Want No Wanton Hatred

In a few weeks, my wife, Julie, and I are going to Europe to experience this amazing thing called “a vacation.” Part of our time away will be spent with two dear, dear, dear friends who came into my life a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, back when I was both a dyke and an aspiring rock and roll musician. I was playing in the iconic (weren’t they all?) Bay Area band KUKUKU in the mid 1980s. We were going through an epic Fleetwood Mac style breakup: high drama, feverish lust, and tearful discussions that went long into the night. After a few months of processing hell, the axe fell and musical cell division ensued. Now, instead of one band that hadn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of economic survival, there were two. Undaunted by the odds, my faction came up with a new name and poured every cent we had into making a studio demo. 

We had a sound engineer friend at the new-on-the-scene Dancing Dog studios, opened by a guy called Adam Duritz (yeah, he went on to greater things). Our engineer, Lydia, not a lesbian, reached out because she was hosting some UK punk band friends, Pickle and Thorn*, and well, they were lesbians. Lydia wondered if I could, ya know, take them to some of the Bay Area lesbian hot spots. I said “Of course!!”, which was hilarious because I had never been to a Bay Area lesbian hot spot in my life. We hit it off immediately. They were smart and funny in that sardonic, quick-witted, charmingly snarky British way.  A bond was formed that lasts to this day.

I loved them both from the beginning and always will. But after they did the lesbian break up thing—no longer a couple but still “til death do us parteth”—my bond with Pickle strengthened. Over the years we have, mostly from a distance, seen each other through break-ups, career spins, heartbreaks, health crises, celebrations, moves, my transition, dying parents, and our own aging into our current dotage. She is beautiful and prickly, brutally hilarious, possesses a crystal-clear intellect, and is very, very tender underneath a somewhat salty, leathery-tough exterior. She is reverently irreverent and would be my kindred under any circumstance, but then she went and partnered with an irresistibly charming Irish lass, around whom we are all hopeless. Pickle says the same thing about Julie, so there’s that. We’ve been through a lot of life, and now have a new adventure ahead because, as of a few years ago, she is a self-identifying Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist, a TERFer by any other name. 

Which is just a wee bit inconvenient for both of us. Nevertheless, our friendship comes first. And I’m so glad of it, because my svara, my internal moral compass, my gut sense of what is right and wrong, tells me that we have a lot more to gain by listening to each other, no matter if it gets a little uncomfortable, than we do by turning our backs on a brilliant 40 year international, interfaith, intercultural, interpersonal, Limeys ♥️ Yanks project. And I think the rabbis, who were no strangers to internal friction and infighting, would back me up on that.

As many of you learned at last summer’s Queer Talmud Day Camp, God is something of a relativist where human conflict is concerned. In the midst of a series of riffs about which rabbi is the smartest, best, wisest, and most compelling, the Talmud slams the lid on the matter with a stunning sugya: 

אָמַר רַבִּי אַבָּא אָמַר שְׁמוּאֵל: שָׁלֹשׁ שָׁנִים נֶחְלְקוּ בֵּית שַׁמַּאי וּבֵית הִלֵּל, הַלָּלוּ אוֹמְרִים: הֲלָכָה כְּמוֹתֵנוּ, וְהַלָּלוּ אוֹמְרִים: הֲלָכָה כְּמוֹתֵנוּ. יָצְאָה בַּת קוֹל וְאָמְרָה: אֵלּוּ וָאֵלּוּ דִּבְרֵי אֱלֹהִים חַיִּים הֵן, וַהֲלָכָה כְּבֵית הִלֵּל.

Rabbi Abba said that Shmuel said: For three years Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel were divided. These said: The law is in accordance with us, and these said: Nuh-uh, the law is in accordance with us. At last a Divine Voice came forth and proclaimed: These and these are the words of the living God. However, the law is in accordance with Beit Hillel. (BT Eruvin 13b)

The Gemara goes on to explain that, even though both positions have merit, the law goes according to Beit Hillel because they listen and take pains to understand Shammai’s position before they present their own, and they learn their opponents reasoning well enough that they could even argue Shammai’s points as well as they could argue their own!! 

The sugya continues:

לְלַמֶּדְךָ שֶׁכָּל הַמַּשְׁפִּיל עַצְמוֹ — הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא מַגְבִּיהוֹ, וְכָל הַמַּגְבִּיהַּ עַצְמוֹ — הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא מַשְׁפִּילוֹ. כָּל הַמְחַזֵּר עַל הַגְּדוּלָּה — גְּדוּלָּה בּוֹרַחַת מִמֶּנּוּ, וְכָל הַבּוֹרֵחַ מִן הַגְּדוּלָּה — גְּדוּלָּה מְחַזֶּרֶת אַחֲרָיו, וְכָל הַדּוֹחֵק אֶת הַשָּׁעָה — שָׁעָה דּוֹחַקְתּוֹ, וְכָל הַנִּדְחֶה מִפְּנֵי שָׁעָה — שָׁעָה עוֹמֶדֶת לוֹ.

This teaches you that all who are humble, the Holy Blessed One exalts, and all who are haughty, the Holy Blessed One humbles. All who seek greatness, greatness turns away from, and all who turn away from greatness, greatness seeks. And all who force the moment (i.e. pushes their agenda), the moment forces back. And, all who (are are patient and) yield to the moment, the moment stands by them.

I am nowhere near achieving the beatific and enlightened attitude of the ancient House of Hillel, but I do aspire to rise to the challenge of listening to things that are hard to hear and that I disagree with vehemently, from a place of genuine love and respect. Selfishly, in this case, I don’t want to lose a friend. But on a much more global level I don’t want either of us to lose the myriad strides we have worked for, towards a world that accepts each of us in our entirety. 

In our lifetimes Pickel and I have lived through over a half century of LGBT and feminist headlines, some sensational and some quiet, some triumphs, some losses, but all steadily leading to incremental understanding, equality, and dignity: Christine Jorgensen, the Women’s Rights Movement, Stonewall, Title IX, ERA, abortion rights, Harvey Milk, AIDS, the glacially slow legal shift to decriminalize homosexual activity in the US (the Lawrence decision 2003) and UK (the Sexual Offences Act, 1967), Ellen, Trans Day Of Remembrance, and the legal acceptance of same-sex marriage (UK: The Marriage Act, 2013; US: Obergefell 2015), just to name a few. Follow the trajectory of any one of these stories and you will discover an undulating, wobbling, scribble that arcs towards justice. 

Until it doesn’t. We’ve already lost ground with the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and its replacement: the push for women to fulfill their destiny by having more babies. The bathroom laws, “don’t say gay”,  and a wild re-reading of Title IX are just a  few of the divisive moves already in play. We are on very slippery terrain and I fear we have a steep incline facing us. Which is why I refuse to let go of my friend. We need each other more than ever, we have more in common than ever and we will both get sent hurtling back to the oppressions of our forebears if we don’t leverage our love for one another and lock arms. The rabbis also knew the cost of infighting.   

מִקְדָּשׁ רִאשׁוֹן מִפְּנֵי מָה חָרַב — מִפְּנֵי שְׁלֹשָׁה דְּבָרִים שֶׁהָיוּ בּוֹ: עֲבוֹדָה זָרָה, וְגִלּוּי עֲרָיוֹת, וּשְׁפִיכוּת דָּמִים.

The first temple, because of what was it destroyed? Because of three things that happened in it: Idol worship, inappropriate sexual behavior, and bloodshed. 

A bunch of proof texts follow to hammer in the above assertion. And then this:

אֲבָל מִקְדָּשׁ שֵׁנִי שֶׁהָיוּ עוֹסְקִין בְּתוֹרָה וּבְמִצְוֹת וּגְמִילוּת חֲסָדִים, מִפְּנֵי מָה חָרַב? מִפְּנֵי שֶׁהָיְתָה בּוֹ שִׂנְאַת חִנָּם. לְלַמֶּדְךָ שֶׁשְּׁקוּלָה שִׂנְאַת חִנָּם כְּנֶגֶד שָׁלֹשׁ עֲבֵירוֹת: עֲבוֹדָה זָרָה, גִּלּוּי עֲרָיוֹת, וּשְׁפִיכוּת דָּמִים.

But the second temple folks, they were engaged with Torah, and they did mitzvot, and performed acts of loving kindness, so why was it destroyed? It was because of baseless hatred. From this it is taught that baseless hatred is equal to the transgressions of idol worship, inappropriate sexual behavior, and bloodshed. (BT Yoma 9b)

We have worked so hard to build this temple, where we can express our love, our truth, and our faith in each other. Over the last 50 years we were able to move from oppression to freedom, from shame to pride, from isolation to community because we did it together. We may not have loved every nook and cranny of the community, in fact we may have just barely tolerated certain factions, but we were profoundly aware that the minute we fractured we would all fall. So, contrary to the mythology that we were all one big happy Queer family, there were times when Lesbians, Gay men, and Bisexuals held both their noses and each other’s hands. The Femmes (of all genders) and the Butches (of all genders), the Faeries and the Androgynes, the Glam Queens and the Bears, scratched their heads in incredulity and reached for each other as they crossed the swamps. The dying and the well taught each other how to oscillate between fury and compassion, and the serial monogamists and the non-serial non-monogamists contained their attitudes in each other’s company. Somehow, miraculously, we fought for each others’ basic human right to love and live with integrity and a minimum of fear. We could not then, and cannot now afford to engage in שִׂנְאַת חִנָּם /sinat chinam, wanton hatred. Not now. Not ever. And that’s why I can’t wait to sweep my beloved friend into my arms in a few weeks. And why she will respond with one of her Limey quips, like, “Oh, Love, I quite like being squeezed like a lemon.”

May the Holy Blessed One, help us to listen and understand each other. May our capacity to love outweigh our inclination to worry. May we have the wisdom to know when to yield and when to seize the moment. May we embrace despite a few jagged corners. And may we know a time, speedily and soon, of being indivisible in our struggle for liberty and justice for all.  

*Not their real nicknames.