Rabbi Steinlauf and is soon-to-be-ex-wife, who is also a rabbi, Batya
Posted on 10/08/2014 10:58:19 AM PDT by Mrs. Don-o
Dear Rabbi Gil Steinlauf:
You sure made a splash yesterday when, as the senior rabbi of Adas Israel (the largest Conservative synagogue in Washington DC) you announced that you are divorcing your wife and coming out as gay.
In a letter to your congregation, you asked for its “continued trust in me to guide you as your spiritual leader as I truly am.”
Such assertions are common by LGBT people – that being gay is “who they are.” But it’s an unfortunate and very narrow construction of someone’s identity. Rabbi Steinlauf, “who you truly are” indeed involves your libido, sexual orientation, and desired family format.
But you are also your faith, your marriage (your wife is also a rabbi), your parenthood (you have three children), your politics (you’re a Zionist and a proponent of social justice), your community, your status as a role model, your profession (calling?), and your job. To decide that one important but ultimately secondary aspect of your identity is your very essence – to which everyone in your family, congregation, and community must adapt – is awfully selfish.
Worse, Rabbi, is your attempt to justify your decision with reference to our sacred texts. Your letter cites the great Talmudic personality Abaye saying a scholar whose inside does not match his outside is an abomination. Does anyone seriously believe that our sages of blessed memory would think a rabbi who opts to stay closeted is MORE abominable than one who leaves his wife to pursue intimate relationships with other men?
Please.
Steps like yours no doubt feel like the right thing to do for gay men in loveless marriages. But you’re not just any gay man. You’re one of the most important Jewish leaders in your city. Part of your job is to help model a loving Jewish family.
Leave aside homosexuality. What does your announcement say to the many men in your synagogue who are more sexually attracted to younger women than to their wives? I doubt you’d approve of a congregant breaking up his family to chase after his 28-year-old secretary.
Oh, but you say being attracted to men is “who you are.” Well, for a lot of heterosexual males, being attracted to younger women is “who they are” too, but we don’t give them dispensation to seek – casualties be damned – self-actualization.
I’m not telling you this as an Orthodox Jew to a Conservative one – or as a celibate gay man to one who wants to explore same-sex relationships. I speak as a coreligionist who is concerned about the impact your decision will inevitably have on the people around you.
Yes, you came out yesterday. That doesn’t mean you can’t “go back in” today. If you don’t, I recommend that Adas Israel start looking for a new senior rabbi.
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I ache for his three kids.
He should have never married. However, once you marry, it is til death do you never part.
Here...let me editorialize this:
“Hello fellow Jews. Please allow me to continue to guide and lead you as your spiritual leader even though I do not give one little dang about what Almighty G-d says about a choice I am making and even though I am willfully destroying my G-d sanctioned family structure for it, because I am 100% selfish and have given into my lust full buying the lie that my lust and or my passions equals my nature as G-d intended. Please look away from all that and FOLLOW ME!!!”
Former Rabbi (teacher),
Your choice of abomination destroys all trust and good will you once had. Begone, we desire neither your counsel nor your countenance.
I guess he doesn’t believe the story of Lot which is Gods Word. Hope they don’t keep him around. Their main way to reproduce by messing with other children.
How can he be a “moral and spiritual leader” of others when he himself is immoral and carnal?
Much of the problem is in that line.
So a man who had NO interests in women managed to successfully persuade her that he really loved her and was interested in her AND sexually performed with her on numerous occasions.
But we are told that they find vaginas to be repugnant.
And his new “love” apparently means more to him than kids did.
“Your letter cites the great Talmudic personality Abaye saying a scholar whose inside does not match his outside is an abomination.”
And the Torah tells us that homosexual acts are abomination as well. The proper decision, knowing both those facts, is for a rabbi who is compelled to those acts to stop being a rabbi, since he is not fit for the job.
Just abominable what this man has done to his wife and children, and no doubt secondary victims of his selfishness. I am glad however, for this letter. The writer addresses it exactly as a true Jew should.
What, she made him gay by becoming a rabbi?
Is it wrong that that made me laugh?
:D
O2
One might not be surprised by this kind of “me, me, me ... my wife, family, and the Torah be damned” behavior if this was the rabbi of a Reformed congregation. But for a Conservative rabbi to do this will, or at least should, result in him being shoved out the door in short order.
he has a right to be homosexual
he DOESN”t have a right to treat his family like this
once you have a family, you should stick with it......
not jilt them to pursue your new-found sexual appetites elsewhere
homo or hetero or sheep or goats or pigs
stay with your family, rabbi!!!
Being a Rabbi is easier and pays better than digging ditches or being a grocer. So he wants to stay a Rabbi, still get paid but completely disavow in thought, word and deed the actual things he is supposed to be teaching.
Instead of condemning this man’s deceit this guy will be praised.
Evidence of the low character among the gay rights activists.
As with many modern American Jews, this guy does not identify as a Jew as much as he embraces liberalism.
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