After many years, I am posting here Jorge Nassau's English translation of my text "Nuestro Babel." I wish to express my deepest gratitude to Jorge, who contacted me shortly after I wrote the text saying he had felt inspired to translate it.
Our Babel: On the Situation of Dialogue in the Mexican Jewish Community
At age 23, English scientist Alan Turing solved an old, intractable logic problem that
dated back to the seventeenth century. The predicament, in a nutshell, asked if it was
possible to reduce human reasoning to a computational problem. Not long after,
Turing’s interest in exploring the limits of automated processes led him to conceive a
‘universal machine’—the first device capable of translating a numeric code into a
mechanical instruction. And so, with only 24 years of age, Turing had conceived the idea
of software. In other words, his abstract work in the realm of logic paved the way to
create a system without which no computer program would be able to exist—from a
basic text processor to the most sophisticated app, like the one that allows me to see
and identify the stars from my smartphone.
In those days, Turing was studying at Princeton, New Jersey, working on a mathematics
PhD. It was a fascinating time to be at prestigious institution, with world-renowned
scientists such as Albert Einstein and John von Neumann strolling around the halls.
However, after getting his degree two years later, Turing decided to return to England.
At the beginning of the Second World War, he was recruited by the government to work
at the Bletchey Park military site. There he deciphered Enigma, the Nazi army’s secret
code, using a machine known as ‘Victoria’, which replicated and translated it
automatically. Without a doubt, it was “an achievement that helped save Britain from
defeat in 1941 and reversed the tide of the war” 1 .
One would have expected a monument to be erected as a testament of Turing’s
heroism and contributions, but the reality was quite different. Not only were his heroic
endeavors kept secret for decades, but nine years after the termination of the War he
was accused of what British Law called a “gross indecency”. For it so happened that,
besides being a somewhat slovenly and shy young man, who enjoyed making puzzles,
running long distances, and fixing all sorts of mechanisms, Alan Turing was a
homosexual. For legal reasons, Turing declared himself guilty of charge and was granted
parole by a judge under the condition that he would undergo a hormonal treatment to
decrease his libido and ‘cure’ his homosexuality. This chemical castration did not only
disfigure his body, but after a year it destroyed his prodigious intellect. On June 7 th ,
1954, at age 41, Turing poisoned an apple with cyanide. The day after his maid found
the dead body lying on the bedroom, with the bitten apple next to it.
This is, by the way, the story behind Apple’s logo, the brand of the computer from which
I’m writing these words, and, maybe, of the platform from which you are reading them.
And although some deny this is the actual origin of the company’s logo 2 , there is no
doubt that Turing’s accomplishments deserve such homage. Be that as it may, I think
the symbol is a reminder of the terrible consequences of social intolerance, of the
blindness of a community that blocks the human spectrum of an individual and narrows
it down to his sex life. Since to neglect Turing’s revolutionary intelligence, to forget the
brave and honorable Turing that imparted a deadly blow to the Nazi beast, a colossal
amount of morbidity is required—a morbidity that the English disguised as puritanism
and morality.
This mechanism, which blocks everything a human is and sees in that person the
incarnation of something it deems despicable is not only a characteristic of
homophobia, but of all kinds of discrimination. The racist sees a skin color when looking
at a black or indigenous person. The chauvinist reduces a woman to a sexual object. For
the xenophobe, the foreigner exists essentially as a threat. For the classist, poverty is an
expression of a natural tendency to submission and self-deprecation.
Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, who successfully managed to introduce the
Talmud’s wisdom into modern philosophy, dedicated one of his books “to the memory
of […] the six million assassinated by the National Socialists, and of the millions and
millions of all confessions and all nations, victims of the same hatred of the other man,
the same anti-semitism” 3 . Levinas knew that all sorts of intolerance suffer the same
blindness; the same obsessive tendency to focus on what is different. Proof of this is the
way discriminated people are often treated: as contagious carriers of some sort of
danger, disease, or impure substance. Alas, the examples abound and seem to be
immune to the passage of time. They range from the medieval belief that Jews naturally
stink to the claims of American segregationists that the black race is a malign virus. And
I’m willing to bet that today each of us has heard someone express disgust for the mere
presence of a homosexual in his field of vision, and some even fear having contact with
them as if it was comparable to rape.
The energetic tone of the recently awoken debate in the Mexican Jewish community
shows that differences among its members were there much before Guimel—the
organization that offers support to LGBT Jews, their families and friends— launched its
campaign for the acceptance and tolerance of the LGBT minority, ‘Yo Tampoco’. What
the event did was bring those differences to light. It is evident that the violence with
which these differences and discrepancies emerged—the disputes and rivalries—can be
blamed, mostly, on those who divulged incendiary opinions. Yet in a deeper sense, we
are all at fault for the anger, confrontation, and resentment that today abound in the
air. Not so much for what has been said in the last few days, but precisely for what has
been silenced during the last few years. The debate has been postponed for far too
long, for we have put our own comfort above the angst of others, and we have
preferred artificial happiness to genuine discussion.
That is why I believe that, independently of our own position on the matter, we should
be grateful for Guimel's event. Because it has finally awoken us from our fatally solitary
dreams. The story of Babel shows that isolation and pride, seclusion and selfishness, are
two sides of the same coin. In the story there is no difference between sin (haughtiness)
and punishment (confusion). The thousands of different languages are in reality
thousands of men talking to themselves. If there is anything to learn from the recent
controversy is that we need to avoid at all cost returning to the comfort of silence.
Issues do not disappear by virtue of not talking about them. We have experience on the
matter: for many years divorce was a community taboo. The end result was that the
social cost of separation was so high that couples preferred a life of misery or violence
to breaking up the marriage. Addictions were also not talked about. The social
landscape was beautiful from afar, but households with an addict had a double
difficulty: besides dealing with the problem without community support, they had to do
it secretly in order to avoid being devoured by a moralizing society filled with prejudices.
In the subject of addictions, there is an anecdote that is case in point. About 25 years
ago a member of the Jewish community in Mexico approached his rabbi, Eitan Eckstein,
to tell him about his addiction to cocaine. The rabbi tried to help but the man overdosed
and died a week after. At the burial, the deceased’s younger sister handed a letter to
Rabbi Eckstein from her brother, in which he begged the rabbi to do everything possible
to help the victims of this ‘white monster’. Setting the foundations of what today is
Umbral, rabbi Eckstein started Retorno, the first Mexican Jewish organization to help
people afflicted with addictions.
One of the first actions of the founders of Retorno was to meet with the leaders of the
various communities to present the project and gain recognition. Instead of receiving
the attention and optimism that they deserved, the young men were met with an
attitude of skepticism, neglect, and rejection 4 . In fact, when they presented the idea to
the board of the Comite Central, the president himself said that addicitons “do not exist
in our community, your concern is a fallacy, will prove fruitless, and will arrive at
nothing” 5 .
Curious to know what rabbi Eckstein’s thoughts are about Guimel in our community, I
called him. He is now the head of Retorno International, a rehab center located in Beit
Hashemesh with increasing presence in the Jewish world. “It’s been 24 years and
nothing has changed”, he said, disappointment evident in his tone, as I finished the
story. Although he is aware homosexuality and drug addiction represent very different
issues, he thinks it is regrettable that the same institutional insensitivity to feel the pain
of some of our brothers persists. The wounds caused by such insensitivity on our society
are permanent.
Just as with the problem of addiction, accepting homosexuality in our community is not
a matter of openness—it’s about understanding a reality and starting to deal with it,
difficulties and challenges included. Some fear such understanding will increase the
number of homosexuals, and I’m sure more than one of you have heard someone say
that once you accept homosexuals, they pop out from everywhere. It’s true that
acknowledging them will make them more present. Not because they will start
multiplying by means of spontaneous generation, but simply because we will turn
around and look at them.
In other words, opening up or not to homosexuals is irrelevant because they have
always been there, in our families, and even in our schools—much before they were
aware of their sexual orientation. So the relevant question is if they will be part of our
lives. The Monte Sinai school, where I studied and now teach, is doing a great job in
implementing the IBO educational system. This highly regarded system takes the task of
forming “a diverse and inclusive community of students” 6 very seriously. This, however,
has the risk of becoming empty words, and there is nothing more dangerous to
education than incongruity. Meanwhile, there are still cases of bullying related to
homosexual stereotypes. Some of them so severe that it is unimaginable for friends to
express their affection and fraternity to one another with the freedom that David and
Jonathan did in the Tanach without being catalogued as faggots. So as long as
community institutions do not actively oppose oppression and exclusion to this group,
these problems will keep worsening. For without their participation there will be no
force strong enough to stop the tremendous psychological abuse faced by young girls
and boys at the minimal suspicion of being homosexual.
Some argue that the risk of sympathizing with Guimel is that once you accept their
message it’s a slippery slope to moral degeneration in our community. First it’s Guimel,
they say, quickly followed by Dalet and so on until we run out of Hebrew letters. But as
a community leader who supports the campaign said, “the most important thing that
has to prevail is respect”, and that “there is still much to do, but these are the first
steps” 7 . Contrary to what some of his detractors are trying to say, it is clear he was not
referring to a concealed agenda to push for gay marriage in a community that calls itself
orthodox. He is not a naïve leader; quite the opposite. I believe he was referring to the
fact that the basic respect for human dignity, regardless of our sexuality (kevod
haberiyot) 8 , is only the first step towards our responsibility to treat each other with love
and benevolence 9 . But, as this controversy made it clear, there is much to learn in the
aleph-bet of ethics and moral.
I am talking, by the way, about Halachic moral here; the same one that today is used as
a banner by those that promote exclusion and homophobia. The Torah does not only
forbid us from oppressing the stranger (Shemot, 22:21 and 23:12), but it also commands
us to love him as we love ourselves (Vaikrá, 19:33-34). As rabbi Saul Berman, student of
the great Rav Soloveichik observed, it is interesting that the Torah does not distinguish
between two types of strangers—those who live amongst the Jews (ger toshab), and
those who adopt Jewish law and convert (ger emet). The reason, he concludes, is that
those obligations must be met in both cases. Having these ethical obligations toward
those who are not even subject to same law as us, do we have the right to exclude
others who are Jews just like us? Indeed, it is hard to imagine that the opinions of our
Talmudists, who made actions the heart of their legal system, could legitimize unfair and
malicious treatment towards a group based upon their preferences. After all, weren’t
those jurists the ones to come up with a legal system that on the one hand is extremely
sensible to those in disadvantage (the poor, widows, foreigners, slaves, orphans), and
on the other fights against the abuse of power by those who hold privileged positions?
Rabbi Ahron Feldman, the head of Yeshiva Ner Israel, conscious that the Talmud’s ethic
is based on action, writes that “Judaism looks negatively at homosexual activity, but not
at the homosexual” 10 Rabbi Jaim Rapoport cites with approval this opinion in his book
Judaism and Homosexuality: An Authentic Orthodox View, which has been praised for its
encyclopedic knowledge of the sources and called a book of great Halachic erudition 11 .
There, he defends the central thesis that homosexuals are also subject to God’s love 12 .
Although rabbi Rapaport, sourcing from traditional texts, recognizes that gay or lesbian
sex is a severe transgression 13 , he emphatically reminds us that the category of this
sin—gilui haraiot—includes sexual perversions that we heterosexuals can commit as
well, rendering impossible for us to treat with particular disdain those susceptible of
committing the same faults as we are.
So it is quite surprising that board members of the Jewish community have distanced
themselves from Guimel’s campaign by claiming that the community as a whole is
“orthodox traditionalist”, with close following of “Halachic principles, based on our
sacred Torah”. There is simply no basis in Judaism to exclude or plainly ignore those who
form part of a minority in our people. The opposite is true: the Halachah commands us
to love and respect them only by virtue of them being part of us.
Unless, of course, what these community leaders are trying to protect is not the
Halacha, but a social status founded on personal prejudices. Because if there was an
authentic concern for the level of orthodoxy in our community, much before
homosexuality, we would be scandalized by the average level of religious observance of
its members. Besides, how can a principle of our community’s tradition be something
we only started discussing yesterday? The glorification of values and costumes of a
heroic past to justify ideas of purity and homogeneity is, and has always been, an
ideological manipulation tool of authoritarian regimes.
If this is the case, as Dr. Daniel Reynhold—professor of Jewish philosophy at Yeshiva
University—warns us, it is important we detect the “prejudice and homophobia hiding
behind a veneer of Halakhic [sic] respectability” 14 . Using the Torah, which we are
supposed to uphold as example of justice before the other nations, for exclusion and
intolerance, is equivalent to defaming its sanctity and denigrating the name of the
Jewish people.
Some of us have expressed support for social and intellectual diversity within our
community, as well as for the right to support Guimel. But our calls have been ignored
as having no relevant argument at best, and disqualified for standing against what is
considered to be the true institutional spirit of our community at worst. I cannot say I’m
surprised—another symptom of immaturity for dialogue is the automatic discredit of
different opinions, as if listening to the person we are talking to is not worthwhile. But
the intention of those of us that defend inclusion and pluralism is not, as it has been
suggested, to spill and corrupt the blood of our community by means of using nice
words. We do it because we fear the flow of that blood will be paralyzed by the
proliferation of dogmas and irrational stereotypes. Because we believe that religiously,
morally, and socially, we defend a perfectly reasonable position.
Or is it not reasonable to want to live in a society free of tragedies like Alan Turing’s? A
society where people are not reduced to a sexual orientation? Where fear and
discrimination do not shield behind a truth that goes against the critical, plural, and
humane spirit of our Torah? A society where Jewish history serves as a lesson of the
fatal consequences of exclusion and intolerance? A society in which a parent can be sure
that, if they have a homosexual son or daughter, he or she will not be abused and
abandoned to their own luck by the same community they belong to?
Maybe today we are a minority, but like rabbi Berman wrote in 1973, “relegating the
excited voices to a minority does not mean that we can safely, or ought morally and
religiously, simply ignore them. Minorities of one generation have a strange way of
becoming the majorities of the next. Fingers pointing out manifest injustices seem often
to become transformed into fists banging through walls of resistance to rectification” 15 .
The Rambam said that in order to work towards perfecting ourselves it is important to
develop a positive attitude towards criticism 16 . The mitzvah of tochacha consists of
pointing out a fault in someone else. While the most natural thing for us would be to
avoid criticism to prevent anger and ruptures, the wisdom of this mitzvah reminds of
that the lack of criticism might degenerate into apathy and then paralyze our capability
to correct our deeds. What is, Rebbi asks, “the proper path for a person to choose?
To love rebuke. For as long as there is admonition in the world, a peaceful spirit
descends upon the earth, blessing comes to the world, and all forms of evil are
removed from the world” 17 . Of course, in order for this to be true, criticism must
prove to come from a place of care and interest for our equals, and not from a wish to
create conflict. I hope that these words are received with the same love and genuine
concern that inspire them.
1 Holt , Jim. How the Computers Exploded .The New York Review of Books, June 7 2012
2 http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/06/opinion/apple-logo/
3 The communiqué can be reached at http://msinai.mx/
4 I thank Silvia Cherem for suggesting talking about Retorno, as well as Abbey Hinich and
Gilda Begún for their valuable accounts on the birth of that project
5 http://www.enlacejudio.com/2012/11/16/ventana-la-calle-ii-tras-los-bastidores-en-la-
politica-comunitaria-adicciones/
6 http://www.ibo.org/es/mission/
7 Emphasis by Rafael Zaga Tawil and Moisés Blanga Sefami, who used part of the interview
in their article ‘Jóvenes, Campo fértil y fácil de corromper!!’
8 http://www.statementofprinciplesnya.blogspot.mx/
9 It is written in Pirke Avot (commentary to Mishna 15) that “our love for God must be
reflected in our attitude towards other men without making distinctions based on race,
socio-economic level, or religious creed. For he who fears God respects in every man the
image of the creator”.
10 Feldman, Aharon. A Personal Correspondence. Jewish Action 58/3 (Spring 5758/1998), p.
69
11 See, for example. Dr. Daniel Rynhold’s remark titled “Compassion and Halakhic Limits:
Judaism and Homosexuality: An Authentic Orthodox View by Chaim Rapoport”, which
appeared in the Orthodox magazine The Edah Journal (5:1, Tammuz 5765)
12 Rapoport , Rabí Jaim. Judaism and Homosexuality: An Authentic Orthodox View. Vallentine
Mitchell, London, 2004, p. 43
13 Opposite to the prohibition of gay sex, which appears in the Torah (Vaikra, 18:22 and
20:13), lesbian sex is not mentioned until Shulchan Haruch: “For women it is forbidden rub
one another in a sexual position”.
14 Op. cit., p. 4
15 Berman, R. Saul J. The Status of Women in Halakhic Judaism. Tradition: A Journal of
Orthodox Jewish Thought, Vol. 14:2, 1943.
16 Hilchot Teshuva 4:2
17 Tamid, 28:3
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