The publication of a book, a global outreach project with filmmaker Sandi Dubowski and a documentary about gay and lesbian Orthodox Jews, \Trembling Before G-d,"" has kept Rabbi Steve Greenberg busy.
However, his schedule did allot the first openly gay Orthodox Rabbi time to speak Monday in an event sponsored by the Jewish Cultural Collective.
""The very existence of an Orthodox gay rabbi is kind of a duckbill platypus impossibility,"" Greenberg said, ""and therefore [the audience deserves], as does the reader, an introduction to, 'What is this creature called the gay orthodox person?'""
Beginning his Orthodox Jewish studies at age 15, Greenberg later took a trip to Israel during his junior year of college at Yeshiva University, where he ""realized [he] was attracted to a guy.""
Believing he was bisexual, Greenberg returned to the United States and dated women for 14 years before addressing his sexuality and coming out publicly in 1999.
Only one rabbi colleague made negative comments, Greenberg said. Greenberg recalled the rabbi said, ""To be Orthodox and gay is like being an Orthodox rabbi who eats cheeseburgers on Yom Kippur.""
When asked to respond, Greenberg said, ""To claim that Jewish law might need to be recalibrated in the face of new knowledge about the human condition is not to be a heretic. ... To deprive a human being of intimacy, love and companionship is simply not the same thing as depriving somebody of a cheeseburger.""
""Wrestling with God,"" released in February 2004 and the winner of the Koret Jewish Book Award for Philosophy and Thought, focuses on the exposition of biblical texts dealing with the problem of homosexuality, evidence in rabbinic texts where homosexuality is found, the reasons found in the Torah that explicitly prohibit homosexuality and a conclusion that expresses Greenberg's knowledge that this interpretation of homosexuality will not be acceptable to most Orthodox Jews.
""You cannot overturn 200 years of jurisprudence,"" Greenberg said.
""His mission about creating that idea of a ... community where people feel welcomed is something I feel really strongly about,"" said the Chair of JCC and UW-Madison senior Joel Bennett. ""I think he really spoke to that.""
""He bases his ideas on very traditional Jewish thought,"" said audience member Geoff Gyrisco. ""He doesn't base his ideas on modern, shallow ideologies that are just fruitlessly battling with each other.""
