Torah Queeries

Torah Queeries
Author: Gregg Drinkwater
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2012-08-22
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0814769772

In the Jewish tradition, reading of the Torah follows a calendar cycle, with a specific portion assigned each week. Following on this ancient tradition, Torah Queeries brings together some of the world's leading rabbis, scholars, and writers to interpret the Torah through a "bent lens." This incredibly rich collection unites the voices of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and straight-allied writers, including some of the most central figures in contemporary American Judaism. All bring to the table unique methods of reading and interpreting that allow the Torah to speak to modern concerns of sexuality, identity, gender, and LGBT life. Torah Queeries offers cultural critique, social commentary, and a vision of community transformation, all done through biblical interpretation. Written to engage readers, draw them in, and at times provoke them, Torah Queeries charts a future of inclusion and social justice deeply rooted in the Jewish textual tradition. A labor of intellectual rigor, social justice, and personal passions, Torah Queeries is an exciting and important contribution to the project of democratizing Jewish communities, and an essential guide to understanding the intersection of queerness and Jewishness.

Torah Queeries

Torah Queeries
Author: Gregg Drinkwater
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 351
Release: 2009-10-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0814741096

A modernized, queer reading of the Torah. In the Jewish tradition, reading of the Torah follows a calendar cycle, with a specific portion assigned each week. These weekly portions, read aloud in synagogues around the world, have been subject to interpretation and commentary for centuries. Following on this ancient tradition, Torah Queeries brings together some of the world’s leading rabbis, scholars, and writers to interpret the Torah through a “bent lens.” With commentaries on the fifty-four weekly Torah portions and six major Jewish holidays, the concise yet substantive writings collected here open stimulating new insights and highlight previously neglected perspectives. This incredibly rich collection unites the voices of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and straight-allied writers, including some of the most central figures in contemporary American Judaism. All bring to the table unique methods of reading and interpreting that allow the Torah to speak to modern concerns of sexuality, identity, gender, and LGBT life. Torah Queeries offers cultural critique, social commentary, and a vision of community transformation, all done through biblical interpretation. Written to engage readers, draw them in, and, at times, provoke them, Torah Queeries examines topics as divergent as the Levitical sexual prohibitions, the experience of the Exodus, the rape of Dinah, the life of Joseph, and the ritual practices of the ancient Israelites. Most powerfully, the commentaries here chart a future of inclusion and social justice deeply rooted in the Jewish textual tradition. A labor of intellectual rigor, social justice, and personal passions, Torah Queeries is an exciting and important contribution to the project of democratizing Jewish communities, and an essential guide to understanding the intersection of queerness and Jewishness.

Queering the Text

Queering the Text
Author: Andrew Ramer
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2020-03-24
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1532665121

Ramer plays and grapples with traditional midrashim, drawing inspiration from the homoerotic love poems of medieval Spain, and envisioning alternate versions of the present. Inspired by the pioneering work of Jewish feminists, he has crafted stories that anchor LGBT lives in the 3,000-year-old history of the Jewish people.

Queer Jews

Queer Jews
Author: David Shneer
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2013-12-02
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317795059

Queer Jews describes how queer Jews are changing Jewish American culture, creating communities and making room for themselves, as openly, unapologetically queer and Jewish. Combining political analysis and personal memoir, these essays explore the various ways queer Jews are creating new forms of Jewish communities and institutions, and demanding that Jewish communities become more inclusive.

Trans Talmud

Trans Talmud
Author: Max K. Strassfeld
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2023-10-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520397398

Trans Talmud places eunuchs and androgynes at the center of rabbinic literature and asks what we can learn from them about Judaism and the project of transgender history. Rather than treating these figures as anomalies to be justified or explained away, Max K. Strassfeld argues that they profoundly shaped ideas about law, as the rabbis constructed intricate taxonomies of gender across dozens of texts to understand an array of cultural tensions. Showing how rabbis employed eunuchs and androgynes to define proper forms of masculinity, Strassfeld emphasizes the unique potential of these figures to not only establish the boundary of law but exceed and transform it. Trans Talmud challenges how we understand gender in Judaism and demonstrates that acknowledging nonbinary gender prompts a reassessment of Jewish literature and law.

Judaism on Pleasure

Judaism on Pleasure
Author: Reuven P. Bulka
Publisher: Jason Aronson
Total Pages: 203
Release: 1987
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9781568213088

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Socratic Torah

Socratic Torah
Author: Jenny R. Labendz
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2013-05-23
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0199934568

Jenny R. Labendz shows that despite the highly internal and self-referential nature of rabbinic Torah study, some ancient rabbis believed that the involvement of non-Jews in rabbinic intellectual culture was an enriching aspect of rabbinic learning and teaching.

Ethics at the Center

Ethics at the Center
Author: Elliot N. Dorff
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2024
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0827615655

Ethics at the Center culls the best of Rabbi Elliot N. Dorff's pioneering thinking in Jewish ethics over nearly five decades. Dorff shows that our response to moral issues depends ultimately on our conceptions of the nature of human beings and God; how Jewish law, theology, prayer, history, and community should also define and motivate Jewish responses to moral issues; and how the honorable and divergent stances of Western philosophy and other religions about moral living shed light on Judaism's distinctive standpoints. From there Dorff applies Judaism's ethics to real life: abortion post-Roe v. Wade, sexual orientation and human dignity, avoiding harm in communication, playing violent or defamatory video games, modern war ethics, handling donations of ill-gotten gain after the fact. In conclusion he explores how Jewish family and community, holidays and rituals, theology, study, and law have moral import as well. Dorff's personal introduction to each chapter reflects on why and when he wrote its contents, its continuing relevance, and if--and if so, how--he would now change what he wrote earlier. Readers will experience not only his evolving ethical thought but many facets of the person and the Jew that Dorff is today.

Can You Be Gay and Christian?

Can You Be Gay and Christian?
Author: Michael L. Brown
Publisher: Charisma Media
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2014
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 162136593X

How do we respond to gay people who tell us how much they love the Lord and experience God's power? What do we do with the argument that the Old Testament laws no longer apply? Brown provides solid biblical answers, clearly written and based on sound scholarship, in a compassionate way that causes the reader to wrestle with the issues and discover the biblical truth. He also provides practical guidelines for ministry, and shows readers how they can resist the gay agenda while reaching out to their gay friends and family.