The Rabbi and the Abyss of AIDS Joseph A. Edelhez't ary Catherine Bateson and Richard in Thinking AIDS note that will cause and social reactions that may change the character of human social life.? AIDS has already forced us to raise questions that we have had no reason to ask before. Asking such questions and confronting the challenge of discovering answers are themselves a transformative process that changes indi- viduals no less than AIDS will ?change the character of human social life.? Bateson and illuminate the transformative character of AIDS and the sobering awareness that, once transformed, one stands on the edge of an abyss opened by the questions that can come only from the people touched by AIDS. Mine is but a small voice in a growing chorus of those who are aware that life is completely different since the advent of our work with AIDS has transformed us. This awareness opens us to the reality that we are living through a caesura, a rupture in history in which our behavior, attitudes, and beliefs will change. Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits challenged us with the following insight from the experiences of the Shoah; the trans- formative character of AIDS renews this challenge: The human being, as a potentiality, and the world that [s/]he encounters, are the raw material out of which selfhood emerges. The reality of [wo/]man is never given; [s/]he has to shape it for [her/]himself out of what is given to [her/]him. How [s/]he does it, that alone determines the quality of [her/]his humanity. The first question I remember still rings in my ear. The young woman called on behalf of her brother who was gravely ill in the hospital with PCP, pneumocystic carinii, the pneumonia most frequently related to the HIV virus. He had wanted to see a rabbi; could I please visit him? I asked whether he was af?liated, if he had a rabbi. I did not want to interfere with someone else?s congregant. I was told that the man?s rabbi had rejected him shortly after he had been diagnosed with AIDS, saying Joseph A. Edelhez't is the rabbi of Emanuel Congregation in Chicago. He serves on the UAHC National Committee on AIDS and is on the AIDS Pastoral Care Network' Board. that there was no place in Judaism for him. I refused to accept that statement. It was impossible?no rabbi could possibly say that; no rabbi could have done that. Slowly but perceptibly I accepted new insights, and I struggled with a new awareness of a different kind of suffering. I ask myself again, I ask anyone who will listen: Can a rabbi help rekindle a soul that has been smashed by another rabbi?s homophobia? If rabbis are ignorant and sometimes homophobic, who will reach out to those homosexual Jews who have been turned off by our callous silence? Are there enough rabbis and lay- people who will hear the call of those in need? This was the ?rst person with AIDS (PWA) to teach me by his patience and his extraordinary courage. He held his hand out to me, and I tentatively and fearfully reached back. Months later I held his hand as he died, and I faced a new set of questions. His mother told me in the hospital room that she could not tell the people at the school where she was a nurse that her son had died of therefore there could be nothing in the eulogy about her son?s illness or about his gay Jewish identity. How do you deliver eulogies in euphemisms? And how do you help people struggle through their grief when they mask its source? Once you?ve done a funeral for a PWA, you realize there are new questions about Jewish customs and the halakhic interpretation of rituals. Does one include a homosexual lover as an ave] (mourner)? Does one give a hrz'a ribbon (traditionally worn by immediate family members) to a lover? A gay Jewish man, at the funeral of a Jewish PWA, asked me whether he should say haddz'sh. Is haddz'sh an obligation, not simply an option, for a homosexual lover in the way that it is for a spouse? I quickly reviewed in my mind all of the laws about those people who are categorized halakhically as mourners, but nothing in the Jewish tradition has a response to this question at this moment. I said, ?Yes, you are obligated to say haddz'sh.? Have I abused my rabbinic authority? Have I misinterpreted the law? Each question is ?radically? new, always raw. There have been more funerals and more PWAs and more questions. What does one do about the embalming of a PWA?when the state requires a steel casket liner without embalming? What does one say to a Jewish funeral director plagued by ignorance and prejudice 67 when he or she says that a remains, without a steel casket liner, will infect the people in the chapel? What does one do after a Jew has died from AIDS, when his Methodist lover asks for a memorial service in the synagogue? Who is the ?rabbi? for a gay Jew who has died from AIDS but who was so alienated from the Jewish community that he had not af?liated for twenty- ?ve years? Should a rabbi facilitate a memorial service in a Methodist church since there is no synagogue that is open to the unaf?liated? I answered the question by leading the services at the church, and then I did another service for him at the cemetery I continue to ask the question now: What does the statement from Isaiah? ?My house shall be a house of prayer for all peoples? really mean? Should we understand that statement to exclude PWAs, gays, and lesbians? The ?rst time I preached on AIDS was on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, and I was asked all sorts of ?profes- sional? questions about rabbinic sensitivity to politically controversial issues. Is it permissible to change the wording of the prayer U?netaneb Tokef because as a prayer of providential theology it now sounds harsh and cruel, as if God were using AIDS as a punishment? I shared with the congregation my own introduction to AIDS and how it had already changed me, and I be- seeched them to look into their hearts and confront their own prejudice, fear, and ignorance. Some of them were shocked, even angry. Yet others were deeply moved. Then more questions?how could you do this on the eve of Rosh Hashanah? The questions were always a ?mild? form of chastisement. Should a rabbi take a leadership role on issues that are not explicitly dealt with by the Torah? Had I abusively tampered with a sensitive medieval pz'yyut (poetic prayer) from the High Holiday liturgy when I rewrote the U?netane/a Tokef? I was beginning to understand that there is a difference between being a rabbi ?before? and ?after? the advent of AIDS. Randy Shilts is correct in The Band Played On: there is a ?before? and an ?after?; most of us just don?t realize we are already living in the ?after.? There was the board of trustees meeting at the syna- gogue at which someone got up and challenged me, asking me whether I wanted all the homosexuals in Chicago to join our congregation. Wouldn?t the congre- gation change, and didn?t I know that homosexuality was a sin according to the Torah? The questions conveyed such contempt; I stood alone, and the board was silent. I answered: Yes, Leviticus 18:22 does refer to homo- sexuality as an abomination, but Deuteronomy 22:5 says that a woman wearing a man?s clothing is an abomination, too; your wife and daughters wear slacks?are they an abomination? Then I was asked: If I cared so much about gays, would I start ?marrying? them? That was a question that I had not yet heard asked in that way, 68 TIKKUN VOL. 4, No. 4 though I was soon to hear it again and again. I started to listen to it differently. ll rabbis, especially those who care for the dying A and bury the dead and attend to the grieving, must ask: How shall we relate differently to the living, when the living are gay men and lesbian women? Can we ever read Leviticus 18:22 in the same way? Is it ethical for us to refuse to read it, to expurgate it from the text of the Torah? What shall we do when that weekly Torah portion comes again? The ?rst time I went on a TV show about AIDS and the Jewish community, I tried to explain why there was confusion, apathy, and fear. The question from the inter- viewer, a question one hears again and again and again, was: ?Why is AIDS a Jewish problem and not merely a human problem?? One can answer the question in terms of the lives of Jews as PWAs, as lovers, as parents, as grandparents, as sisters and brothers. And another question: ?But how many Jews are we talking about? Five percent? Ten percent?? How does one answer that question? Why is AIDS a Jewish problem? Because there are Jews dying of it, Jews living with it, and Jews grieving over it. All of this is obvious. Why is any problem a Jewish problem? Did we ask how many Jews needed to be discriminated against in the South in the ?fties and sixties for civil rights to be aJewish problem? Did we ask how many Jews had to die in Vietnam for that to be a Jewish problem? Do we ask how many Jews are homeless when we proclaim that homelessness and p0verty are a Jewish problem? Must there be a pasuk (verse) in the Torah that de?nes the problem as Jewish for it to be a Jewish problem? Must 10 percent of those touched by AIDS be Jews for us to recognize a new reality? Should rabbis and Jewish leaders be concerned only about Jewish problems, narrowly construed? Should a rabbi be obligated to teach about AIDS in religious supplementary schools when students are already learning about it in public schools? One en- raged mother argued, ?Why should you take time away from teaching Torah by teaching about Then she took her child out of the school. Should a rabbi, a Jewish educator, and a Jewish school be responsible for teaching about sexuality with an equal emphasis on celibacy and condom use? Would such an educational program also include teaching about ?safer sex?? Is it a Jewish problem if there is a sakana (danger) that can be decreased? In Illinois, rabbinic involvement with the AIDS epi- demic became a reality when every premarital couple was required to take an HIV antibodies blood test. How does a rabbi handle a young male who turns to his ?anc?e and says, guess you ought to know before we have the HIV test that I had a chance homosexual encounter.? What does a rabbi do when a young man calls crying three days after an initial premarital session and admits that he had joined his fraternity brothers in going to a whorehouse and obviously had had high-risk exposure? Is the rabbi obligated to tell the fianc?e, and what if either of them tests positive? Should I, as a rabbi who requires Tay-Sachs testing, require the HIV test before marriage in case the couple chooses to have children? Nothing in the Torah, the Talmud, the Sbulk/Jan Ara/eh, or any of the commentaries on these texts answers these questions. No professor at the Hebrew Union College ever taught me anything about this. Yet there are people who come to me whose eyes glisten with tears and whose hearts race as I try to explain that the HIV antibodies test is not an AIDS test, and that they should go to a doctor they trust and not to a street clinic. I explain what an ELISA test is and what the Western blot confirmatory test is. Each time I speak to a premarital couple, I worry about their emotional strength when their sexual behavior of the past ten years is tested. ow do rabbis teach other rabbis about We rarely talk together about sexuality and IV drug use, and certainly not in graphic terms. Is there an issue of z?nut (immodesty) which impedes rabbis from addressing these matters? When one is trying to achieve communal rabbinic support for an AIDS education program, should ideological differences compromise rabbinic integrity? Is it possible to have an AIDS program that does not emphasize the use of con- doms, since premarital sexual activity is not permitted by the traditional rabbinate? Should the organized Jewish community support AIDS education programs that, in order to achieve Orthodox support, ignore homosexual behavior? Was it appropriate for me to be compelled to accept the title ?doctor? in lieu of ?rabbi? in order to teach a group of Orthodox rabbis about AIDS and premarital counseling? Is it significant that major rab- binic organizations seem to ?nd time to discuss almost every important issue in the Jewish and secular world except How does a rabbi answer questions about becoming involved in community task forces on Should rabbis try to set up a Jewish communal or interfaith coalition on Should rabbis spend outside, noncongregational time involved in such community organizations? Why have there been so few rabbis consistently involved in these projects? Most rabbis honestly face the crush of many pressing commit- ments. Sfill, Some rabbis have suggested that AIDS is too controversial, and besides, it involves them only intellectually?they haven?t met any PWAs. Other rabbis simply never respond to the many letters and calls. There are too many AIDS meetings, yet there are still not enough meetings for all of the problems that AIDS brings us. Sometimes those people who have been transformed by dealing with AIDS feel lonely, angry, and resentful that they are carrying the burden of AIDS for others. Dennis Altman, in his provocative essay ?Legitimation Through Disaster,? has noted that AIDS paradoxically has legitimated the gay community more than it has ever been legitimated before. Thus, even though we have all tried to separate AIDS from the gay community, those of us who have done AIDS work are necessarily drawn closer and closer to that community. WillJewish leaders have any choice but to confront the valid claims of gays and lesbians? Are we ready to engage in more than merely supporting the already existing network of syna- gogues that have a special connection with the gay and lesbian Jewish community? How will we respond to the needs of gay and lesbian rabbis? What should we do with the liturgies for life-cycle events as they pertain to gay and lesbian Jews? We do not yet have any referential categories that explain the extraordinary range of questions provoked by AIDS. We do not know how to evaluate the daily, 'weekly, and statistics. Knowing how many people have died from AIDS does not begin to help us cope with those who are living with AIDS. Have we even begun to ask how we will help those who will die to do so with dignity? Our lack of any analogue to the transformative char- acter of AIDS adds an extra element of frustration. One possible analogue to the radical social change we will continue to experience is the issue of racism and civil rights. Those of us who are touched by AIDS, may be experiencing what only a vanguard of people prophet- ically understood from 1955 to 1957, before civil rights became the tidal wave that changed America socially, economically, and emotionally. We must now come to accept that these same kinds of changes are on the horizon, as the pressure of the AIDS epidemic provides the crucible within which some of the moral foundations of the twenty-first century will be forged. Rabbis, Jewish educators, and Jewish lay leaders are like everyone else. We weren?t more ready than anyone else for AIDS, and many of us may feel that AIDS is bigger than we can handle politically, morally, emotion- ally, and Still, the changes that the AIDS epidemic has wrought cannot be reversed. We cannot stop asking questions about AIDS merely because they don?t lie explicitly within Jewish tradition. We can- not simply say that homosexuality is an ?abomination.? And we cannot, as Jews, be responsive to AIDS and deny the transformative nature even of the questions themselves that are provoked by the epidemic. THE RABBI AND AIDS 69