Author Archives: Penina

Song of Deborah: Motherhood, Manhood, and War (January 17, 2019)

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Ruach HaYam Teaching presented by Penina Weinberg at Congregation Eitz Chayim, 136 Magazine Street, Cambridge, MA – January 17, 2019. (Scroll to end for logistics)

Join us at Ruach HaYam, an independent queer havurah, for a close reading of the Song of Deborah (Judges 4-5). We will study stereotypical gender roles, non-normative gender roles, and how power is wielded. We also consider the nature of war. The Song of Deborah is as old as the very ancient Song of the Sea (Ex 15:1-19) and Song of Miriam (Ex. 15:20-21), with which it is paired as haftarah.

The text presents an extraordinary trio of women who run the gamut from magnificent to tragic to disturbing, set against the backdrop of war. It includes one of the most poignant stories in the Hebrew Bible – the little known saga of Sisera’s mother.

Be prepared for a provocative (and queer) look at motherhood, manhood, and war.

You may wish to visit Laurence Olivier’s recital of the story, with illustrations. Quite amazing.

Penina Weinberg is an independent Hebrew bible scholar whose study and teaching focus on the intersection of power, politics and gender in the Hebrew Bible. She has run workshops for Nehirim and Keshet and has been teaching Hebrew bible for 10 years. She has written in Tikkun and HBI blog, and is the leader and founder of Ruach HaYam.

** Logistics**
Study starts promptly at 7:15 pm. We open the doors at 6:45 for schmoozing. Feel free to bring your own veggie snack for the early part. A parking consideration is in effect for the three blocks around EC during all regularly scheduled events. It is a good idea to put a note in the windshield that you are attending an event at EC.
Accessibility information: all gender/accessible bathrooms, entry ramp.

Ruach HaYam study sessions provide a queer Jewish look at text, but are welcoming to any learning or faith background, to all bodies, and friendly to beginners.

Job: Divine and Human Response to Suffering (December 20, 2018)

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Ruach HaYam Teaching at Congregation Eitz Chayim, 136 Magazine Street, Cambridge, MA – December 20, 2018. (Scroll to end for logistics)

Banner: Color illumination from Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, c.776 – 825 Septuagint of Job with commentaries (Vat. Gr. 749, f. 25r): Satan, Job and his wife. Job in the center, struck with boils and threatened by a three headed monster. On the right, Job’s wife mourns.

In our previous study session on Korah, we questioned how one might understand a divine being who can threaten to annihilate an entire community. We discussed what Abraham Joshua Heshel teaches about “harsh passages” in the Bible. This led us to want to learn about Divine response to tragedy. What is the interplay between tragic human events and divine intervention? The book of Job deals at length with questions of evil and suffering. We would need years to plumb its meaning. For this class we will look at a few verses from Job, consider what it means to be labeled responsible for one’s own suffering, and look in the text for divine and human response to suffering.

“Where shall wisdom be found?
And where is the place of understanding?” [Job 28:12].
Listen here to Dolorean who has set this beautifully to music

Robert Alter’s translation in “The Wisdom Books” is highly recommended.

Here is a tiny video I made of images and music for Job

Ruach HaYam Study of Job on Biteable.

Penina Weinberg is an independent Hebrew bible scholar whose study and teaching focus on the intersection of power, politics and gender in the Hebrew Bible. She has run workshops for Nehirim and Keshet and has been teaching Hebrew bible for 10 years. She has written in Tikkun and HBI blog, and is the leader and founder of Ruach HaYam.

** Logistics**
Study starts promptly at 7:15 pm. We open the doors at 6:45 for schmoozing. Feel free to bring your own veggie snack for the early part. A parking consideration is in effect for the three blocks around EC during all regularly scheduled events. It is a good idea to put a note in the windshield that you are attending an event at EC.
Accessibility information: all gender/accessible bathrooms, entry ramp.

Ruach HaYam study sessions provide a queer Jewish look at text, but are welcoming to any learning or faith background, to all bodies, and friendly to beginners.

Parashat Vayeira (Genesis 18.1-22.24) Radical Hospitality and the Sanctuary Movement

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Those of us who have an opportunity to participate in giving sanctuary to refugees in crisis know how critical it is to provide a safe haven for a person at risk of deportation to certain physical danger.  As volunteers providing round the clock witness, we are sometimes daunted when months stretch into years while our guests await relief in the courts.  Yet we know that the difficulty of our task is not to be compared to the discomfort of being confined day after day in a small space, not knowing when/if release will come.  Our job is to make the environment as hospitable as we can.

This week’s Torah portion, Vayeira (Gen 18.1-22.24) teaches us about hospitality.  As the parsha opens, YHWH appears to Abraham as he sits by his tent in the midday heat.  When Abraham looks up, he sees three men, not immediately obvious as messengers of God.  Nevertheless, Abraham rushes to bring them water to wash their dusty feet, invites them to rest in the shade under the tree and brings them bread.  Abraham further prepares a tender young calf with curds and milk – a feast for the visitors.  The radical hospitality of Abraham is well known.  And what accompanies this hospitality is the pronouncement that Sarah will bear a child in her old age, an occasion for laughter and joy (and some trepidation).  This would be enough to teach the virtues of hospitality on its own.

However, our parsha goes on to additionally warn us of the drastic consequences of radical inhospitality.  In a master stroke of point and counter point, the narrative switches immediately from Abraham and Sarah and the message of new birth, to God sharing with Abraham that God will visit Sodom and Gomorrah to see if they are indeed as sinful as God has heard.  Implied is that God will sweep away the inhabitants of that land.  Abraham bargains with God to save Sodom from destruction if there are even ten righteous persons there.  Now certainly identified as malachim, (messengers/angels) of God, two men, presumably two of Abraham’s guests, go to Sodom.  Lot, nephew of Abraham, greets the malachim by falling on his face, with an offer of shelter and a place to wash their feet.  Lot, like Abraham, prepares a feast for his guests.

Lot is not a native of Sodom.  He is newly arrived, considered a ger, a resident alien, not permanent. Lot’s new neighbors do not hold to the same high standard of hospitality as do he and Abraham.  The men of the city, young and old, encircle Lot’s house and demand that he bring the visitors out so that they may know them.  While “knowing” here may have sexual overtones, and from this text for many centuries fanatics have claimed that the sin of Sodom is homosexuality, the sin is not homosexuality.   Whatever the neighbors want to do to the visitors has nothing to do with same sex love (or any love), and everything to do with force and violence.  Lot refuses to allow wickedness to be done to the men.  Unfortunately, Lot’s hospitality (and humanity) breaks down, as he offers up his virgin daughters to the neighbors.  Would there have been a better outcome if Lot had not offered up his daughters?  Perhaps the 10 righteous would have been found and the city saved.

Lot leaving Sodom, Woodcut from the Nuremberg Chronicle

In the event, YHWH rescues Lot and his daughters, turns Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt, and reigns brimstone and fire down on Sodom.  The conflagration is horrific.  The Genesis text is not specific about what the sin of Sodom is, but coming on the heels of Abraham’s welcome to strangers, we understand it may be in  refusing friendship to resident aliens (Lot and family), and threatening to swallow up strangers in violence.

The prophet Ezekiel gives us insight into the underpinnings/ background to the cruel way in which those of Sodom treat strangers.

This was the iniquity of your sister Sodom: pride, surfeit of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters; and she did not strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. Ezekiel 16:49–50

Rabbi Steven Greenberg gives an overview of rabbinic commentary:

Among early rabbinic commentators, the common reading of the sin of Sodom was its cruelty, arrogance and disdain for the poor. The sages of the Babylonian Talmud also associated Sodom with the sins of pride, envy, cruelty to orphans, theft, murder, and perversion of justice. While the event which sealed the fate of the Sodomites was their demand for Lot to bring out his guests so that the mob might “know” them, this still was not seen so much as an act of sexual excess, but as hatred of the stranger and exploitation of the weak. Midrashic writers lavishly portray Sodom and the surrounding cities as arrogant and self-satisfied, destroyed for the sins of greed and indifference to the poor. https://www.myjewishlearning.com/keshet/the-real-sin-of-sodom/

Not to take in the sojourners or travelers crossing the desert in those days could doom them to great suffering and even death.  This is the action of a community which indeed practices cruelty, perversion of justice, greed and indifference to the poor.  The flaming destruction of an entire people is terrifying in our eyes, yet the symbol remains as a warning of the dire consequences of radical inhospitality.

The news these days is full of cruel practices and perversion of justice.  We hope and pray that there is a just reward to the perpetrators.  Meanwhile, like Abraham and Sarah, we can hold our sanctuary guests in warm embrace, assuring them of clean water, abundant food, and safe shelter.  And we can work against the real sins of Sodom in our present society, by standing up for the rights of transgender people, immigrants, people of color, and other marginalized groups.

May the pleasure and laughter of Sarah be our reward.  “And Sarah laughed.”  Genesis 18:12

Ruach HaYam Shabbat Retreat November 10, 2018

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Ruach HaYam, in partnership with Congregation Am Tikva, invites you to our sixth annual full day Shabbat retreat for LGBTQ+ Jews and friends and family.

November 10, 2018, from 9:30am to 7:30pm at Congregation Eitz Chayim, 136 Magazine Street, Cambridge, MA 02139.

PRE-REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED PLEASE REGISTER HERE

Eitz Chayim is 15 minutes walk from Central Square.  There will be a parking consideration in effect so that you may park within a couple blocks of the synagogue.   Eitz Chayim has a ramp entry and accessible and all gender bathrooms.

Refresh your spirit and make new friends in this fabulous day of egalitarian davening, creative and thoughtful workshops,and delicious kosher food!

Ruach HaYam welcomes queer Jews, friends, allies, family, and interfaith connections . We worship without a mechitza, with the music of our voices only, and with our own siddur. Our retreats are warm, meaningful, collaborative, lead to deepening of friendships, and are simply fabulous. 

Schedule for Retreat See below for faculty and leader biographies

Services
9:30 am to Noon.   Service Leader Marvin Kabakoff.  Song/Chant Leader Maryam Rhys. Gabbai Sarah Pasternak. Darshan Penina Weinberg
Lunch  Noon to 1:30 pm
Workshops
1:45 to 3:00 –  Mimi Yasgur. Storytelling and Improvisation: The Gift of Transmission.  “Toldot” means “generations,” and this Torah portion focuses on the progeny of our ancestors and the challenges they had in establishing their families and working through family dynamics. What stories do you carry with you from your own history? What stories do you seek to impart as your legacy? Bring your mind, heart, and playfulness as we explore these questions through interactive conversation, movement, and improvisational activities.
3:15 to 3:45 – Time for a 7th inning stretch!  Walk or exercise!
4:00 to 5:15 – Rabbi Reb Lea-h Campolo.  Colonial Jews of Newport.  Have you visited the mansions on Bellevue Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island ? Do you know that Bellevue Avenue was once called Jew Street? Do you know that the Hebrew language was once a requirement for a Yale graduate? How did that come to be?
Learn about the generations of Jews before us, particularly the Sephardic colonial Jews of Newport (Lopez, Rodrigues, Seixas). What images do we hold of Jewish immigrants in America? Come and hear a fascinating history that may change how we might think about Jewish life, worship, ethics, and interfaith relationships during the formation of the country. An important class for those who aspire to learn a another slice of American history that was missed.
Closing
5:30 – Havdalah – Marvin Kabakov
Following Havdalah – Meal/Melave Malka

Retreat Directors

 

 

 

 Penina Weinberg, Retreat Director is an independent biblical scholar and the founder of Ruach HaYam. Penina is President Emerita of Congregation Eitz Chayim in Cambridge, MA, where she is a frequent lay leader.  Her studying and teaching focus a queer lens on issues of gender, power, and identity in the Hebrew Bible. Penina teaches in Boston area synagogues, and has led many workshops for Nehirim and Keshet.  This is her sixth year as Ruach HaYam retreat director.
Marvin Kabakoff, Service Leader, graduated from Brandeis and received a Ph.D. in history from Washington University-St. Louis. He is recently retired as an archivist with the National Archives and Records Administration at their regional facility in Waltham, and is an adjunct in the Simmons Library School. Marvin attended a community Hebrew school and Hebrew High School in New Haven, and has been a long-time service leader at Am Tikva.
Sarah Pasternak, Assistant Retreat Director and Gabbai hails from NJ. She graduated from Dartmouth College. After six years in New Hampshire, Sarah is excited by the size and diversity of the Boston Jewish LGBTQ+ community and doesn’t expect that excitement to fade for a little while yet.   Sarah serves on the board of Netivot an international LGBTQ+ traditional Jewish community

Workshop and other Leaders

Rabbi Reb Lea-h Campolo graduated from Oberlin College with a degree in Religion and Philosophy. She went on to rabbinic studies, learning with Rabbi Zalman Schachter Shalom z”l, and received smicha in his lineage. She was the founder and spiritual director of Beit HaDorshim in Brookline MA. She currently teaches, speaks, and officiates life cycle events for many occasions. She also holds degrees in building construction and design, and is licensed to assist in surgery at Boston Medical Center where she currently works.

Maryam Rhys is a healer, musician and ritual drummer who plays for a wide variety of groups. She is a Tsovah (temple keeper) in the Kohenet Hebrew priestess program, which trains Jewish women to become leaders in the Jewish community in traditional and non-traditional ways. She will get smichah as a full Kohenet next year.

Mimi Yasgur, M.A., LMHC, is an expressive arts therapist and mental health counselor. She has a private psychotherapy practice in Medford, where she works with adults across the lifespan, including the LGBTQ community. She enjoys integrating her passions for art, creativity, Judaism, and spirituality to create vibrant community.

Our Partner Organization
Congregation Am Tikva, since 1976, has been providing a safe and welcoming space for GLBT Jews in the Boston area to pray together and to socialize. It created its own gender-neutral prayerbooks and customs for Friday evening services, the high holidays, and special events, such as the Erev Pride Liberation Seder. Am Tikva is a mixture of genders and sexualities who come from a variety of Jewish backgrounds. The services reflect that variety. Am Tikva offers two Friday evening services a month, one more contemporary and one more traditional, as well as High Holiday services and celebrations of other queer and Jewish holidays

Korah: Rebel With (out?) a Cause (September 27, 2018)

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Ruach HaYam Teaching at Congregation Eitz Chayim, 136 Magazine Street, Cambridge, MA – September 27, 2018. (Scroll to end for logistics)

Banner: “The Punishment of Korah and the Stoning of Moses and Aaron” by Sandro Botticelli, 1481-82. Fresco in Sistine Chapel. (Wikimedia Commons)

Penina Weinberg leads this study of Parashat Korah, Numbers 16.1-18.32. (note, we usually meet on 3rd Thursdays; this is 4th due to Yom Kippur)
Korah dares to question the authority of Moses, whom Korah claims is raising himself above the congregation of YHWH. Does Korah have a point, or is he a rebel with a wish for personal power? Korah says that everyone in the community is holy. Sounds right, yet the text tells us that “The earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up with all their households, all Korah’s people and all their possessions. They went down alive into Sheol, with all that belonged to them; the earth closed over them and they vanished from the midst of the congregation.” (Num 16: 32-33)
Who can be a prophet? Who is holy? When do we question authority? How do we understand a divine being who can threaten to annihilate the entire community? What do we do with what Abraham Joshua Heschel calls “harsh passages”?

Penina Weinberg is an independent Hebrew bible scholar whose study and teaching focus on the intersection of power, politics and gender in the Hebrew Bible. She has run workshops for Nehirim and Keshet and has been teaching Hebrew bible for 10 years. She has written in Tikkun and HBI blog, and is the leader and founder of Ruach HaYam.

** Logistics**
Study starts promptly at 7:15 pm. We open the doors at 6:45 for schmoozing. Feel free to bring your own veggie snack for the early part. A parking consideration is in effect for the three blocks around EC during all regularly scheduled events. It is a good idea to put a note in the windshield that you are attending an event at EC.
Accessibility information: all gender/accessible bathrooms, entry ramp.

Ruach HaYam study sessions provide a queer Jewish look at text, but are welcoming to any learning or faith background, to all bodies, and friendly to beginners.

Parashat Sh’lach — Caleb: Ruach Acheret and Sacred Norms

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Wherever we travel in the Jewish world, we can see the positive effects of efforts to bring human laws, lives, and communities into line with divine standards of justice and loving-kindness.  But those who don’t fit communal norms know the downside of this ideal: its tendency to cast an aura of sanctity over flawed and even oppressive social structures and to frame efforts to make communal norms more inclusive as threats to the essence and existence of the community….

The emphasis on sacred normativity in Judaism and the Jewish community harms those, like LGBTQ Jews, who don’t fit established norms.  It also harms the Torah by obscuring the queerness on which its moral and spiritual vitality depend.  — Joy Ladin

Parashat Sh’lach (Numbers 13.1 – 15:41) tells of fear and courage at the border between wilderness and homeland, spells out a set of sacred norms about sacrificial offerings, relates the tale of a man who is stoned for gathering sticks on Shabbat, and commands the wearing of the tzitzit. At the border crossing, Moses sends twelve spies to reconnoiter the land.  One of them, Caleb, is recognized by the divine as a man with ruach acheret. His “different spirit” carries within it the queerness of the divine, and life lived in the non-normative lane.  Joshua, a strong and effective leader, has ruach, but it is not “different.”  His accomplishments on the field of battle in the book of Joshua fit into the normative communal pattern of kill and conquer, of obey God or die.  The laws of sacrificial offerings are in line with Joshua’s directions to the people.   The struggle for even balance between Caleb’s ruach acheret and Joshua’s just plain ruach,  between living true to one’s nature and obeying norms, could be a good lesson about existing in the non-binary – holding two extremes in tension.  Or would be, if it were not for the horrifying story of the stoning of the wood gatherer, and norms run amok.  The commandment of the wearing of the tzitzit is oddly jarring after the stoning.

As Parashat Sh’lach opens, we find ourselves recovering from the temporary exclusion of Miriam from the camp, and at the brink of entering into the land of Canaan, which God has promised to the children of Israel.  The way in which Miriam challenged authority and normativity is not the subject here and would take us astray.  Nevertheless, keep in mind that we are standing at the brink of Eretz Israel, with the fresh memory of the unsettledness of Miriam’s banishment and our week long wait for her to return.

Before we can enter Canaan, God commands Moses to send one man from each tribe to spy out the land and its inhabitants.  The spies return after forty days and present their report.  The text says “they told” Moses that though the land flows with milk and honey, it is full of fierce people from enemy nations living in fortified cities [Num 13:27-28].  It appears to be a consensus report by all the spies – until Caleb speaks up.  His report is diametrically opposed to that of his fellow spies; he undertakes – one person – to stand against the entire community in favor of going up into the land at once. [Joshua does not speak here but will join Caleb’s cause later].  Furthermore, Caleb stills the people towards Moses, saying that they most assuredly can possess the land.  He grasps the people’s unease at once, and determines to make them hear the truth.

Rather than instilling courage, Caleb’s speech provokes the other spies to an even greater effort to keep the children of Israel from entering the land.  They bring forth an evil report about giants and a land that eats its inhabitants.  “We looked like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and so we appeared to them.” [Num 13:33].  The people raise up their voices and weep all night.  They murmur against Moses and Aaron, and complain that God brought them out of Egypt only to die by the sword.  “Let us make a captain and return to Egypt,” they say [Num 14:4].

This is a disaster.  The people are in open rebellion, not only against Moses and Aaron, but against the Divine itself.  Moses and Aaron try to intervene, falling on their faces in front of the assembly. Caleb and Joshua make a mighty effort.  They rend their clothes and testify that the land is tovah meod meod – very, very good land, and that they must not rebel against God.  The people refuse to listen;  they determine to stone Moses and Aaron (to death).   God appears in the divine aspect of kavod (glory) [Num 14:10].  God as kavod entered the tabernacle when it was completed [Ex 40:35], and now appears as glory or majesty, with a voice, but without body, without gender.    God as kavod called out to Moses upon entering the tabernacle, securing Moses’s good counsel for the journey across the desert [Lev 1.1].  Now God takes counsel with Moses. How long will these people despise me, God asks of Moses? “I will smite them with pestilence and dispossess them and will make of you a nation greater and mightier than they.” [Num 14:12]

Moses argues convincingly that God needs to maintain the reputation garnered by rescuing the people from Egypt with a mighty hand.   God is slow to anger and full of lovingkindness, Moses reminds God.  He presses God to pardon the iniquity of  this people.  What exactly is their iniquity?  Rebelling against God [Num 14:9], despising God and not believing in God [Num 14:11].  We are reminded of Naomi, who accused God of making her lot bitter, of dealing harshly with her, and bringing misfortune upon her [Ruth 1:20-21].  “For the hand of YHWH has struck out against me,” she says [Ruth 1:13]. Yet Naomi was rescued by Ruth, and this people will not be rescued.  As Moses has requested, God pardons the people, which means that they do not immediately die; however all those of the older generation are doomed to wander forty years until their dead bodies drop in the wilderness.  Ten of the spies are not pardoned.  God subjects them to deadly plague.  But God saves alive Caleb and Joshua.

Joshua is destined to carry on Moses’ work.  Further on in the text God tells Moses to lay his hands on Joshua as successor.  He is “a man in whom there is spirit – ish asher ruach bo” [Num 27:18].  His ruach serves mainly to hold up the communal norms – to lead the conquering and killing of the inhabitants of Canaan, as well as to remind the people of the dangers of forsaking the covenant and of serving foreign gods. [See the book of Joshua]  But Caleb is different; in this text he does not champion norms.   He plays Ruth to the suffering Israelite Naomis.

Although Caleb does not succeed in convincing the people of the goodness of the land, God saves Caleb “because he had ruach acheret and has followed me fully” [Num 14:24].  This may be the only instance of ruach acheret in the Hebrew Bible. Ruach holds the meanings of spirit, animation, vivacity, vigor, maybe prophetic spirit.  Acheret means other, another, different. Together they suggest a powerful life spirit, not like any other.  The prophets are said to have ruach. See for example 2 Kgs 2:9 where Elisha asks Elijah to give him a double portion of his ruach.   So Caleb perhaps has a unique knowledge of the divine, of the people around him, and of himself.  It may be his ruach acheret that enables him to experience and to follow the divine fully.  Caleb does not speak the language of Joshua, of covenant, of adherence to the norms. Rather he is dissenter, cheerleader and truth teller.  We are well able to overcome the dangers, he says. [Num 13:30] The land is exceedingly good.  YHWH will bring us to a land flowing with milk and honey.  Only don’t rebel because YHWH is with you.  [Num 14:8-9]

I suggest that Caleb’s appeal, like Ruth’s, is to hearts of the people, meant to remove their fear and to fill them with courage.  YHWH is with you.  Not to frighten them with dire punishment as Joshua does. Joshua says, “You cannot serve YHWH [with other gods]; for he is a holy God; he is a jealous God; he will not forgive your transgression nor your sins.  If you forsake YHWH, he will turn and do you evil and consume you” [Josh 24:19-20].  This is a scary prospect for the person who for whatever reason doesn’t fit in.

The emphasis on sacred normativity in Judaism and the Jewish community harms those, like LTBTQ Jews, who don’t fit established norms. (Ladin)

Ruach acheret is by definition different from Joshua’s ruach; it does not emphasize normativity but rather courage and heart.  I argue that in the leaderships of Caleb and Joshua we can see the tension between sacred normativity and queerness; between those bound by the strictness of law and those who live outside the norms.  Norms are important, but queerness is that “on which [the Torah’s] moral and spiritual vitality depend.” (Ladin) I do not mean that appealing to hearts and souls as Caleb does implies queerness in the common sense of gender identity, but in the sense of appealing directly, outside of rules and constraints, to the finest in the humans around him.  Caleb tries to imbue them with moral and spiritual vitality.

Caleb fails in his mission to re-turn the people to YHWH.  But he is rewarded for his different spirit and for his efforts by being admitted to Canaan, and by receiving a portion in the land of Israel. As further evidence of his different spirit, he is gifted with an extraordinary daughter.  When he gives Achsah in marriage [see Joshua and Judges], she demands that her marriage portion of land contain water, ie the best of his land.  A rarity in the Bible, she speaks directly to her father making this request.   Her action is not unlike the daughters of Zelophehad who boldly ask to inherit the land of their father.

If our parsha ended here, we might wonder if our discussion of ruach acheret in Caleb is a bit far-fetched.  What – Caleb as queerness and Joshua as normative?  Perhaps the contrast in leadership is not so great we might say? There is an interesting writing by Chana Tolchin, in which Caleb represents dissent and Joshua continuity.  Both important qualities of leadership, but quite different.

The two prototypes of leadership that Calev and Yehoshua represent each hold unique value. Calev as an independent leader realizes the problems around him and possesses the strength of character to dissent and be a mouthpiece of truth. Yehoshua, on the other hand, represents continuity. When Moshe changes Yehoshua’s name at the start of the mission, he ensures that no matter what goes wrong in this group of people, one individual will certainly embody the values of Hashem. Throughout the episode, Yehoshua is Moshe’s representative. While Calev merits entering the land because of a “ruach acheret,” Yehoshua enters because of an established ruach that is greater than himself but that he has been chosen to embody for the next generation entering Eretz Yisrael. Yehoshua stands for a type of leadership in which one pays deference to the leaders and systems of the present for the sake of serving as the vehicle for continuity in the future.  —– Chana Tolchin

If we understand Caleb and Joshua as leaders who represent the poles of dissent/truth telling and deference/continuity, we can find deeper understanding of the other three sections of this parsha.  Chapter 15:1-29 presents the rules of sacrificial offerings – a version of holy/sacred order. After the terrible news about carcasses to fall during a forty year period of wandering in the desert, these rules serve to settle the narrative and give hope of survival. Yet they come with a dire warning to those who defiantly or willfully break the commandments, to those who live outside the norms. Whoever will despise the word of YHWH and break the commandments, their soul will be utterly cut off from their people [Num 15:30-31]. This is similar to Joshua’s warning in Josh 24:19-20.  There is none of Caleb’s understanding of the feeling of fear and alienation in the wilderness.

As if to demonstrate the threat that arises when we “cast an aura of sanctity over flawed and even oppressive social structures” (Ladin), the list of sacrifices and the warning are followed by the deadly punishment of a (no doubt) poor wood gatherer who picks up sticks on the Sabbath. This is deeply disturbing.  One is commanded not to work on the Sabbath, but our text here is normativity run amok. God Godself orders the people to stone the wood gatherer to death [Num 15:32-36].  Surely the wood gather could have been taught to follow the rules without capital punishment.  Perhaps he was simply cold, or desperately in need of selling a few sticks of firewood to buy food.  Perhaps he did not believe in (or know about) the Shabbat laws.  God rewards ruach acheret  in Caleb, for seeking a way forward without punishment for his compatriots, but we nearly stone Aaron and Moses, and we kill the wood gatherer.  This is the harshness of slavish adherence to form.  As queer Jews we know about the stoning of the wood gatherers.  As people in general with a sense of the strictures of normativity, we all know about and can fear the stoning of the wood gather.

To close out our parsha, as if this horrible stoning had not occurred,  God commands the wearing of fringes as a reminder to do all God’s commandments [15:37-41].  This is a call to holy  normativity; it again settles the narrative as it shows that there is a definite path to holiness.  Yet we are left with the terrifying thought that if they will stone the wood gatherer, they may come for any one not conforming to communal expectations.

Our text is in tension between “the positive effects of efforts to bring human laws, lives, and communities into line with divine standards of justice and loving-kindness” (Ladin) and the need to make room for those living outside the norms.  At its best the two can live in a non-binary harmony;  taken to extremes, the non-normative are destroyed by the norms.  Ruach acheret may not stop the tide of human misery altogether, but it may help. In the words of Rabbi Tarfon “It is not incumbent upon you to complete the work, but neither are you at liberty to desist from it.”

So that we may not be left at the end with the picture of the death of the wood gather, I close with the words of Rabbi Camille Shira Angel regarding Caleb and ruach acheret.

As long as queers are not grasshoppers in our own eyes, we can use this passage to cultivate within ourselves ‘a different spirit,’ the spirit that brings with it the intrinsic qualities of compassion, courage, and perseverance.  As Jews, we take inspiration from our primary narrative about crossing the boundary between slavery and freedom.  As queers, our experiences of wrestling the giants without and within help shape not only our memories of the past but also our actions in the present and our visions for the future.  – Camille Shira Angel

Sources

Drinkwater, Gregg, Joshua Lesser, and David Shneer, eds. Torah Queeries: Weekly Commentaries on the Hebrew Bible. NYU Press, 2009.  Camille Shira Angel “Parashat Shelach”

Ladin, Joy. “Both Wilderness and Promised Land: How Torah Grows When Read Through LTBTQ Eyes.” Tikkun 29, no. 4 (Fall 2014): 17–20.

Tolchin, Chana    http://drishaparshablog.blogspot.com/2011/06/parshat-shlach-calev-versus-yehoshua.html

 

Caleb: Ruach Acheret (“Different Spirit”) and Sacred Norms (July 19, 2018)

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Ruach HaYam Teaching at Congregation Eitz Chayim, 136 Magazine Street, Cambridge, MA – July 19, 2018. (Scroll to end for logistics)

Banner: The Spies Return from Canaan Carrying a Large Bunch of Grapes (miniature on vellum by a follower of Simon Bening from a 1500–1525 Southern Netherlands Book of Hours).  Two men in conical caps with a gigantic bunch of grapes suspended from a pole that they carry between them.

This study, led by Penina Weinberg, is about having a different spirit and struggling with(in) the strictures of sacred norms. We will read and study Parashat Sh’lach (Numbers 13.1 – 15:41) .
As the children of Israel are poised to enter the promised land, Moses sends out 12 men to investigate. 10 spies come back with an evil report of the land, about giants to be found there, and about a land that eats its inhabitants. One of them, Caleb, is the first to see what a disaster this report is. His stance is diametrically opposed to that of his fellow spies, and it appears that he undertakes, one person, to stand against the entire community, who are quaking in fear. Furthermore, Caleb makes a mighty attempt to quiet the people towards Moses, pleading with them to understand that they can well possess the land.
God commends Caleb for having “ruach acheret,” a “different spirit.” While God sets a plague on all the 10 spies, and prevents the entire adult generation from entering the land of Canaan, God allows Caleb to enter, along with Moses’ heir apparent, Joshua.
What is this “different spirit?” In what way is Caleb’s leadership at odds with standard norms (and different from Joshua’s)? What are the implications for queer Jews who don’t fit established norms? Does God possess ruach acheret and in fact model ultimate queerness?

We will keep in mind the teaching of Joy Ladin, which we read at an earlier class:
“Wherever we travel in the Jewish world, we can see the positive effects of efforts to bring human laws, lives, and communities into line with divine standards of justice and loving-kindness. But those who don’t fit communal norms know the downside of this ideal: its tendency to cast an aura of sanctity over flawed and even oppressive social structures and to frame efforts to make communal norms more inclusive as threats to the essence and existence of the community……The emphasis on sacred normativity in Judaism and the Jewish community harms those, like LTBTQ Jews, who don’t fit established norms. It also harms the Torah by obscuring the queerness on which its moral and spiritual vitality depend.”
Ladin, Joy. “Both Wilderness and Promised Land: How Torah Grows When Read Through LTBTQ Eyes.” Tikkun 29, no. 4 (Fall 2014): 17–20.

Penina Weinberg is an independent Hebrew bible scholar whose study and teaching focus on the intersection of power, politics and gender in the Hebrew Bible. She has run workshops for Nehirim and Keshet and has been teaching Hebrew bible for 10 years. She has written in Tikkun and HBI blog, and is the leader and founder of Ruach HaYam.

** Logistics**
Study starts promptly at 7:15 pm. We open the doors at 6:45 for schmoozing. Feel free to bring your own veggie snack for the early part. A parking consideration is in effect for the three blocks around EC during all regularly scheduled events. It is a good idea to put a note in the windshield that you are attending an event at EC.
Accessibility information: all gender/accessible bathrooms, entry ramp.

Ruach HaYam study sessions provide a queer Jewish look at text, but are welcoming to any learning or faith background, to all bodies, and friendly to beginners.

Ruth and Naomi: Boundary Crossing, Bitter Soul, and Chesed (May 17, 2018)

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Ruach HaYam Workshop at Congregation Eitz Chayim, 136 Magazine Street, Cambridge, MA – May 17, 2018. See end of post for logistics.

(Scroll to end for logistics)
Banner shows two woodcuts by Margaret Adams Parker. In both, Naomi and Ruth and villagers are portrayed as long robed and hard laboring – not the common idyllic scenes. First image shows Naomi entering her old village, drooping, supported by Ruth. Caption “Ruth 1:19 – And the women said, ‘Is this Naomi?'” Second image shows Naomi looking up at Ruth. Caption “Ruth 3:16 – And she said, ‘Who are you my daughter?'”

Join us for a timely discussion of the book of Ruth.
**Boundary Crossing**
What can we learn from Ruth and Naomi about transforming identities?
**Bitterness of Soul**
“Do not call me Naomi, call me Mara (bitter)” (Ruth 1:20-21). How is Naomi like Job?
**Chesed**
Chesed (loving kindness) wins the day. How does this work? Why does Ruth disappear in Chapter 4, leaving her child with Naomi?

Here is my source sheet.

Penina Weinberg is an independent Hebrew bible scholar whose study and teaching focus on the intersection of power, politics and gender in the Hebrew Bible. She has run workshops for Nehirim and Keshet and has been teaching Hebrew bible for 10 years. She has written in Tikkun and HBI blog, and is the leader and founder of Ruach HaYam.

** Logistics**
Study starts promptly at 7:15 pm. We open the doors at 6:45 for schmoozing. Feel free to bring your own veggie snack for the early part. A parking consideration is in effect for the three blocks around EC during all regularly scheduled events. It is a good idea to put a note in the windshield that you are attending an event at EC.
Accessibility information: all gender/accessible bathrooms, entry ramp.

Ruach HaYam study sessions provide a queer Jewish look at text, but are welcoming to any learning or faith background, to all bodies, and friendly to beginners.

Celebrating Diversity – Refashioning our Synagogues and our Minds

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Celebrating Diversity – Refashioning our Synagogues and our Minds

A small synagogue that I once belonged to has a ramp, an accessible bathroom, a large print siddur, and a braille siddur especially prepared with the order of service they customarily follow on Friday nights.  The ramp was constructed a few years ago with a huge amount of work and good will and fundraising among that community.   The accessible bathroom was built as part of a major renovation to the sanctuary a year later.   The braille siddur was prepared by a blind woman who visited for a couple of services and offered to make it.   The membership committee prepared the large print siddur.

These are all excellent starting places for accommoda Continue reading →