Apr 30, 2004  |  By: STEVE WEINSTEIN  | COMMENTS     

STEVEN GREENBERG IS a living, breathing paradox. As an Orthodox Jew — a rabbi, no less — he represents a tradition of anti-gay teachings and traditions. But as a gay man in a sexually active relationship, he stands in direct opposition to the culture that has nourished him.

Like many religious gay people before him, Greenberg has wrestled with his conscience, what he considers his natural inclinations, his religion, his traditions and his God.

“Wrestling with God & Men: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition” is the result of his labors. Like Jacob wrestling with the angel, who is depicted on the book’s cover, Greenberg has emerged from his own personal dark night of the soul into a place where he believes both sides of his personality can live in harmony.

The struggle he describes is both personal and academic. The book details his account of how he, the child of non-observant Jews, came to Orthodoxy and a realization of his sexual feelings. Unlike some, he never gave up on either. Instead, he used the extensive training he received in religious academies in the United States and Israel to find a justification for same-sex love within the strictures of his religion.

Unlike other religious orthodoxies, which rely on dogma, Judaism is at its center a series of arguments.

Greenberg makes his arguments within the framework of the Talmud. He employs Jewish history and some outsides sources, such as poetry and folk stories. But his basis remains firmly in the rabbinical tradition.

He begins at the origin of mankind, Adam and Eve.

He also tackles the story of one of the sons of Noah “seeing” his father’s drunken nakedness, which some biblical scholars have seen as incestuous rape.

The infamous passage of Leviticus, which in part says a man should not “lie with a man as with a woman,” comes under special scrutiny, as does the story of the Sodomites.

He saves the story of Jonathan and David for a special chapter.

IN PASSING, GREENBERG notes that nothing in the Bible or subsequent Jewish literature mentions lesbian relationships, although lesbian Jewish couples have taken Ruth’s vow to her mother-in-law — “whither thou goest, I go, and thy god shall be my god” — as a statement of romantic yearning and have adopted it for their own vows.

Greenberg often brings up the groundbreaking film (in which he appears), “Trembling Before G-d,” which first exposed gay Orthodox and Hasidic Jews struggling to remain true to their faith and themselves. The author lives in suburban New York and works for the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. He says he and his partner “were actively encouraged to join the Orthodox synagogue we now attend.”

The one question that hangs in the air, however, is why Greenberg tries so hard to reconcile himself with a club that, for the most part, doesn’t want him as a member. He cites, with admiration, the Reform Jewish movement, which has been in the forefront of gay rights, as the first major American religious denomination to ordain openly gay clergy and the first to sanction same-sex union ceremonies.

Greenberg mentions his keeping the strict kosher dietary and other laws as one of the reasons why he stays within Orthodox Judaism.

Ultimately, he uses the enemy’s own tool — the Bible and Talmud — to argue for the legitimacy and sanctity of same-sex love. Even if most of his peers reject his scholarship, one can’t help but admire him for being true to himself.