the film that preceded/interrupted this book. It is important that we face the challenges that the world provides us, rather than either pretending that they don't exist or that they are someone else's problem.

While Judaism provides us with a way of life, the accretion of bias and discrimination that has built up over the ages does not mean 'this is the way it must be, because it has ALWAYS been like this'. To echo Rabbi Goldstein, if in the last 50-100 years Orthodox Jewry has been able to tackle issues as complex as and central as women's role in our community and faith, then I am confident that with time, we will be able to deal with the broader issue of sexuality, too.

The one thing that I have taken away from this book, is that ultimately it is an incredibly special thing to be able to love another human being and to have them love you to and I cannot believe that God would have it any other way, no matter if that love be for somone of the opposite or same sex.

If you wish to be informed about these issues and better understand how to relate to your fellow human beings - read this book.

I read the original paperback edition of 2004. The book contains some 260 regular text pages, plus 31 pages of footnotes (altogether 328 pages). The author, an openly homosexual orthodox rabbi, had appeared in the 1999 documentary Trembling Before G-D.

Speaking in the popular language of separation I am not an Orthodox Jew, but the "original" holy texts which often get interpreted homophobically most certainly are of relevance to me, as their (King James) Bible derivations are used within the RastafarI branch of religion for the downpression of the constructed minority of homosexuals. Theologically, the book is of interest for any branch of religion which knows certain common stories, such as the one of Sodom.

There are advantages and disadvantages of this book being written by an ordained religious official. However, the air of authority is irrelevant to me personally: As a RastafarI I do not know such officials. The advantage is that this book departs from similar ones (of any closely related religion) in that it is less argumentative in a general sense, but is open to reassessing theological concepts. The disadvantage is, that the reasoning of the book has to be restricted to the parameters of (orthodox) Jewish theology. Which of course is again an advantage for the Jewish orthodox reader, but not necessarily on all issues to the reader who seeks more universal answers. I was also looking for some specifics of elsewhere averred alterations/mistranslations of early Jewish texts (e.g. at the time of the Egyptian diaspora), but of course a rabbi can't go into such a notion and I am not complaining as I respect other people's concepts of belief/knowledge.

I am also a mystic and appreciated the few references to the Jewish light on mysticism. In addition, the Ham story is of involuntary importance to RastafarI, as it was used to justify slavery, and I am always all ears of how this story gets interpreted in different ways. I am thankful for the author's elaborations on the Sodom story, as many other non-homophobic interpreters remain rather superficial when it comes to the anti-greed part. (Another advantage of the book having been written by a theologian instead of a scientist- or activist-only.) It was refreshing to read the "anecdote" suggesting that God has given the Torah to the humans and now it is their business to interpret it. In general books about the European Middle Ages, it gets usually forgotten how non-Christian homosexuals were treated. So it was interesting to learn that Jews weren't delivered to Christian courts and their corresponding (capital) punishments.

The theological differentiation between willful transgressors (not for pleasure, but rebellion) and indulgent transgressors (who can't resist temptation) is more for the specifically Jewish reader.

Not all of the author's reasoning I have to agree with. To begin with, it's a persistent myth that women can't get pregnant while nursing. As the opposite is the reality, intercourse by nursing women can't get used as another example of theologically allowed non-procreative sexuality. I agree (of course, what else?!) that holy texts (not only the Torah, but also e.g. the derived Bible) got freely reinterpreted to re-allow money lending with interest. In fact, banking was once termed another example of sodomy (unnatural reproduction of money) by the Church. I even do like the theology better which is against exploitation and classism as put forward in this book. However, I don't agree that it was such a good idea to radically change that prohibition or even to change it at all, taking a look a the local and global system, which is basically an extension of that downturned (overturned) ancient holy law. Ok, it DOES show a precedent for humans freely changing interpretations of holy texts. All I am saying is that it is a bad choice of example. Actually the worst, considering that it is about the original meaning of the Sodom story about greed and pitilessness.

I am flabbergasted to read from THIS author that the Jonathan-and-David-story would make most sense if Jonathan were homosexual, but David not: Though Jonathan "manages in battle, we find him not very aggressive or interested in military prowess. He doesn't think strategically." As a pacifist and draft dodger I would applaud, if being homosexual would automatically equal the same attitude. But isn't talk like that supposed to be foolish prejudice? In any case, in the ancient world, the opposite of that was at least one of the realities. In fact, some Greek city states especially employed and encouraged homosexual warrior couples. Hawaiian warriors bonded sexually before battle. (Make love, then war.) Fascinating concept, even if not my cup of tea, so I just ordered Gay Warriors: A Documentary History from the Ancient World to the Present.

All of that said, the upper line is: This is a great book. Challenging in different ways for both sides of the issue. For that what it is, this book succeeds. It clearly shows that where there's a will there's a way. This book has a heart. Which seems to be the diametrical opposite of the hatemongers - of any branch of religion. And I am not sure wether religion is supposed to be engaged in without a heart.

You may also be interested in Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century and Islamic Homosexualities: Culture, History, and Literature.