Gay rights protest after stabbings.
Gay rights protest after stabbings.Flash 90

Rabbi Yaakov Meidan, Dean of the Har Etzion Hesder Yeshiva at Alon Shvut, explained to Arutz Sheva Wednesday that it is one thing to accept individuals who are homosexual, and a completely different thing to accept the so-called “gay community.”

Regarding private individuals, the rabbi said that he knows “an entire organization of people who hang on by their fingernails to the Torah and the mitzvot (commandments) and do not flout the Torah prohibitions, and they have same-sex tendencies. They consult with rabbis on how to do and what to do, and these people are complete tzaddikim (righteous people)…”

“Many of them make great efforts to change the tendencies, but in most cases we know that it cannot be done, and we have to identify with them. These people are kosher for ascending to read the Torah (at the synagogue) and to lead the congregation on a Yom Kippur that occurs on Shabat.”

Even people who transgress against the Torah prohibitions are not to be judged with excessive harshness, he said. “While this is a very serious Torah prohibition, we have a rule that says ‘do not judge your friend until you have reached his place.’ We need to encourage them as much as possible, even those who have failed, to keep away from this prohibition and find other solutions. There are all kinds of things that can be done with this issue, but to denounce and boycott people who fail is something I think we must not do, as long as they have not given up on their commitment to fulfill the Torah completely.”

“I, personally, am adamantly opposed to the gay community,” he said, however. “This is a community which carries out these parades and there is a purpose here to sway youths to try [homosexual relations]. These are people who do things in order to provoke, on purpose. A person who goes to march in Jerusalem, the Holy City, his purpose is simply to anger others. .. These are things I strenuously oppose.”

Rabbi Medan said that there is something “very violent and very repellent” about the gay community’s style of protest, which he said is typified by a threatening manner. He noted that the protesters after the stabbings at the Gay Pride Parade held up hands stained with red paint, in a motion reminiscent of the infamous Ramallah lynch of 2000.