Sandi Dubowski

There are many who would be unhappy at this announcement but I am still happy to make it. Not that I gain anything, but as Doug at Metacatholic notes, the word of God comes from sources we might least expect. Some years ago, Sandi Dubowski produced Trembling before G-d, a film about homsexuality in the Jewish Orthodox tradition. It is a tender, moving film. The book, Wrestling with God and Men which I reviewed here is an equally moving exploration of Rabbinic reasoning on a subject which many prejudge as obvious sin.

After 12 countries, 9 languages, and 5 1/2 years, Producer Sandi DuBowski and Director Parvez Sharma are proud to announce the World Premiere of our film, A Jihad for Love, at The Toronto International Film Festival, September 6-16, 2007. The film is the first feature documentary to explore the complex global intersections between Islam and homosexuality. We are thrilled for such a prestigious global launch of this challenging work. I am extremely proud of the the hard work that went into this film by Parvez and our team over the years to make the film visually stunning, emotionally moving, daring and challenging. We are living now in challenging times and both of us believe A Jihad for Love has to do justice to the lives of the subjects who so courageously came forward to tell their stories despite enormous risks. We have always intended that the film has profound impact in the world. So please join us in Toronto! The dates and venues of our screenings in Toronto are as follows:

Public, September 9th, 8.30 PM, Cumberland 3
Public, September 11th, 1.15 PM, Royal Ontario Museum
Public, September 15th, 11.59 PM, Varsity 7
Press & Industry, September 10th, 1:30 PM, Cumberland 3
Press & Industry, September 12, 11.30 AM, Varsity VIP

I for one will certainly go to this film at the earliest opportunity. If nothing else, his films express an honesty that is good to see. You can be in touch with the producer of these films at [sandi AT filmsthatchangetheworld.com].

Given my earlier understanding that sin is a failure in a relationship, not a matter of following rules by rote, it will not surprise you that when I hear people claim they know in advance that God condemns such and so, I am suspicious that they know less than they claim. I suspect their real motivation is power, or that they speak in fear or ignorance. There are assaultive, exploitive and foolish appropriations of any gift, but a gift of love is not abomination in itself. Anyone who thinks it is runs the risk of judging the work of God. I am fully confident that God knows how to deal with the homosexuals that call upon the name of the LORD - and God does not deal with them according to the condemnation that some of the other children appear to demand. God is able to make them stand as who they are not as what others expect them to be.

Story segment

I have published a story segment I drafted last month. Blogger publishes them out of sequence - a bug in the software in my humble opinion, so this is the link. Warning, the story is graphic - parental guidance recommended.

The Song - links

Some time ago I put together structural diagrams and a meditiation and program notes on the Song - before I made the current blog - here are the links collected for convenience.

Structure
Full Size Image
Pint size; text in html format - my usual rough and ready draft translations
Dialogue
Program Notes

I am a little surprised at some of my translations - but I did have a number of sources:
Fisch, Harold, Poetry with a Purpose(1988)
Fox, M.V. The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs (1985)
Pope, Marvin H., Song of Songs, The Anchor Bible Commentary
Walsh, Carey Ellen, Exquisite Desire, Religion, the Erotic, and the Song of Songs

Old Blog entries are very hard to find your way around - this is a current design problem in many of the blogger programs out there - there are other problems as well; editing, navigation, backup, whew - this may not be Wiki - but it is transient. I just fixed a bunch of old links to useful places like Paul on Paul, and ITanakh on my old homepage of writings... links are transient, but maintaining them is for ever!

in this matter

I heard John Webster at St Andrews last year at Hebrews 2006. It is not very often, it seems, that the theologians and the Biblical Studies folks conference together. Michael Bird at Euangelion reports this provocative comment by John about the Historical Jesus:

"The only historical Jesus there is is the one who has his being in union with the Son of God who is eternally begotten of the Father. Those who pore over the gospels searching for another Jesus (whether their motives be apologetic or critical) pierce their hearts with many pangs, for they study a matter which does not exist."

And the new school terms are beginning in the North so all the devotional and confessional young students are meeting their first exposure to the critical historical methods - and as Mark Goodacre points out, it is important to have your assumptions questioned.

After years of dialogue with Jesus Seminar folks, I think I incline to Webster's statement. It fits too with a question a friend of mine asked me about comfort recently: what does the word paracletos have as roots in the Hebrew tradition?

It's a somewhat roundabout question, but the intent is to find the continuity between the Greek New Testament and the Hebrew tradition. When I was young, like those unsuspecting students starting classes, someone told me that no one really knew what paracletos meant. But really they meant that we can't translate the word very well because it has too many overtones. So some translations don't translate the word - but it has a perfectly good set of ancient roots.

On a tip from my son-in-law, I began to look at the Hebrew word, nacham, that is used in the name Nehemiah, an administrator at the time of the rebuilding of the temple. It is also the word that begins the book of consolation -Isaiah 40. Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, (remember Handel.) It is also the word that is used when God repents. And sometimes, it means that God sighs. The word, like paracletos, has legal overtones - advocacy.

As with so many words, one word won't do in the English. The same is true of hesed which Suzanne wrote about recently (July Archive at Better Bibles Blog). These words have a wide range because they express both sides of a relationship. You could almost say the word gets in between us as mediator. So hesed represents God's covenant love but is also used to represent the objects of God's love - the hasidim. It can 'mean' many things in a relationship - mercy, steadfastness, loyalty, even rebuke.

The same is true for naham. It is translated comfort and consolation and it has the strength of advocacy also and is greatly to be desired. For another NT example, remember that Simeon was looking for the consolation of Israel - related word paraklesis, same hope, same substance.

The image continues further when we recognize what a crescendo there is on the role of the Spirit in the New Testament. I began an exploration of this here years ago but have not had time to continue it. The Spirit is the builder of the new temple. I don't want to express this in too few words, for a pithy statement is no substitute for the reality of the Spirit's work in us. Our liturgies and traditions try to do justice to it and sometimes do.

So let us pore over the gospels, as John Webster invites us to - but not to be so distracted by tradition, or method, that we miss entering into the love of the life-giving Spirit which is in this matter.

Sin and Repentance - Chapter 12

When I awake, I am still with thee. (I need the unambiguous singular here.)

Then I will be innocent of the great offence. (I need the impossible.)

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. (I need escape.)

The third essay in chapter 12 is by Miroslav Volf, The Lamb of God and the Sin of the World. My understanding of sin has been like this: no God, no sin. He puts it this way:

Sin is an irreducibly theocentric notion that cannot be translated without loss into psychological, sociological, or cosmological terms. Whatever sin may be formally (e.g. homelessness or disharmony), it is "ungodliness" in the sense of turning away from God.

He's right - no God, no sin.

Fundamentally sin is a failure in a relationship. Am I still with thee (Psalm 139)? Sin is unknown - there are hidden and presumptuous sins as we see in the last stanza of Psalm 19 - under detailed verse by verse examination by John with of course mad-colour disease by me. And sin is hard to face - so we deceive ourselves. (1 John)

Jews and Christians have a strong sense of sin. So much so that lots of people argue about it - especially original sin. Chapter 12 begins with a sensitive essay Turn us to you and we shall return: Original Sin, Atonement, and Redemption in Jewish Terms, by Stephen Kepnes. He reads Paul with understanding and shows several phrases and words in the TNK that undergird the 'concept' of original sin focussing particularly on galut, exile, as a way of helping a Jewish reader identify with the 'Christian' concept.

I put these terms in single quotes, because it is too easy to get lost in speculative cerebralism when the problem is relational - and relational with the only possible solver of the problem - God.

And of course, God's solution is not very attractive - death! (Hey - wait a minute - what about repentance?)

Oh - right. There is repentance, but both traditions ask if that is something I / you /we can do? Can we turn from our sin? Here Kepnes has picked in his title the essential verse - Turn us to you and we will turn. Lamentations 5:21 - right at the end of arguably one of the greatest expressions of human sorrow in poetry. We're in a catch-22 - needing something, deceived by ourselves, and yet knowing that there is more. I hear the problem caught in Psalm 90 - Lord, Thou has been our refuge, another poem about turning, and also caught in the Shaker song - till by turning, turning, we come round right.

Kepnes engages the scope of the problem and the many Jewish pointers to the reality of the I-Thou that must resolve it. He writes of the liturgical and sacrificial components from the Akedah (Abraham and Isaac) and its interpretation in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan to the sin offering, to Yom Kippur. It's a short essay that is full to overflowing.

Volf accepts the efficacy of the liturgy and exile as analogy, but he does not accept exile as a sufficient image. He deals with the New Testament critical texts such as "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself." Theologically, this atonement is an "event in the life of God".

Volf ends with gratitude that Prefessor Kepnes has been very sympathetic but puzzlement that he has not asked the hard questions such as: why does repentance not suffice that the Son of God must take the sins of the world away? Or if I can add Nanos question to me: if the Messiah has come, why are we not yet living in the Messianaic age?

The middle essay - I think I have figured out what they were trying to do - the middle essay is a Jewish response to the Jewish first essay. I will have to read the book again and see if I can make better sense of them. The middle essay is by Laurie Zoloth, Exile and Return in a World of Injustice: A Response to Stephen Kepnes. I didn't want to go here in this review. Sin is pervasive and has large and complex consequences. Maybe later.

There is only one chapter left: The Image of God. Other chapter reviews in this series: 1-4 5 6 7 8 9, 10a and 10b, 11.

Works of the Law

I came across this review of the phrase 'works of the law'. I don't want to go to a complex place to reframe this phrase and others in Galatians - but I may have to. If so, the work will be done on a different day. Today I actually am observing Shabbat. I enjoyed the robust singing of the Shul choir this morning and I was invited to come and sing next time I am in town. (This is my last weekend here for a while - back to Victoria on Friday - though my office in home doesn't exist there since we are in the midst of construction.)

I would learn Hebrew very quickly if I sing. Today I was able to sing and I saw that I could follow even the impossible cantor for three or four lines (assuming I knew where he was starting). And I was able to follow the haftorah completely - Isaiah 54, the fifth of 7 consolation passages that follow the 9th of Av. Note the reference to Noah. God had forgotten for a moment even his promise to Noah! This sense of exile will be important for the next chapter of Frymer-Kensky. (Wait for it - for it will surely come.)

The sermon today was engaging and full of energy - on the butterfly effect, that there are no small things, a meditation on the Torah portion, Deuteronomy 21-25 which has many mitzvot, among which is the instruction concerning the incorrigible child, and the man on the tree. Both of these are very close to my heart, for my youngest son is incorrigible due to brain damage, but his mother and father never agreed that he should suffer such a fate. And of course the hanging on the tree is applied to Jesus.

Of Shabbat I noted that it is a bride, and a great joy, a memory of the creation (zkr lmasah bereshit) - this is a deep truth. The Lord had asked me - will you go to the service this morning? I did not want to go. I said I would not understand anything and I had work to do. But he reminded me that I had been recreated through his death and so, eventually, I said - OK I will go, and I will observe the day. The joy came first but the following lessons were also lovely. And had I not been there, I could not have had an invitation to sing.

The work that he came to do, is the same word as 'works' of the law that Paul speaks of. It is by this work that I am recreated. There is something very positive here. And there is an aspect of our exile - our alienation - the sin we cannot escape from (see Psalm 19, the third section - I know, the coloring is over the top) that his particular work on the cross, hung on a tree, has dealt with, undoing the curse I am under just because I am born into a place of exile - which might be considered at least similar to the idea of original sin. I am really not wanting to be doctrinaire on this. I am not a theoretical theologian. But I do have some first hand knowledge of the liturgy in a life that begins to exercise itself in participating in this work of Jesus which I think fulfills the requirements of the Law in us.

Lots of blogs

I regularly read the JTS weekly commentary on the Torah. Speaking of the principle of remembering God amidst the bounty of the promised land, Rabbi Marc Wolf referenced not the Torah but a blog!

Hechsher Tzedek is a symbol that hopefully will be affixed to kosher products. It will certify that the product has met standards that recognize that our reach for holiness extends beyond the blade of the slaughterer. The Hechsher Tzedek will set standards for “wages and benefits, health and safety, training, environmental impact, product development, and corporate transparency”

The link above references one of their recent posts: Church and steak - farming for the soul. Worth a read -"What brought these men together could easily have kept them apart: religion."

(Some of my children eat only vegetables - and I admit to the beauty and convenience particularly at this time of year when the abundance is so great.)

As an addendum here is this week's commentary - really lovely particularly this:

When Rabbi Pinhas ben Yair was living in city of the south, some men came there to work. They had two measures of barley they left with him which they forgot when they went away. Rabbi Pinhas ben Yair sowed the barley year after year and harvested it and stored it. After seven years the men returned and when Rabbi Pinhas ben Yair recognized them, he said to them, ‘Come take your storehouses full of grain.’ From the faithfulness of Man you can learn the faithfulness of God (Deuteronomy Rabbah 3:3).