Stowe Reporter and News and Citizen opinion
In recent Stowe Reporter and News and Citizen letters to the editor, a resurging debate about religious morality is taking place, this time on the backs of the LGBTQ+ community with news about a local religious school. I am so sorry that the love shared among and between our LGBTQ+ neighbours continues to be scrutinized and delegitimized. I am sick of it, and I can only imagine how they feel.
The debate among the letters to the editor, depending on your persuasion, seems to be arguing that religions are either conservative or progressive. The truth is, as often is the case, somewhere in the middle. The answer to the question: are religions conversative or progressive is a resounding “yes.”
History has shown that religion can be deeply conservative, holding onto doctrines and rituals “in the name of G-d” to perpetuate long-held beliefs and practices in a cycle that goes on for generations. With archeological evidence, the priestly blessing (in both the Jewish and Christian bibles) dates back some 4700 years, and is still said to this day. I feel blessed to be a part of a tradition that goes beyond the most recent chatter on Twitter. There is nothing like the wisdom culled from thousands of years of thought and reinterpretation. It is an inherited privilege.
However, religions are not only or necessarily primarily conservative by nature. They evolve over time, across centuries and sometimes millenia. They are inherently flexible.
I was recently revisiting a famous post-Biblical Talmud story about how Moses was on Mount Sinai (circa 1300 BCE), and he saw G-d adding small crowns on the Hebrew letters in the Torah. When Moses asked G-d: “Why are you doing that?” G-d answered: “There will come a man, at the end of many generations, Akiva son of Joseph (circa 100 CE), who will create many laws out of these small crowns.” Moses asked G-d if he could see this man. G-d said: “Turn around.” And all of a sudden, time travel! Moses was sitting down in the middle of a lecture that Rabbi Akiva was giving to his students. Interestingly, Moses was not able to follow the arguments being made by Akiva, and it made him quite distraught. But then they came to a certain subject, and one of Rabbi Akiva’s students asked: “Where do we learn this?” Akiva replied: “It is a law given to Moses on Mount Sinai.” And Moses was set at ease.
Moses himself would not recognize Judaism as it is practiced by any of its adherents today because religions evolve.
Recently, I spent a few days at the Mercy Ecospiritual Center, a farm sponsored by the Catholic Sisters of Mercy. In living memory, just generations ago, one could not imagine a rabbi sitting and preparing for the High Holy Days at a Catholic retreat centre, encouraged to attend by a protestant minister friend!
On the website of the center, they write: “The new is always unfolding in our evolutionary universe.” As I drove up to the center, I saw a sign that began: “In this place, we believe: love is love.”
Not all religious people believe that loving someone of the same gender is a sin. The Hebrew Bible says all kinds of things that Jews have long since abandoned as fundamental to our beliefs and practices.
Thank G-d for love. We at the Jewish Community of Greater Stowe firmly believe that love is love. That it is no sin at all to love someone of the same sex. Or for that matter, on issues of gender identity, it is no sin to be transgender or non-binary, or simply to not subscribe to a world that is either male or female. In fact, an ancient rabbinic story teaches that Adam and Eve were created as one being, an androgynous or intersex person.
Religions are both conservative and flexible. There are times when traditions are meant to be carried on. And there are times when through love, justice, and compassion—and an evolving moral and scientific understanding of what is true, right, and ethical over years of unfolding wisdom—we are made more whole as a society.
Every Shabbat, we say the ancient priestly blessing to our children, a tradition passed down from generation to generation. And then we add the words: “Be who you are and may you be blessed in all that you are.” This is my prayer for all of us.
