This is a question that permanently troubles the philologist, probably the question itself stems on the split identity but that's much of a bigger topic which I'll develop some other time, plus before I do so I guess I have to do some re-read of a few authors, among them Diana Wang, Marx and even Elie Wiesel.
The few months I've spent reading Ha'aretz have also elucidated me quite extensively on the subject but let's focus a little bit on my current question for I haven't seen or read anything on the matter. Probably I can remember a few cheap books on Israeli gay soldiers, movies here and there (Trembling before G-d for one) and maybe a few other things I used to read during my free time at the Open House in Jerusalem.
During 2003 I had the chance to be heading this support group for Orthodox gays which I found to be probably one of the strongest experiences ever. Different social determinants for a common reality, for a common ground. I owe these set of experiences to people like Chris, Elroi and Al. All of them provided me with interesting example to examine the particular case of the religiously observant gay jew, in particular Al (z"l) who being religious (reform though) was living and sharing a life with his Israeli partner who was in the closet and religiously observant as well. This strange kind of camaraderie was very unique in my eyes and probably not so atypical to the Jerusolomite environment (technically impossible in Tel Aviv for obvious reasons), even though I found out later on such a thing did exist among different circles in New York and even among Yeshiva students, that shocked at first glance to tell the truth.
Yet I did find something very unique about these people (which applied to all of them, or to most) and was basically the dimension of their inner conflict. Several times I've talked about fate and the Jewish question, defining the Jews (since the Biblical times through the Reform movement - here I'm talking probably about Jewish philolosphy or let's say history of the Jewish ideas) as a people against themselves, against their fate and against their own historical determinants. This is probably a unique existentialist phenomenon; I remember having read once a book by this certain Jewish French sociologist called "The reflexive condition of the Jewish existence" (I can't translate the exact French title into English) in which this phenomenon was explained in the eyes of political history, with special emphasis on the Zionist movement and its remarkable definition of a new Jewish character. The idea then became clearer upon reading this article by an Uruguayan anthropologist called "Jewish diasporic mentality"... or if not clear, then probably better developed. The bottom line is, the Jew is by definition an anti-historical being in terms of Anthropology (or at least in terms of the historical anthropology of E. Carr or let's say anthropological definition of history).
The jew against himself and against his own stem? Probably yes, this doesn't manifest on a scientific ground though. It is just this kind of popular belief or anathema or call it in whichever way you want. To my advantage, anthropology does emphasize on these popular tales and beliefs as serious manifestations of social cohesion, national character, familiar structure, etc. But do not forget that in case I'm nothing by a philologist trying to convey some thoughts about homosexuality and judaism, there's nothing anthropological about me, with the exception of the method: observation. (Damn, if my anthropology books weren't resting in some storage room somewhere in Latin America I could really play the scientist and explain my point with deeper accuracy). Let's say that as a philologist I'm accurately trained for certain kind of anthropological field work, collection of unretrievable data and lots of speculation. That's nowadays a "totally" independent science that is probably called "ethnography". All of us involved in the humanities and the social sciences (in particular language students) deal with ethnographic methods, but their real scope within our fields can be as useless as those long and tiresome statistics classes. I didn't find them interesting nor useful, but apparently they seem to have sharpened my data collection logic, results are still due to be examined. Probability is a natural rule and in different terms probably the biologist, the mathematician and the physician learn about it as much as the linguist, the sociologist and the philosopher. Maybe the rules are not entirely dissimilar, only our terminology might be the underdog for our imminent confusion.
After having explained unsuccessfuly the problem in the approach I might as well extend a philological remark. I can't conceive philology existing by itself, at least not classical philology and certainly not in our times.
Classical philology is possibly to a certain extent the oldest of the human sciences. Poetry, epic and historical narrative couldn't be considered within a scientific scope, neither science itself as they made part of the so-called "divinity", the essence of the Logos. I would prefer not to call it "religion" for this is a latter term and probably foreign to any Greek. As usual the previous considerations are relevant to the Greek world, but not only. They might have been axiomatically true to other peoples of the antiquity (and of more recent antiquity). Not sure if that includes the peoples and tribes of Israel, nevertheless I'm pursuing some extensive reading on the subject and I hope I may be able to complement this point at some later stage.
I was just about to extend into the particular of the philological science but I'll hold myself as it is certainly not in place. I might just conclude by saying that the current approach of what is really philology might be seen more in the scope of historical or comparative linguistics which is a scientific discipline, almost like mathematics. The Indo-European linguistics of 1850 when the obvious questions about the similarities between Old Lithuanian, Sanskrit, Greek and Latin were raised is certainly not the same science of today. The terminology and the method evolved at a very fast pace. The philologist evolved from following slavishingly the Classical text (more of a papyrologist if you want to call it so) into a totally conjenctural, theoretical and speculative science. Fortunately as redundant as it might sound, philology is still methodologically philological. This explanation was certainly unnecessary for the scope of the subject I want to treat, but I found it particularly helpful if the reader (if there's any at all!) wants to grasp the methodological approach of this non-social sciences educated speaker who is only trying to approach a subject from a very personal point of view. Nevertheless I foresee being deeply influenced by the "contexts" of the methods I've acquired over the last 6 years. Some contact with the so-called Jewish social science will make my points less "philological" and probably closer to the "true" human science, as Heidegger would re-phrase it.
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