#tzav

[girlactionfigure]

Puts Pesach cleaning into perspective in this week's #PieceofParasha on Tzav.

 Check out the full idea: Here

Rabbi Benji

[geostatonary]

Tonight in Torah study: Tzav - 3/26/24

We continue again with the sacrifices of sin, ordination, meals, well-being, and the actual ordination of Aaron and his sons by Moses. Some

tonight in torah study: sacrifices, ordinations, and the inability of priests to double-dip on meals

[nonstandardrepertoire]

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.

[torahgalus]

Tzav

blood on every earlobe and wiggling big toe, our solemn faces limned in purples, blues, crimsons, light--we have spilled our blood on the stage, eager and anxious and ready. we are waiting, waiting, waiting --for the fats and flesh to  catch fire, for the crowd to weep in ecstatic applause.

[straythoughtsmostlyabouttorah]

Tzav

So I was reading the Torah portion for the week - Tzav. And in it God instructs Moses to anoint Aaron (his brother), and his sons as priests. There is a lot in this section about offerings, and the ritual of the anointing is pretty involved as well. And while all that is fascinating, I find myself focusing on the fact the it is Moses who gets to do this for his brother. I have been really relating to Moses’ humanity lately. He is so delightfully human, for better or worse. 

In this section Moses dresses his brother for the priesthood, in front of the whole community. Was he proud of his brother? Did the men shed tears of understanding how momentous this was? Were the sons nervous at this responsibility? Perhaps not. Perhaps they were stoic, attempting to be nothing but serious in front of everyone. But I sincerely hope not. 

I also can’t help but to think about the pressure to get it all right. Literally everyone was watching. No pressure, right?

[parshapoem]

Tzav

This is the Torah rising, a gift, sin and guilt establishing peace.

God made me wash my brother and wash my brother's sons clothe them, crown them, anoint my brother and his sons. The people looked on. My sons watched the consecration of their cousins. God asked me this.

[jewish-education]

What is the perpetual fire, the Eternal Light, that the Torah describes? Where can we find it today?

We as individuals become the little sanctuaries that carry God’s presence around. There is godliness within all of us, a fact that many of forget on a regular basis. Being human, we need reminders of things—both spiritual and physical reminders. We circle back to the ner tamid, the eternal flame. Just as our ancestors were able to see the flames and smoke coming from the Temple at all hours, so too can we see the eternal flame when we walk into a synagogue, no matter the day or time. Even today it takes a community willing to raise money and tend to its infrastructure in order to keep that flame burning. Outside the synagogue it takes other types of communities, like minyanim and kehilot, to provide nurturing environments to tend to the flame, the spirituality, the little sanctuaries that burn within each of us. 

[girlactionfigure]

Puts Pesach cleaning into perspective in this week's #PieceofParasha on Tzav.

 Check out the full idea: Here

Rabbi Benji