About Toratah
Toratah (Her Torah), the Regendered Bible, is a rewrite the Hebrew Bible by gender reversing all characters. The new narrative centers the stories on a matriarchal lineage in contrast to the patriarchal lineage described in the Bible (Torato).
The Bible has been translated into the largest number of languages ever and has a huge impact on human culture and creativity. It was written over a long period of time, and the process of its sanctification also took hundreds of years. It describes the theology, politics and law of a patriarchal world. The biblical law favors men over women and most of the exemplary figures it paints are male.
The Regendered Bible, by contrast, offers a matriarchal structure for the sacred mythology, for the narratives that establish self and national identity, for politics and the law. Toratah reveals other existential possibilities for women and men. The gender reversal unsettles the reader. At the same time, it opens horizons for non-binary gender realities, as well.
The deity in Toratah is named Tehovah-Elohin. The first human creature is named ‘the khova,’ meaning ‘she who experiences.’ The name is created via a vowel modification from Chava (Eve), and humanity is named 'Daughters of Khova.' Khova's primary relationship is to Tehova-Elohin and she is the addressee of the divine call. The secondary relationship is between the Khova and the man, designed as her aide.
Since all the names of the characters and places in the Bible have meaning, the regendering begins in adapting the names to the opposite gender. For example: the patriarch Abraham, ‘high father,’ becomes the matriarch Emrahama, ‘high mother.’
The experience of reading Toratah, especially for those accustomed to the language of the traditional Bible, is not simple. It describes female presence in all aspects of Biblical reality. This presence manifests vividly and by both destructive and restorative powers. The women of Toratah express a wide range of human behavior and agency usually ascribed to men: they murder, commit incest, and rape. They reign and judge. They are priestesses, prophetesses, warriors, founders of tribes and leaders of nations.
Although the range of roles of men in Toratah are significantly reduced, they gain a deepening of their fatherhood which now occupies a central place in their identity. The men in Toratah are desperate to father daughters, on whom their status will be established. The men of Toratah function mainly on the domestic level: they belong to their women who dominate over the household.
Toratah was born from a feminist consciousness, but it does not reflect a feminist utopia. Because the narrative and the law in Toratah parallel those in the Bible, the resulting text challenges us as well. The ethics and theology described in Toratah are incompatible with the ideals based on equality between the sexes. However, it opens unexpected feminist horizons of thought due to the new position of the women in the story.
The matriarchal space of Toratah allows for a new and original reading of the relationship between humanity and divinity: the story of eating from the forbidden fruit in Eden (Genesis 3) can be interpreted as the process of pregnancy and birth of humanity from the divine womb while severing the umbilical cord (serpentess) connecting them. Such a reading identifies the eating of the fruit not as a sin but as an inevitable process that begins the painful separation of Tehovah-Elohin from her daughters.
Toratah builds a new cultural language, it enables us to extricate ourselves from the patriarchal language that functions as a cultural default. Toratah marks a new horizon for social and spiritual self-understanding. As Toratah sheds off historicity, geography and theology, it asks us to reexamine how our sacred texts shape our spiritual and moral code. What does it mean for a girl to read that she’s made in the image of the absolute Creator Goddess? What is a boy to learn as he grows to understand his role as her helpmate and caregiver?
Our hope is that over time, the interaction between Toratah and the traditional Bible will give birth to additional sacred texts towards a more inclusive canon.
The Regendering and Translation Process
The regendering process begins in the original Hebrew. Hebrew assigns binary gender to everyone and everything. In the Hebrew of Toratah, we flip the genders of people, animals and places. Occasionally, we are called to create new word forms based on existent Hebrew roots, when words are missing. The word עבד (Eved) denotes a certain status of servitude and applies only to men. We created the word עבדה (Avda) ascribing this status to women, thus in Deuteronomy 34:5 Mosha is described as עבדת תהוה (Avdat Tehovah), ‘Servant of Tehovah.’ In Genesis 20:3 Sarah is called בעולת בעל, (beulat baal) ‘belonging to a man owner.’ In Hebrew, there is no parallel status of a man belonging to a woman. When we needed to say that Sahar belongs to a woman we created the expression בעול בעלת (baul ba’alat) meaning, ‘He who belongs to a woman owner.’ We utilize the modularity of Hebrew roots to expand the language. The process is further supported by research into history, mythologies, contemporary biology and regional archeology.
The English translation seeks to capture the Hebrew verse structure and meaning while leaning towards modern American English. We usually chose to transliterate the Hebrew names in the style of modern Hebrew, to raise attention to their new meanings, which is explained in the footnotes.
Some ask, why not regender straight to gender-neutral/non-binary in English? We have learned through Toratah how deeply we all live in a men’s designed world. Without defining, writing and expressing a women’s designed world that is positioned at exactly the same level as the male-dominated Bible we are so familiar with, gender-neutral language could result in extension of the former and continued obfuscation of the latter. We believe that for fluidity to become really possible, female gendered language needs to be fully articulated and present and integrated into culture.
Project Timeline
The project was initiated in 2016 by artist Yael Kanarek from New York City. The first draft of the Pentateuch was completed in 2020. Jewish feminism scholar Tamar Biala from Jerusalem joined the project. Together they completed the second draft in Hebrew and additional books: Book of Mordekhai (Esther), Book of Rea (Ruth), Lamentations, Song of Songs, Tehoshi’i (Joshua) and 1 Shemualah. A growing team of volunteers edits the work. As of this writing, the English translations include Genesis 1-24, Book of Mordekhai, Book of Rea, and many other selections used in the classes that they regularly teach in various academic and liberal religious settings. In 2020, they launched beittoratah.org. There the books serve the community in their digital publication.
This work is a labor of deep love to the language of the Bible and its culture of extensive learning, compounded with acute urgency to realize the feminine as sacred, integrated into our culture.
With gratitude,
Yael Kanarek & Tamar Biala
September 2022
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Since 2016, Israeli-American artist Yael Kanarek has been rewriting the Torah in Hebrew and English to reveal the feminine divine as a central presence in the Hebrew sacred texts. This need emerged after a decade long of Kabbalah study and practice. The first draft of Chumash Toratah in Hebrew was completed in April 2020. She is currently working with Jewish Studies scholar, Tamar Biala, on publishing the Chumash on this website. Additionally, she has been creating Visual Midrashim as fine art prints, exploring ideas in Jewish thought through letters and form. Her fine art practice is at YaelKanarek.com and her fine jewelry practice is at KanarekNYC.com.
Toratah has been presented and read at many Jewish spaces: The 14streetY, FTJC, LimmudFest Atlanta and Boston, and in private group readings. Yael is an artist-in-residence at Kehilat Romemu. During the Jewish Emergent Network (JEN) gathering, in collaboration with Lab/Shul and Romemu, she chanted the first Aliyah for Toratah. The second Aliyah was at Romemu in collaboration with the Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute.