Five Things That Make Us Go Ummm

Five Things That Make Us Go Ummm


(Keshet is a national grassroots organization with offices in Boston, Denver, and the Bay Area that works for the full inclusion and equality of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Jews in all facets of Jewish life-- synagogues, Hebrew schools, day schools, youth groups, summer camps, social service organizations, and other communal agencies. Led and supported by LGBT Jews and straight allies, Keshet offers resources, trainings, and technical assistance to create inclusive Jewish communities nationwide.
www.keshetonline.org)

Goodbye, Miriam.

Goodbye Miriam.

Alone

I sit beside this grave

Hollowed out and filled in without the benefit of song and remembrance.

Just so much sand and dust and bone slipping from between my quivering fingers.

The hot wind kisses my cheek and runs invisible fingers through my hair.

In the oven-baked air I can hear the fading rattle of so many timbrels.

Around me dance the ghosts of celebratory praise.

I close my watering eyes and can see, further back,

 a young girl following a floating basket from behind a screen of riverside reeds.

A testament of sisterly love

even if later she will feel the need to question her brother’s authority.

(I have to smile. Ah, siblings…should we or God have expected any less?)

That desert wind now tickles my ear: Why are you still here? Look around - your tribe has moved on! With their every step the promised land grows larger on the horizon. Do you really want to be left behind?

No…but neither do I want to leave this spot of sand and bones in a desert of sand and bones,

to perhaps one day become a single barely-glanced-at, seven word sentence

destined to be swallowed whole in an endless tome.

The wind dries my tears and carries away my words: “!זכרונם לברכה”

I feel I can stand now, with a prayer on the edge of my parchment lips

that the blessings of her memory shall never overwhelm

all that I need to carry.

American Slavery as Forerunner to Nazi Germany? Surprise! (At least to me)

5, Av, 5772

(It is my experience that, as someone who has converted to Judaism – I am not a fan of the Jew-by-choice moniker, btw – I see my journey to and through the mikveh as a demarcation line from which aspects of Life can now be seen through a before-and-after lens. The Holocaust/Shoah is one of those for me. At some future point, when I think I have the strength to do so, I will try to tackle that subject as a whole. Good luck with that, right? For right now, I can only process it through tears and cries one piecemeal fragment at a time. This is one of those times.)

  

So there I was, two hours into a three hour, twice-weekly summer session course on race, listening to a discussion on nuances of the invention of race in the United States, when I made a disturbing connection.  In the left hand margin of my notebook (a space I often reserve for practicing Hebrew script whenever lectures become tedious) I began to write out all the identifying markers of race that were being discussed. Our latest chapter focused on the Invention of Race as a social construct coinciding with the rise of capitalism, especially in colonial (or, more accurately, colonized) North America. This theory, at least in my mind, makes perfect sense. Capitalism needs labor to thrive (i.e. – expand by making profit for profit’s sake). The Europeans who had “discovered” the “new” world had systematically decimated the Native American population through warfare and disease. (Later would come more warfare, broken treaties and forced exodus) The ongoing system of indentured slavery just couldn’t keep capitalism afloat – the poor who had either been kidnapped or bartered their way to the USA via working contract would eventually be freed or could escape and blend into the dominant population by virtue of their skin color. This simply would not do.

            Enter the African Slave Trade, already a burgeoning labor market (or so it was defined by the people of the time) for the colonies. Here was a seemingly endless supply of relatively cheap labor that had some working knowledge of the type of farming needed (especially in the South), could produce generation after generation of manpower, conveniently had no legal standing or representative voice and most importantly was readily identifiable. The text’s hypothesizes that before Columbus ever stepped foot on American soil there was no such thing as “black” or “white” (or Mexican, Asian or even Native American) as racial descriptors. Up until then differences in people was seen through the European-centric prism of “civilized vs. uncivilized”. But in the wake of Columbus’ ‘discovery’ there came the colonies, the near extermination of the indigenous peoples and the implementation of an economic system which demanded cheap labor to maximize profit, and therefore an easily exploitable people was needed to maintain it. As a result, a system of White Superiority/Domination and Black Inferiority was installed.

            

            What follows is a slow adoption of institutionalized racism which becomes hidden under the guise of generational “storytelling” which describes the differences in “races” and its subsequent racial hierarchy as religion and then religiously ordained, evolving into Manifest Destiny, followed by scientific justification as “proven” through anthropology, biology and frighteningly, eugenics. (For the Marxist theorists out there, you can think of it as a racial FalseConsciousness which once again servies the bourgeoisie.) From this “storytelling” (in addition to other sociological factors) emerges an ideology which in turn gives birth to a number of “slave codes” (later morphing into “black codes” which will inform the Jim Crow Laws). Non-whites are now framed as overall inferior races, animalistic in nature, impossible to ever be fully civilized, given to the most base human urges (especially sexual). They are animals to be used, abused, even murdered without twinges of conscience. Laws emerge which separate them from the rest of society. They cannot vote, own property or businesses. They are not seen as having any legal agency. They must not intermingle socially with the general public (therefore keeping the horrors of their lives as slaves secret). White Supremacy enforces identification based upon a purity of bloodlines (from which emerges the “one-drop rule”). Phenotype also becomes an identifying marker. At one point the popular magazines of the time, relying on pseudo-science, ponder what should be the answer to “The Race Question” or “The Black Question”.  Eugenics is given serious consideration in mainstream conversations.

Sound familiar?

            I certainly thought they did. As the classroom conversation continued I began writing down all these aspects of racism in pre-Civil Rights’ United States, noting with growing unease the similarities to The Nuremberg Laws of Germany circa 1930’s. The connection shook me. I had been long socialized and taught through the discourse of history textbooks and popular media that Nazi Germany was a social aberration, an unlikely powder-keg of a compliant citizenship, fervent militarized nationalism, an oppressive economics and of course long-standing antisemitism that only needed the spark of insane charisma to ignite. That the Holocaust/Shoah had not been repeated since seemed to prove the idea of anomaly. (Yes, let’s admit right here and now that there have been – and tragically continue to be – worldwide genocides. I will not degrade the memories of those lost or the families shattered in any of them by comparing who suffered more. That is not my point (and is a gratuitously lurid discussion IMO). What I am hoping to relate here is that the framework of the Holocaust is commonly portrayed as historically and socially anomalous and the “fact” that it has not been repeated as such since would seem to bear that out.)

Now I learn that there is a history of institutionalized racism in the United States, often left critically unexamined and therefore I will argue is purposely hidden, that not only pre-dates but probably informed Nazi Germany. The “races” were certainly different but the development of their antagonism and the mechanisms of how they played out bear too much resemblance to be declared coincidental abnormalities.

(I am sure there are those out there who will say, Steph – or whatever my critics call me – do you really think this is unique enough to be worth blog space and my time? Hel-lo, known this for years! There are whole dissertations on the subject. Get thyself down to your college bookstore already! To which I would reply that I do not doubt this personal revelation is new. Little under the sun is, to paraphrase. For me, the point is that even if this information is the most widely read chapter of all college texts, it is still not readily accessible to the general population, which I think it should be.)       

Parshat Pinchas: Women Standing up for their Rights in the Bible

Balaam and Curses and Blessings, Oh My!

17 Tammuz, 5772

An examination of Parashat Balak yesterday led us not only to ponder the nature of the biblical Balaam as prophet, pagan or both but thehistorical evidence for the real-life existence of the son of Beor (a title which has a very GoT/LoTR/FoTR resonance to it, IMO) as professional curser in ancient Middle East; and not only the juxtaposition of curses and blessings in the Torah (apparently it was a bit of a trend) and viewing Blaam’s blessing as lyrical poems but the historical perspective on the use of curses in theancient Middle East and a reading of some modern-day Yiddish curses (from which the examples below have been culled):

“Selection of Curses

from Nahum Stutchkoff's Thesaurus of the Yiddish Language

Khasene hobn zol er mit di malekh hamoves tokhter.

He should marry the daughter of the Angel of Death.

Meshuga zol er vern un arumloyfn (iber di gasn).

He should go nuts and run around (through the streets).

Vi tsu derleb ikh im shoyn tsu bagrobn.

I should outlive him long enough to bury him.

Got zol im bentshn mit dray mentshn: eyner zol im haltn, der tsveyter zol im shpaltn un der driter zol im ba’haltn.

God should bless him with three people: one should grab him, the second should stab him and the third should hide him.

A groys gesheft zol er hobn mit shroyre: vus er hot, zol men bay im nit fregn, un vos men fregt zol er nisht hobn.

He should have a large store, and whatever people ask for he shouldn’t have, and what he does have shouldn’t be requested.

Hindert hayzer zol er hobn, in yeder hoyz a hindert tsimern, in yeder tsimer tsvonsik betn un kadukhes zol im varfn fin eyn bet in der tsveyter.

A hundred houses shall he have, in every house a hundred rooms and in every room twenty beds, and a delirious fever should drive him from bed to bed.

Migulgl zol er vern in a henglayhter, by tog zol er hengen, un bay nakht zol er brenen.

He should be transformed into a chandelier, to hang by day and to burn by night.

Es zol dir dunern in boykh, vestu meyen az s’iz a homon klaper.

Your stomach will rumble so badly, you'll think it was Purim noisemaker."

Because yeah, that’s how we roll at Shabbat-morning Torah study…  

More Dances with My Muses...

Hyphens as Minus Signs

“Oh,” he smiled without a trace of malice, “so…you’re a Jew-by-Choice, then.”

As if those hyphens were actually minus signs that, when subtracted from the sum of the whole,

equaled a person somehow less-than, a fraction shy of authentic.

Oh, I wanted to reply. So…are you going to break the bad news to Sarah, Yitro, Ruth, the thousands of millions at Sinai, and Rabbi Akiva, too?

Or should I? 

*********

Lashon Hora

Sadly, tragically, I got to know you before I ever met you

In a neon-lit concrete dive - 

late night, cigarette smoke,

with cocktails over easy.

Introductions were made by way of an eager third party

who, upon hearing your fabled name, dressed you up for me in the most bedazzling of improprieties…

Of course, I saw nothing wrong as I had met so many other celebrities in this way before…

Only this time,

my last time,

I finally understood what was happening here.

In a neon-lit concrete dive - 

late night, cigarette smoke,

with cocktails over easy.

And now, whether in one year, fifteen or twenty

I will never know

the thrill unraveling that ancient mystery

of meeting you,

another human,

for the very first time.  

******************************************************

The Shape of a Jew

The Nazis got it wrong. (Of course.)

You cannot tell a Jew by the size of his nose,

the curls in her hair

or by measuring the circumference of a seemingly Semitic skull.

What Hitler could never understand was that Jews are measured

by the width of their open arms,

the height of their communal pride,

the length of their shared histories,

the depth of their curiosities

and the exact circumference of their circumcised hearts.

Queer Jewish activist. Same sentence. Of course.

(The spirit and action and unending pursuit of social justice was one of the aspects of Reform Judaism that originally beckoned me through my temple's door. It seemed that many of the activists whose  ר֫וּחַ I was inspired by were, in some way shape or form, Jewish: Emma Goldman, Allan Ginsberg, Gloria Steinem, Harvey Milk, Lisa Edelstein, Elizabeth Taylor, Kate Bornstein, Bella Abzug, Leslie Feinberg, Judith Plaskow, Barbara Streisand... Now you may argue that correlation does not equal causation and for some of the aforementioned, their Jewishness was in fact antithetical to their activism. And I would respond, yep, you are absolutely correct. Still, I believe there are no coincidences....only, perhaps, a dearth of critical analysis.

Here is one more individual who I would add to the list :) 

Gay Marriage’s Jewish Pioneer