Category Archives: Events

Megillat Esther – Modes of Resistance and Ridicule (Feb 20, 2020)

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Ruach HaYam teaching presented by Penina Weinberg at Congregation Eitz Chayim, 136 Magazine Street, Cambridge, MA – 6:45pm – 9:30pm.
[Images: Esther in Persian attire proudly sitting on throne, Mordechai in front writing, Ahasuerus behind, by Arthur Szyk, 1950. Queen Vashti refusing to appear before Ahasuerus. 15th century manuscript illumination]
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The book of Esther has it all: heroic women, man of valor, ridicule of authority, harsh treatment of our enemies, eunuchs serving as messengers, advisors, guards, assassins, and soldiers. See Peter Toscano https://petersontoscano.com/eunuch-inclusive-esther-queer-theology-101/  (no longer available here)
But no name of God appears. As we study, we will discover moments of pride, times of laughter, and dismay at violence. And wonder at the purpose of the tale. We will share our collective wisdom on this well-known story as we head into Purim.

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.  If you would like a copy of parking permit, go here   Permit for this event will be found there a couple weeks before event.
Accessibility information: all gender/accessible bathrooms, entry ramp.

*** Ruach HaYam https://www.facebook.com/groups/Ruach.HaYam/ study sessions provide a queer Jewish look at text, and are welcoming to LGBTQ+ and allies, to any learning or faith background, to all bodies, and friendly to beginners***

Exodus: non-binary identity and living (or not) one’s destiny (Jan 16, 2020)

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Ruach HaYam teaching presented by Penina Weinberg at Congregation Eitz Chayim, 136 Magazine Street, Cambridge, MA – 6:45pm – 9:30pm.
[Miriam dancing at the crossing of the Red Sea. Chludov Psalter. 9th century.]
(Scroll to end for logistics)
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Join us as we begin the book of Exodus, for a study of Shemot, both Torah portion and book. We will see how binary labels miss the complexity of life. Moses is Israelite, Egyptian, Midianite. A killer and a prophet who fights his destiny. The midwives are Israelite and Egyptian. Israelite slaves have almost lost their identities. Ziporah is magician, nemesis, finger of God.

We will also look at how the daughters, like Miriam, are saved alive and save the day. The large arc of the exodus journey, from beginning to end, is energized by 17 women, Shifrah, Puah, Miriam, Jocheved, Pharaoh’s daughter, Zipporah and 6 sisters plus 5 daughters of Zelophehad, Mahlah, Noa, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah. Yet the stupid Pharoh will save the daughters alive.

Perhaps we will take a clue from Joy Ladin who writes, in her book, The Soul of the Stranger: Reading God and Torah from a Transgender Perspective:

“God knows what transgender people know: the binaries that make identities seem clear and simple, easy to express and enforce, are, in practice, impossible to maintain, because they do not and cannot fit the complexity of human lives and human communities… [We live in] a world in which, as the plagues and miracles of the Exodus remind us, everything we think we know can change in an instant… in a world in which the distinction between who is ‘us’ and who is ‘them’ can be a matter of life and death.”

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.  If you would like a copy of parking permit, go here   Permit for this event will be found there a couple weeks before event.
Accessibility information: all gender/accessible bathrooms, entry ramp.

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

Judith – Warrior, Priestess, Savior, Femme Fatale? (Aug 22, Sept 19, 2019)

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Ruach HaYam teaching presented by Penina Weinberg at Congregation Eitz Chayim, 136 Magazine Street, Cambridge, MA – 6:45pm.  Part one: Aug 22.   Part two: Sept 19, 2019.

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(Scroll to end for logistics)
[Artwork Judith before Holofernes, Hamburg Miscellany, Meinz (?), ca. 1428–1434. Hamburg, Staats-und Universitätsbibliothek, Cod. Hebr. 37, fol. 80v, detail (© Staats-und Universitätsbibliothek, Hamburg).

Everyone has heard of Judith. Isn’t she the woman who separated Holofernes from his head? And something or other about Hanukkah? Join us at Ruach HaYam *** (a queer Havurah based in Cambridge, MA) for a two session study of the book of Judith. Each class will be different – come to one or both as your time permits.

First encountered in a scroll that did not enter the Hebrew Bible, but became very important in Christianity, Judith does not become a Jewish heroine, or appear in rabbinic sources, until the middle ages, 1,000 years later, when Megillat Yehudit (the “Scroll of Judith”) and other midrashim in Hebrew surface. The midrashim draw fascinating parallels between Judith and Deborah, Jael, Esther, Ruth, David and many others. And of course tie Judith into Hanukkah.

Judith is a woman who has been called warrior, priestess, feminist icon, slave of the patriarchy, icon of piety and celibacy, seductress, femme fatale, independent, wise, androgynous. Indeed Judith may be the woman of the bible/Jewish tradition who has had the most contradictory reception. Judith is a fascinating study in herself, as well as a good lesson on how we read our own values into the text.

We will look at the deutero-canonical Book of Judith authored in antiquity in Greek, as well as Megillat Yehudit written in Hebrew sometime before 1402 CE. There are many online sources for self study.

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, and are welcoming to any queers and allies, to any learning or faith background, to all bodies, and friendly to beginners.***

Navigating the Harsh Passages of Torah (July 18, 2019)

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Ruach HaYam teaching presented by Penina Weinberg at Congregation Eitz Chayim, 136 Magazine Street, Cambridge, MA – July 18, 2019. 6:45pm.

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(Scroll to end for logistics)
[Banner John Martin, The Deluge, 1834. At Yale Center for British Art.]

In this class with Ruach HaYam *** (a queer Havurah based in Cambridge, MA) we will wrestle with finding meaning in some of the harsh passages of Torah. All of us know of such passages, which shock and discomfort us in their violence and inhumanity. As queer readers of the Hebrew Bible, how do we understand them? And in struggling to understand, can we illuminate the harsh passages of our own lives? Our reference points will be the teachings of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Rabbi Victor Reinstein (at Nehar Shalom in Jamaica Plain), and Judith Plaskow. As we read them, we will consider how we react to their teachings.

Rabbi Reinstein writes: “On the surface of Torah there is often violence and strife, as in life. Sometimes on the surface itself, shimmering as a crystal fount, and sometimes beneath the surface, there is a river of peace that runs through Torah into whose flow we enter by engaging and wrestling with what Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel calls the “‘harsh passages.'”

Rabbi Heschel writes “In analyzing this extremely difficult problem, we must first of all keep in mind that the standards by which those passages are criticized are impressed upon us by the Bible, which is the main factor in ennobling our conscience and in endowing us with the sensitivity that rebels against all cruelty.
We must, furthermore, realize that the harsh passages in the Bible are only contained in describing actions which were taken at particular moments and stand in sharp contrast with the compassion, justice and wisdom of the laws that were legislated for all times.” [God in Search of Man : A Philosophy of Judaism]

Judith Plascow writes: “[I]f in theory, it is entirely fitting to read about sexuality on Yom Kippur, the actual content of Leviticus 18 is deeply disturbing… [C]hanting it as sacred text colludes in promoting its values. In this situation, the question becomes not so much whether to read or not to read, but how to read, interpret, and appropriate the text in ways that are transformative.” [Beginning Anew: A Woman’s Companion to the High Holy Days]

For a personal commentary, read my post

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, and are welcoming to any queers and allies, to any learning or faith background, to all bodies, and friendly to beginners.***

Joy Ladin: Soul of the Stranger – Speech of Shekhinah (April 21, 2019)

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Let us know on RSVP if you’d like a ride from Boston area.

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Passover second day afternoon conversation with author Joy Ladin. A collaborative presentation by Ruach HaYam, Beit Ahavah Reform Synagogue of Greater Northampton and the Queer Torah Havurah.

2:30 pm to 4:30 pm. 130 Pine St, Florence, MA.
Accessibility information: all gender/accessible bathrooms, entry ramp. Parking on site and in lot next door.

Joy will discuss her newest book The Soul of a Stranger: Reading God and Torah from a Transgender Perspective, and treat us to readings from her as yet unpublished poetry on the speech of the Shekhinah. This will be a chance to hear Joy read and to engage her in conversation with our own thoughts and hearts. Kosher for Passover refreshments will follow, and an opportunity to share Joy’s books.

Joy describes her book as “an effort to heal the divide between traditional religious communities and the LGBTQ people who are often seen as a threat to religious traditions…[particularly important] in a time when LGBTQ rights are increasingly under attack in the name of “‘religious freedom.’” One way this works is that “The Torah speaks to transgender lives [and] transgender perspectives illuminate the Torah.” We will ask Joy to tell us how.
At this time of Passover, we think of the stranger, and of the splitting of the Sea. Joy writes, “Religious communities that treat openly transgender people… as strangers, should recall that God repeatedly commands the Israelites to remember their own experiences of being treated as strangers in the land of Egypt: to remember that they know – because God wants communities devoted to God to know – the soul of a stranger.” Furthermore, Joy sees “God as the one who brought me out of the depths of despair, who split the binary sea of gender and led me across on dry land, who made the impossible – me – a reality.”

We will ask Joy to talk about her assertion that “the covenant with Abraham is founded on Abraham, Sarah, and Jacob’s embrace of trans experience: their willingness to live outside the gender roles they were born to and become the kinds of people they were not supposed to be. By portraying trans experience as the foundation for covenant with Abraham, the Torah plants God’s recognition that people do not have to be what binary gender says we are at the heart of the Abrahamic religious tradition.”

Joy Ladin is the first openly transgender professor in an Orthodox institution. She holds the David and Ruth Gottesman Chair in English at Stern College of Yeshiva University and has written 11 books including 9 books of poetry, her memoir, Though the Door of Life, and her latest book, The Soul of the Stranger: Reading God and Torah from a Transgender Perspective.

Shabbat Shmini Lunch and Learn (March 30, 2019)

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Join us for a Saturday morning Shabbat service followed by potluck lunch and learn. Bring your own thoughts on aish zarah. What is the reason for this strange, alien fire? For a preview of the parsha, look at a commentary by Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell.

Header image Yoram Raanan – Nadav & Avihu Bring the Unauthorized Incense Offering.

We convene at 10am in the cozy front parlor at Congregation Eitz Chayim, 136 Magazine Street in Cambridge. Please bring a vegetarian dish to share for the potluck. Due to a bat mitzvah taking place in the main sanctuary, kitchen space is very limited. We will have a small cooler. If your item needs to be kept cold, we can accommodate smaller dishes like egg salad, but not bulky green salads.

Disability and Divine Power: Reading Julia Watts Belser (December 21, 2017)

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Ruach HaYam Workshop at Congregation Eitz Chayim, 136 Magazine Street, Cambridge, MA  – December 21, 2017.  See end of post for logistics.

This study is led by Penina Weinberg.

Banner for event has a painting of an ecstatic person in red, possibly flaming, dress whirling in a blue wheel chair. Caption is
“Ezekiel’s vision split open my own imagination. Hearing those words chanted, I felt a jolt of recognition, an intimate familiarity. I thought: God has wheels!”
from “God on Wheels—Disability and Jewish Feminist Theology”
by Julia Watts Belser in Tikkun 2014
Illustration from the article: “Whirlwheel” by Olivia Wise. [end of caption]

Article can be found here via subscription or access through a library:  http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/god-on-wheels

Join us for an introduction by Penina Weinberg to the work of Julia Watts Belser on disability studies, and a relevant Talmud text study with Ruach HaYam member Ariel Cohen. Many of us wish for and hope for a world that will be accessible to all, and accepting of all. But there is much more. As Belser writes: “I fear that by conceptualizing disability primarily as an access problem to be solved, we fail to invite in the vibrant, transgressive potential of disability culture: of a ‘crip’ sensibility that celebrates disability as a way of life, a radically different way of moving through the world.” The notion of celebrating a vibrant and transrgessive culture will be familiar to queer Jews who wish to participate in celebration, not just tolerance.

Julia Watts Belser, whose work we will read, is an Associate Professor of Jewish Studies in the Theology Department at Georgetown University, with expertise in rabbinic literature and Jewish feminist ethics, with a focus on gender, sexuality, and disability studies. She is the author of Power, Ethics and Ecology in Jewish Late Antiquity: Rabbinic Responses to Drought and Disaster (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and Rabbinic Tales of Destruction: Gender, Sex, and Disability in the Ruins of Jerusalem (Oxford UniversityBar Press, 2017).

Barb Ariel Cohen is the Chief Scientific Officer of Arex Life Sciences, a biotech startup enabling physicians to more successfully treat male infertility. Ariel has been studying for the past 20 years with her rebbe Rabbi Alan Ullman, including a small private study group which he took to Israel.

  • Ruach HaYam study sessions provide a queer Jewish look at text, but are open to any learning or faith background and friendly to beginners.
  • Study starts promptly at 7:15 pm. However 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’s 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.

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, founded the group Ruach HaYam and is president emerita and webmaster at her synagogue. Penina is a mother and grandmother.

Gendered in the image of God: The first human (August 17, 2017)

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Ruach HaYam Workshop at Congregation Eitz Chayim, 136 Magazine Street, Cambridge, MA  – August 17, 2017.  See end of post for logistics.

This study is led by Penina Weinberg.

In speaking of the creation, the Kabbalists call the first human du-partzufin, a Greek term meaning two visages, ie two faces on one body, not two bodies. They describe the divine and human each as bi-sexual. They say that both genders are present in all humans and that this is the image of the divine.
What does that actually mean? How does non-binary fit into this idea?
We will read from Genesis and from the Kabbalists in an effort to see the biblical story of the creation in a new light, and to make greater sense of our own gender journeys.

  • Ruach HaYam study sessions provide a queer Jewish look at text, but are open to any learning or faith background and friendly to beginners.
  • Study starts promptly at 7:15 pm. However 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’s 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.

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, founded the group Ruach HaYam and is president emerita and webmaster at her synagogue. Penina is a mother and grandmother.

Women’s Voices in the Talmud (July 13, 2017)

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Ruach HaYam Workshop @ Congregation Eitz Chayim, Cambridge, MA
July 31, 2017.  See end of post for logistics.

This study is led by Jonah P

We’re very excited to have guest teacher Jonah P back for a second year! Don’t miss this opportunity!

The Talmud was the project of hundreds of male rabbis over many generations. When and where do women’s voices appear? Who are the female characters who elbow their way into the stories and legal cases? What wisdom did they leave us with? In this session, we will listen to these women’s voices and attempt to understand how their experiences influenced the legal system of their day and shaped the wisdom of the Talmud.

This will be a text learning session which is open to any learning background and friendly to beginners (English translations provided for everything).

About the facilitator: Jonah P. has been reveling in the intersection of queer/trans and Judaism since becoming active in the Boston Jewish community in 2011. He recently completed a year of learning at Yeshivat Hadar and is currently learning in Jerusalem.

  • Ruach HaYam study sessions provide a queer Jewish look at text, but are open to any learning or faith background and friendly to beginners.
  • Study starts promptly at 7:15 pm. However 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’s 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.

Sex of the Soul: Gendered in the Image of God (June 22, 2017)

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The text which we will look at after reviewing the place of Mopsik’s work in the history of the Kabbalah is here:       Mopsik Sex of the Soul pp 46-52

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Ruach HaYam Workshop at Congregation Eitz Chayim, Cambridge, MA
June 22, 2017.  See end of post for logistics.

This study is led by Penina Weinberg.

We will dip one toenail into Charles Mopsik’s book: Sex of the Soul: The Vicissitudes of Sexual Difference in the Kabbalah. Mopsik was a modern scholar of Kabbalah. With him we will re-visit the creation of humans in the image of God and explore what it means, according to the kabbalists, for the soul to be both male and female in every human. This will not be a study in depth, but will open a tiny peep hole into an amazing world of thought. Mopsik warns us that we cannot pull this knowledge into modern reality, but it will illuminate our own thinking on the questions of gender.

“Clearly it is out of the question to draw a direct lesson from these classic texts and apply them to modern reality… Nevertheless, even though there is no way of equating them, the parallels are thought-provoking and can guide attempts to find solutions to the problems raised… The religious recognition and acceptance of polymorphism in human sexual identity, bisexuality, the acknowledgement of a gulf between external gender and ontological real gender, the existence of parents who are basically of the same gender, and a complex economy of desire differing vastly from so-called natural instinct, all demonstrate the flexibility of kabbalistic mystical belief as it attempted to grapple with the infinite variety of human existence.”

  • Ruach HaYam study sessions provide a queer Jewish look at text, but are open to any learning or faith background and friendly to beginners.
  • Study starts promptly at 7:15 pm. However 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’s 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.

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, founded the group Ruach HaYam and is president emerita and chair of various committees in her synagogue. Penina is a mother and grandmother.