May 19, 2023 / 29 Iyyar 5783
וַיְדַבֵּ֨ר יְהֹוָ֧ה אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֛ה בְּמִדְבַּ֥ר סִינַ֖י בְּאֹ֣הֶל מוֹעֵ֑ד בְּאֶחָד֩ לַחֹ֨דֶשׁ הַשֵּׁנִ֜י בַּשָּׁנָ֣ה הַשֵּׁנִ֗ית לְצֵאתָ֛ם מֵאֶ֥רֶץ מִצְרַ֖יִם לֵאמֹֽר׃
YHWH spoke to Moshe in the Wilderness of Sinai, in the Tent of Appointment,
on the first [day] of the second month, in the second year after their going-out from the land of Egypt,
saying…
[B’midbar/Numbers 1:1]
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the beginning of B’midbar (Numbers) from three medieval illuminated Bibles
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Maayan Segal, who felt annoyed that the King had more value.
Available here
Welcome to the 7th (and final) week of ‘Omer Counting – the practice of enumerating the 49 days between Pesah and Shavuot. This final week is focused on the middah (divine attribute) called malkhut or shekhina – dignity or divine Presence.
Donna Kirschner shares her reflection on malkhut/shekhinah:
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Every friday night, as we sing, לך דודיL’kha Dodi, while the rest of the congregation sings “Kimsos hatan al kalah” (as the groom greets his bride”), I quietly (or not so quietly) sing what feels like a subversive alternative: כמשוש הלב באהבה “Kimsos ha lev b’ahava” – as the heart greets its desire.
I first encountered this formulation to in Siddur Sha’ar Zahav (שער הזהב), the “Purple” Siddur developed by the San Francisco- based LGBTQ- focused shul that bears its name. (It’s a wonderful Siddur – the next time you’re in the sanctuary – grab one from the back credenza and check it out). Why formulate our encounter with the divine presence, the “shekhina” as “she” arrives on Shabbat this way? Isn’t an expression of the delight that a groom feels as he sees his bride (or for that matter, a groom to a groom or a bride to her bride) sufficient to express how overjoyed we feel about our Shabbat encounter with the divine presence (however we formulate it)?
As I see it, what lights us up at any given moment may not be in the idiom of matrimony.
Despite a joyful 28 year marriage to a beloved partner, my heart’s delight shifts – it might be anything: a song, a sunset, a good knitting pattern, a cup of coffee, a conversation with a friend and yes, indeed, the sight of my beloved after a long day or the sound of his piano playing as I clean up after the Shabbat dinner he prepares so I can “get my God on” every Friday night.
To return to this Shekhina business, how did the most central, ethereal formulation of “God” come to be feminized in a panoply of biblical formulations that otherwise seem “male”? Is this simply a matter of semantics and the gendered basis of Hebrew itself? Does thought follow language? If this were a literal question, I might need to push away some cobwebs to return to my training in Linguistic Anthropology to dance around the sign/signifier relationship or really dig at the structural/post-structuralist arguments. But those concerns,hopefully, take a background when we sing our hearts out, sway, bow or simply randomly encounter whatever feels divine in a given moment.
Is there genuinely something “feminine” about shekhina the dwelling, the place within us, the “deep knowing,” or intuition that creates a place of trust, kindly love, wisdom, foundation, roots, lineage, a sanctuary within, that allows all of the sacred attributes to “flow” through us? Animate our being? Is our deepest wisdom – that still, small voice; that loving presence that abides within and around – is that feminine?
The Torah offers at least two instances of “deep knowing” and trust in a feminine milieu: When hustling out of Egypt under cover of night, the Israelite women brought their instruments, which they used to sing and dance after crossing the Sea of Reeds: an act of faith and deep knowing that everything is gonna be alright (cue Bob Marley’s Three Little Birds, which I hope will be your Shabbat earworm). As well, when Moses sent twelve scouts to check out the land of Canan, only Joshua and Caleb returned with a good report and believed that God and the Jewish people would succeed. I’ve read several sources (again, cobwebs) that attribute their optimism, deep wisdom, sense of confidence that “everything will be alright” as the feminine attributes of Joshua and Caleb, for which they were rewarded with leadership.
I have been both comforted and dismayed at times with this gendered formulation of whatever we call God. Ever since childhood, I’ve railed against the God talk that uses “he,” mostly because, eww: there are enough men telling us what to do, so no thank you to a “he” God. So might God be female? One of my favorite movies, the 1999 cult film, Dogma, features Alanis Morissette as an Aphrodite-type God – silent, loving, (and wrathful but in a sweet way). Such fun, beautiful; a nice counter to George Burns, but still a person, a sweet, loving projection of our super-egos.
While the more wonder-based or events-based “God happens when….” formulations, or the more “woo” descriptions of energies absolutely resonate with my hippie-gen-X/JewBu heart, are those energies really female?
I would like to invite us to consider that there might be something authentically sacred if we try to recalibrate the question altogether: might we find something very holy in the non-binary nature of how we approach our understanding of the divine?
Our non-binary friends, mostly young people, who are asserting that the gender binary does not speak to them or how they situate themselves in the world, might point the way. More than the cis-gendered or even trans-gendered among us, they are blowing up a binary that has organized human society, human cognition for, well, for as long as we have been human. The backlash is enormous. Hateful and reactionary. We are a categorizing species, ever scanning the environment for danger: something that I can either eat or will eat me? My people/not my people.
The defiance of categorization makes most of us uneasy. So defiance of a binary is so subversive, invites us to sit with that discomfort and sadly, invites the ire of those who want to live in a simple world that hearkens back to some good old days that few of us would want to live in.
I invite us to consider, to sit with, breathe with, the possibility that our non-binary friends are pointing the path, perhaps to what the late John Lewis called the “Good kind of trouble.” This trouble might promote, (perhaps at first), some discomfort over the groundlessness of life without the binary.
What would our Jewish lives feel like without the binary? What would our soulful lives feel like? What would “God” feel like? Can we embrace whatever arises, even if it’s discomfort? Sit and breathe into it the way an experienced meditator can try to not scratch an itch that arises just to see what happens on the other side? (Something amazing, by the way, give it a try).
Perhaps the shekhina will greet us with a deep welcome as they arrive.
Shabbat Shalom,
Donna Kirschner (she/they)
Inclusion Committee co-chair
If you are interested in actionable, and soulful ways to support non-binary Jewish folks, please consider attending this amazing event at the JCC:
https://jewishphilly.org/get-involved/neighborhood-programming/delaware-county/building-a-new-home-in-our-minds/
PS, if you Would you like to sponsor a copy of Siddur Sha’ar Zahav in honor of an event, a loved one, pride month? You can order one here.
What I learned at the White House this week –
The invitation arrived early last week; initially I thought it might not be real, but it turns out that it was, and, needless to say, I accepted. It was my great privilege to be among 300 guests at the White House’s celebration of Jewish American Heritage Month this past Tuesday. Upon our arrival, we encountered a military band playing Yiddish and Hebrew songs, and were welcomed formally by the First Lady of the United States, Dr. Jill Biden. A moving musical performance by Ben Platt and Micaela Diamond, current co-stars of Parade on Broadway followed. The event concluded with words from Doug Emhoff (the Second Gentleman of the United States) and President Biden. Delicious food prepared by Michael Solomonov completed the evening.
What exactly is Jewish American Heritage? A number of encounters on Tuesday afternoon have helped me begin to answer that question.
Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz is credited with creating Jewish American Heritage Month – her first piece of legislation, she shared with me in a brief conversation. The goal, she said, was to publicly highlight the contributions of Jewish Americans to American life and culture; contributions in so many realms, too numerous to list. A few areas, however, stood out – music and the arts; health, medicine and science; the ongoing struggle for social justice. It was a moving day and an honor to represent our Jewish community.
