Interesting Shabbat lunch. We had a local family of new immigrants join us -- their story would make a good book. (The father, originally from LA, lived all over the Far East for many years and has a daughter with an Indian woman who left when the girl was very young. The father met a Philippina woman online and went to live in the Philippines . They married and had 2 children and lived on a small island. They became more religiously observant via the local Chabad and right after the typhoon, they made aliyah. There's actually much more to the story than that, but suffice it to say that they are always interesting guests!) There was also an engaged couple -- the woman did Livnot many years ago and we were friendly then.....her fiance is a lovely guy and I appreciate his easy-going nature. We had 3 guests from Livnot who are in Tzfat for various periods of time and a neighbor who lives in the apartment below my house.
The "excitement" started when I asked the Livnoters to share any "Words of Wisdom" that they may have prepared at Livnot (it's kind of Livnot's answer to a Dvar Torah.....inspirational thoughts, but not necessarily related to the week's Portion of the Torah).
The young man shared his Words of Wisdom -- basically that, because of the high possibility that a gay Orthodox youth may attempt suicide (as born out by statistics), the mitzvah of preserving a life overrides the prohibition against homosexual behavior and the Orthodox community should adopt a more open and welcoming stance towards gays.
What a can of worms! Our neighbor kept insisting that, "the Torah says....." about the prohibition against homosexual activity while the rest of us tried to emphasize "live and let live."
Glad that I had a glass of wine in my stomach so that I could stay relatively mellow. Never boring a
The "excitement" started when I asked the Livnoters to share any "Words of Wisdom" that they may have prepared at Livnot (it's kind of Livnot's answer to a Dvar Torah.....inspirational thoughts, but not necessarily related to the week's Portion of the Torah).
The young man shared his Words of Wisdom -- basically that, because of the high possibility that a gay Orthodox youth may attempt suicide (as born out by statistics), the mitzvah of preserving a life overrides the prohibition against homosexual behavior and the Orthodox community should adopt a more open and welcoming stance towards gays.
What a can of worms! Our neighbor kept insisting that, "the Torah says....." about the prohibition against homosexual activity while the rest of us tried to emphasize "live and let live."
Glad that I had a glass of wine in my stomach so that I could stay relatively mellow. Never boring a
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