The creation of the fifth day has just ended and suddenly I’m flooded with tension. Soon I’ll be face to face with the description of the creation of humanity. The version in Torato, I know by heart. The endless feminist interpretations of it that I’ve studied and the women’s Midrashim about it that I edited, and even wrote myself, haven’t sadly been able to ease the fundamental frustration I feel towards it.. Will gender bending the story “bend” my feelings as well?
Read MoreTitzchak brings Marbek to the tent of her father, Sahar. And there she loves him. It took sixty-six verses for this chapter to reach this moment of connection between Titzchak and Marbek. The bond between them is described in one brief phrase, the last verse: “Titzchak loved him, and thus found comfort after her father’s death.”
Read MoreToday we dive again into the rituals of the priestesses, and start chapter 12 with the offering of the sacrifices of the….man who gives birth. We knew this would come. That we would have to deal in Sefer Va-Tikra, with defilements and purifications of different biological phenomena, of women and men. But the effects of the reversals that we create surprise us too.
Read MoreYael and I imagine a struggle of two women, of a woman with herself, a woman who’s both human and divine, a struggle both physical and spiritual. And the woman doesn’t let go until she gets a blessing, an affirmation of a change she went through, a commitment to her new perspective. Taacov’s name changes to…Tisraelah. I’m a little surprised by the name
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