1. Gayness and God

For millennia, two biblical verses have been understood to condemn sex between men. Traditional Jews have rejected homosexuality, condemned practicing homosexuals as wanton sinners and taught that the halakhah demands absolute celibacy from homosexuals. Rabbi Steve Greenberg, author of Wrestling with God and Men: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition, will share his radical and his pragmatic solutions to the conflict between traditional Judaism and homosexuality.

2. The Genesis of Sexuality

From the loneliness of Adam, to the discovery of sin and shame, and from the drunken nakedness of Noah, to the love of Jacob and Rachel, the Genesis stories are among the most enduring legacies grounding our notions of sex and gender. Human existence, being and unbeing, ecstasy and pain, union and separation are all tied to the great difference of all differences, the male/female divide and the mystery of sexual union that is the foundation of ongoing life. This session will explore the multiple meanings of sexuality that appear in the book of Genesis and consider their implications for our own understand of sex and gender, love and pleasure, relationship and community.

3. Sodom Rediscovered

Sodom has been used by preachers to decry lechery and sin. But most specifically this biblical narrative has been used to incite righteous rage against homosexuals and to issue a dire and condemnatory warning to those societies that tolerate them.. A careful study of the biblical text, its traditional interpretations, and the various uses to which it has been put will reveal a very different, much more interesting, nuanced and morally compelling story than the one we have commonly inherited.

4. From Father knows Best to Sex in the City: Sex Ethics in a New Age

From the constrained domesticity of the fifties to the sexual liberation of the sixties/seventies to the fearful contagion of the eighties/nineties, we find ourselves in a good deal of sexual confusion. How do we construct a personal sex ethic and what Jewish resources might there be to help us?

5. Princely Love and Rabbinic Heros

Jonathan, the young prince of Israel, is smitten when he first sees David, the acolyte and singer of songs. Their love is judged by the rabbis to be the epitome of eternal love. One day as Rabbi Yochanan, known for his astounding beauty, was bathing in the Jordan, Resh Lakish, the Jewish gladiator, saw him and vaulted across the Jordan after him. These two love stories, one biblical the other rabbinic, mark the complex ways that same-sex male love appears and disappears in Jewish literature.

6. God, Humor and Sex: Comic Scenes from a Rabbinic Wedding

When Rabbi Yehuda the Prince finally agrees to invite the famously hilarious and often inappropriate Bar Kappara to his son¹s wedding the result is both funny and edifying. The comedy routine has been put to various uses by different commentators. Not only will we learn from a two thousand year old stand up comic how to pun Jewishly, but we will explore for ourselves how theology, sexuality and perhaps humor are linked.

7. Reasoning the Law: Four Rationales for the Prohibition in Leviticus

While law functions independent of reasons, rules cannot be intelligently and fairly applied without as sense of their intended aims. Four rationales for the prohibition sex between men appear in the traditional literature, each offering a different grasp of the problematic of same-sex love, and each offering a different frame for reconsideration of the law¹s application. .

8. Zachar Unekeva Bera'am: Lesbians and Gay Men in Halakhic Perspective

The Torah explicitly abominates male sexual intercourse and turns a blind eye to lesbian relations. Despite this fact, ³homosexuality² is often treated as a single halakhic problem. This session will explore different Jewish texts that associate and that disassociate lesbian and gay male sexual relations in order to make better sense of the shared halakhic challenge of inclusion.

9. The Queer Middle Ages

Same-sex love, while surely hidden and formally decried, finds surprising expression in Jewish poetry, prose and case law. The material is full of pathos, gender bending, humor and intrigue and reveals a sliver of life, despite the well known prohibition, that has been all but erased from historical memory.

10. Two Constrained Halakhic Solutions to Homosexuality

Presently there are two Orthodox responses to homosexuality offered by trusted halakhic authorities that could ground policies of welcome for gay and lesbian members. The two solutions are similar in strategy though different in emphasis; one is thirty years, the old the other was only put forward just this year. They are both moving attempts to transform what is still considered by many to be an abomination into a simple and somewhat ordinary human failure, but will gay people be willing to live with such a limited form of acceptance?

11. Queer Kiddushin: Toward a Halakhic Same-Sex Commitment Ceremony

How different is the relationship of Adam and Eve from that of Adam and Steve? If gay people will be marrying, how should gay couples conduct their wedding rituals? What does Jewish law have to offer in thinking about such a commitment ceremony and what might the consideration of gay marriage teach us about straight Jewish marriage? This inquiry offers a surprising look into the kiddushin ritual, going well beyond gay and lesbian politics in order to ask more deeply what it means for any two people to commit to each other in marriage.

12. Why Jews Should be in Favor of Same-Sex Civil Marriage

In 2002 two Canadian provinces were sued for their refusal to offer same-sex couples a marriage license. Rabbi Greenberg was part of this ground-breaking court case having written an affidavit in favor of same-sex civil marriage from a Jewish perspective. In this session Rabbi Greenberg will describe the evolution of his thinking on the issue and demonstrate why he believes that Jews should be actively in favor of same-sex marriage, no matter what their particular religious views on homosexuality might be.