Just Say No

The latest issue of the journal Dialogue (with which I’m associated editorially) has just been published and its appearance could hardly be timelier. Under the rabbinic aegis of Rav Aharon Feldman Rav Moshe Meiselman and Rav Shlomo Miller the journal includes a broad range of articles from halachic analyses to explorations of Jewish thought and history and the intersection of science and Torah. But a primary function of Dialogue is to fill the role that the now-defunct Jewish Observer once did by providing a forum for talmidei chachamim of stature to express Torah views on critical — and often controversial — issues of the day.

Several articles in the current issue are devoted to a topic that is very much in the news: same-gender relationships and the efficacy of reparative therapy for those afflicted by same-gender attraction. TheCaliforniastate legislature recently passed the nation’s first ban on administering such therapy to minors and after conflicting district court rulings on the law a federal circuit court will soon hear arguments on its constitutionality. InNew York an ultraliberal advocacy group is currently assisting several plaintiffs in pursuing a civil suit against a Jewish organization that provides some form of such therapy.

Rav Aharon Feldman appears in Dialogue’s pages with a magisterial essay on why the Torah regards such relationships as so deeply abhorrent and damaging. The Rosh Yeshivah writes that “[g]enerally considerations of modesty militate against discussion of [such] matters in a public forum” but that “in a period when the media and advertising are suffused with the promotion of [this form of degenerate behavior] and the surrounding culture has embraced it these considerations must give way to the more urgent need for a compelling Torah response … and a clear exposition of what it is that the Torah finds so deeply harmful about [such behavior].” The issue also includes a brief but illuminating letter from Rav Shmuel Kamenetsky addressing this topic.

And for those who might wonder whether this topic is really of relevance to the Orthodox community an article by Dr. Elan Karten an Israel–based psychologist with an almost-exclusively frum clientele makes a compelling case not only for the efficacy of at least some forms of reparative therapy but also that the need for it certainly does exist in the Orthodox community. Particularly fascinating is the account of his efforts to publish his research despite the attempts of a deeply politicized psychological establishment to squelch all dissent to the reigning anti–reparative therapy orthodoxy.