Rabbi Yoel Schoenfeld, Rabbi of the Young Israel of Kew Garden Hills in Queens, New York, told Arutz Sheva that the decision Wednesday by the U.S. Supreme Court striking down key parts of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), paving the way for greater acceptance of gay marriage, was a major step backwards for humanity that goes all the back to the Biblical Bila'am.”
Describing an action which honors biblical/Talmudic law as a major step backward … that is not something one would expect of a Rabbi … even an apparently, dimwitted one.
There is absolutely nothing in Mosaic Law which, in any way, attacks same-sex marriage. There is one passage that rejects MALE bi-sexuality … a man cannot lie with a man as he would with a woman. Buit there is nothing against a man laying with a man, if he abstains from such behavior with women. Nor is there anything at all which prohibits a woman from being with a woman … or being with both men and women.
There later assertions which may, in some perverted interpretation reflect on gay behavior … but nobody follows the teachings of those idiots… and if someone wanted to accept their teachings, it follows that they must accept ALL their teachings … most of which are rejected out of hand by Jewish Scholars.
The Rabbi stated: “This is a generation as foolish and as silly as Bila'am was,” Rabbi Schoenfeld told Arutz Sheva. “When a donkey speaks to you, you don't get into a conversation with it. You are supposed to take note that something extraordinary is happening.”
The question is… is anyone but the Rabbi the donkey? If a donkey speaks, clearly “something extraordinary is happening.”
Could it be that the one who make Bushes speak, and all of Israel listen, might wish to converse via a donkey? After all, when the bush which could not be consumed by fire started to speak to Moses, didn’t Moses speak to it?
Apparently the rabbi missed that portion of the Talmudic story of our Israelite origins.
Like the average Creationist Christian, the Rabbi talks of “thousands of years that man has lived with a traditional marriage” … but two thousand years ago the Emperor of Rome had a public ceremony in which he married a man. Where are all the documents which report Hebrew Rabbinic outrage – is it denounced by Josephus, or any other historical scholar of the era?
NO! Of course not. Marriage was between two people and their families – it was not sanctioned by a filling of permission from the State … no town clerk needed to give permission for two people to be married … they needed only let it be known that they were committed to each other… state the were married … THAT is a TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE … the state has no place in it… if you wish to be traditional… for that matter, even Rabbis have no place in it. But reality has no place in the fantasy world of right-wing idiots … and that world seems to be bleeding its way into the Jewish community.
DOMA IS THE STATE defining what applies for taxes to, and benefits received from, the State. The Court is defining, in terms of what the State defined as the defining framework for all State definitions, what is legitimate and beneficial to “domestic tranquility”.
Of course, the Rabbi believes that the way HaShem makes people defines if they are superior, or inferior … but that is what Hitler believed when he defined Jews as inferior …
In the case of a clearly troubled Yoel Schoenfeld …