Sep 28, 2024
اللهم آمين
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اللهم آمين
Parashat Aḥarei Mot-Qədoshim: תּוֹעֵבָה | to’eivah
There is a story I read somewhere ages ago, the origin of which I can no longer track down, about a feminist philosopher presenting a paper at some academic conference or other. When it came time for the Q&A, some smarmy asshat in the audience piped up to demand, “OK, but what does this have to do with Heidegger?”. The presenter walked to the front of the stage and sat on the lip, to get as close as possible to this guy’s face, and then, with all her force, yelled, “WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH HEIDEGGER? FUCK HEIDEGGER!”. She then stood up, walked back to the lectern, and calmly explained the relationship of her work to Heidegger’s in appropriately academic terms. I think about this story all the time, and feel it especially acutely when it comes to this verse and others like it.
I went to my college's Hillel yesterday for Shabbat, and we talked about Vayetzei. So when the Rabbi was introducing the student who would give the D'var Torah, he said:
"Hey everyone this is Jacob and he's going to tell us about a man named, well, Jacob."
😆😆😆
B'midbar Dvar Torah
'On the first day of the second month, in the second year following the exodus from the land of Egypt, the Eternal One spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the Tent of Meeting, saying: "Take a census of the whole Israelite company…" - Numbers 1:1-2' This week we read the first parashah in Numbers: B'midbar, which means 'In the Wilderness'. As summarised in the B'midbar 1:1-2, this parashah is one massive census. G-d commands Moses to take a census of all the Israelite males of the age of 20 – all who are able to go out to war in Israel. Arranged in their houses, a lot of counting goes on, and we learn the names and quantities of the men, who are assigned specific places in the camp around the Tabernacle. The Levites, not included in the census, have their duties detailed. They are tasked with carrying the Tabernacle and looking after all of its holy furnishings, being the ones to take it down and set it up whenever the camp moved. The unlucky sons of Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, get a posthumous mention. We learn that since they had no children, their roles are fulfilled by Eleazar and Ithamar, who minister in the priest's office in the presence of their father. G-d also instructs Moses and Aaron regarding the responsibilities of him and his sons, and the duties of the Kohanites. And that's about it. No big scenes of drama, as in the Exodus story. No real teachings that will shape the future of the Jewish people, as many of the parshiot in Leviticus. But what captured my imagination wasn't the content of the parashah as such, but its title: B'midbar. The wilderness. The Israelites are now wandering in the wilderness on their onwards quest for the land promised to them. At one point in the Book of Numbers, they exclaim that slavery is better than not having enough food or water. Trapped in a space of desperation, uncertainty, and desolation – this makes me wonder: why do the Jewish people's arguably most important years of spiritual challenge and growth take place 'in the wilderness?' The Talmud states that 'When one makes himself as the wilderness, which is free to all, the Torah is presented to him as a gift'. (Babylonian Talmud, N'darim 55a). What does it mean to literally become the wilderness? The wilderness is a place of enemies, danger, physical and mental torment. When I was 18, I was an alcoholic. I was jobless, and had left a transphobic school. I had no prospects, and I had ongoing mental health problems which were being neglected. I remember that moment, I was in my midbar. I knew there were mountains around me, and I could either find the strength to pass through them and to try and find a better future, or I could remain stuck, and spiral even further down. A short period of soul searching and heaving myself up by my bootstraps meant that I chose to live. I got an apprenticeship, I quit drinking as I got my life together, and now I'm here. Perhaps this is the journey the Rabbis mean? To overcome and persevere in your darkest moments – to identify the bad within yourself and make a change, to contribute towards society once again. Not only did the ancient Israelites receive the Torah in the wilderness, but from those moral and spiritual teachings and from struggling through the midbar for many years, they were able to form the basis of a nation and a society. Within the midbar of our lives, we are able to find emotional and spiritual growth. But the midbar wasn't just a one off occurrence. The Haftorah from Hosea (Hosea 2:1-2:22), is a cry against the idolatrous behaviour of Israel and a plea for them to return to the one G-d – behaviour other prophets have linked to the destruction of the First and Second Temples. However, even though Hosea used striking imagery to conjure up the image of Israel forsaking their lover, G-d, and proclaiming that they get their sustenance from Baal ('I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink') – the haftorah ends on a surprisingly hopeful note. One of G-d bringing us back to Him, accepting our failing, and starting afresh: ('I will betroth you to me forever. Yes, I will betroth you to me in righteousness, in justice, in loving kindness and in compassion.') The combination of the parashah and the haftorah tells me a story. If we are in our midbar – our journey to whatever our promised land is, either to being a better person, pulling ourselves out of a depression or a spiritual crisis, or just overcoming the tribulations of life – G-d will not abandon us and actively wants us to return, to trust, and to become better people ourselves. Even though I still sometimes struggle with mental health problems, this is something that I can find solace in, and I hope you can, too.
Parashat Pinəḥas, 5784
(This dəvar was originally given at Kolot Chayeinu on the morning of Saturday, 27 July, 2024.)
Today's Torah portion comes from the book of Numbers, which is called that in English because it has so many lists of numbers of things. Several of those lists occur in today's portion, including a second census of all the Israelites in the wilderness. You may remember a similar census being taken way back at the beginning of the book, some forty years ago or so; we have to do another one here because the entire generation that was counted in that first census has since died. Or, well, that entire generation minus Mosheh (for now), Yəhoshú’a and Kaleiv, and everyone who wasn't yet 20 the first time around. But still, close enough. An entire generation, give or take, minus those spared by G-d or fate or what have you.
Perhaps because it's a census of the next generation, this list of Israelite adults contains some little nuggets of history along with the tribal tallies. We hear about Qóraḥ's rebellion, for example, and then we hear that the sons of Qóraḥ did not die.
It gets an entire verse all to itself, Numbers 26:11: And the sons of Qóraḥ did not die.
What do we make of this?
One approach is to take it very literally: Qóraḥ had some sons, they didn't rebel with him, they didn't die. That's the approach Ibn Ezra — a scholar from early twelfth-century Spain — takes. He notes that several psalms are attributed to the tribe of Qóraḥ, surmises that these must be Qóraḥ's descendants, and explains that some of Qóraḥ's kids must therefore have survived. Easy enough.
But if you know anything about our tradition, you know that our sages of blessed memory are seldom satisfied with a simple surface reading, and they have some wild things to extrapolate from this one verse. The Babylonian Talmud, in tractate Sanhedrin, page 110a, records a story from Rabba bar bar Ḥanah. He says he met a guy this one time who brought him to a crack in the earth that belched steam and heat so intense it could singe wet wool when passed over it at spear's length. And yet when bar bar Ḥanah listened, he heard the sons of Qóraḥ singing songs of praise from the underworld.
The Talmud doesn't cite a Biblical prooftext for this story, but we can find an allusion to it in Numbers 26:11 itself: If you take the first letter of each word in the verse, you get ו, ק, ל, ם, which together spell vəqolam, "and their voice". The sons of Qóraḥ did not die, and neither did their voice. If you listen, perhaps you can still hear it today.
What does that voice tell us? If you take Mosheh's side of the dispute, which the sages certainly do, this is a warning that no victory is final, that there will never be a perfectly stable society where no one seeks to challenge the status quo. It's a warning against resting on your laurels, a warning that leadership requires constant attention to discontent among those you hope to lead.
If you take Qóraḥ's side, tho, it suggests that defeat need not be final either, that a setback, however ruinous, to the cause of pursuing justice is never the end of the story — the sons of Qóraḥ did not die; another generation will come and carry on the fight.
This reading echoes Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg's quip that dissents speak to a future age, that the dissenter's hope is that they are writing not for today but for tomorrow.[1] Dissents like these remind us that the past is not flat, that the majority or official opinions aren't the only ones that existed, and that the world does not always move in a tidy line from less to more just.
Our tradition is full of dissents such as these. One that I come back to regularly as I build my own Jewish life is a dissent from Rabbi Howard Handler from 1992. At the time, Rabbi Handler was a member of the Conservative Movement's halakhic authority, the Committee for Jewish Law and Standards, which was debating whether to alter the traditional ban on homosexuality. The majority opinions adopted by the Committee reflect the ambient homophobia of the time — the consensus position includes a clause saying they will not accept "avowed homosexuals'' into the movement's rabbinical school, for example — but Rabbi Handler's dissent is having none of it. He writes:
The CJLS has made gay and lesbian Jews second-class citizens or, even worse, a tolerated minority. . . . The policies are discriminatory at best and profoundly oppressive in any event. There is no reason for us to hesitate in accepting gays and lesbians into our community with complete equality.[2]
In some ways, this dissent, with its insistence on full equality for queer Jews, goes further than the Committee would go some fourteen years later, in 2006, when the Committee finally approved a təshuvah abrogating their halakhic ban.[3] His dissent is a reminder of what could have been, that there is a radical tradition there for us in the past, no matter how hard some have tried to bury it.
Rabbi Handler wrote these words some ten years into the AIDS crisis. Despite Fukuyama's "End of History", it was a time of tremendous upheaval, uncertainty, and death. In my undergraduate gay and lesbian history class, the lecture on the early years of the crisis was the one lecture my professor asked us not to take notes on. Instead of his usual academic analysis, he just showed us pictures from when he was in college, some 40 years ago or so, pictures of his friends, with little annecdotes about each of them in turn. This one would always make sure you got home safe from the party, no matter how drunk you were. This one was so beautiful, but so annoying to be in class with. This one sang so enthusiastically, even if he wasn't always the most in tune. Each of these stories, a whole hour's worth of them, ended in the same way: And he died. And he died. And he died. A whole generation, give or take, minus those spared by G-d or fate or what have you.
In 1993, Rabbi Handler was outed and fired from the congregation where he had had a pulpit. He was kicked off the Committee for Jewish Law and Standards, and his former colleagues debated whether the movement should help him find a new job. In a decision stark in its cruelty, fourteen of these rabbis voted to deny him that help. He was left without a rabbinical position.
But the sons of Qóraḥ did not die.
Queer Jews did not simply go away. We certainly didn't get any quieter. 1992 was not the first time we asserted our halakhic rights, and it would not be the last. The struggle is far from over, but more and more, these days, it's the people who would shame us who are themselves shamed instead.
We are living in a time of tremendous upheaval, uncertainty, and death. (When are we not!) I don't know how it will all turn out. I don't know what the ledger will say when the final case has been tried and decided, the final verdict rendered with no appeal left in any court human or Divine. I don't know where things will stand when history truly, finally ends. I don't know what happens when that day comes.
But I do know it won't come for a while yet. And so even when the prospects seem bleak, when I am in despair and the possibility of bending the universe towards justice seems faint, remote, impossible, even then I keep working, keep putting my little voice out into the world. Because I want there to be a record of it. Because I want people to know I was here. Because, even if things don't all turn out the way I hope they will, perhaps another generation in some future age will be able to say "Look! Even back then, there were people who thought like this, who fought for these ideals, however imperfectly and unsuccessfully.''
Because the sons of Qóraḥ will not die.
Shabbat shalom.
This quote has been widely repeated, which makes it difficult to track down a precise source. If anyone can point me to the origin, I'd love to cite it more properly.
Rabbi Howard Handler, “In the Image of G-d: A Dissent in Favor of the Full Equality of Gay and Lesbian Jews into the Community of Conservative Judaism”, 25 Mar, 1992 (PDF)
In my experience, many Conservative shuls today go much further than even the most permissive ruling in 2006 would theoretically allow. The ruling in question explicitly says that bisexual Jews must only enter into relationships with Jews of the "opposite" binary gender, and bars gay and lesbian Jews from sanctifying their relationships with the rite of qidushin. (Instead, they create an alternate rite that heterosexual Jews are not supposed to use — it's very marriage vs civil union, honestly.[4]) I have been in many Conservative shuls in the past ~8 years where I would be, frankly, shocked if the suggestion that bisexuals halakhically ought to limit themselves to heterosexuality were met with anything other than shocked condemnation. There is the Law, and then there is the Community, and I think it's important to remember that they're not always in synch.[5]
Or at least, that's the theory. In 2017, the CJLS approved a təshuvah about trans people that, among other things, allows married Jews to stay married after one of them transitions, meaning that you can, in fact, have two men or two women joined in qidushin or a man and a woman joined with the bərit ahuvim after all. But I digress...
That said, from what I gather, both the 1992 and 2006 discussions of gay and lesbian Jews in the CJLS were acrimonious and distressing for most of those involved, so I understand why they're not exactly eager to dredge the whole thing up again.
Parashat Vayaqheil: רֽוּחַ | rú’aḥ
Roaring or whispering, it takes a constant wind to see a project of any size thru to completion. There’s a common notion that most of the work of creation involves coming up with a really good idea. Once you know what your show or book or painting or movie or whatever is about, the rest is just a sort of tedious, mechanical setting down of the work that already exists in your head. But it’s not like that. It’s not like that at all.
Tzav/Trans Day of Visibility
[This dəvar was originally given at Kolot Chayeinu on 20 Adar II, 5784. This transcript has been lightly revised with some staircase thoughts.]
Shabbat Shalom!
As a general rule, the Torah is written using a very restricted vocabulary. When two characters are talking, for example, we don't get verbs like "muttered", "mumbled", "shouted", or "whispered" — it's all just "said", "said", "said". One of the big exceptions is the lavish descriptions of priestly matters like the Mishkan and the Levitical paraphernalia. Suddenly, we have all these technical words for kinds of fabric, dyes, precious stones, and architectural features. The ordination of the priests in this week's parashah is no exception: Aharon doesn't just have "clothes", he has a special tunic, he has a frontlet, he has something called an "efod".
We know what some of these things looked like, but others remain somewhat mysterious, because no actual examples of them survive to the present day. This isn't altogether surprising — in general, not much clothing survives from the past. In part, this is because so much of it is made from materials less durable than ceramic or stone, but it's also because people wear clothes, and in doing so expose them to the ravages of time and the elements. This can easily distort our understanding of the past — it's easy to come away from a historical fashion exhibition with the impression that everyone in the past was skinny and fashionable, when really it's just that very skinny clothes are hard to hand down or alter for the next generation and very fashionable clothes tend to be worn once or twice, for a season at most, and then set aside instead of being worn again and again year after year. The constant exposure that comes with regular use takes its toll on clothes to the point that they disintegrate into nothing.
Exposure takes its toll on people, too. Outside of shul, I'm an artist (I make theatre), and from time to time, people will try to hire me with exposure instead of money. This happens so frequently that my friends have a stock joke response to such offers: "Work for exposure? But people die of exposure!"
That joke has been on my mind a lot these past few years whenever Trans Day of Visibility rolls around. On the whole, trans people have become increasingly visible in this country in the past few years, but that visibility hasn't been accompanied by increased support or protection. Instead, increasing visibility has come with increasing hostility, increasing attempts to punish and prevent trans existence. In this climate, being more visible feels an awful lot like being more exposed, with all the vulnerability to destruction that that entails. I've seen increasing numbers of my trans friends talk about visibility as a problem, as a trap.
In this way, Trans Day of Visibility feels like it's become one more day when we talk about trans suffering. And trans suffering has a visibility all of its own.
As I said, outside of shul, I make theatre. And I have found again and again that when producers talk about authentic trans plays, they have in mind plays about trans suffering. The plays that the mainstream theatre world is most excited about are plays where trans people, all in all, don't have a very good time.
And I don't like that.
I'm not going to stand up here and claim that living as a trans person is 100% uninterrupted peaches and cream, but my transsexual life is not defined by my suffering. And I don't want the world at large to get in the habit of equating transness with misery. I don't want people left with the impression that the only true transsexual is a suffering transsexual. I want people to be in the habit of imagining us happy, or at least as happy as anyone gets to be on stage or in the wider world.
And this brings me back to the roots of the day. Trans Day of Visibility was started in 2009 as a counterweight to Trans Day of Remembrance, the day when we remember our dead and mourn their untimely passing. Trans Day of Visibility was meant to be a foil to that, to be a day for celebrating trans joy, a day for lifting us up while we're still alive. And I think that that insistence on life, that full-throated affirmation that we belong here, in the world, as living people instead of memories, is worth holding on to, especially in a moment when so many people want us to disappear without a trace.
The lives we celebrate on this day don't have to be grand or earth shaping. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's quip that well-behaved women seldom make history is often taken as a feminist exhortation to make good trouble, but her original point was gentler and subtler than that. Her point was that lots of women in the past lived orderly lives, lives that leave little trace in the historical record. They weren't poets, they weren't politicians, they weren't activists or artists or great warriors. But they were still real people. Their lives still mattered. Their invisibility in the historical record shouldn't lead us to think of them with incurious apathy. For trans people, too, our lives shouldn't have to be big and splashy, to be especially visible, to matter, to be worth protecting.
On Trans Day of Visibility, I think about my friend Liz, who works in HR. Brian, a clerk in a small-town city hall. Jay, a night manager at the Ralph's. I want Trans Day of Visibility to be for them, too. I want a world where it doesn't take courage to be trans. I want a world where trans people can be boring.
And in a weird way, this brings us back to Tzav.
Leviticus — especially this part of Leviticus — is often called fly-over country. People rarely fight to give a drash on Tzav. But listen: I have this one trans friend. We were thrown together by circumstance — the same exhausting place at the same exhausting time — and we've stuck together since then. From time to time, we get coffee, and we don't talk about anything particularly deep or witty: the latest hijinks at our jobs, the health of various family members, the weather. But it's nice. I like seeing them. It's a reminder that we're both still here, and sometimes that's enough. With the world the way it is, it doesn't always feel like such a small achievement.
I'll be honest: I think Tzav is kind of boring. But if I'm here studying it again, that means we're both still here. And maybe that's enough. Not every trans person needs to be Miss Major or Chase Strangio. And not every Torah portion needs to be Bəreishit or Qóraḥ. Tzav, too, is Torah. And we must learn.
Parashat Éiqev: וְאֶמְחֶה | və’emḥeh
A second consolation: You are going to die. Everyone you love is going to die. Every thing and place you love is going to be rendered nothingness by the expanding nuclear fire of the sun and the ultimate dissolution of the universe itself. There is nothing you can do about any of this.