Comments on: Peace in Martin Place

By: Michael Barnett

Michael Barnett — Mon, 22 Dec 2014 12:27:53 +0000

In reply to Liat Nagar. Ideally governments shouldn't involve themselves in marriage and just limit their involvement to civil relationship registration. That would make most of these issues go away. Unfortunately it's not so simple. Thanks for your understanding though. :)

By: Liat Nagar

Liat Nagar — Mon, 22 Dec 2014 08:39:08 +0000

Michael,
I wasn’t thinking of marriage only, or specifically (despite the subject matter we’ve been discussing) when referring to awkward situations facing Rabbis in relation to Jewish law and the Torah. There are a host of issues that are not satisfactorily dealt with due to current practice of Jewish Orthodoxy. I would hope one day to see some change in this regard, just as there was change in relation to finding it no longer necessary to actually kill animals for sacrifice, as I mentioned earlier.

There is a big problem for Jewish people who wish to marry in a Jewish service that is not Orthodox. Basically, it’s not recognised by the Orthodox as legal, and therefore children of that kind of marriage are viewed illegitimate at that level of Judaism. As you will know, if you want anything other than an Orthodox marriage in Israel you must leave the country, which is why many Israelis go to Cyprus for the wedding service. It’s about time all this was sorted out sensibly, for all kinds of marriages. I guess Reform and Conservative Rabbis would also be fed-up with not being thought of as equal or treated equally.

So, perhaps you’re right, and these Rabbis would not feel awkward. Perhaps they wouldn’t feel awkward about the food choices you posit either. This due to the clarity in their own minds of where they stand.

By: Michael Barnett

Michael Barnett — Sat, 20 Dec 2014 12:25:32 +0000

In reply to Liat Nagar. Liat, how is a rabbi placed in an awkward position when I ask the government to allow me to marry the man I love, under civil law? The Rabbinical Council of NSW made a submission to the Senate opposing changes to the Marriage Act to allow people like Tori Johnson and Thomas Zinn from marrying under civil law. There is no position, let me repeat, no position, that these rabbis will ever be placed in that will be awkward for them, in terms of civil marriage. An awkward position for a rabbi is when he is invited to a dinner where he's asked to choose between the chicken parmigiana and the prawn cocktail. Equal rights for gay people is not awkward for rabbis, unless they actively interfere, because it doesn't inolve them.

By: Liat Nagar

Liat Nagar — Sat, 20 Dec 2014 07:10:28 +0000

I find Rabbi Zalman Kastel’s smile a little too wide and ‘happy’ to be appropriate to the occasion.
As to the sexuality of Tori Johnson, the deceased, it is only one element of his make-up, and in Judaism nothing comes before the loss of life in importance as an issue. In saying that, it’s true that Rabbis are sometimes placed in awkward positions contemporarily due to the problems literal reading of the biblical text can cause. At some point we shall have to struggle forward into the future taking into account new knowledge on issues that allow different perceptions, or Rabbis will have no room to move. At some point long ago, for instance, it was decided that the blood sacrifice of animals was no longer a necessary act to perform.

By: Michael Barnett

Michael Barnett — Fri, 19 Dec 2014 05:43:14 +0000

What disturbs me deeply about these rabbis ingratiating themselves on the father of Tori Johnson is that they would not be respectful of the 14-year relationship between Tori and his partner Thomas Zinn. The two men wanted to marry each other and here we have two rabbis who are both opposed to homosexuality and same-sex marriage, blessing the father of the deceased.