To et or not to et

Josh Jarman in the Columbus Ohio Dispatch reports on a rabbi who tackles the most common religious rationales forbidding same-sex relationships.

With a bit of characterization and Jewish witticism, Rabbi Steven Greenberg made his point clear: You shouldn’t use the Bible to pass judgment on others. Greenberg shared this belief during a sermon today at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church on the campus of Ohio State University.

Greenberg, who was raised in Bexley and is in Columbus for five days, is America’s first openly gay Orthodox rabbi. He isn’t saying that the Bible is not the revealed word of God. But according to Jewish tradition, he said, God gave that word to man and entrusted him to decipher it. “No one can say, ‘It says in the Scripture,’ to ground any policy,” Greenberg said. “All we can say is, ‘My community says this.'”

Mike Wernick, Chair, Faith in Life, Diocese of Southern Ohio, who attended Greenberg’s presentation reports:

The Diocese of Southern Ohio’s Faith in Life committee just had Rabbi Steven Greenberg here as a Hobson lecturer, to speak about biblical authority and homosexuality from a Jewish perspective. Yesterday afternoon’s session focused on his book Wresting with God and Men. In one passage, he assesses the underlying meaning of the original Hebrew from Leviticus, and I offer it for your consideration:

“The sages of the Talmud believed that every letter of the Torah was filled with meaning. Nothing was accidental. For this reason there was great competition among sages to find ways to read everything as important, nothing as inessential.

The Hebrew word et is a grammatical word that often has no translatable meaning but simply marks a transfer of action, usually after a verb and before the direct object. Since its use is sporadic, sometimes appearing before objects and sometimes not, the rabbis decided that when it appears, it must mean something. The standard reading was that et adds something to the general class of things mentioned, to include hidden elements, to speak the unspoken.

A celebrated incident of this rabbinic penchant for finding added meaning in every letter of the Torah appears in the command to fear the Lord:

Nehemia Haimsoni was expounding on all the et’ im in the Torah, explaining how each et was there to add something. As soon as he reached the verse, “You shall revere (et) the Lord your God” (Deut. 10:20), he stopped. [For there is nothing to revere other than God.] His pupils asked him, “Rabbi, what will be with all the other et’ im that you already expounded upon?” He answered them, “Just as my attempt to interpret them all was worthy, my withdrawal from the project is equally worthy.” Until Rabbi Akiva came and expounded: “You shall revere (et) the Lord your God, the et comes to include the students of the wise.

For Rabbi Akiva, talmidei hakchamim, the sages of every age, deserved a portion of reverence as well, because without them God’s Torah would remain inert. Without the living embodiment of the Torah in the lives of great teachers, few of us would have the resources to revere God. In this fashion the presence of et in a verse offered the rabbis an opportunity to open up verses to say what was left unsaid.

There is only one sexual prohibition in Leviticus 18 that begins with the word et.

Ve’et zakhar – – – And (et) a male

Lo tishkav – – – you shall not sexually penetrate

Mishkeve ishah – – – to humiliate

Toevah hi – – – it is abhorrent

In less poetic Hebrew the sentence would read, “You shall not penetrate et a male to humiliate, it is abhorrent.”

Given that et adds an unspoken element to the text, there is an obvious candidate to suggest—a woman!

V'(nekeva o) zakhar – – – And (either a female or) a male

Lo tishkav – – – you shall not sexually penetrate

Mishkeve ishah – – – to humiliate

Toevah hi – – – it is abhorrent

Until very recently only the sexual humiliation of men could be understood as abhorrent. However, as women become their own agents, as they approach equality with men, the verse cries out to apply to women too. It could be argued that this superfluous word was ready and waiting for the moment when human equality would be fully extended to women, when as a culture we would be ready to interpret the verse to mean that the fusion of sex and power into a single act is abhorrent between any two people.

In an amazing a paradoxical fashion the very verse that was for centuries read as requiring the ongoing demotion of women through the marking of intercourse as humiliation, and thus femininity as degraded could be read as a full-fledged critique of the male-dominated social hierarchy! The only way to redeem intercourse from its inevitable dominations is to press for gender equality on the deepest emotional planes, to work formally toward ending the gender hierarchy, and to heal the ugly misogyny at its foundation.”

Tobias Haller, BSG – resident scholar and blogger on In a Godward Direction questions Greenberg’s translation:

The object marker “et” though not much used in chapter 18 is used in many of the commandments in the parallel chapter Lev 20, in addition to reappearing with “et zakar.” This would render “zakar” a definite rather than indefinite object. (“The male.”) It can also be more simply understood under the less common meaning “with” as in “with a male.” That is the usual choice, and is reflected in most translations.

Translating “mishk’ve ishah” as “to humiliate” is odd. It means, “the lyings-down of a woman.” (Important: woman, not female; singular, not plural) I thus find the idea that one should read the “et” as providing a way to add “female” to the opening phrase unlikely, as it would produce “With a male or a female you shall not lie down the lyings-down of a woman…”

I would suggest that a more direct translation would be —

“With a male you (singular masculine) shall not lie down the lyings-down of a woman. It (she) is an abomination.”

If we understand “abomination” in its usual sense as connected to idolatry, and take the “Hi” as “she” rather than as “it” and take due note of the plural “lyings” and singular “woman” it is easier to see this as a reference to cult prostitution, and a statement that a Hebrew man is not to become a cult prostitute, taking the position of a woman servicing (multiple) other males.

Alternatively, some scholars have suggested that the “lyings-down of a woman” refers to the other incestuous relationships described in the rest of the chapter; so that it would represent a prohibition on same-sex incest. That has the virtue of making sense; I would be interested in seeing some justification for translating “mishk’ve ishah” as “to humiliate.

Debating the meaning of scripture to help clarify possibilities is a characteristic rabbinic approach to interpretation. The debate keeps our scholarship honest and not a captive of one side or another.

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