Equally Married: Parashat Ki Tetze

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Torah Sparks
Equally Married: Parashat Ki Tetze

Deuteronomy 21:10 – 25:19

Our Torah portion, according to some traditional accountings, has more commandments in it than any other portion in the Torah – 74. We will focus on only two, because I believe that our understanding of one of the mitzvot can help us in understanding one of the others.

The Torah’s commands to bury the dead. This command is stated explicitly with regard to criminals who were executed by a court of law. The Sages explained that this was to teach us the command to honor the dignity of every human being. The Torah has chosen a paradoxical and extreme way of emphasizing this obligation. To leave the body of an executed criminal unburied would be to defile that person’s dignity as a human being. Even an executed criminal has inherent human dignity and is entitled to burial, because every human being is created in the image of God and, therefore, must be treated with respect!

Affirming the absolute value of human dignity can direct us toward understanding another of the commandments in our portion. This is the commandment to marry. The Torah celebrates the sanctity of marriage. We saw, last week, that newlyweds are exempted from military service because it is so important that they be able to begin their lifes together in safety.

Yet, as we know, the institution of marriage is subject to major controversy today. It took a Supreme Court decision to compel the nation to allow same-sex marriage. Unfortunately, many people who see themselves as religious are convinced that the Bible outlaws such marriages. They claim to wish to defend “traditional marriage.” So it is important to emphasize, as I have done in so many contexts, that the Torah speaks only through interpretation. There is no simple, incontrovertable reading of anything that is of any importance in our Torah. That is why we have such a rich and glorious tradition of commentary, dispute and complexity in our history of living according to the Torah. And engaging in interpretation means execising one’s choice in sleecting between different possibilities.

The institution of marriage is no exception. The relevant verse reads: “Should a man take a woman [as his wife] and have intercourse with her…” (Deut. 24:1, and cf. 23:13) This is hardly a clearcut command to marry. Yet traditional Judaism has read this as warrant to say that marriage must be performed by the man, with the woman passively accepting his “taking” her as his wife. Another corrolary of this reading is that marriage can only be between a man and a woman. I do not believe that such readingss can claim convincingly to be the exclusive interpretations of these ambiguous words. The original words of the Torah can very easily be read as describing a hypothetical situation – should it happen that this is the case…, etc. It would follow, then, that other variations of understanding marriage could be entertained.

It is at this point that the Torah’s command to recognize the essential dignity and equality of every human being should come to our aid. Respecting human dignity calls for a concept of the wedding ceremony that maintains a few key features: the wedding should never be an act of one person “taking” the other, it should be an act of mutuality, and it should apply to any adult in the community who is capable of a loving and committed relationship with a corresponding partner.

This means that the marriage ceremony must be crafted so as to have both parties engage in commiting themselves to the other, rather than “taking” the other, and it means that same-sex couples are equally capable and called to forge such relationships and celebrate them.

Unfortunately, the Law Committee of the Conservative movement has not yet affirmed this fully. It has retained the traditional ceremony of marriage, which is a unilateral act on the part of the man, who “takes” the woman as his wife. (This is the crux of the injustice that results when a marriage falls apart. The man, as the initiating agent, is in exclusive control of dissolving the marriage, through a get. There are too many cases of men abusing that power.) Furthermore, because it views that traditional ceremony as sacrosanct, it has felt it necessary to create an alternative, secondary commitment ceremony for same-sex couples, denying them the equality of treatment that their dignity deserves and demands.

Instead, the correct approach (as I have argued for years, and which I practice as rabbi) is to craft a wedding ceremony of mutuality that works for every couple, gay or straight, that is willing to commit themselves to this sacred mitzvah. (For a fuller discussion of this topic, please see my essay, “Equality and Sanctity: Rethinking Jewish Marriage in Theory and in Ceremony

Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi David Greenstein

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