Category Archives: Biblical Men

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.

Unrighteous Anger – Queen Vashti and the Erasure of Transgender Women

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This article was written by Mischa Haider and Penina Weinberg and was first published in Tikkun Daily Blog  on May 13th, 2016.

Image: Queen-Vashti-Refuses-to-Obey-the-Command-of-Ahasvuerus

The night after Purim the two of us sat feasting – a queer Hebrew bible scholar and a trans woman activist. The book of Esther was on our minds, as we read Esther every year on Purim, the festival when we celebrate the brave Jewish queen who saves her people from annihilation in Persia. Also on our minds was the “bathroom panic” gripping the nation over the perilous prospect of transgender women using women’s restrooms.

Continue reading →

Reading Torah through LGBTQ Eyes: A study of Joy Ladin’s work (April 19, 2018)

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Ruach HaYam Workshop at Congregation Eitz Chayim, 136 Magazine Street, Cambridge, MA – April 19, 2018. See end of post for logistics.

Join us for a discussion led by Penina Weinberg about Joy Ladin’s Tikkun Magazine article (fall, 2014): “Both Wilderness and Promised Land: How Torah Grows When Read Through LGBTQ Eyes.” (We will have copies at the study session). This is by way of preparing us for Joy’s book, The Soul of the Stranger: Reading God and Torah from a Transgender Perspective, due out later in 2018 from Brandeis University Press. We hope to have an opportunity to learn with Joy at that time!

There is so much we can talk about from the article. In order to fully discuss it, and to see if we agree or disagree with Joy’s conclusions, we will look up and study many of the verses in Tanakh to which Joy refers.

There is considerable tension between queer creation and the establishment of sacred normativity. (PS, those of you who learned with Ezra Rose Greenfield , note the establishment of God’s **angelic** court.) Here is a taste of what Joy has written.

“The Torah’s God is disembodied, incomparable, and incomprehensible in human terms. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam developed theologies based on the God we encounter in the Torah, but by Iron Age standards, this God is utterly queer. Later Jewish traditions and texts normalize this queer God, imagining God as a king or emperor surrounded by an angelic court. But the God we encounter in the five books of Moses has no normalizing context, no divine hierarchy to define God’s kingship, no divine family for God to patriarchically dominate, no consort, and no body. As a result, despite the masculine pronouns and verb forms assigned by the text, God has no gender, masculine or otherwise, because God has no way to demonstrate or perform a gender. Gender is a system; even the simplest form of that system, the gender binary, requires at least two of a kind, and God, as Jews affirm in the Shema prayer, is One. And, as many of us know, being singular, living outside recognized human categories and relationships, makes one very queer indeed….. We are queer children of a queer God-and by ‘we,’ I mean the Jewish people. When queer Jews read Torah as our own, we help all Jews recognize and reclaim our heritage of radical queerness, rekindling the flame of desire that led our ancestors to abandon known norms and follow God through a wilderness unknown toward a future founded on the principle that being true to God requires being true to ourselves.”

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

** 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, are friendly to beginners.

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.

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.

Saul and the Necromancer of Endor (April 20, 2017)

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Ruach HaYam Workshop at Congregation Eitz Chayim, Cambridge, MA
April 20, 2017.  See end of post for logistics.

This study is led by Penina Weinberg.

King Saul’s visit to the necromancer of Endor (1 Kings 28) introduces us to man who is at the end of his political life but hoping for saving words from beyond the grave. Saul hopes the necromancer will bring up the ghost of Samuel to help him. We will look at what drives Saul politically to seek out the necromancer, and at how the woman’s wizardry bypasses the traditional authority structure. Ruach HaYam member Sarah Pasternak will lead us in a discussion of Saul’s struggle with his own mortality and forthcoming irrelevance (with the regime change to David). This story has power politics, confrontation with mortality, and the story of a woman who defies the king’s decree.

It turns out that the Kabbalist Hayyim Vital, writing at the end of the 16th century, discussed the women diviners of his day in great detail, some of whom commanded respect and obedience from great rabbis of the day. The modern scholar J.H. Chajes sums up his essay about Vital and the diviners thus: “Their authority was not based on their scholarship or communal post… Their commanding voices were heard because they were benign witches, expert diviners, vivid dreamers, acute dream interpreters, and socially conscious prophets.” In our class, along with examining Saul’s motivations, we will ponder Chajes’ study in conjunction with the comments of Rabbi Geela Rayzel Raphael quoted on the event banner.

  • 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.

Ki Tisa as a Song of Longing (Mar 16, 2017)

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Ruach HaYam Workshop at Congregation Eitz Chayim, Cambridge, MA
March 16, 2017.  See end of post for logistics.

This study is led by Penina Weinberg.

Parashat Ki Tisa is a Song of both longing and danger. First, the longing. Previous to our parsha, Moses has gone up to the top of Mount Sinai, entering the cloud of God’s presence, to remain with God for 40 days (Ex 24:18). While Moses is up on Mount Sinai encountering the Divine, the children of Israel wait expectantly at the foot of Mount Sinai for Moses to return with God’s prescription for a holy life.

Now the period of time is coming to an end and the people are restless, “for this Moshe, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him!” (Ex 32.1 Everett Fox translation). They go to Aaron, brother of Moses, and say to him, “Make us a god who will go before us!” (Ex 32.1 Everett Fox translation). There follows the well-known story of the creation of the golden calf from the gold rings of the people, and of the people eating, drinking, and dancing wildly around their creation.

I would like to read the creation of the golden calf as the story of people who are yearning for God’s presence, and who do the best they can in their circumstances to fill that longing. But there is a problem with this reading, and that is where the danger comes it. Although Moses successfully pleads with God not to destroy the people entirely (Ex. 32:31-34), nevertheless God sends a plague upon the people (Ex. 32:35). Moses himself orders the Levites to assassinate 3,000 of the Israelites. (Ex. 32:26-28). If the people were expressing longing for God, how do we understand a world in which they can be punished for doing so?

We can illuminate the Exodus text by following the ancient rabbinic tradition of reading Torah intertextually with Song of Songs. But fair warning, the Song illuminates the danger as well as the longing.

  • 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.

Tziporah and the Awesome Fusion of Aaron and Moses (Feb 16, 2017)

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Ruach HaYam Workshop at Congregation Eitz Chayim, Cambridge, MA
February 16, 2017.  See end of post for logistics.

This study is led by Penina Weinberg.

There is a mysterious and awe-filled encounter between YHVH and Moses, as Moses returns from Midian to Egypt to undertake the deliverence of the Hebrew slaves from Pharaoh (Exodus 4:24-27). It appears that YHVH seeks to kill Moses and that Moses’ wife Tziporah, a Midianite priestess with overtones of Osiris, performs a magical and life-saving circumcision. Immediately afterwords, YHVH sends Aaron from Egpyt to join Moses in the wilderness. Aaron meets Moses and kisses him. From now on, Aaron will “speak Hebrew” for Moses. Moses is both Hebrew and Egyptian and stuggles to come to terms with his existence as a hybrid being. Tziporah’s magical/priestly ritual forms a crucible for Moses, enabling him to essentially fuse with Aaron.

We will do a close reading of the text to uncover interesting implications for queer identity and for identity fusion, transformation, or hybridization. We will look at issues of ethnic as well as gender identity (is Moses really a nursemaid? do all the 5 women who birthed him continue to live within him?). As suggested by Penina’s study partner in preparing this class, Noach Dzmura (thank you Noach for all the great ideas!), the closest modern analogy may well be the cartoon character Steven Universe. Our friend Ezra Rose Greenfield has graciously agreed to give us an introduction to the hybrid/fushion personas of Steven Universe and his friends.

  • 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.