queer hermeneutics

takin the jesus out of exegesis

[dafpunk]

Yitro

6 February 2021

I love this parsha because of its namesake. Yitro—that is, Jethro—is my number-one favorite character in the entire Torah, and I don't think that's just DreamWorks SKG's smokin'-hot zaddy talking.

Start with his name. Shmot Rabbah, the great midrash, says that "Yitro" means "expand"; in one case, that he expanded the Torah. And that he was called Hobab when he was first introduced because of his great love—the root H-B-B meaning "love". Whenever he appears in the Torah, he spreads and expands love.

And this parshah won't stop talking about Yitro's name! Every time he's mentioned, he comes along with one of his epithets; he's never simply referred to by his name. And these two epithets are interesting: first, he's "kohein Mid'yan", the priest of Midian. But not any priest, a kohein, like the Israelite priests.

Second, he's "chotein Mosheh", Mosheh's father-in-law. This is the most frequent epithet, sometimes used without even Yitro's name. But it doesn't exactly mean "father-in-law"; in modern Hebrew, father-in-law is cham. Although we assume Yitro is that kind of relative to Moses, Ch-T-N is the same root as chatan, husband or bridegroom, and the root has to do with creating a familial covenant. It sounds to me like Yitro is a very special kind of relative to Mosheh and has a really important bond with him, not merely through Tzipporah, but from heart to heart.

In this parshah, Yitro does a few very important things:

He brings Tzipporah, Gershom, and Eliezer back to Moses after he "sent Tzipporah away",

He tells Mosheh to take a fucking break,

He explains to Mosheh the will of G-d, essentially superceding Moses as a prophet.

And all these things prepare the people of Israel for receiving the Torah from G-d on Mount Sinai, arguably the highest point in the history of the People of Israel, ever.

So what's the significance of the three things Yitro does?

Most importantly, Yitro, as a wise elder who's been in the struggle for a lot longer than Mosheh, schools him on his priorities and responsibilities. Thinking back to Bereishit, Avraham didn't have anyone to tell him about his responsibilities, and he wouldn't even listen to other prophets like Avimelech, so Avraham ended up a self-serving, egotistical megalomaniac. Yitro—and it can be inferred, the Holy One of Blessing—does not want to see that happen again with Mosheh.

Mosheh is also clearly in need of a father figure, a chotein. We learn from the Talmud in Sotah 12a that Amram was a leader in Israel, but he broke under stress. When he learned that Pharoah intended to kill all of the newborn male Israelites, he threw in the towel, and if it hadn't been for Miryam, that would have been the end of the Jewish people.

On the other hand, my own father likes to lean into his persona of the Asian Immigrant Dad (his words, not mine!) He takes it to mean that if you want something, you have to work hard for it, making it your single-minded focus until you achieve the results you want.

But in reality, we don't need either of these extreme solutions to weather life's storms, and Yitro arrives with Tzipporah to teach Mosheh a thing or two. The first thing he taught him is that one's responsibility to G-d does not come before one's responsibility to family. Rashi explains that Mosheh had divorced Tzipporah when Aharon disparaged her as they came to Egypt. In essence, Mosheh despaired and pulled an Amram: oh, things are hard in Egypt? Well, Tzipporah might as well go home and I'll disavow her. Here ends the line of Mosheh.

And in fact, Yitro comes to Mosheh saying "I... am coming to you with your wife and her two sons"—not yours, hers. But they are his, too, and he has a responsibility towards them. Likewise, we all have a responsibility to care for the one's we're bonded to, even if work gets tough. Even if you’re literally Moses.

The second thing Yitro teaches Mosheh is to work smart, not hard. When Yitro saw Moses pulling absurd hours, being out of the house from morning until evening, Yitro pointed out that this was no way to live, and no way to lead; an easy path to instant burnout. He says, “ki-chaveid mim’cha hadavar, lo-tuchal asohu l’vadecha”: “the word is heavy on you, you can’t do it alone and succeed.” Yitro’s not insulting his son-in-law. He’s just stating a fact: you can’t do it alone and succeed.

The final thing Yitro does, which I find the most interesting, is that he speaks for G-d. Like Avimelech, who gets an angelic visit, the Holy One of Blessing has Yitro speak from his divinity. Even before the Torah is given, Yitro knows the mitzvot, saying that G-d commands Mosheh to delegate authority.

At this point, Yitro has just recently accepted G-d as the most powerful. As in, minutes or perhaps hours earlier. But this story teaches us that there is divinity and conscience in every human being, Jewish or otherwise, and we all innately know what the Holy One of Blessing commands even if we can’t fully express it. So Yitro teaches Mosheh another lesson: even if we today venerate Mosheh as our great teacher, he’s nothing without the ones who taught him.

[dafpunk]

Sh'mot

9 January 2021

And [the overseers of the Israelites] said to [Mosheh and Aharon], "May G-d look upon you and punish you for making us loathsome to Pharaoh and his courtiers—putting a sword in their hands to slay us." —Sh'mot 5:21

At the very end of Parashat Sh'mot, there's this scene with Mosheh and Aharon standing "in the path" of the shotrei b'nei Yisrael, overseers of the Israelites. And the overseers curse Mosheh and Aharon for speaking up to Pharaoh because now the brick quota is the same but the Israelites won't be provided with straw to make the bricks.

This scene plays out again and again in our collective struggle for freedom. We're making progress. We lay out our demands. But some people who were supposed to be on our side—the Israelites who oversee the Israelites!—benefit from the status quo, and get angry when they "look loathsome to Pharaoh and his courtiers". They correctly see the collective struggle for freedom as a subversion of power, but they incorrectly think it isn't good for them.

The fact is, we cannot one be free till all of us are free. Our struggle for freedom as a Jewish people is inherently bound up in the struggle for Black liberation, for instance—just see how Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff won together, bolstering each other, to become the two Democratic senators from Georgia. The struggle against sexism is linked to the struggle against homophobia and transphobia in the complex we call cis-heteropatriarchy, that impact the inner core of all of our lives, making it incumbent for women, gender minorities, and sexual minorities to band together to demand freedom from it all. And in the global sphere, neocolonial and imperialist forces ally with capitalist ones to create the neoliberal order: to wage eternal war, extract resources and labor from poorer countries to enrich the few, and amass power in the Westernized world.

It was not Mosheh and Aharon who "put a sword in their hands to kill us". That sword was always there in Pharaoh's hand, waiting for some excuse, any excuse to lash out and wipe the people of Israel out—shotrei and avadim alike. As oppressed populations who experience intersecting oppressions, sometimes it feels that the weight of oppression never goes away, that we can never escape it. As an out queer person, my sexual orientation is out there and can't be taken away; it's a subcurrent in every conversation about social interactions or romance. My intersecting privileges, though they are many and powerful, doesn't protect someone from using the Gay Panic Defense to murder me. That sword is there.

Over the past week or so, news broke about a huge party numbering hundreds, if not thousands, of gay, American, conventially attractive men who flouted US and Mexican COVID-19 restrictions to have an enormous sex party in the Yucatán Peninsula. I liken them to the shotrei: when we win our battles against discrimination, when being queer becomes "normal" in society, they are beneficiaries. But who fought those fights, and had the most to lose? While we worry about cutting straw, they see us being loud and queer and radical and fret to themselves about losing the favor of Pharaoh's courtiers. It's loss on a different scale.

So our leaders, our most revered activists, and the ones who end up ultimately acheiving the most experience double hatred: from the oppressors, and from the people in their own communities who benefit from our oppression. What can be done about that?

First, recognize how we are all interconnected. The shotrei b'nei Yisrael did not understand how their struggle to earn favor and appreciation from Pharaoh and his courtiers connected with Mosheh's mission to end his people's captivity in Egypt and fulfil G-d's promise. But both of them have the same root: Israelite enslavement by the Egyptians. Once freed from slavery, of course both problems are solved. In the same way, if you understand that our oppressions are linked, you can combat the root cause, and avoid sabotaging your own liberation.

Second, own your privilege. The Torah portrays the shotrei as petty, self-serving, and ultimately on the wrong side of history. We, as aspiring towards tzedek, righteousness, don’t want to be like that. Recognizing who we are and what our position in society affords us is the key to being the tzadikim we wish to be.

Finally, trust in each other to build collective power. When Mosheh gets cursed by the shotrei, he complains to G-d, who responds like this:

“You shall soon see what I will do to Pharaoh: he shall let them go because of a greater might; indeed, because of a greater might he shall drive them from the land.” —Sh’mot 6:1

G-d is making a point about the power that G-d is bringing to bear with signs and wonders, but also about the oppressed Israelites: they’re powerful. And with power comes the ability and the choice to free oneself. Not everyone chooses to—the shotrei are the prime example—but having a choice is better than not.

[dafpunk]

Vayera

7 November 2020

18:5 Who is Avraham a servant to, strangers? Sounds a lot like the description of primitive societies where men gain power by either being physically violent, hospitable, or both. Avraham isn’t being hospitable because he’s a nice, moral guy—he’s being hospitable because he thinks the three strangers are going to build his power, and they are.

18:6 Who’s Sarah to be baking pitas when there are over three hundred people in Avraham’s household?

18:8 Not very kosher I see.

18:12 “Am I to have enjoyment with my husband so old?” Don’t you know that old folks are the horniest?

18:15 Sarah continuing the long tradition by now of straight-out lying to G-d? First Adam and Chava “we didn’t eat anything” to Cain “am I my brother’s keeper?” to now Sarah “I didn’t laugh”. What’s similar here, what’s different? And why do people keep doing it when they supposedly have faith in G-d?

18:17 G-d just monologuing like a cartoon villain here.

18:23 And Avraham arguing, as if G-d doesn’t know that he only cares about Lot being spared! Avraham couldn’t care less if a “righteous” person is saved, he just wants Lot to get out.

19:8 But okay, what? Both of Lot’s daughters are married... to men. Is Lot just lying to the Sodomites? Does he know that they won’t accept natives of Sodom to torture, but rather want to torture the strangers? Also, did Avraham warn Lot that angels were coming, so he had to treat them nicely, like he did? Or is Lot also such a good judge of character, like Avraham, that he can tell?

Brief tangent: in case anyone is unaware, Sodom and Gomorrah were not destroyed because of butt sex! For fuck’s sake. They were destroyed for being the most inhospitable, low-down, crooked scammers there ever were. Reference: the story of Hidod, the most absurd scammer in history.

Additionally, the crime of stinginess, wherein Ezekiel is quoted as saying “This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: arrogance! She and her daughters had plenty of bread and untroubled tranquility, yet she did not support the poor and needy.”

19:14 Why could Lot’s sons-in-law not have just believed him? Why were they cursed, too? God promised to save ten people from Sodom, I’m only counting four!

19:19 Why does Lot not flee to the hills? Don’t you think that Zoar would be targeted before the hills, since it’s presumably nearer to Sodom than the hill country? Why does Lot say that “the bad” would overtake him in the hills? Is this a premonition of his daughters? They are 100% “the bad”!

19:31 These are like, super important and problematic women. Why don’t they have names?

19:34 There’s persuasion and lack of consent happening here, just like Chava and Adam with the fruit, and like Avram enslaving Sarai in Egypt. Avram, for instance, just proposed this plan and Sarai carried it out, but didn’t say “yes” to it ever.

20:2 You would think that Avraham would have fucking learned from the shit they pulled in Egypt would you not? Also, isn’t Sarah advanced in years and isn’t about to have sex with even Avraham? What’s the deal with that?

20:4 Yeah, this is really twisted. On the one hand, G-d is testing Avimelech, like he subsequently does with Avraham. Does that mean that G-d favors Avimelech? Well, clearly not like Avraham, because the penalty for failing the test isn’t spelled out as death for Avraham even beforehand.

20:9 But that’s the other hand: G-d is just going around threatening people for the entirely blameless things they’re doing just because Avraham is a fucking trickster and a scammer—the only difference between Avraham and the Sodomites is that the Sodomites are settled and mistreat the nomads, and Avraham is a nomad and mistreats the settlers!

20:12 “And besides, she is in truth my sister, my father’s daughter though not my mother’s; and she became my wife.”

20:14 Avraham is literally getting away with blackmail, and G-d literally just aided and abet him. G-d just has Avraham’s back, and Avraham knows it, and will just totally abuse and misuse that power.

21:9 “Playing” is the same word as “laughter”, which Sarah uses in 21:6... to literally name Yitzchak. There are interpretations of “metzahek” as committing sexual immorality, doing violence, or worshiping idols (the absurdity of which is the topic for another post) but it could also mean simply “mi-” (in) “yitzchak” (Isaac)! Sarah saw Yishmael’s influence on Yitzchak—possibly not even seeing Yishmael at all, but seeing Yitzchak—and got jealous. And her reaction to her jealousy was destructive and inhuman.

21:12 In which Avraham almost thinks a nice thought but G-d tells him to listen to his racist wife instead.

21:14 Shmot Rabbah is very anxious about how nice Avraham was to Yishmael and blames him for how wild Yishmael was despite the fact that it was literally foretold in prophecy. I’m very anxious about how “nice” Avraham was to Hagar because for fuck’s sake!

Also quick midrash break again—same Sefer HaYashar says that decades later, Avraham swung by Yishmael’s place to tell him to divorce his rude Egyptian wife for not giving him water and bread and marry a Canaanite instead.

[phoukanamedpookie]

Let’s talk a bit about Hagar

(FYI, I am only interested in examining this parsha from a Jewish perspective of Jewish texts. Non-Jewish sources and commentary are not appropriate here.)

I know that, traditionally speaking, Jewish women are “supposed” to identify with Sarah, but when I look at real life and real history, with my background as an African American woman from the South, it’s hard for me not to see myself and my foremothers in Hagar.

Let’s be honest: in Vayera, our ancestors don’t come off looking all that great. From a moral and ethical standpoint, what they do to Hagar is pretty fucked up. They exploit a young woman’s body and labor, abuse their power over her then discard her and her child when they become of no further use and/or a threat.

Unfortunately, textual tradition tends to ignore, gloss over, minimize or even blame Hagar for how Sarah treats her, not to mention justify the expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael. Rather than restate what’s already been stated, how about we unpack this?

I’d like to open up a Hagar-centric discussion that delves into the text and the commentaries, wrestles with them, questions them, even challenges them.

Why do some commentaries believe that Hagar is a willing participant in Sarah’s decision to use her as a surrogate mother? Why do these commentaries need this belief? How would removing Hagar’s consent from the equation change the meaning of the story?

What is the relationship between social/economic power and righteousness? Does being powerless in one situation translate into righteousness when one has power over others? Why or why not?

Are we really encouraged to identify with and approve of Abraham and Sarah in Vayera? Why or why not? How does this change the meaning of the story and how it relates to our identity as a people?

What meaning does Hagar’s story have to us as Jews when we look at our own history and our own sacred stories? If we see ourselves in Hagar more than we see ourselves in Sarah, what does that mean?

What other questions are not being asked of the text and commentary? Why do you think that is? What does it mean to you?

What does it mean for Hagar to encounter an angel not once, but twice? How is her encounter similar to and different from other encounters with angels in the Torah?

[torahgalus]

Vayera

I am here.

take your son– I have two sons your only son but I your only son he’s not- he won’t come back he might he won’t I left him I saved him take my son? the one you love I love both my– your only son the son I love? the son you love. my only son. and offer him to me I’ve offered so much Abraham? hineni. take your son not take back your only son now the one you love the one who still loves me.

take my only son?

[nerdyqueerandjewish]

In this parsha, as God makes the covenant with Avraham is told that his people will be oppressed and enslaved, and later we see Sarah abuse and oppress Hagar.

The d'var today ways about how this can function as a reminder that even though we are the chosen people, even though we are told that we will suffer oppression, we are not only victims. We can also act as oppressors. We have to be aware that we are in a constant balance of being a possible victim or possible oppressor and act accordingly, and I just found that to be a really powerful idea because it helped me embrace the complexity and nuance of human interaction and power dynamics instead of the more straightforward model of systemic oppression (not saying that that model isn’t important, but I think holding the dialectic of both of them is good).

Lech Lecha also just has me really emotional about the covenant anyway, so that also had a hand in how this moved me I’m sure.

[dafpunk]

Yes, all this.

Why does G-d allow systems of oppression to perpetuate themselves? Why, when Abram traffics Sarai, is it Pharaoh who suffers the STDs? Why, when Sarah traffics Hagar, does G-d tell her to bear her suffering and abuse?

Our tradition teaches us that we as a Jewish people are the wielders of immense power to uphold cycles of abuse and oppression. And at least at this point, G-d is even encouraging us to do so. But we know better now. Our ancestors were sexist and violent, but we don’t have to be. Our ancestors feuded over land, but we can live together with our neighbors in harmony. Our ancestors captured and enslaved people, but we can pursue abolition of carceral systems. We have to.

[adamavshamayim]

Time for my weekly last-minute-before-shabbat reading of the parsha and finding a verse that I want to comment on. So. Lech-lecha. (disclaimer: Avraham and Sarah are still Avram and Sarai here, but we’re all more familiar with their later names). Avraham is traveling, and passes Pharoah by pretending Sarah is his sister (??), there’s a famine, and then in chapter/perek 13, Avraham, Sarah, and Lot begin traveling to “the place where his tent had been formerly.” I was worried after Breishit and Noah, there would be a (relative) shortage of natural/environmental themes, but this verse didn’t take long to find either. 

Breishit 13:5-6 

גם־ללוט ההלך את־אברם היה צאן־ובקר ואהלים

Lot, who went with Abram, also had flocks and herds and tents,

ולא־נשא אתם הארץ לשבת יחדו כי־היה רכושם רב ולא יכלו לשבת יחדו

so that the land could not support them staying together; for their possessions were so great that they could not remain together.

And here I was thinking that environmental apocalyptic thinking was a new phenomenon, introduced by fellow activists who taught me: we need seven earths to contain what we need/use; we need to each own fewer possessions…not now, yesterday.  But here we are in the third parsha of the entire Torah, being told already that two men could not find enough pasture to feed all of their flocks and herds, or enough land for them to stay together with all of their possessions. They part ways, and soon, we’re told the the people of Sodom are sinners, and that Avraham will have enough land for his children to become as numerous as the dust of the earth. 

There’s a lot to be said here, I think, and please add on some thoughts, people. The nature of nature (ha!) is that it is limited, and it has been from the beginning. It’s extremely difficult and pits people against each other. I wish I could say that we knew the solution to feed everyone, or that the parsha tells us the solution on how to feed everyone, but it doesn’t seem to (on a surface reading, although sometime not right before shkia I hope to look deeper to find an answer maybe). What it mostly tells us, though, is that the limitedness of resources means we should be grateful for what we do have, the food that we do eat. A famine and limited resources were the precursors to Avraham receiving a blessing of land; in a way, it’s difficult to appreciate what land provides until we experience a lack of land. And that today’s problems of limited resources do not constitute a brand new phenomenon.

[dafpunk]

I think an important thing to add here is that not only are Abram and Lot dividing up the land and going various places because the land can’t support them as they are (and G-d is insisting that the land is theirs and there are nations more people on the way)—not only that, but there are people, Canaanites and Perizzites, living on the land already, and fighting atrocity-laden wars to maintain control of the land. So environmental spoilage also results in violence.

But it doesn’t have to! Why does G-d say in the first two parshiot that the land is theirs, the land is ours to have, and we have dominion over everything, but at this point, when we’ve clearly shown that we can’t use the land responsibly as a resource, we don’t get punished, but encouraged further to use the land? G-d promised Noach that the world wouldn’t be destroyed again—but does that just mean that G-d will let us destroy it instead?

[neuroticdad]

This week’s Torah portion

So my goal for this year is to re-read the Torah. Every week I am going to read the Parashah and then write a quick response. 

This week it’s the story of Abram/Abraham which has tons of juicy stuff: War! Travel! Geriatric sex! 

But here’s what strikes me:

“And every male in Abraham’s household, including those born in his household or bought from a foreigner, was circumcised with him.” Genesis 17:27

Abraham had hundreds of men in his household. Can you imagine? All those men in pain for weeks? 

If I were Abraham I’d have been like, “Whatever you say Lord, but can’t we just get our ears pierced?”

[dafpunk]

Lech L’cha

31 October 2020

12:1 I feel like we got a nice rationale for G-d choosing Noach—he was the only person in the world who wasn’t a total trainwreck (or shipwreck, you might say?) But we don’t get an explanation of what was so special about Avram—we just jump straight into it from the get-go like “G-d paging Avram, come in, Avram”

12:2 Another big contrast: Noach gets the stick first, but Avram gets the carrot first. We get this whole big blessing and a promise of a covenant, not like, “I’m gonna destroy the whole world and you’re gonna build a boat if you want to survive.”

12:5 “All the wealth they had amassed, and all the persons they had acquired in Haran” First mention of our forefathers being slaveholders. They don’t even need to be white, or even colonizers (at this point) and they’re already horrible people[1]

12:12 Maybe Avram was divinely guided to this workaround, but still the question arises: how do we get to a point where someone is so beautiful that their mere presence as part of a household makes them and other members of the household vulnerable to violence? Or is it Avram’s “ownership” of Sarai that makes him vulnerable to “dispossession”? We read a couple verses earlier that Avram prayed at the Terebinth of Moreh, a.k.a. Shechem, where Jacob and the Israelites would later pray to either dispossess others or to keep their possessions of land. Was Avram praying there that he wouldn’t have Sarai stolen from him?

12:15 And of course Sarai does “go to Pharaoh’s palace”—so that she could have sex with Pharaoh in exchange for Avram staying in Egypt and prospering. It’s a disgusting transaction that we have no way of reconciling. How did Avram’s subsequent acquisition of wealth help Sarai ever again? Does mere accumulation translate to a better quality of life? Sarai never seems to consent to Avram’s scheme; can she be seen as similar to proud OnlyFans sex workers who get rich through sex work, or was it a degrading and traumatic experience that no amount of wealth can compensate for? After all, G-d only promised nice things to Avram at this point, not Sarai.

12:17 Yeah, of course it’s Pharaoh’s fault Avram used Sarai like a sex slave. Surely Avram has no fault in this. Serves Avram right for being exiled. G-d should have known at that point that Avram wasn’t worthy.

13:7-17 Why do we forefront Abram and Lot’s cattle when we’re literally told in the same verse that the Caananites and Perizzites were then dwelling in the land? Abram says, “Is not the whole land before you?” No, it was not! There were already cities, already farms, already herders who were possessing the land. You can’t have it. Fuck this colonialist bullshit. G-d has now begun the displacement that continues for the rest of history.

13:18 Abram’s back to the Terebinths of Mamre, the symbol of dispossession.

14:15 There’s war. Horrible war, with unthinkable atrocities being committed, so that people would rather throw themselves in tar pits than live. And Abram is a warlord like anyone else. Nowadays he’d be the kind of guy who mass-murders Jews.

14:18 Something about the repetition of El Elyon here makes me think this isn’t G-d we’re talking about. Everywhere else, G-d is being referred to by name. So it’s fine if Abram worships El Elyon, yeah?

15:3 What’s the big deal if Dammesek Eliezer the steward inherits Abram’s household?

15:14 Why were Abram’s descendants punished with slavery and exile? Because of Abram’s immorality? Or is this dream simply a rationalization of what came next, because history has to be written by the victors?

16:3 In a way, this is a disturbing but common reversal or continuation of what happened in Egypt. Just as Abram sex trafficked Sarai with Pharaoh in Egypt, Sarai sex traffics Hagar—the Egyptian—as her own sex slave for Abram. Systems of abuse and oppression, if not interrupted, perpetuate themselves.

16:5 “The wrong done me is your fault! I myself put my maid in your bosom...” Now how does that make any sense.

16:9 Wonderful, all G-d has to say to Hagar the prophet is, “shut up and take it”.

17:12 So all non-Abrahamites who associate with the Abrahamites get to be part of the covenant, too? Besides having to be second-class citizens and submit to the Abrahamites, that signals a really pleasant openness to non-kin and also, seemingly, a very convenient and easy way for G-d to make Abraham numerous as a nation.

17:18-20 Whoa. “O that Ishmael might live by your favor!” As in, the one who Sarai exiled. The one whose mother was abused by an abused, abusive master, Sarai. And the one who was “a wild ass of a man”—seemingly a lot like Abraham, then.

[1] ~by today’s standards~ all right, whatever I feel like I should not have to defend the ownership of human beings by other human beings

[half-sassed]

According to last week’s Torah parsha:

God built a specialized enclosure for the first human (Gen. 2:8-15)

God then got concerned about the first human’s well-being and tried to provide the first human with enrichment (Gen. 2:18-20)

God finally gave up and brought home a second human to keep the first one company (Gen. 2:21-22)

The humans got into the food that they weren’t supposed to have while God was out (Gen. 3:6)

God came back to find the humans covered in leaves and trying to avoid God (Gen. 3:7-8)

God decided that since the humans couldn’t be trusted not to break into the food it was better to send them outside (Gen. 3:22-23)

Conclusion:

We are all God’s outdoor cats.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Now watch him take no responsibility as we wreak havoc on the local environment, breed out of control and die of transmissable diseases and in traffic accidents.

[hieronymus-bush]

God is an irresponsible pet owner.

[dafpunk]

Looking past and ignoring the neomalthusian “breeding out of control” comment but also canonically yeah we’re kinda like G-d’s pets

“I let you out of my sight for one frickin moment and you went and committed the first murder in the Universe??”

[dafpunk]

Noach

24 October 2020

TW: sexual assault

Holy shit y’all, what a parshah. Getting into it:

6:11 “Became corrupt” is “vatishcheit” and “full of lawlessness” is “vatimalei”. At least the first one is familiar from “al cheit shechatanu” But have I heard of “mala’anu”? If it were only vatishcheit—which could be interpreted as “missing the mark”—maybe it was just that G-d was disappointed in humankind? G-d saw that the thing created had free will and we weren’t perfect, so G-d destroyed all of us?

6:14 lol gopher wood

6:15 So dang specific about the construction of the ark! If G-d weren’t so exacting, maybe humankind would have done better in G-d’s sight before the flood!

7:10 It sounds like Noach went into the ark seven days early. Can you imagine? What would it have been like—you’re getting used to your new home for the next year and it’s taking forever for the end of the world to come. You’re not even totally sure it is going to come, the thing you’re trying to escape with this astounding, ridiculous plan. Was Noach wondering? Or was his faith so strong?

7:13 Now it says that the same day the rains started to fall and the fountains of the great deep burst, they went into the ark. Which one was it, then or seven days earlier? Also there’s no discussion of what Noach’s family is going through at this time. There are eight of them, but only one of them seems to have any subjectivity at all so far.

7:22 Only breathing things perished, clearly. Were the fish and sea creatures as perfect as Noach this whole time?

8:1 G-d’s attention was 100% diverted while everything on Earth perished. On the one hand, that could be sweet—imagine HaRachaman, El Rachum v’Chanun gently, considerately causing the compassionate drowning death of every living being, like putting down a beloved pet. Or was Adonai HaDayan Emet actually just reveling in destruction, gleefully tallying the deaths?

8:1 cont’d And G-d remembered Noach—what was Noach doing out of G-d’s sight? Things that weren’t recorded in the Torah, clearly—as in, when our sages and so on posited that no one on the ark had sex for a whole year, maybe there were some unrighteous deeds done while G-d wasn’t watching? Noach definitely had the capacity to get stinky drunk and strip.

8:7 The raven, as far as we can tell, never actually came back to the ark. Or Maybe it never went far? I feel like we always talk about the dove coming back, but not much about the raven. Maybe it kept circling around but never actually leaving the ark?

8:11 Apparently every living thing was wiped off the planet but an olive tree slash olive pit survived the whole flood to such an extent that it just sprang up in the 40 days (plus a few weeks?) and already had leaves and branches and everything? And after all that water and humidity, no mold damage issues (also pretty concerned for the vineyard in 9:20)? Truly a miracle from G-d.

8:13 Incredible how precise this can seem in counting the time, and then you try to scrutinize and actually count the time a little bit and it seems to fall apart.

8:20 Noach sacrificed one of every single clean animal and bird? How long did that take? This is a pretty weird flex. There are lots of animal sacrifices in the Torah, of course. But all of these are out of the person’s own possessions, a sacrifice where part of your possessions—livestock—goes to G-d in thanks or compensation for absolution. But these are all the world’s animals, which I would argue are not Noach’s wealth, but the wealth of all creation. Noach salvaged them at G-d’s command; nowhere else is someone commanded to safeguard certain pieces of property for future keeping and then destroys them! So in returning the live animals to G-d, Noach is being a little flippant, a little rude to G-d—like, have these back, they’re so unimportant that after I observed the commandment, I’ll destroy all evidence of it.

8:20 cont’d So why the heck does G-d smell the pleasing odor and make the covenant with Noach? What about that wanton destruction on Noach’s part made G-d want to end the destruction on G-d’s part and make the promise to keep perpetuating the world?

9:3 And so it seems surprising that there are Jewish vegetarians, but explains why traditional meals are so non-veg.

9:5 Before this, did G-d really not care about the value of human life? Maybe that was the part that was lacking before the flood, just saying. Relatedly, the covenant of perpetuation is really important here. Without a guarantee from HaBorei Bereishit that the Earth won’t be destroyed at any given moment, I can imagine all kinds of wickedness stemming from short-term-ism and short-sightedness.

9:24 “When Noach woke up from his wine and learned what his youngest son had done to him” What had he done to him? It’s unclear; I saw a few different interpretations. Steven Greenberg’s reading in Torah Queeries cites Rashi’s discussion of Rav, who said Ham castrated Noach, and Shmuel, who said, even one step more horrifically, that Ham raped Noach, both by allusions to other places in the Tanach. Greenberg reads the narrator talking about “seeing” and then Noach waking up and understanding some “doing”—a much more active verb—as the kind of seeing “that is about violence and possession, about control and domination”: the use of something sexual for destructive ends. This story is extremely confusing, including the fact that Canaan, Ham’s son, is cursed instead of Ham, leading to an alternative interpretation that Canaan committed the crime against Ham, not Ham against Noach. In any of these cases, the story is extremely complicated, almost as bad as the foreskin part with Tzipporah in Exodus, and probably not discussed much because of its traumatic content, complication, and ambiguity.

10:1 This genealogy is interestingly backward-derived, like the genealogies of Greek gods, but for actual ethnicities, which makes it seem a little more insidious, reminiscent of race science. It’s even worse since we’ve already established that one whole branch of the family tree is cursed to servitude.

11:1 You get through some genealogy, have some Tower of Babel as a treat.

[starlightomatic]

I’m gonna invent my own form of Judaism, here are the rules

If you have a grandparent who was Jewish you’re Jewish, regardless of how they raised your parents or how your parents raised you, and regardless of the genders involved.

Anyone can convert and there is no payment involved for any part of the process. In-person is encouraged during non-pandemic times but if you request to do it online that will be granted, no questions asked. We’ll assume it’s a valid access need and won’t make you prove it. (Beit din and mikvah need to be in person but we will put out the stops to make sure you’re supported in accessing this.)

On that fucking note. Accessibility will be a priority. We will have and support zoom minyans and online communities. We will encourage our shuls to provide boxes of stuff you need for at-home ritual. You can stim at shul. You can lie on the floor at shul. We’ll also provide translations – shul means synagogue!

We’ll also provide education. We’ll offer day school if we can and make hebrew school accessible if we can’t. We’ll prioritize adult education too. And we won’t just teach Hebrew and prayer, but also Jewish history, and halacha, and home practice.

Books! Libraries! We’ll have Jewish libraries you can withdraw books from without being part of an existing shul, and we’ll have mail-out lending system too.

All forms of Jewish prayer will be offered!  And we support creative ritual!! And we are trans and queer affirming! We support trans and queer Torah interpretations and text readings. Synagogue dues will be voluntary, and if the community cannot sustain itself that way, it will figure how to use less resources. Maybe that’ll mean meeting in members’ living rooms. Maybe that’ll mean organizing in a cohousing space. No one will be explicitly or implicitly excluded by poverty.

On that note, we support mutual aid!!!! No one should have to have a conversation about navigating synagogue dues when they don’t have food on the table or are not housed or are experiencing stability around any of those things. Mutual aid and making sure everyone is housed and sustained is maybe the most important thing. Without that you have nothing else.

We strive for justice. Racial justice, economic justice, justice for trans and queer folks. We will be actively anti-racist and seek to tear down systems of oppression in the world and in our own communities. No cops at shul.

We will support returners to Judaism, newcomers to Judaism, and folks who have complicated feelings about Judaism and assimilation and deassimilation. Folks who feel resistant to and uncomfortable with Judaism and yet drawn to it anyway. We will hold space for those complexities (in ways that keep the safe space for others) while helping to untangle them. We will provide the tools for deassimilation but it will be consensual and not coerced.

On that note, don’t want to be religious? Totally fine. Secular Jewish cultures will be celebrated. Learning about the history of Yiddish theater? Teaching us how to make your grandmother’s sambusak? All of it. You can be here in all the ways you want, and not in the ways that you don’t.

We will provide each other with resources, with education, with books, with ritual creation and queer text readings and the tools to make the world a better place. We will provide each other with housing and with protest first aid. We will figure out what it means to be Jewish together, and hold each other as best we can through the times of uncertainty ahead.

[half-sassed]

According to last week’s Torah parsha:

God built a specialized enclosure for the first human (Gen. 2:8-15)

God then got concerned about the first human’s well-being and tried to provide the first human with enrichment (Gen. 2:18-20)

God finally gave up and brought home a second human to keep the first one company (Gen. 2:21-22)

The humans got into the food that they weren’t supposed to have while God was out (Gen. 3:6)

God came back to find the humans covered in leaves and trying to avoid God (Gen. 3:7-8)

God decided that since the humans couldn’t be trusted not to break into the food it was better to send them outside (Gen. 3:22-23)

Conclusion:

We are all God’s outdoor cats.

[dafpunk]

Bereishit

17 October 2020

1:27 “Male and female” is “zachar un’kavah” as opposed to “adam v’ishto” in the second story. Actually this whole verse is interesting: “vayiv’ra elohim et-ha-adam b’tsalmo b’tselem elohim bara oto zachar n’kavah bara otam”. Very poetic and lyrical, unlike the second story.

1:28 I’m surprised that “master” the earth (“v’chivshuha”) doesn’t have r-b-n in it, and “rule” the earth (“ur’du”) doesn’t have m-l-ch in it.

2:9 “The tree of life in the middle of the garden, and the tree of good and bad.” You know, I was thinking about how we call the Torah the tree of life, and I was like, so we got it in the end, huh? and 3:22 says “what if he should... take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever!” Which implies that the Torah will help us live forever. That bears more thought.

2:10 Random break to talk about river geography and the land of Havilah (Cush, Asshur, and the Euphrates are pretty well known, but Havilah seems to be a mystery and even more explanation in the text as well).

2:18 And G-d brought the human every living thing to see if he would fuck it, but the human had zir mate inside zir, in an eternal state of fucking, the entire time, so ze didn’t fuck any of the animals G-d put before zir. Only when G-d divided the human would ze not sometimes be fucking.

2:21 G-d invents anaesthesia.

3:6 I feel like folks often leave out that “the woman saw that the tree was good for eating and a delight to the eyes” (also Torah description?) “and that the tree was desirable as a source of wisdom” (“v’nechmad ha-eitz l’haskil”).

3:8 G-d moves about in the Garden at the breezy time of day.

3:20 Chava because she was the eim kol-chai. Ohhh.

3:21 G-d made them clothes, to help them out of the Garden, how nice!

4:3 A few verses back, G-d curses Adam, saying that “your food will be the grasses of the field”, but doesn’t accept the offering of what was literally described as what humans eat? That... actually kind of makes sense, I guess. G-d only wants the food that isn’t part of the curse? But later bread- and grain-offerings are sacrificed at the Mishkan and the Temple, so G-d’s mind changed, I guess?

4:7 First definition of “sin” here: “if you do not do right, sin (“cheit”) crouches at the door”.

4:13 SO OKAY A FEW THINGS HERE:

“I must avoid your presence” (a) G-d literally never said that, and (b) how are you planning to do that, wise guy?

“Anyone who meets me may kill me!” uh you just committed the first murder in the history of the world, how about that case of projection. Also WHO

G-d seems to be paying really, really close attention to the first family and talking to them all the time and the seem to think it’s kind of normal. When does this become a special gift?

Who taught them to make sacrifices? Did G-d say they were put on the world to sustain G-d too? No.. Okay, 4:26, “It was then that they began to invoke G-d by saying hashem.”

4:23 pls may I have a drop of context why the heck did Lamech kill some person/people?

5:1 Third time that G-d creates humans. It’s really getting to be enough.

5:4 There’s got to be mad gematria in the number of years people lived, right?

5:24 “Enoch walked with G-d... G-d took him.” So he didn’t die, huh?

6:1 This one is way more confusing than any of the others!! Divine beings saw how nice women looked and married then and fathered a race of Nephilim, “the heroes of old, the men of renown”? Is this the way the Torah gets around the inbreeding issue? And then, G-d sees how bad humans are all the time? No wonder, considering all of the divine beings cohabiting and marrying them all the time!