The Supreme Court on Same Sex Marriage..., And The Rabbi Of Goray

Bitter dissents in gay marriage case lay bare deep divide in high court
Liz Goodwin
Senior National Affairs Reporter June 26, 2015
https://www.yahoo.com/politics/bitter-dissents-in-gay-marriage-case-lays-bare-122528649891.html

[...]

Justice Antonin Scalia... went even further than usual in his criticism of Kennedy’s signature flowery language. He wrote in a footnote that he would “hide his head in a bag” if he ever signed onto an opinion containing this first sentence, which he said contained “the mystical aphorisms of a fortune cookie.” ...

All pretty profound stuff. That Scalia guy, either channeling the Founding Fathers in his own mystical way, or disguised as a junkyard dog going after Justice Kennedy.


The only eternal verity here is the universal gulf that exists in cultures with Writings they hold to be sacred  -  whether they be religious or political documents   -   between the learned who believe strongly in the unchanging Mana of the written, and try to preserve, scrabbling about, keeping every vowel and consonant in the right place, and the learned who believe that the world changes and have compassion for people in a changing world, and see the Mana of the scriptures emanating not from an adamantine monolith, but from a formation and reformation of changing within change...

The Rabbi of Goray... a story I have told many times here.

Rabbi Benish Ashkenazi had inherited his office in Goray from generations of rabbis. He was an author of commentaries and responsa, a member of the court of the Council of the Four Lands, and was reckoned among the most brilliant men of the day. In former times, many deserted wives had made the long trip to out-of-the-way Goray to receive permission from Rabbi Benish to remarry  -  for with all his learning and brilliance, Rabbi Benish was one of those who construed the Law liberally.

I repeat what I said three months ago when speaking of Rabbi Benish Ashkenazi:

I woke up in the middle of the night with a thought in Latin in my head and no scrap of paper nearby, so I scribbled it down on a Yiddish copy of Isaac Singer's    

דער שׂטן אין גאָרייַ

(Satan In Goray) which has been on my night stand
all this brutal winter:

and on the back I wrote:

illi credentes mortui sunt;
currentes cum Deo vivunt.

which translates as Those who believe are dead; those running with God are alive.

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