As Yael and I work on the regendering of Song of Songs, we wonder what new turn in the story of the Song this will open. We are curious how the depictions of different bodily limbs’ beauty will sound when attributed to the body of the opposite gender; how will the brief dramatic scenes sound when experienced by the “other,” gender-wise. We also wonder - if we choose to examine the regendered Song as an allegory to relations between the Divinity and the nation, what theology will emerge, when the Divinity is the woman and the nation is the man.
Read MoreWhen we translate into English the punishment that Tehovah imposes on Kina, drifting and wandering (na’a ve-nada) you will be on the land (Gen. 4:12) for an instant we read it as na’a ve-nidda, “drifting and bleeding.”
Na’a ve-nada means to drift back and forth in the land, in the world, without rest or a home. Na’a ve-nida means to drift back and forth while bleeding your period, which till now hasn’t been mentioned, and maybe is created by Tehova only now.
Read MoreThe next time I open my mouth, I find myself speaking with enthusiasm in praise of divinity. I grasp the story of the building of the tower as another step in the separation process between the mother and the daughters. This step is rooted in the crisis that humanity undergoes when she realizes the distance, and longs for her mother, and tries, by building the tower to return and cling to Her. Goddess, like a lioness whose cubs are climbing on and over her, pushes them off her, away, teaching them independence, and their own abilities. Though the separation pains Goddess, she overcomes, and take action. She at once becomes a role model for me – I, the mother, who so fears the day my daughters will leave the nest and I’ll have to organize my heart anew, to redirect it, from scratch, towards life.
Read MoreTurning the prophet Elisha to the prophetess Elatish’i [my Goddess, answer me] moves me much less than turning the Great Woman of Shunem to the Great Man of Shunem. The prophetess Elatish’i (and her maidservant Gechazit) are perhaps lacking in our canon, “women of Elohin,” possessed of superpowers, and exemplifying new horizons of spiritual possibilities, but reversing the Great Woman of Shumen, a woman so human, whose “superpowers'' are emotional and moral, into another human man is for me a frustrating process.
Read MoreToratah’s V’Tikra (Leviticus) chapter 18’s incest laws, and the laws regarding rape of Toratah’s Devarim (Deuteronomy) 22, deal with sexual pathologies. Here, women are no longer victims of incest and rape, but with the vanishing of the horror of victimhood the horror of being the victimizer takes its place.
Read MoreThe cell phone sends me a notification of a new message in the WhatsApp group of my extended family on my father’s side. I tense up. It’s May 2021 and by now the third week of “Operation Guardian of the Walls,” Israel’s military confrontation with Hamas. The messages firing in the family WhatsApp group divide into two. In my heart, at least, everyone else is on one side, and I am on the other.
Read More“Pleasure-fluid” is not mentioned in Torato. When we look for a parallel to Torato’s shikhvat zera’, (semen, literally “lying of seed”) again we find ourselves inventing a new term, this time, for the range of fluids issued from a woman’s body when she is sexually aroused. With pleasure we called them ‘shikhvat oneg,’ pleasure-fluid.
Read MoreAfter the birth, Elohin calms down. In Her maternal mercies, She goes back to caring for her children. She dresses The Chovah and her Man with skin coverings. If only she could cover with the skin of an elephant, and not this skin, so easily penetrated by pain. “Skin coverings,” in Hebrew are kutnot ‘or, and the word ‘or is another Hebrew word that contains something and its opposite: Blindness, and wakefulness. Elohin doesn’t choose for us between these two states of consciousness. It’s us who will choose whether to eat from the trees and expand our consciousness in the physical and spiritual worlds in which we don’t have enough protection or control.
Read MoreA female raven and a male dove, that Nochah sent from the ark. Why did I resist and feel such discomfort at this minor, nearly meaningless, change? Changing the female dove and male raven, yonah and orev, from Torato, to a male dove, yon and a female raven, orevet? And why are we changing the animals’ genders anyway, I’m trying to remember? Because they aren’t “just the background.” The animals are also characters in the story, and changing them can open a door to new insights into the story.
Read MoreWho are these cousins, of Nadvah and Imihi, summoned to carry away their corpses? Do they also have childhood memories of endless hours of playing, together with Nadvah and Imihi? That they’d play again and again? Did they also bake challah together, do arts and crafts and plait each other’s braids?
Read MoreWhen Sahar gets in touch with his feminine side, Emrahama, in turn, is demanded of by Elohin, we fear, to circumcise her foreskin. “My covenant will be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant,” (17: 13) Elohin says, and we try to understand just what the hell She is talking about.
Read MoreThe next verse works beautifully with the melody, but something else doesn’t. Tehovah, a woman warrior, Tehovah is Her name. Tehovah, the what, exactly? “A woman warrior??” I tell Yael, I find it problematic and I’m uncomfortable with this. But this is what written, she insists, and anyway, you’re only noticing this now? What about the Flood? And all the Plagues? And the drowning of the woman warriors of Metzarim running for their lives? Isn’t She a warrior?
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