A rabbi this week called for the leader of the Orthodox Spanish and Portuguese Sephardi Jewish community to be officially censured for saying that “the homosexual revolution is a fantastic development for humanity”, Damian Arnold writes.
Rabbi Joseph Dweck had given a lecture at the Ner Yisrael synagogue in London on May 8 urging Britain’s Orthodox Jews to show acceptance towards gay people. But on Monday Aaron Bassous, the rabbi at the Beth Hamedrash Knesset Yehezkel synagogue in Golders Green, told his congregation that Dweck was “more poisonous than Louis Jacobs”, the rabbi who in the late 1950s controversially questioned the Orthodox view of revelation.
Bassous has called on the United Synagogue Beth Din, the rabbinical court of British Orthodox Judaism under the chief rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, to condemn Dweck’s words, which he said were “twisted, misguided and mistaken”.
Orthodox Judaism follows the teaching of the Torah in prohibiting homosexual acts between males (no reference is made to females). Dweck’s lecture, which was reported by Jewish News, has since been removed from the S&P Sephardi community website.
Dweck is reported as saying: “Whatever hang-ups you have are yours, don’t hang them on the Torah. Homosexuality in society has forced us to look at how we deal with love between people of the same sex and it has reduced the taboo for me, my children and my grandchildren. The act remains an issue, but if we can deal with the peripheral issues, it changes how we address these things. That’s good for society.”
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In his response, Bassous said: “We have found it our obligation to warn the masses that his words are nothing and can only be defined as damaging.”
Dweck told Jewish News: “Nothing was said contrary to Jewish law, nor was it a political statement of any kind. It has only been removed from our website because the study of the Torah should not cause endless arguments.” He also issued a clarification that said his words had been “misunderstood and misinterpreted”.
A spokesman for the chief rabbi said it was an “internal” debate between Dweck and Bassous and that Mirvis would not be making a statement on the matter. The Federation of Synagogues is expected to make a statement about Dweck’s comments next week.