Brokeback Mountain - Rabbis are cool with that
The 2005 film Brokeback Mountain features two manly sheepherders, Ennis and Jack, who sleep out in the wild on a remote mountain range, in a single tent - at first under separate blankets. But in a moment of passion, the two discover the social construction of the norms for male sexuality in an very immediate way - although Ennis spends the rest of the film struggling between his desire and societal expectations.
However, those canny sages of old, the tannaitic Rabbis, already knew about such things. Although it isn’t uneqivocal, the Mishnah declares its approval for ’brokebacking‘.
“Rabbi Judah says: an unmarried man may not herd cattle, nor may two unmarried men sleep under the same cloak. But the Sages permit it.”
(Mishnah, Kiddushin 4:14)
Well, that’s a very practical approach to legislating same-sex relationships, isn’t it? After all, the Rabbis probably realised that if they were to clamp down on such things altogether, how many manly sheepherders would be still putting up their hands to herd sheep in remote mountain ranges?
- See:
Moss JA and Ulmer RB, “Two men under one cloak” – the Sages permit it: homosexual marriage in Judaism.” Journal of Homosexuality 55.1 (2008): 71-105
Sages? But is Rabbi Judah not a sage too?
Isn’t he just speaking generally on behalf of them all? I dunno.
Ah – the second comment, “But the Sages… ” indicates a minority opinion.
[I changed the post - it seems that the majority Sage opinion is permissive of brokebacking, and R. Judah was the minority. But I admit I have trouble reading the Rabbis.]
R. Judah seemed very worried about the single man all alone with cattle. I mean, a man on his own, with only cattle for company. With two men together, the disputed sexual relationship changes.
OK, so why did R. Judah think unmarried men shouldn’t herd cattle together? Could this be connected with the passage in m. Hag. 2:1 about not expounding Lev 18? The great thing about this is the rabbinic deferral to the majority, even, in another famous passage, against a Bat Qol. “My children have defeated me [and gone off to bonk each other and random stray cattle]!”
The sages may be cool with Jack and Ennis, but how would they feel about brokebacking Aussie style?.
Anyway my wife will be delighted to hear I can now go back to herding cattle.
The post title says that the Mishnah allows same-sex relationships. The actual text quoted appears to say that it’s not really a llowed – but that there’s a minority opinion that would let men do it anyway.
Isn’t this just an admission in the Mishnah that there are Sages who will let people do what they aren’t meant to? That’s how it looks to me.
R. Judah is the minority; the Sages who let unmarried men sleep under the same blanket are the majority.
Incidentally, by the time you get to the Talmud, the statement of the majority gets explained away, by the denial that homosexuality is something that ever took place amongst Jews! i.e., the only reason they could do it was because they didn’t.
So is R Judah complaining about the Sages becoming more liberal?
I don’t know if R. Judah would have been in dialogue with the others or not. When the Mishnah gathers these opinions together in text, it just reports his opinion as a minority rabbinic opinion concerning the sleeping arrangement of unmarried men.
I realise he wasn’t speaking to them. I was just commenting on his take on the state of affairs of the teaching of the sages. he seems to be saying that they have fallen away from right teaching.
No, that’s not right, but maybe you’re thinking R. Judah wrote these two sentences? (He didn’t.)
The opinion of R. Judah ben Illai is recorded in the first sentence. The opinion of the majority of the Sages is recorded in the second sentence. The compiler of both is not R. Judah ben Illai (it’s R. Judah HaNasi). So R. Judah ben Illai is not commenting on the rest of the Sages here.
OK, so rather than R. Judah, is the compiler saying that the Sages are a bit liberal?
On another note – I notice that according to the title, the Mishnah “allows” same-sex relationships a la Brokeback Mountain. I wonder how fair this is, given that the opinions cited are about whether or not men should share a tent. It may well be, for example, that R. Judah supposed that doing so may encourage same sex relationships, whereas the sages thought that it would not. It’s well known, for example, that the Mishnah as a whole is pretty harsh on homosexual unions. A modern Rabbi, bradley Shavit Artson, put it thus:
So while there was a disagreement here about whether tent-sharing was appropriate, there’s no indication that this was a disagreement about whether same-sex relationships themselves where appropriate. It looks like the sages took a more liberal stance then R Judah about what was prudent and what wasn’t.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think so. ;)
I don’t think there’s any secure basis to establish the compiler’s opinion of the majority Sages as “a bit liberal” or not. Also, there is no secure basis to establish whether the unmarried men were “heterosexuals with no other sexual outlet”, and the speculation probably only reveals a modern categorization of ‘heterosexual’ versus ‘homosexual’.
But if you’re content to speculate, then I think we can also speculate that the Sages were turning a blind eye to what unmarried sheepherders got up to. Remember also that they usually in fact didn’t carry out those stonings they kept prescribing, on the grounds that the person might have repented and was forgiven. Those canny Sages!
Well, the rabbi I quoted is one who would freely idenitfy as somewhat liberal, who personally did not accept the Mishnah’s stance on the issue. He claims that ancient texts are ignorant of our modern knowledge of the existence of orientation.
As for whether they were turning a blind eye…. I don’t think so, because they didn’t merely ignore tent sharing, they allowed it. I think they were perhaps less worried about anything happening, perhaps seeing it as unlikely.