Hope For Homosexuals

Question: I am 32. For several years I have been looking for a wife, but it never gets anywhere because I don’t feel any strong desire to be with women. I confided this to a friend, and he took me to a group meeting with men who have homosexual leanings, and who are learning to be proud of it. Apparently, this is my situation too. Is there anything I can do to strengthen my attraction to the opposite sex so that I will be able to marry?  

Answer:

(by Rabbi Elyakam Levanon, Rosh Yeshiva, Elon Moreh)

To begin, we must note that there is a desire for unnatural relationships. The Torah mentions three different types of sexual relationships. The first is between a man and woman, and this is limited to a relationship sanctified by marriage and the tenets of Jewish Law. The Torah also mentions the possibility of a man being with a beast and rejects this outright as being strictly forbidden. Our Sages teach that Bilaam polluted himself in this manner. The third relationship mentioned is between two men, which the Torah absolutely forbids. Because the prohibition is recorded, we can assume that there exists a desire for this type of connection. Nevertheless, the Torah does not allow any leniency in this matter whatsoever.       

For us, who strive to be faithful to the path of the Torah, this means that even though there may be a lust of this sort, we have the wherewithal to overcome it, just like with every other prohibition of the Torah. For instance, there is a prohibition of eating milk products and meat together. While a cheeseburger may be very tasty to the palette, we nevertheless overcome any desire we have for eating combinations of this nature. The Midrash teaches that we shouldn’t say, “I don’t have the possibility of eating milk and meat together, or I don’t have the possibility of engaging in incestuous acts.” Rather, we should say, “I have the capability of doing these things, but what can I do? My Father in Heaven has forbidden them to me.”

If you can give up cheeseburgers, you can give up homosexuality too.

The Torah teaches us to chose good and to distance ourselves from evil. Furthermore, the Torah defines for us what is good and what is evil. There is a natural inclination in the world that pushes us toward engaging in evil actions, but through the strength that the Torah gives us, we overcome our evil inclination and chose to do the proper things instead.

This preface comes to let you know that you should not feel abnormal for the situation you describe. But just as we relate to other lusts, we must relate to this lust in the same manner. Going to a meeting with other men who share this same inclination seems to me to be a negative thing to do. Meets of this sort can only be beneficial if their intent is to help the person overcome his problem. Thus an overweight person can attend a gathering of other overweight people if the intent is to support one another in undertaking a diet. But if the intent of the meeting is to encourage one another that being overweight is healthy and beautiful, then something is wrong.

I'm fat and I'm proud!

Someone with an addiction to cigarettes, or alcohol, or drugs, can benefit from a support group when the intent is to break free of the addiction.  If people with homosexual feelings come together to overcome their lusts by supporting one another to align their lives with the Torah, the can be certainly beneficial. However, if the group assembles to encourage homosexual feelings and give them justification and legitimacy, this is a negative encounter, because we are obligated to overcome our weaknesses and not give in to them. It is a grave mistake to take weaknesses and turn them into kosher ideologies.

You don’t have to consider yourself weird or some kind of social leper, but rather like any other person who has negative inclinations. Someone who walks through a supermarket and thinks about stealing something, he is a normal person who must overcome his inclination.

The way to overcome negative inclinations like the one you describe is consulting with a counselor experienced with this problem, or by attending a support group whose goal is to re-channel negative desires to the proper path, which is the male-female relationship that leads to marriage. From my experience, I can attest to cases of men like you who received counseling and guidance, and who are happily married today with families of their own. The main things is not to accept the negative inclination as the way things must be, not to say that this is who you are, but rather to summon the courage and strength to reach the true solution through the guidance and path of the Torah.           

A Nation That Should Dwell Alone

Holy brothers in Israel, when you go to the mikvah each morning for your holy immersions, when you take a shower, be sure that you don’t waste water.

A Mikvah a Day Keeps the Doctor Away

How unfortunate it is when a holy brother, whose love of G-d brings him to strive for added saintliness by purifying himself in the mikvah each day before his prayers, treats himself to a long ten-minute shower, as if he were vacationing in some luxurious health spa. Why waste so much water in a time of drought, when just seeing the dry banks of the Kinneret can bring a person to tears?

And while we are in the mikvah, a few reminders. The mikvah is not an exercise pool. Do your immersions and make way for others. Also, it isn’t the locker room of a health club where you can sit around naked and gab about politics and the like. In fact, a person shouldn’t talk in a mikvah at all. And be careful not to look at another person’s nudity. Gazing at someone else’s brit is a serious offence that can damage one’s eyes and lower one’s level of holiness. People who strut around the mikvah like peacocks on parade without covering their nakedness are transgressing the precept, “Thou shall not put a stumbling block before a blind man.”   

Guard Your Eyes!

Since we mentioned locker rooms, a memory comes to mind, scores of years ago when I was in high school in America, before it became standard medical practice to circumcise all babies after their birth. In those days, back then, in the locker room after sports, the majority of students walked around like  uncircumcised Philistines. Only the handful of Jews were circumcised. The difference was obvious to all – just like Hashem intended it to be, to let everyone know that we were His chosen holy people. Today, in the locker rooms and health clubs of America and Europe, the distinction is no longer apparent, and it is no wonder that assimilation is on a perilous ascent.

Health Club Bar in LA

Of course, the hospital circumcision of the gentiles isn’t real, and we are still the ONE AND ONLY holy people. But having a holy Jewish circumcision, in the proper manner when we are eight days old, isn’t enough to preserve our Jewish future. We have to live holy lives as well, separating ourselves from the heathens. That’s why we have our own Land, as it says in the Torah, “It is a nation that should dwell alone, and not be reckoned amongst the peoples” (BaMidbar, 23:9).

With a student of Rabbi Kahane in the new Knesset, let’s hope that it comes to pass soon.   

The Greatest Mitzvah of All

This is for my brothers and sisters in Israel to remind ourselves how lucky we are to be living in Eretz HaKodesh. As we have written many times, the Holy Land is the Holy Land, no matter who is the Prime Minister, or how long you have to wait on line when you need something at the Ministry of the Interior. If only because Israel is G-d’s Chosen Land, it is worth living here more than any other place in the world.

This is just for Israelis because my brothers and sisters in the Diaspora, whom I love very much, get angry at me when I remind them of the compromise they are living. For instance, in the Torah portion we read this past Shabbat, we learn about the Hebrew slave who doesn’t want to cease serving his master when his years of servitude have ended. Because he prefers serving a mortal, rather than be free to serve G-d, his ear, which heard the commandment “I am the L-rd your G-d,” is nailed to the doorpost of the door (Shemot, 21:5, Rashi). Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda HaKohen Kook, of blessed memory, would refer to this sad situation when referring to Jews who preferred to remain in the exile, subservient to the governments and cultures of their gentile countries, rather than coming to live in the Land of the Jews. “These people say, ‘I love my master, the gentile,’ he would explain, paraphrasing the Biblical verse. “I will not go out free.”

What will become of the Jewish Princes and Princesses of America?

Let me give you another example. Our Sages inform us that the Jews of Egypt merited to survive their bondage under their foreign masters because they guarded their names, their dress, their language, and the ways of Jewish modesty.  They didn’t give their children goyisha names like Mohammed, Tutenkamen, Mark, Chris, Sally, or Jane. They walked around proudly with kippot and tzitzit, not mimicking the fashions of the goyim. They continued to speak Hebrew, rather than Egyptian, English or French. And they stayed away from the orgies of their Egyptian neighbors, and refrained from watching the Academy Awards.  

"And the winner is...Barack Obama

If you think it is an inconsequential thing for a Jew to speak Hebrew, you are mistaken. The Hebrew language was given to us by G-d. He wants us to speak in the Lashon HaKodesh (Holy Tongue) because we are a Holy People. Hebrew is Divinely geared to the Jewish mind and Jewish way of thinking. A Jewish child who grows up speaking Hebrew sees the world, right to left, through Jewish glasses. A child who grows up speaking English sees the world backwards, from left to right, through gentile glasses. His orientation to the Torah is distorted. If you don’t believe a has-been Hollywood screenwriter like me, look at Rashi. On the verse in the Shema, “And you shall teach them to your children to speak of them,” (Devarim, 11:19), he writes:

“On this it has been said, when the child begins to talk, the father should speak to him in the Holy Tongue and teach him Torah, and if he doesn’t do this, it is like he buries him” (Rashi, there).

When I write these things, my brothers and sisters in the Diaspora get angry at me, even though I love them dearly and have their very best interests at heart. Because I know when they get to Heaven with their suitcases from America, Australia, and England, the Guard at the celestial gate is going to ask them why they didn’t live in Israel.

It'll never get through Customs

“What does it matter?” they’ll claim. “We kept the mitzvos.”

“You kept the mitzvos,” he’ll answer, “But you didn’t keep the greatest mitzvah of all.”