This week, President Barack Obama responded to a question on national television about marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples. He said, "I've been going through an evolution on this issue. I have always been adamant that gay and lesbian Americans should be treated fairly and equally… I have just concluded that, for me personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married." 

The president later went further to justify his position in religious terms. He said, "Obviously this position may be considered to put [Michelle and me] at odds with the views of others but, you know, when we think about our faith, the thing at root that we think about is, not only Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf, but it's also the Golden Rule, you know, treat others the way you would want to be treated" (paraphrasing Leviticus 19:18, "Love your fellow as yourself").

Predictably, this has set off a torrent of statements from religious conservatives who oppose marriage rights for gays and lesbians. Just as the president did, they have claimed that their position is rooted in the Bible.            

The Rev. Bryant Wright, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, called Obama's statements "a calculated, politically expedient decision that completely ignores the biblical foundation of marriage."  The Rev. Leith Anderson, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, said, "The evangelical community is broadly committed to define marriage as between one man and one woman and will not accept an unbiblical definition."

Each side claims that its position is informed by the Bible. Can they both be right? What, exactly, does the Bible say about marriage and homosexuality? Does the Bible define marriage, as Rev. Anderson states, as "one man and one woman"?

Not much and not really. 

Both the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Scriptures (which Christians call the "Old Testament" and the "New Testament") have opinions and laws regarding marriage, but there is no one, consistent view throughout. What is clear, though, is that the biblical view of marriage is very much unlike modern conceptions of marriage. 

For example, the idea of fidelity in marriage only works in one direction in the Bible. The sin of adultery is limited to the case of a man who takes another man’s wife. Because the Bible permits polygamy, a man cannot commit adultery by having multiple sex partners, as long as none of them is married to another man (Leviticus 20:10).

Marriage, in some parts of the Bible, is defined by nationality. In the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, marriage is exclusively limited to the union of two Israelites. All other marriages were null and void. (Ezra 9:12, Nehemiah 9:2). 

Also, marriage in the Bible could be coerced. The book of Deuteronomy defines rules for a man to acquire as wife a woman captured in battle (Deuteronomy 21:10-14). There are circumstances in which a man is required to marry a woman whom he has raped (Deuteronomy 22:28-29).

Contemporary Judaism and Christianity do not accept marriage as it is defined in the Bible. Both traditions, over the centuries, have created new models for marriage in which both partners mutually agree to marry and in which both partners are bound by oaths of fidelity. To claim a single "biblical" or "traditional" definition of marriage, as have the opponents of equal marriage, is to invent an idealized past and to deny thousands of years of change.

And the change and adaptation are ongoing. Marriage today is not the same institution as it was even two hundred years ago, let alone two thousand. Before the Civil War, most states in the United States gave married women little control over the property they brought into a marriage. A woman's rights to buy, sell and to keep the money she earned was given to the husband upon marriage. Part of the effective definition of marriage in that era was the acquisition by a man of the wealth and livelihood of his wife. Times do change, and so does marriage.

Some opponents of equal marriage claim that marriage between gay and lesbian couples violates the Bible's denunciation of sexual relations between two men. Indeed, Leviticus does say that for a man "to lie with a man, in the manner of lying with a woman," is an "abhorrence" or an "abomination" (to'eivah in Hebrew; Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13). This is a strong condemnation, but it is not the only time the word is used in the Bible. 

Other practices were equally abhorrent to the Bible's culture of more than 2,000 years ago. The word to'eivah is used to revile the eating of shellfish (Leviticus 11:10), a woman wearing men's clothing (Deuteronomy 22:5), a man remarrying a woman he previously had divorced (Deuteronomy 24:4), and the practice of predicting the future from signs (Deuteronomy 18:9-12), to name a few. There certainly are religious communities that observe these prohibitions strictly to this day. I, myself, do not eat biblically prohibited food like shrimp and lobster, but I would not want to see those foods banned for everyone. I am quite certain that we will not see religious conservatives filing legislation to ban crab cakes and pants suits as "abhorrences." 

Central to the faith of many religious people today is the concept of continuing revelation. As human beings continue to learn about our world, we continue to develop new understandings of the Divine will. Slavery, for example, is ordained by the Bible, but it is universally condemned today as a violation of religious values. Many today similarly see the need to reconsider the ancient attitudes towards homosexuality expressed in the Bible. 

Will legal acceptance of equal marriage damage the institution of marriage? Quite the contrary. Marriage strengthens society as a whole. We want people to get married. We want all people to formalize their loving relationships so they will benefit from the support of the community. We want to impress people with the serious nature of the marriage commitment. Denying gays and lesbians the right to legal marriage sends the wrong message. It promotes a society in which marriage is "optional" for people who share their lives. It weakens marriage both for homosexuals and for heterosexuals. 

Six states currently recognize marriage for gay and lesbian couples:  New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, and New Hampshire. Massachusetts, the first state to legalize marriage for these couples, has the lowest divorce rate of any state in the Union (50th of the 50 states). The other states that recognize equal marriage rank 47th, 40th, 46th and 27th. Marriage is doing quite well in those states. Of the fourteen states with the highest divorce rates, all of them ban same-sex couples from marrying.

And what of the claim that marriage between gay and lesbian couples is harmful to children? The question, I believe, is, "Which children?" Will the thousands of children in the United State whose parents are same-sex couples benefit from a legal system that refuses to recognize their family? Will their lives be better without the right to health care from one parent's insurance? Will they be better off because one of their parents cannot visit them in the hospital? Or will they profit from a society that says that the people who love them, raise them and take care of them are not really married at all? Honestly? 

Who would benefit by outlawing these marriages? It seems that the opponents of marriage equality believe they can legislate same-sex couples and their families out of existence. It is not so. Families with gay and lesbian parents are part of our communities. They pay taxes, go to houses of worship and send their kids to school. Laws may unfairly discriminate against them, but these families are not going to disappear. 

Finally, this is not a conflict that pits religious Americans against secular Americans. Wherever there have been proposals to prevent legal recognition of gay and lesbian marriages, the opposition has included numerous religious laypeople and their clergy. The supporters of marriage equality include clergy and laity of Congregationalists, American Baptists, Episcopalians, Jews, Unitarians, Methodists and many other faith groups. For these people of faith, the defense of the civil rights of same-sex couples is a matter of religious conviction. 

I respect the rights of those who do not recognize same-sex marriages as “holy matrimony” within their religious traditions. As a member of the clergy, I myself have refused to officiate at weddings that did not meet my religious standards. However, I would not seek to outlaw those marriages that I or my denomination would not solemnize. In a free society, no one religious perspective should be allowed to trample on the rights of others. 

People will pick and choose the biblical verses that suit them when arguing about the right to marry. For me, the only relevant religious principle is the one that says that human beings are created in the image of God. That means that whether people are born gay or straight, they all are due the same level of respect and civil rights in civil society. No people should be considered to be "mistakes" because of the way that God has chosen to make them. 

The counting of the forty-nine days (a week of weeks) from Passover until the day before the festival of Shavuot has been imbued with different meanings over the course of Jewish history. In the days of the First Temple, its was primarily agricultural—a way to set the date of harvest festivals. The later rabbis of the Talmud made it a period of semi-mourning in memory of Torah students killed by the Romans. In Kabbalah, the Counting of the Omer became a mystical journey through forty-nine gates of divine emanations to reach the transcendent moment in which Torah is received from Mount Sinai on Shavuot. 

Last year, I wrote a post for each week of the Counting of the Omer to describe my journey through the mystical associations of each day. The first week is devoted to the divine emanation of Chesed, or "lovingkindness." The second week is focused on G'vurah, understood as "strength" and "discipline." The third week is Tiferet, the emanation of "harmony," "balance" and "splendor." The fourth week takes us to Netzach, meaning "eternity" and "endurance." The fifth week is about Hod for "humility." The sixth week is based in Yesod, the emanation of "foundation," "groundedness" and "connection." Finally, the seventh week we reach up into Malchut, "sovereignty," "nobility" and "leadership."

Today is the thirty-third day of the Counting of the Omer, the fifth day of the fifth week. It is a semi-holiday called Lag B'Omer. The "Lag" is an acronym in Hebrew for the number 33. (The letter Lamed = 30; Gimel = 3). Like the Omer period itself, Lag B'Omer has many meanings. In Israel, it is celebrated with bonfires and outdoor games. Lag B'Omer also is regarded as the yahrtzeit, the anniversary of the death, of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. That association gives Lag B'Omer great mystical importance.

According to tradition, Rabbi Shimon was the author of the Zohar, the greatest book of Jewish mysticism. He also is the central character of the book. A famous passage in the Zohar  (III, 287b -296b) tells how Rabbi Shimon made his final revelation of the Torah’s secrets to his disciples on the night he died, Lag B'Omer. The passage is known as the Idra Zuta, and it describes how Rabbi Shimon did not just die a normal death that night. He left this world in a torrent of supernatural fire that surrounded him as the words of his revelation came pouring out of him in ecstasy. His disciples heard his words, but they were unable to reach him through the fire.

"The light that is revealed is called the Garment of the King," declared Rabbi Shimon from the midst of the divine fire. In language that is obscured by mystical terms that each resonate with multiple meanings, Rabbi Shimon says that all that we know and experience about God is nothing more than an outer garment that hides an unrevealed truth beyond our conception. "The light within, within is a concealed light. In that light dwells the Ineffable One, the Unrevealed."

Finally, Rabbi Shimon's revelation was crowned with the greatest truth of all about the "High Spark," the most hidden truth that lies at the foundation of all reality. Rabbi Shimon cried out, "There is nothing but the High Spark, hidden, unrevealed!” If we were able to truly know and understand God, we also would know that there is nothing but God. Everything that appears to exist is merely a ripple upon the surface of God. That is the great truth, the only truth, that lies at the center of all.

On this day every year, tens of thousands of people travel to Meron, the place where Shimon bar Yochai is said to be buried, to celebrate the revelation of all revelations.

I led a group today of seven 15-year-old Confirmation students and five of their parents on a trip to Jewish sites in Miami. The day was a great success, if I do say so myself. We travelled to the Holocaust Memorial of Miami, the Jewish Museum of Florida, and Temple Beth Sholom of Miami Beach. We finished off the day by going to a concert in West Palm Beach by the Jewish reggae artist, Matisyahu. 

One of my goals for this trip was to give these young people a taste of life in a large, urban Jewish community. For the most part, the Confirmation class students have lived their lives in a place where the Jewish community is very small and the opportunities for Jewish experiences are scant. I wanted them to see that, just two hours to our south, there is another kind of Jewish world. It is a world inhabited by tens of thousands of Jews who live in relatively close proximity to each other. The culture of Miami Beach is inseparable from the large, thriving Jewish community that has been there for more than seventy years. Jewish food, Jewish music, Jewish learning and Jewish people are to be found on every city block.

Here are some of the highlights of our trip:

• At the Holocaust Memorial, we heard a concentration camp survivor, Isaak Klein, tell his story. WIth frightening details, he told us of his experience as a boy in the cattle cars, the unspeakable misery of the camps, the death march from Auschwitz, and the inhuman medical experiments of Josef Mengele that he was forced to endure. 

• Our trip to the Jewish Museum coincided with a visit from Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz,  the first Jewish Congresswoman ever elected from Florida. That fit nicely into the theme of celebrating the role of Jews in the history of the state of Florida.

• At Temple Beth Sholom we met with senior Rabbi Gary A. Glickstein, who talked about the history of the very diverse Jewish community in Miami Beach, and Rabbi Amy L. Morrison, who took us on a tour of the building and talked about some of the congregation's innovative projects. I was particularly impressed by the way the congregation has put substantial resources into reaching out to twenty-something and thirty-something Jews in the community with no effort or expectation of recruiting them to become dues-paying members of the congregation. This congregation is thinking outside the paradigms that close many young, unaffiliated Jews out of Jewish learning and Jewish experience.

Of course, I hope that the students will remember this day for a while. I hope that it made an impression on them about the possibilities of Jewish community beyond the limited experience they have had in our small (but lively!) congregation. I hope that it makes them think about Judaism as a fun, vibrant, living and changing tradition—one that they can help shape in the future with their own Jewish choices. I hope that this trip might inspire them to look for new ways to connect with Jewish community, even after they leave their parents' homes and find their own place in the world. 

It's May Fourth and I find myself listening, as I always do on this date, to a song from more than forty years ago, wondering. Miller, Krause, Schroeder and Scheuer would be in their early sixties if they were alive today.

It happened when I was too young to understand, but I went to college in northern Ohio ten years later. In those days, in that place, the tin soldiers still left a long shadow.

I wonder how, or if, to talk to my children about it. What lessons would I want them to learn? 

People who seem normal and well meaning can turn fanatically cruel if they are given a reason to hate and fear. 

Speaking truth, even today, is a dangerous business, but it is what we are obligated to do. 

Elections have consequences.

The rabbis warned us about power and what can come of it. They warned the leaders of their day to love service to others, but to fear the power that comes with authority (Pirkei Avot 1:10). We have seen, in our own country, in my own lifetime, how twisted power can become, how ideology without compassion can turn into murderous brutality. I fear it could happen again.

How many more?

I know that those two words can seem contradictory. We tend to think of relaxation as a state of internal quiet, and meditation does help a person calm his or her stormy emotions and thoughts and find a place of repose. For me, though, meditation is about more than just putting the motor of my mind into neutral. It is about aiming for a deep place within that is fundamentally, exuberantly joyful.

I believe that happiness is the normal state of human beings. For me, meditation is about a feeling of "aliveness." It is a state of being attuned at at a heightened level to the miracle of our existence and to the pleasure of inhabiting a body that sustains us from moment to moment. How could that not be happy? How could it be that in our most basic state—once we clear away the worries and anxieties of everyday life, the striving and the struggle to make sense of things—that we are not joyfully amazed by just being alive?

The meditation service I lead begins with a brief relaxation exercise in which we take inventory of the body—step by step, relaxing and releasing the feet, legs, hips, back, belly, shoulders, neck, head and face. I then guide people into focusing on the breath and allowing the mind to become curious about the flow of air, in and out, and how breathing is experienced throughout the body. I then direct meditators to notice how the mind—doing what it does naturally—will drift away into memories, thoughts, images, stories and other distractions. I ask people to notice the mind, pay attention to how it does what it does, to let go of the distractions and gently come back to focussing on the breath. 

(There is an audio file of a meditation service at the bottom of this post that you are welcome to use. It's about 31 minutes long and includes about fifteen minutes of silence that starts at about 15:00. The chant at the beginning and the end is a Satmar niggun I learned from Rabbi Michael Strassfeld. I have practiced Jewish meditation with several teachers, but the guidance of Rabbi Sheila Weinberg is closest to my heart.)

Following this general mindfulness meditation, at our Friday morning service I also lead a meditation specific to the particular day and its associations in the Jewish calendar. Often it is based on an idea or a story in the weekly Torah portion.

I won't pretend that meditation is easy. I often find it hard to motivate myself to sit and practice meditation in the morning. Having a group to do it with certainly makes it easier. Think of it as a spiritual practice, like yoga. Think of it as something that you do for yourself, like running, that requires a commitment, but that pays off in the long run.

That "pay-off" for me has been a greater capacity to pay attention to my own state of mind, and that has helped me to be calmer in difficult circumstances, to listen better to other people, and to be patient and open-hearted. Not in any great, overwhelming way, but in a million small and barely noticeable ways, it has helped me to become happier.

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