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Title: Wrestling with God and Men: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition by Steven Greenberg ISBN: 0-299-19090-0 Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press Pub. Date: 15 February, 2004 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Give a copy of this book to everyone whom you care about!
Comment: "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!
Rating: 5
Summary: Thoughtful, insightful, respectful and enlightening
Comment: 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.
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Title:Trembling Before G-d ASIN: B0000BV1YO Publisher: New Yorker Video Pub. Date: 21 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $39.95 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $35.96 |
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Title: Queer Theory and the Jewish Question (Between Men--Between Women) by Daniel Boyarin, Daniel Itzkovitz, Ann Pellegrini ISBN: 0231113757 Publisher: Columbia University Press Pub. Date: December, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.50 |
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Title: The Case for Israel by Alan Dershowitz ISBN: 047146502X Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 01 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Jewish Study Bible: Tanakh Translation, Torah, Nevi'Im, Kethuvim by Adele Berlin, Marc Zvi Brettler, Michael Fishbane ISBN: 0195297512 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: January, 2004 List Price(USD): $40.00 |
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Title: The Lord Is My Shepherd : Healing Wisdom of the Twenty-third Psalm by HAROLD S. KUSHNER ISBN: 1400040566 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 26 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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