In a new interview with Details magazine, actor Sir Ian "Gandalf" McKellen shares a very unusual ritual that he has when staying in hotels. Unlike some celebrities, who like to do drugs and wreck hotel rooms, McKellen prefers to flip through the handy copy of Gideon's Bible. The actor, who is openly gay, always rips out the page of Leviticus that contains Chapter 18, verse 22 ("Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable") from the book.

"I'm not proudly defacing the book," he asserts, "but it's a choice between removing that page and throwing away the whole Bible."

McKellen says his actions have inspired others to do the same. "I got delivered a package of 40 of those pages that had been torn out by a married couple I know. They put them on a bit of string so that I could hang it up in the bathroom."

I wonder if anyone would have ever noticed this if he hadn't said anything. I mean, who actually leafs through hotel Bibles anyway? And if you were going to leaf through the Bible, who would pick Leviticus as quality bedtime reading?

 

Update 11/9/09:

Another quote from Details:

 

Sir Ian wants you to know that being gay in England was kind of like being a Jew during the Holocaust. In a recent interview, he said:

It was horrible living this secret life. You could feel a little bit what it was like to be a Jew in central Europe during a certain period. It was horrible.

 

In this week's parashah, Tzav, we witness a beautiful ritual undertaken by Moses and the entire tribe in preparation for the sacrificial duties of Aaron, the head priest (Kohein), and other priests serving the tribe. As revealed within the Torah, Moses gathers kol ha'edah ha'kahal (everyone in the tribe) and dresses each priest in a special outfit consisting of, "a tunic, sash, robe, ephod (loincloth), choshen (breastplate), cap, and showplate" (Lev. 8: 9-10). Afterwards, Moses sanctifies the sanctuary where all of the priests will complete their sacred rites in addition to the objects inside of it. 

Within the somewhat grim and graphic contents of Vayikra (Leviticus), Moses' dressing of Aaron and his priests stands out as a strikingly warm moment. Moses, the leader mainly responsible for the tribe's religious and spiritual education, steps aside to allow Aaron and his priestly cohorts a chance in the spotlight.  Adding further depth to this point, the commentators of our Midrash note that the Tent of Meeting (the place where Moses performed the ritual) miraculously expanded for this special occasion. As our sages describe, it enlarged to accommodate the large body of Israelites during the priests' clothing ceremony. This way, all individuals from the tribe could participate actively in the ritual by showing support for their fellow priestly tribe members.    

In reflecting upon the special "clothes" ceremony within the induction of the priests, we learn an important lesson connected to our own professional lives: preparing oneself on the outside for a job/duty is just as important as  being ready on an intellectual basis. For example, have you ever gone shopping right before a big interview to purchase an item (i.e. business suit, new shoes, tie) because you felt that this piece of clothing would give you an advantage in your interview?  Think back to your first day at a new job. Did you ever select a special outfit ahead of time for a boost on your first day? Adding further insight to this point, our Torah instills that having properly fitting clothing is an essential part of any job.  Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo ben Yitzhak), the medieval rabbi par-excellance renowned for his Torah and Talmud commentaries, points out that each priest's linen garment was specifically made according to his exact measurements and dimensions. This is also important within our professional settings. As any clothing designer/maven would concur, having well-made clothing and appropriate attire disseminates a sense of respect and honor from fellow co-workers, friends, and family. When we wear the right clothing, we signify that we are ready, willing, and able to get the job done.  

Within our own lives, we can connect ourselves back to the times of our ancient ancestors by helping to clothe those who might not be able to afford the proper attire. In the spirit of Passover and spring cleaning, we should take the time to look through our closets and donate clothes to a reputable organization such as Dress for Success, or another like-minded organization which provides professional clothing for those in need.  Additionally, we should patronize dry-cleaners and Laundromats which provide cleaning services free of charge to those who cannot normally afford those services for job interviews. 

As parashah Tzav teaches, spaces, such as an office, home, or special location known only to us, can only be sanctified when individuals enter into those environments with a positive self-image and healthy respect for their appearance. When we have the means to help someone achieve confidence in this capacity, we should model ourselves after Moses and the Israelites and gather the necessary materials and energy to do so.  Shavua Tov!

Leviticus: It's way more interesting than you thinkWow. Leviticus may be an excruciatingly boring book, the ugly red-headed stepchild in the Pentateuch—what with all those laws and laws and laws, laid out with all the narrative flair of the instruction manual for an assemble-it-yourself desk—but if you skip ahead to where the story heats up again in Numbers, you’re making a mistake.

Former National Review literary editor and current Discovery Institute scholar David Klinghoffer says that the cipher to the mysteries of American political life is right there in the laws of ritual contamination. Those laws, it turns out, are more than just a bit of perverse fretting about ejaculation and menstruation—they’re also a pre-emptive attack against Darwin and Karl Marx, and against the materialist worldview more generally. You’ll have to read it to see how Klinghoffer gets there.

Of course, if you’re an atheist, you won’t buy it, since he’s working from the Bible and the Talmud as his sources. This produced a bit of in-house Jewcy debate, with Tahl and I discussing the extent to which we want Jewcy articles to be broadly persuasive, to operate from assumptions that are widely shared. The new, decentralized “read/write weO-P-R-H: She's God, more or lessb,” aka Web 2.0, of which Jewcy is a part, is often blamed for atomizing debate, with lots of insular groups, each one talking among themselves, agreeing with themselves, and operating from premises that they share with no one else. Somehow our conversation ended up with Tahl saying “God is not a Republican. He’s Oprah,” the rough idea being that it takes an I-Thou master like Oprah to bust through the borders of all these incompatible groups and appeal to everyone.

So is Klinghoffer’s article just another sort of internally-directed salvo, persuasive to people who already agree with him, but meaningless to everyone else?

I don’t think so. Even if you’re a secular liberal (as I am, more or less) who thinks his premises are rubbish, the article still gives you a fascinating insight into the mind of a freethinking theocon, a theocon who’s come up with a novel formulation for expressing what distinguishes him from you. And for good measure he places the Torah in the nature/nurture, environment/individual debate…who knew that the redactors of Leviticus saw nineteenth century Europe coming, and freaked out?

Read it here.

An overlooked enigma of political life is why there are distinct ideological groupings at all. We take the liberal/conservative divide for granted, rarely pausing to contemplate how mysterious it actually is. The Hebrew Bible solves the mystery. The solution can be found in the unexpected context of the Torah's seemingly primitive and bizarre laws of ritual contamination. The relevant material is laid out in dense detail mainly in Leviticus, a.k.a. the stuff most Jews skip over in shul (as Christians do in church). If you don’t see the mystery, consider the following: Doesn’t it seem equally if not more plausible to imagine a scenario where people’s opinions on the top-20 hot-button political issues formed no patterns at all? For example, there seems to be nothing that links Al Gore–style worrying about climate change with favoring state-sanctioned gay unions. Yet somehow, to ...