Drash on Acharei Mot-K’doshim 2025

Rabbi Moshe Givental

North Shore Temple Emanuel

Parshat Acharei Mot – Kedoshim contains one of the most painfully infamous verses in the Torah. Leviticus 18:22, translated as something like “Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman.” This is a verse which has been used as a weapon of hatred, persecution, and stigmatization. It is a verse, among a number of others, which we might want to erase from our cannon, or at least ignore in our Torah reading in shul. However, neither erasure nor ignorance is healing. Nor does it prevent hatred, persecution, or stigmatization which continues in many Jewish communities and non-Jewish communities around the world.

The Torah, with all of its challenges, speaks in the language of humanity. It speaks to the ways in which, Jews, and non-Jews, have treated each other with infinite dignity (i.e. in the “image of God” Gen. 1:27) as well as cruel horror (i.e. “spare no one, kill all alike (1 Samuel 15:3) across the generations, including our own, around the world. These painful verses have been used to cause suffering, but they are not the source of it. We know this, because hatred, persecution, stigmatization, and murder arise from them and completely independent of them.

This is why I think it’s important to highlight the painful parts of our tradition (when it is safe enough for everyone in attendance) in order to use them as an occasion to loudly denounce the multitude of ways in which human beings have hurt each other and to celebrate every single way in which consenting adults have found ways to share care, kindness, dignity, and love. Commentators through the centuries have struggled, wrestled, and done all kinds of acrobatics to find a way to integrate this Leviticus 18:22 with the command to love one’s neighbor and treat each person as an expression of God’s image. One very literal and surprisingly constructive option, however, is often missed. Clearly, it is physically impossible for a male to lie with another male as he would lie with a woman, in the biblically commanded procreative manner. So I want to suggest the possibility that what we are talking about here is a male who wants to be laying with a woman, but uses a male as a substitute. What I’m talking about is is the practice of men using/raping other men or boys. This practice was horrifically common in the ancient world, just as it is today.This indeed is “abhorrent” as Levitucus 18:22 goes on to say.

What if re-interpreting this verse requires absolutely no midrashic or halakhic acrobatics but a simple reading of the verse in its most literal form, which is indeed abhorrent? What if we can use, even this verse, even in its most literal translation, as a reminder to treat each other with the utmost respect and infinite dignity?