Biblical,
Medieval,
and Modern
Jewish Stories
Andrew Ramer
Foreword by Jay Michaelson
Afterword by Rabbi Camille Shira Angel and Rabbi Dev Noily
A White Crane Book
Published by Lethe Press at Smashwords
Copyright © 2010 Andrew Ramer.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, microfilm, and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the White Crane Institute.
Published in 2010 by White Crane Books
an imprint of Lethe Press, Inc.
118 Heritage Avenue • Maple Shade, NJ 08052-3018
www.lethepressbooks.com • lethepress@aol.com
www.whitecranebooks.org
ISBN: 1-59021-183-9
ISBN-13: 978-1-59021-183-0
Library of Congress
Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ramer, Andrew.
Queering the text : biblical, medieval, and modern Jewish stories / Andrew Ramer ; foreword by Jay Michaelson ; afterword by Camille Shira Angel and Dev Noily.
p. cm.
“A White Crane Book.”
ISBN 1-59021-183-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Bible. O.T.--Gay interpretations. 2. Bible stories, English--O.T. 3. Homosexuality--Religious aspects--Judaism. 4. Homosexuality in the Bible. 5. Midrash. I. Title.
BS1186.5.R36 2010
221.6086’64--dc22
2010018176
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White Crane Institute is a 501(c)(3) educational corporation, committed to the certainty that gay consciousness plays a special and important role in the evolution of life on Earth. White Crane Institute publishes White Crane, the Journal of Gay Wisdom & Culture. Your contributions and support are tax-deductible to the fullest extent of the law.
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little pictures
Angel Answers
Revelations for a New Millennium
Two Flutes Playing
(with Donna Cunningham)
The Spiritual Dimensions of Healing Addictions
Further Dimensions of Healing Addictions
(with Alma Daniel and Timothy Wyllie)
Ask Your Angels
about White Crane Wisdom Series
Part
One
The
Genizah of Dreams: 22 Midrashim
Part
Two
Al-Andalus: Tales of an Imaginary Spain
Remembering
Spain
Reading
“Shemot”
In
Granada
The
Rabbi and the Court Physician
Erev
Shabbat
Before
Arvit
The
Vizier
In
the Marketplace
The
Hidden Mirror
Before
there was Law
My
Forsaken Garden
The
Christian
The
Commandments
Twice
a Heretic
Toledo
in Winter
The
Tutor
The
Dreamer and the Dream
The
Street of Butchers
While
Praying
The
Rabbi’s Dilemma
In
the Domed Hall
Before
the Expulsion
Part Three
Avodah: Divine
Service
Shacharit:
Light in the Tree
Musaf:
Pink Izzy
Mincha:
Gazing out of a Window
Ma’ariv:
Th e Return of the Hebrew Bedouin
Afterword
Rabbi
Camille Shira Angel and Rabbi Dev Noily
Acknowledgments
Credits
About
the Author
My guess is that most readers of this book will be lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgendered – some of the many sexual and gender identities now subsumed under the reclaimed label of “queer.” It’s only natural: like seeks out like, especially when, as Andrew Ramer says in his introduction, “like” is so hard to find in a library with so many erasures and gaps.
But Queering the Text makes a case for a broader readership. These contemporary midrashim – on texts from the Bible, the “Golden Age” of Spain, and other strands of Jewish tradition – show that when a previously marginalized group transforms tradition, it transforms it for everybody. None of us – gay, straight or the rest of us; male, female, or the rest of us – emerges from these rereadings the same as we entered them. This is the gift of queer voices like Ramer’s – not that they petition to be let into a normal Jewish world, but, like the feminist pioneers of the last several decades, they assert: we are here, we deserve to be here, and we are going to change things.
In its imaginary (knowing Andrew as I do, perhaps the right word is “visionary”) renderings of Biblical, medieval, and contemporary queer Jews, this book doesn’t merely insert a lesbian prophetess or gay patriarch into a pre-existing Biblical text. Like the best of midrash, it transforms the text itself. Rather like Anita Diamant’s The Red Tent, Queering the Text presents us with a God/dess who transforms genders, a Biblical Israelite religion in close intercourse with Canaanite and other polytheisms, and an entire suppressed history of same-sex love that dates back to the primordial generations and is remembered and recounted by subsequent ones.
In other words, this is queering the text – not merely imagining queers in the text, or providing a queer reading of text, or some other innocuous literary procedure. The text itself changes, and we do as a result. While this may seem radical, it is, in fact, part of a longstanding anti-fundamentalist strand of the Jewish tradition, which sees the Bible not as a quasi-historical record with a single correct interpretation, but a font of multiple interpretations. Plurality of meanings and conflicting interpretations are not a sign of the text’s or our weakness – they are a sign of its strength.
That said, the transformations Ramer proposes may in fact bring us closer to the “original meanings” (whatever that means) of the Biblical texts themselves. Biblical scholar Ken Stone has suggested that the sexual distinctions the elites of Israel sought to impose upon the nation were meant to demarcate national distinctions as well – the binary opposition between ‘Israelite’ and ‘Canaanite’ being more rhetorical than real. We don’t do what they do, the Law seems to say, and thus We aren’t Them. Ramer picks up where Stone leaves off, imagining a far more porous Israel than that presented in Scripture, and one richer and more varied in its expression of Divinity. Here are Naamah and Nogah, Bezalel and Oholiab, Deborah and Yael; here are sacred prostitutes and holy eunuchs; and here is a world in which what Stone astutely describes as elite Israelite “border anxiety” is transformed into a popular border-crossing delight.
Likewise in the later portions of Queering the Text, which bring us to the multicultural Sepharad and to our contemporary day. It was likely in imitation of their Muslim colleagues that medieval (male) Jewish poets composed homoerotic love poems to young men. Ramer takes things a step further, venturing beyond literary convention to imagine a host of intra- and inter-generational loves, rendered in prose and verse. Here again, the lines crossed are not merely those of sexuality; Ramer’s lusty medievalists are commanded to transgress the law, impelled to rebel, and inspired, by sacred lust, to bridge the gaps between sexual and spiritual.
Arriving in the present day in the third section, with UPS, HIV, and Ph.D’s in tow, is at first something of a shock: our own moment can seem small in comparison with the narratives of older times. But for many readers, I suspect, the last tales in this volume contain Ramer’s most radical proposal of all. For here, not only does queer experience reshape the Bible, but, Ramer daringly suggests, the Bible can productively shape queer experience. For queer readers whose only contact with religious tradition has been exclusion and marginalization, the crossing of this particular boundary may seem like too much of an encroachment. But this, too, is the challenge Ramer issues: to reclaim the tradition is to allow it access to our own intimacies as well.
Do Ramer’s hidden traditions – Queering the Text ends by imagining an entire parallel line of non-Biblical Hebrews – actually exist? And if they do not, is it necessary to invent them? Maybe only the angels know for sure. Then again, if anyone’s in touch with those watchers and keepers of secret tradition, it surely is Andrew Ramer, prophet and poet and heretical preacher all wrapped up in one.
Let me end with a confession. Many times, I wanted to take Queering the Text and bash it over the head of every reactionary rabbi I know. Amidst the batteries I would shout, “See! This is what can happen when the religious spirit is liberated! This is what would result if our souls were encouraged to dance!” Unfortunately, this volume is too slim to do much damage in such a brute, physical way. I therefore hand it to you, so that it may work its far more insidious magic on your heart.
This
book is dedicated to the queer youth of the future,
hoping that
they will always know,
with all their heart, all their soul, and
all their might,
that they belong to the Family of Eve
and
the House of Israel, the God-Wrestler.
Judaism is a text-based tradition. From the time of the Bible until the present we who the Qur’an calls “People of the Book” have expressed ourselves in words. Sadly, tragically, for women and queer people, until recently there have been few textual mirrors for our lives in any of our sacred or scholarly books. But that is changing, and this book is a part of the transformation, the recognition, of who we are and how we fit into the Jewish world.
There are three sections in this book. The first plays with texts from the Hebrew Bible, the second was inspired by homoerotic poems written in medieval Spain, and the stories in the third section are set in the present and play with the Bible and other texts. For me this book is a work of Tikkun Olam, a sacred work of Cosmic Repair. I wrote it with the hope that other queer people of faith won’t have to wander in the wilderness for forty years as I did, looking for their spiritual home in our tradition. My fondest wish is that these tales will add to the conversation that Jews and non-Jews, queer and non-queer people are having, about inclusion, diversity, and human freedom. The Bible, in the book of Genesis, tells us that we were created in the image of God. That verse of text is the foundation for all of these stories.
Part One
The Genizah of Dreams: 22 Midrashim
In the Jewish tradition sacred books are not discarded or destroyed when they’re too old and ragged to use. Instead they’re deposited in a storeroom called a genizah. A genizah, which means “hiding place” in Hebrew, is also the repository for books considered heretical, but which contain the sacred name of God and therefore can’t be destroyed either. The most famous genizah was discovered in 1890 during the renovation of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fostat, Old Cairo, built in 882. The hundreds of thousands of pages found there, most of them written between the 11th and 13th centuries, vastly increased our knowledge of medieval Jewish life. It’s also possible that the Dead Sea Scrolls were part of an ancient genizah, stored away because they were worn out.
I have called this section a Genizah of Dreams for two reasons. First because the “documents” it includes are “heretical” in that they are all “queer,” non-normative, questioning the un-queer thrust of most Jewish texts. And second, because the stories you will find here are the kinds of tales I wished I had discovered as a young gay man, struggling to find a place for myself in Judaism. They are documents from a parallel reality, retrieved from hidden shelves in the deepest recesses of my heart and my mind. They express what is most sacred to me – the ability to be true to one’s soul, and the capacity to love ourselves and others in alignment with the calling of our soul.
In Hebrew, these stories are called midrashim, from the root drash, “to inquire.” Midrashim are designed to fill gaps in scripture. For example, the Torah prohibits work on the Sabbath, without defining what’s forbidden. Legal midrashim enumerate the categories of banned work. Narrative midrashim expand or interpret biblical stories, as in the tales of Adam’s first wife Lilith, who isn’t mentioned in the Torah. The earliest preserved midrashim date back to the first two centuries of the Common Era.
Just as medieval European artists painted Biblical characters in garments they wore themselves, the rabbis of old crafted midrashim in which the women and men of the Bible were seen as their own contemporaries. For instance, there are tales of Jacob studying Torah with his father Isaac (even though the Torah wouldn’t be given till generations later), as if they were students in a talmudic academy that only existed centuries after that. We queer readers of Torah can do the same thing, by telling stories that are relevant to own time and our own concerns, which will reframe our sacred texts in ways its authors might not have understood – or accepted – just as the rabbis of old did with their midrashim.
Our Bible is the product of many revisions, and I believe that there were once other torahs, torahs that may have embraced what we now call queerness. For example, kedeshim, a Hebrew word that used to be translated as “sodomites,” and is usually now interpreted as “cultic male prostitutes,” derives from the root word for holiness. What does this tell us about the behavior and beliefs of some of our ancestors?
My stories are told in a number of different styles, from mock-scriptural to modern narrative. None of them are legal, although I address the two verses in Leviticus about men having sex with other men in the story “The Holy One.” I haven’t dealt with some passages that are open to queer interpretations, like the account of Ham uncovering his father Noah’s nakedness, or the one about Lot and the men of Sodom.
There are twenty-two stories in my collection, one for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Most of my tales begin with the passage of scripture that inspired them, although in a few cases lines from the Bible are woven into the stories. The quoted passages all come the Jewish Publication Society translation of the Bible, Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures, but each time God’s name appears I have replaced the substitution “The Lord” with YHWH, the English equivalent of the Hebrew letters of that sacred name.
Part Two
Al Andalus: Tales of an Imaginary Spain
Some writers need roots, lineage, ancestry; like tree from acorn, linked back, emergent. For me, 20th and 21st century creature, cognizant of the Torah’s prohibitions on men being with men, and conscious always of the absence of queer stories in our sacred texts – where can I turn but to medieval Spain? There, and nowhere else we know about in Jewish history until the present, rabbis, sages, and scholars wrote words of love to other men. We know these writers, from what is called the Golden Age in Spain: Samuel HaNagid, Moses ibn Ezra, Solomon ibn Gabirol, and Judah HaLevi. Their poems were almost always written to young men, and most scholars believe that in writing as they did those poets were only following the Arabic literary convention of the time. They also assume that the “boys,” the “cupbearers,” “fawns,” and “gazelles” in those poems, were always Muslim, but I don’t. In my imaginary Spain, famous rabbis were writing real love poems to real young men, most of whom were Jewish.
Very few Jews know about these poets, and we have no idea of how their work might have influenced our lives if the Muslim Spain that was their home hadn’t been reconquered by Catholic Spaniards, who expelled the Jews in 1492. To give you a feel for what those men were writing, I quote a short poem by Samuel HaNagid. He lived from 953 to 1056 and was the vizier to the Muslim king of Granada in addition to being the head of the Spanish Jewish community. This translation is by Jerome Rothenberg and Harris Lenowitz. It’s one of the first of these poems that I came across, and it remains one of my favorites. The word yod is the name of the smallest letter of the Hebrew alphabet, almost like a floating comma, which is also the first letter of God’s sacred four-letter name, often translated as Yahweh.
I’d sell my soul for that fawn
of a boy nightwalker
to the sound of ‘ud and flute playing
who saw the glass in my hand and said
“drink the wine from between my lips”
and the moon was a yod drawn on
the cover of dawn – in gold ink...
After reading that first poem I hunted for others. They are tucked away in other places, including anthologies by Raymond Scheindlin and Peter Cole. Last year I had the pleasure of hearing Cole read at the Jewish Community Library in San Francisco. After the reading, while he was signing books, I asked him if the tradition of men writing poems to and about other men had stopped with the Expulsion. He said no, that recently in an archive, in Albania I think he said, similar poems from a later day were discovered, all as yet untranslated. Did those Sephardic poets know that a day would come when men who love men, Jewish men who love men, would walk together hand in hand, form gay synagogues, become ordained as rabbis, and write queer prayers? Did they have the conversations we have, about Jewish law and their place in the Jewish world? And did they love other men with an inner freedom we still lack? Even if they didn’t, they and their poems make us possible, even if we haven’t known their words or heard their names, and even if they never imagined us, or needed us, in order for them to love in their own ways.
So Spain, yes. Muslim Spain. Jewish Spain. Sephardic ribald passionate man-loving Spain. In linked, inter-woven stories, written from my New Spain, San Francisco, California, former Spanish Catholic colony, where I sit and study and write my evocations. In these stories it’s not my intention to recreate the Spain that existed from the tenth to twelfth centuries under Muslim rule until the expulsion of the Jews in 1492 by the Catholic rulers of a newly reunified country. My Spain is one of inference and shadow, of reference and allusion, as true but no more real than Cavafy’s Hellenistic world, or Gilbert and Sullivan’s Japan in The Mikado. My tales are like Whitman’s, who dreamt of parallel realities and immanent futures that still stand eagerly on thresholds and linger in doorways, as the dominant culture debates or avoids debating the civil rights and sanctity of same-sex marriage.
Hebrew love poetry often refers back to Song of Songs in the Bible. On the surface it’s a collection of erotic heterosexual love poems, mostly written in women’s voices, although Paul Johnson, in his book The Song of Songs: A Gay Love Poem?, claims that it was originally written by one man to another. Tradition ascribes its authorship to King Solomon. Due to its subject matter it was one of the last books to be admitted to the canon, and then only because it came to be seen as an allegory of the love between God and Israel. Rabbi Akiva said of it, “All scripture is sacred, but ‘Song of Songs’ is the Holy of Holies.” My Andalusian muses wrote with Song of Songs in their minds, and it’s influenced my work as well. The stories at the heart of the book are all about men who love men, reflecting the deepest dreams of my own heart.
Part Three
Avodah: Divine Service
There are four longer stories in the final section of the book. The title of this section was initially inspired by a verse in the Talmud, from a section called Pirke Avot – Chapters of the Fathers, which reads, “The world stands on three things, Torah, divine service, and acts of loving kindness.” This book is grounded in Torah. My hope is that its publication will be seen as an act of loving kindness. And the stories in the third section, Avodah – Divine Service, are named for the four traditional synagogue services offered on Shabbat: shacharit – the morning service, musaf – the additional service, minchah – the afternoon service, and ma’ariv – the evening service.
These four stories all take place in the present, or in a present. Biblical prohibitions against male same-sex love have warped the lives of hundreds of generations of Jews and countless others across the globe who have been influenced by the Jewish Bible. Rabbinical Judaism carried on and extended those prohibitions, by including women in its list of prohibitions, and verses about cross-dressing and rigid binary gender notions shape our lives to this day. Fortunately, in this time, rabbinic texts about multiple genders and other queer concerns that I was never taught in Hebrew School are being read, studied, and written about, texts that few have had access to for hundreds of years.
Over the last decades, the writings of feminist Jews, and the recrafting of Jewish ritual life to include women rabbis, female God language, women’s Seders and other women-centered rituals, has not threatened the sanctity of Jewish life, but enhanced it. And it is my hope that the stories in this book will do the same, in their own small way – helping to redefine and enhance Jewish life for all queer people, lesbian, gay, bisexual, intersexed, and transgendered. So my characters in Part Three move through a landscape that is transformed, but not fundamentally alien. And I hope that as you wander through it you will find yourself there too, whether you are queer or not.
Andrew Ramer / Ayal Shabtai ben Gita v’Yaakov
May 2009 / Iyar 5769
Love your neighbor as yourself.
Leviticus 19:18
The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.
Psalm 118:22
Re-vision – the act of look back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction – is for women more than a chapter in cultural history: it is an act of survival.
Adrienne
Rich
22 Midrashim
א
Without a Beginning
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
No time. No space. And therefore, no beginning.
Now the earth was unformed and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
Only light, light, light. Ever-present and eternal.
And the spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters.
And the light was God. And the light is God. And the light will always be God.
And God said: “Let there be light.” And there was light.
And from Her body, which is light, God births all that is; galaxies, stars, worlds.
And God saw the light, that it was good.
With no separation between Her, Her body, and all that She has given birth to.
And God divided the light from the darkness.
And the oneness of all that is, She breathes with it and calls it Good.
And God called the light Day. And the darkness He called Night.
And the Goodness breathes with Her; galaxies, stars, worlds.
And there was evening and there was morning, one day.
And there is one day only, always; radiant, joyful, and never ending.
Genesis 1:1-5
ב
Let There Be Life
And God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. They shall rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the cattle, the whole earth, and all the creeping things that creep upon the earth.” And He created man in His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female created He them.
Genesis 1:26-27
After God had given birth to all the worlds, joyful and radiant, It breathed the breath of life into Its creation. With that breath It birthed angels and archangels, seraphim, cherubim, and all forms of embodied life. It birthed beings that swim and slither, that fly and crawl, that walk and wiggle, and beings that don’t move at all.
God blessed them and God said to them: “Be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it; and rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and all the living things that creep on earth.”
Genesis 1:28
And all the life that It birthed was connected in a vast web, body to body and soul to soul. And out through that web It breathed the truth of Its creation – that all who remember the web will prosper, and all who forget it will struggle, struggle in ways that are of their own making. It breathed out this truth to worlds with one gender and worlds with two genders. It breathed out this truth to worlds with many genders and worlds with no genders. It breathed out this truth to worlds with constant genders and to worlds with changeable genders. God, the Source of Life, breathed the truth of Its creation out to every part of it.
ג
The Seeker
And the days of Adam after he begat Seth were eight hundred years; and he begat sons and daughters. And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years; and he died.
Genesis 5:4-5
Jerah was the youngest son of Eve and Adam. Even as a boy he knew that he was different from his many brothers and their sons and from the sons of his many sisters. When he was older he set out to find someone else who was like him. He walked and wandered from village to village and town to town, to all the places where they had settled, but nowhere did he meet anyone who was like him. Weary, after months of wandering, he came to the village of his favorite sister, Hodesh.
Now Hodesh had a son named Naam, and Naam was the same age as Jerah. When Jerah and Naam looked at each other for the first time, their hearts like birds flew out of their breasts toward each other. And their lips called out the other’s true name. And their bodies opened, one to the other, so that their souls could dance joyfully together on the earth.
Jerah and Naam built for themselves a house of stone in the village established by Hodesh. They lived there happily for seven hundred and twenty-eight years, in midst of their family. And they were buried side by side in the cave where first they had buried Hodesh.
ד
The Makers of Beauty
Lamech took himself two wives: the name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other was Zillah. Adah bore Jabal: he was the ancestor of those who dwell in tents and amidst herds. And the name of his brother was Jubal: he was the ancestor of all who play the lyre and the pipe. As for Zillah, she bore Tubal-cain, who forged all implements of copper and iron. And the sister of Tubal-cain was Naamah.
Genesis 4:17-22
Naamah was the ancestor of all those who create beautiful things. With wool from the flocks of Jabal, Naamah and her beloved Nogah the daughter of Inanna, spun fiber and wove it into fabric. They made garments and carrying pouches, they made hangings and carpets. They mixed berries, leaves, stems, roots, and ground stones to make dyes. With their dyes they colored the fibers they had spun and wove them into beautiful patterns.
Next they mixed plants and ground stones, they mixed them with water and oil and they made paint for the very first time. Before that time no one had ever yet painted on stone or on animal skins, on wood or cloth, or even painted their own bodies. But Naamah, she did these things, she did them for the first time. She and her beloved Nogah, together they did all these things. With tools made by Naamah’s brother Tubal-cain, Nogah and Naamah carved wood and stone, they carved bone and ivory. They carved circles and spirals, they carved flowers and animals, they carved birds and rivers, mountains and trees. All that they carved and made was beautiful.
And all the beauty that they made, they made it as an offering to the Mother of us all. And She saw what they had made, and She smiled with pleasure and told them that everything they made was good, yes, it was very good.
ה
The Messenger
Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the break of dawn.
Genesis 32:23-25
Said he, “Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with beings divine and human and you have prevailed.” Jacob asked, “Pray tell me your name.” But he said, “You must not ask my name!” And he took leave of him there. So Jacob named the place Peniel, meaning, “I have seen a divine being face to face, yet my life has been preserved.”
Genesis 32:29-31
It was a moonless night. The sky was strewn with stars. I built myself a small fire. It cast a tiny flickering pool of light around me that quickly vanished in the darkness.
I didn’t see him; nor did I hear him approach. Suddenly he was standing across the fire from me, hands on his hips, looking down at me as I sat on the hard dry earth. The wood was crackling. The air was cold. His face was dark and expressionless, but he was staring at me as if he knew me.
“Peace be to you,” I said to him. He said nothing back, just stepped closer. It was only then that I saw his wings. They were vast, like the fringed shawl of a holy one, dark, dark as his skin, dark as the night that births new mornings. He opened them wide and stepped over the fire. I stood, my legs shaking.
My heart was beating furiously. I was sure that he could hear it in the silence. I wanted to run but I was frozen in that spot. He stepped close, reached out and placed his hands on my shoulders. And he looked down into my eyes as if they were two wells empty of water, till his gaze had penetrated to my very heart, filling it to overflowing. Then he opened his wings, further than I would have thought possible, and wrapped them around me, pulling me closer. And he wrapped his arms around my back, so that my chest was pressed flat against his chest. And I felt myself vanishing in his embrace, like a stream that washes into a river, as we stood chest to chest, belly to belly, thigh to thigh.
He leaned down and kissed me. I opened my lips to him. And so it was, all night, that the two of us grappled on the ground, a man and an angel, his wings and his arms wrapped around me. We battled and made love till the sky began to lighten, when he pressed me to the earth and entered me. Wrenched apart and then pushed into bliss, he filled me with light. Then, bathed in the waters of my flesh, we curled together by the remains of the fire, breathing softly together.
I asked him his name. He would not tell me. I asked him for a blessing. He said, with a grin, “Wasn’t this blessing enough for you?” I looked away, ashamed, for he was right. But he lifted my chin with his hands, smiling. Then he kissed me again. I stroked his back, feeling the way that his wings grew out of it. I caressed his face, looked him deep in those dark dark eyes again. Then my arms were empty and he was gone, just as suddenly as he had appeared. And I was alone again.
ו
The Cave of Pleasure
Now Dinah, the daughter whom Leah had borne to Jacob, went out to visit the daughters of the land.
Genesis 34:1-2
Fourteen year old Dinah and her little sisters Rizpah and Hadar were crossing the stream that separated their father’s grazing land from that of the local chieftain Hamor, land that Jacob had purchased from Hamor for one hundred kesitahs.
Sandals in hand, holding the bottom of their robes up, the sisters were slipping and sliding on wet stones, laughing as they made their way across. Rizpah and Hadar dashed ahead, laughing, as Dinah followed. As she made her way across the stream, Dinah was thinking about a hand-clapping song that Hamor’s daughter Katirat taught her on her last visit, about the goddess Asherah. “Oh, she is a mighty tree,” the song began. “She is a tree of life that reaches from earth to heaven.” One clap, four claps, two claps. She kept repeating it in her mind till she reached the other side, where she dried off her feet and slipped into her sandals.
The closer Dinah and her sisters got to the town, the more her heart swelled with thoughts of Katirat. The two of them began their friendship by singing and dancing together with all the village girls. Now that she was older, Dinah wanted to be alone with her new friend. Her heart beat faster as she approached the town, its stone walls glowing in the sunlight. And there was Katirat, waiting for her by the open gate. “Come with me,” she said to Dinah, as her sisters darted through the gate to meet their friends.
Katirat led Dinah around the town walls. At first they walked and then they ran, toward a cave that Katirat wanted to show her. It was dark inside, but Dinah wasn’t afraid. She was with her friend now. Out of breath, the two stood in the darkness. Neither of them spoke. And then Dinah began to sing a song that she learned from Leah her mother, a song of her own people that she wanted to teach her friend. “Asherah, the Lady of the Sea, she opened her body to Tallai, the Lady of Rain. And oh, how Tallai came to her, wet and beautiful.”
There were more verses to the song, but suddenly Dinah’s throat was clogged. She couldn’t find her voice. All that she could do was reach out a trembling hand, and place it on Katirat’s warm shoulder. And the two were wrapped fast in each other’s arms, their young breasts pressed together. And their hands began to travel on each other’s backs, thighs, faces, bellies, pressing over cloth, seeking and hungering for flesh, in the darkness of the cave, at the north of Hamor’s village. And soon they lowered themselves to the dark earth, like ocean, like rain, becoming the two goddesses.
“And Tallai the Lady of the Rain, she poured herself into the body of Asherah, the Lady of the Sea. And the two waters met, dark and shining.”
ז
On Bended Knee
When Joseph was taken down to Egypt, a certain Egyptian, Potiphar, a courtier of Pharaoh and his chief steward, bought him from the Ishmaelites who had brought him there.
Genesis 39:1
Now Joseph was well built and handsome.
Genesis 39:6
God of the Hebrews, I am an Egyptian, but please accept my offering and hear my prayer. I have made offerings to my own gods, but they do not hear me. The Hebrew who I bought in the marketplace is torturing me. I come to you on my knees to beg you to make him take notice of me. I could take him. I know that. He is powerless beside me. I own him. But what kind of a man would that make me? No, that isn’t how I want him. That isn’t what I want. I want his spirit, I want his soul, I want him to love me.
That day in the market! It was hot. I was looking to purchase a new boy but there was nothing in the merchandise that I liked. I was about to leave when I noticed him, standing in the back of a cluster of other youths. They all looked so dejected, while he stood, so tall, so proud, so beautiful. I had to buy him, and now I have turned over my entire household to him, something I never did with any of my Egyptian stewards. I have given all of this to him, a Hebrew, a hairy nomad, dust covered and wild. Although I made him shave his beard. His cheeks are smooth now. And his eyes! Green like the sea in a face so dark. And his lips, made for kissing. Made for kissing – me! But does he see me? No. Does he smile at me? No. His smiles are the smiles of a slave for his master. But I want him to smile at me as a man smiles at another man, smile at me the way that I smile at him, with desire. I want him to want me, to reach out to me, to be lover and master of me as he has become the master of my heart.
O, god of the Hebrews, now I see my wife looking at him, yearning for him. He looks at her just as he looks at me. But what if that changes? It would kill me if he gave himself to her when he refuses to give himself to me. I tremble when he walks past me. I shake when he hands me something. I am a man of power and position. I own him. But when he is around I sigh and look away like a boy of twelve. Please hear me. I will give you the best of my flocks and my fields. Your people will be well fed because of me. So why do you curse me? Why have you sent me this Joseph of yours to drive me crazy?
His smell, as fragrant as the incense I just offered you. And the shape of his head, and the line of his shoulders when he turns away from me. They’re like daggers of copper in my heart. If he should favor my wife, I would send him out of my house. I might kill him. When all that I want to do is touch him, love him, and be loved by him. So hear my prayer. Accept my offering. And bend his heart toward me, god of his own people. I am humble before you. I am weak. I am Potiphar, the Egyptian, groveling.
ח
Healing Hands
The King of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shifrah, the other Puah.”
Exodus 1:15
Just before dawn they were awakened by Jahmai, whose wife Haggith had gone into labor, almost a month early. Puah grabbed her staff, her bundle of herbs, and ran after him, just as the first light of morning painted a coral streak across the dark sky. And then later, as Shifrah squatted in front of their mud brick hut, bent over a tiny fire, stirring her morning meal of fish and grains, little Miriam came running. “My mother is calling for you.” Removing the clay pot from the fire and putting it out with sand, Shifrah gathered up her own medicine bag and followed Miriam to her family’s hut.
This was Haggith’s first child. Her labor was long and difficult. For a time Puah thought that neither mother nor baby would make it. The sun had cleared the top of the sky and was sinking when at last Haggith’s baby entered the world, tiny, and feet first. But she was a strong little girl, with strong lungs, and as night fell, a happy, weary Puah made her way home.
Jochebed’s labor was different. The mother of several children already, she was smiling as Shifrah entered her hut. She knew what she was doing, but welcomed the comforting presence of the woman who had been with her when Aaron, Miriam, Itai, and Peninnah had been born. Squatting behind her, massaging her belly, Shifrah held and supported Jochebed as waves of contraction came and went. Her baby, a little boy with curly dark hair, entered the world quietly and easily. Mother and newborn washed, the hut cleaned, the rest of the family welcomed in to meet the baby, Shifrah slipped out and quietly made her way home.
Puah returned to find Shifrah bent over a new fire, stirring onions and fennel into a pot that contained that morning’s leftovers. They ate sitting in front of their hut, and quietly told each other about the new children they had welcomed into the world. And then later, on the mattress of grasses that they shared, wrapped in each other’s arms, they whispered together words of thankful prayer to Shaddai, for allowing them to be witnesses to the miracle of new life. And then they rode the waves of that miracle as it washed between them, the midwives of the Hebrews.
ט
The Tent of Miriam
Then Miriam the prophetess, Aaron’s sister, took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women went out after her in dance with timbrels.
Exodus 15:20
The sea was wide and cold. The water was waist high in some places, shoulder high and swift in others. Tibni lost the small bundle of things he’d hurried to gather before they left. It was carried away in the current. Miriam watched him struggle after it and called out, “Let it go, cousin. Keep walking.” Iscah stumbled, and her little daughter Elat, clinging to her back, was nearly swept away. But Shifra grabbed the child and saved her. And they all pushed on, panting and cold, following the path that Moses had charted.
From the back of the line Miriam saw her brother Moses grasp at reeds on the opposite shore, and then pull himself up on the bank. Aaron and his children were right behind him, then the rest of our tiny clan climbed out of the water and stepped into freedom. And gasping, coughing up water, muddy and dripping, alone, in groups, hand in hand, the rest of her people pushed and pulled themselves up on the far side of the sea. Lastly Miriam and her beloved Zahavah, at the very end to make sure that everyone else had made it, emerged from the waters, together. And free.
Some were sobbing. Others were standing, shivering, numb and afraid. Others were wandering in the crowd, looking for their loved ones. Moses, beaming, reached down to Aaron’s granddaughter Batshua and raised her high up over his head. Then he spun her around and the spray of water made rainbows in the morning sky.
They’d fled in secret in the middle of the night and walked for hours, fearful that they’d be followed. But the plague had killed thousands, guards and soldiers included, so no one came in pursuit – although at every step it felt as if they had. And now, now they were free!
Miriam looked at Zahavah. Zahavah knew that look. The spirit of prophecy had entered Miriam. She threw back her head and let out a long loud cry. Everyone stopped, and then, pushing their way through the crowd, all the women joined her. They had no drums. They had no timbrels. They had no sistrums or hand bells. They’d left Egypt with only the essential they could carry on their backs. But they had their hands to clap with. The midwives Puah and Shifrah led the women in a circle dance, with Miriam and Zahavah in the middle, hand in hand. Then Miriam began to sing the song of God that was moving through her. After each line the women repeated it, as they always did when she was given a holy song.
“As if the waters had parted for us.”
“As if God had parted them Herself.”
“We crossed. We crossed into freedom.”
“Yes, the waters of the sea parted, and then we crossed.”
“The waves rose up around us like horses.”
“Yes, like horses with soldiers coming after us.”
“But we crossed. Everyone of us crossed.”
“The waters parted and then we crossed into freedom.”
All the men and boys were gathered around the women as they sang and danced, clapping and cheering them on. And when the power began to ebb, when the song and dance began to slow down, Miriam let out a final cry that echoed out over the hills. Then she turned to Zahavah, in the midst of the crowd, and pulled her wet cloak over both their heads. Wrapped in each other’s arms, they kissed, deeply and fully, in that tent of theirs, that first tent of freedom our people raised up in the wilderness.
י
And They Made Sacred
Now Bezalel son of Uri son of Hur of the tribe of Judah, had made all that YHWH had commanded Moses; at his side was Oholiab son of Ahisamach of the tribe of Dan.
Exodus 38:22-23
The accident of meeting. Two Hebrew youths, one in service from an early age to the chief carver and metalworker in the temple of Amon-Ra, king of the Egyptian gods. The other in service to the master weaver in the temple of Isis. One day the carver sends his servant Bezalel on an errand to the temple of Isis, where the two young men see each other for the first time. And a look passes between them, a heartful look of recognition. And each remembers the other, at night on the hard dry earth in the servants’ lodging in the back of the temple in which he lives and works.
Months later, after plagues and increasing hardship, word sweeps through the city that all of the Hebrews can go free. Taking only what he can carry, Bezalel runs back to his family’s tiny hut. And so too the orphaned Oholiab grabs what he can and leaves the temple of Isis, to join the rest of his people in their march to freedom. And there, in the crowd, people pushing and shoving, crying, afraid, the two see each other, smile, move toward each other. And the same look passes from eye to eye, a heartful look of soul-deep recognition. Hands find each other, hands well trained in work, but not yet in love, that say as they march from Egypt in the night, “Surely God brought us together.”
In the wilderness, because of their many skills, Moses chooses the two of them to create for the people a vast portable tent and everything required to serve God. In sand, on animal skins, on shards of broken pots, they sketch out designs for ark, altar, lampstand, priestly garments, and for the great tent and enclosure that they will make, a sacred shrine to the One who in six days created the world and everything in it.
Oholiab and Bezalel train others to assist them in the work, which occupies them for months and months, in the wilderness, with limited resources. As the work progresses, from time to time they stop, catch each other’s eye, and exchange a look that says, “Surely God brought us together to do this work,” turning to face each other, just as the cherubim face each other, on top of the ark they make for God’s holy words.
Finally, everything is complete. In a week’s time Moses will dedicate the ark, altar, tabernacle, and initiate Aaron and his sons as priests. Exhausted, almost unable to believe that everything is finally done, Bezalel and Oholiab stagger toward the little stream that runs to the east of the encampment.
From months bent over a fire, hammering copper, silver, and gold, all the hair on Bezalel’s arms has burned off, his skin is dry and seared. And from months bent elbow deep in large clay vats, dying blue, purple, and crimson the yarns that he and his assistants spun and wove into cloth, Oholiab’s hands and arms are now a deep rich purple. That evening, as they kneel to wash beside the narrow trickling stream, lined with reeds and grasses bowing in the evening breeze, they join hands, burnt and discolored. And each says to the other, through wet palm and curled fingers, “Surely God brought us together, just like Naamah and Nogah, to create all of this beauty.”
כ
The Academy of Women
His daughter was Sheerah, who built both Lower and Upper Beth-horon, and Uzzen-Shirah.
I Chronicles 7:24
When Sheerah the granddaughter of Ephraim moved through the camp, she was tall as a date palm and her hair blew in the wind like flags on the walls of a city. Her shoulders were as broad as roof-beams made of wood from Lebanon, and her stride was as powerful as a lion’s. After the people settled back in Canaan, of all the women in the Bible, we are told of no one else but Sheerah who built towns. In the hill country north of Jerusalem she built the two Beth-horons, and then she built a town she named for herself, Stronghold of Sheerah. And it was there, in Uzzen-Sheerah, that Sheerah and her beloved, Shulamit a descendant of Ishmael, created a school, a school for women who felt a calling to be teachers and healers. Women from every tribe who were lovers went there to have their unions blessed, in the names of Sheerah and Shulamit. And women from every tribe went there to study also, older teaching younger. When they completed their studies they returned home to serve the people, with sacred stories, inspired words, and with healings for body and spirit.
Generations of women studied at Sheerah’s school, including three noted but unnamed elders from our past. The first was Noiyah the daughter of Yaffah, remembered as the witch of Endor who King Saul visited in his despair, begging her to summon the spirit of the prophet Samuel for him to consult with, which she did. The second was Milcah the daughter of Hamiadan, the wise woman of Tekoa who gave counsel to King David after his son Absalom had killed his half-brother Amnon for raping his sister Tamar. The third was the wise woman of Abel, Cozbi the daughter of Ahimyah, who gave counsel to David’s general Joab when he was laying siege to her city. These unnamed women and their forgotten sisters, all students of Sheerah’s school, were healers and far seers, able to dowse for water and bless flocks and crops. They passed their gifts on to all of their children, down through time, and many of us are awakening now to our inheritance from those women who went before us, the wise women of Israel.
ל
Tossed by Wind
In the days of Jael, caravans ceased, and wayfarers went by roundabout paths. Deliverance ceased in Israel, till you arose, O Deborah, arose, O mother in Israel.
Judges 5:6-7
“It’s always been this way,” Jael said to Deborah, as they stood in front of her tent, dust-covered, their hair tossed and tangled by a fierce wind blowing in from the west. “You do things your way, and I do things mine. You want me to be just like you, but I’m not, and I won’t ever be.”
“That’s not true, my love,” Deborah said, reaching out a hand to Jael, who stepped back, her hands clenched tightly behind her. “I’ve always honored and respected you. I’ve celebrated you in songs and poems. All the people of Israel know how I feel about you.”
“I know that you love me, and I know that you honor me. That isn’t the problem. The problem is that you want me to do things your way. And I don’t. I don’t want to. Your way is your way. I want you to honor mine.”
“But I do!”
“No. What happened last night is a perfect example. You told me to lead a contingent of soldiers back to Hazor. But when I asked you to send someone else, you snapped at me in front of everyone and then stormed off, leaving me standing there, alone. Do you know how I felt? Do you care?”
“Jael, we’re at war. Don’t you understand that?”
“I understand perfectly, Deborah. But I’m not a general. I’m not a captain. I’m not a leader of troops. Why can’t you understand that? You knew this about me, when we first met all those years ago at Uzzen-Sheerah. We both have different skills, and I intend to use mine in the right way, not the wrong way.”
For a moment Deborah’s steely composure altered. Her shoulders fell, her dark eyes went soft. “I’m sorry, my love. You’re right.” She expected Jael to shift as well, to soften, to take her outstretched hand. But Jael did not. Instead she sighed, pulled her hair back from her face, and gazed into the hazy distance, toward the distant sea.
“Deborah, this isn’t the first time we’ve been through this. We discussed it in Ramah, and at your camp. I don’t have it in me to go through it again. I need to go back to my camp. I have a deep sense that God wants me back there. And not just because of us, because of you. I’m not saying that things are over with us. I just need a break. So trust me. And trust yourself. All of our people are depending on you now. So please, do what you do so well, and let me go back now to find my own path.”
With tears in her eyes, Deborah bowed to her beloved and turned away. The wind whipped her cloak, her robe. Ten paces away she turned and saw Jael striding off toward her horse, the wind whipping through her dark hair, and through the horse’s dark mane.
מ
An Altar in the Sand
Thus Naomi returned from the country of Moab: she returned with her daughter-in-law Ruth the Moabite. They arrived in Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest.
Ruth 1:22
Ruth was out in the fields, gleaning among the grains, for herself and her mother-in-law. Each day she visited someone else’s fields, and Naomi knew that today she would be walking a long distance and be gone a long time. At the edge of the city Naomi took a goat path away from the fields toward the hills. There, at a distance, in a hollow, where no one could see her, she built a small altar of stones, she built it to Shaddai, the god of her people. Then she gathered kindling and struck stone to make a fire. Too poor to offer up even a single turtledove, she knelt before the altar and offered up her prayer instead.
“Shaddai, Breasted One, You who nurture and feed, who have sustained me and my beloved Ruth, come to me now. You know her. She is a stubborn woman. I tried to make her turn back to stay with her own people. But she clung to me, she refused. She joined herself to me, and to Your people. And the time that we have had together is most beautiful to me. Night after night we lie in each other’s arms, clung together, joyous, like the best wine, the sweetest honey, like a ripe fruit on a vine, split open.
But I am old now, Shaddai. My days are numbered on your earth. When I am gone, what will she do? Will her people take her back? Will they even know her, after all this time? No. You must help me, Shaddai. You must find a way to keep her here when I am gone, so that she is watched over and respected as one of our own people.
You have seen her. You know the way she laughs. The way she tosses her hair back. The way her hips move when she walks, like water. Who could have imagined that so old a woman as me would find such love, so late in life? Think of her in the morning, first waking up. Think of the way she turns to me. This is a woman who was not made to be alone. Find someone to care for her, so that when I am in Sheol I will not have to worry about her.
I think the best choice is Boaz, my late husband’s kinsman. He visits the holy ones at their shrine, and has never married. Boaz owns much land but he has no children. He walks like a man who has never known a woman. He is kind and gentle and when I think about him with my Ruth, having children, I see it as a blessing for both of them. So please, Shaddai, hear my prayer and find a way for the two of them to be together, so that I won’t have to worry about her when I’m gone. But, god of my people, please, please, remember this old woman, and do not do it too soon.”
נ
The Wooden Box
Jonathan and David made a pact, because Jonathan loved David as himself. Jonathan took off the cloak and tunic that he was wearing and gave them to David, together with his sword, bow, and belt.
I Samuel 18:3-4
“Soon it will be over,” he said out loud. That was one of the nice parts about being old, he thought, that he could talk to himself and sing to himself, whenever he felt like it, and nobody paid any attention. Once scribes followed him, copying down every word he said, and they wrote down the words of every song he sang. But so much had happened. So much loss. “Once I danced, naked, in front of the Ark of the Covenant. And now I can hardly walk.”