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Message: <br /><br /> If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/38178/full/38178/prop.-8-ruling-sticks-a-pin-into-the-balloon-of-justice/ <br /><br /> <b>Prop. 8 ruling sticks a pin into the balloon of justice</b> <br /> Thursday, May 28, 2009 | by Rachel Biale <br /><br /><p>In the three days leading up to the giving of the Torah on Shavuot, the people of Israel were instructed to cleanse themselves and stand at the foot of Mount Sinai with awe and trepidation, anticipating Matan Torah (the giving of the Torah).</p> <p>This week, in this very period, the California Supreme Court missed a historic opportunity to give us its own revelation, its own version of a new covenant of justice.</p> <p> <div class="capDivLeft" style="width: 126px;"><img alt="Vbiale, rachel" class="left" height="159" src="http://www.jweekly.com/images/uploads/z_photos_2009/zc05_29_09/Vbiale, rachel.jpg" title="Rachel Biale" width="126" /> <div class="caption">Rachel Biale</div> </div> When it ruled on May 26 that Proposition 8 will stand, the Supreme Court trampled not only the rights of same-sex couples, but the essential protection of any minority group from being stripped of its equal rights by the vote of 50 percent of Californians, plus one.</p> <p>The Midrash tells us that when God “shopped around” the Torah to the peoples of the world, no one wanted it. Each nation found in the Torah some ethical imperative that conflicted with its way of life or its means of livelihood.</p> <p>When God came to the people of Israel, it was presumably already with a premonition of another “No thank you.” After all, God had already known this people’s craving for the “fleshpots of Egypt” over the path to freedom; their longing for the tasty vegetables — “melons [or squash] and cucumbers” of Egyptian cuisine over the prospect of a Promised Land.</p> <p>Thus, the Midrash says: “‘And they stood under the mountain’ (Exodus 19:17) — Rabbi Avdimi bar Hama said: The verse implies that the Holy One overturned the mountain upon them, like an inverted bowl [kegigit], and said to them: ‘If you accept the Torah, it is well; if not, your grave will be right here.’”</p> <p>Once presented with the choice of accepting the Torah or having Mount Sinai dropped on their heads, the people of Israel eagerly took a leap of faith, saying “na’ase venishma” — we will do it and [then] we will hear it. This inversion of the logical order of things — normally one first hears the “marching orders” and then follows through (or, as it is often translated, “obeys”).</p> <p> <div class="capDivLeft" style="width: 360px;"><img alt="protest" class="left" height="270" src="http://www.jweekly.com/images/uploads/z_photos_2009/zc05_29_09/protest.jpg" title="Protesters gather May 26 for a late-afternoon rally near San Francisco City Hall and a march down Market Street. photo/dan pine" width="360" /> <div class="caption">Protesters gather May 26 for a late-afternoon rally near San Francisco City Hall and a march down Market Street. photo/dan pine</div> </div> What is this about? The Midrash suggests that hearing about the new ethical and religious order is a challenge beyond the people’s full grasp. It is through doing — first following the commandments in practice — that they will prepare themselves to truly hear them.</p> <p>The lesson of these midrashes is ever more resonant today.</p> <p>There are times when true leadership requires holding a mountain over the ordinary citizens’ heads. That mountain today is the mountain of equal rights and “justice for all.”</p> <p>Stuck in old ways and thought patterns, the people of California showed they were unable to leap to a new conception of justice when they passed Proposition 8 in the November election. The state Supreme Court had the opportunity — and the moral obligation — to compel us all to see the issues of equality and justice that were just beyond the grasp of a small majority of the electorate.</p> <p>Had the Supreme Court seized this moment, it could have brought us a new Torah, a Torah of “liberty and justice for all.”</p> <p>Had it taken this courageous step, many Californians would have had to practice first and then grow to truly hear and understand, let alone preach. With time and practice — and the discovery that expanding the tent of marriage to include LGBT couples does not harm heterosexual marriage — the justice of upholding same-sex marriage rights would have become self evident.</p> <p>And I should know. After 36 years in a “mixed marriage” — that of a man and a woman — I have not felt my marriage threatened by the marriage of same-sex couples; not by my married same-sex friends or the 17,988 or so couples whom I do not know personally.</p> <p>Instead, after the California Supreme Court’s failure to protect the right for everyone to marry, my marriage evokes not the sweetness of happiness and longevity, but the bitterness of an injustice.</p> <p><br /><strong>Rachel Biale</strong> lives in Berkeley. She is the Bay Area regional director of Progressive Jewish Alliance.</p>

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