You say 'intermarriage' like it's always a bad thing | Sarah Tuttle-Singer | The Blogs | The Times of Israel

You say 'intermarriage' like it's always a bad thing | Sarah Tuttle-Singer | The Blogs | The Times of Israel

Let’s Get The Conversation Started: LGBT Jews and Orthodox Communities

Let’s Get The Conversation Started: LGBT Jews and Orthodox Communities

Why I Am Making 'Aliyah' to Reform Jewry – Forward.com

Why I Am Making 'Aliyah' to Reform Jewry – Forward.com

While I do not get into the more-Jew-than-you game with the various streams of Judaism, I really liked this piece as I sense a profound joy in the spaces between the letters. Am I projecting? Perhaps. All the same it sounds like her Aliyah is sincere.
Neshama Carlebach is one of my favorite performers. Her voice lifts me from wherever I am at to a better place and her songs - even the stray niggun - leaves me somehow more in touch with my own Judaism than before I heard them.

Caught on Tape, a U.N. Interpreter Wonders Aloud at its Israel Bashing - Tablet Magazine

Caught on Tape, a U.N. Interpreter Wonders Aloud at its Israel Bashing

"There’s other really bad shit happening, but no one says anything”

(In activist circles I hear this argument cutting both ways; Anti-Zionists claim this is Israel misdirecting attention away from its militaristic policies while Zionists say it's proof of macro anti-Semitism i.e. - the United Nations.)

Thoughts on Lech L’Cha

12 Kislev, 5774

It’s taken me a while to catch up with my ongoing thoughts for each week’s Torah study. School is partly to blame – some weeks I have to give more emphasis to those readings which are graded. Some weeks, though, I need to sit with the portion longer than others, not only intellectually and spiritually but emotionally processing it as well. 

“Lech L’cha” is one such parsha.

As I have written here before, coming out as a queer woman (in-transition) I have been questioned numerous times about my choices and actions with demands that I literally explain my Self. Why am I doing this? Who am I to be going against the (socially-constructed) dictates of biological essentialism? Where was my proof that I am who I say I am? 

At first I would earnestly attempt to answer these demands, not realizing that in the end I could offer no reasonable justification, for the speaker was merely projecting their own ignorance and intolerance. At the same time I internalized the message my interrogator implicitly delivered – that I was (being labeled as) abnormal, freakish, (socially) stigmatized and therefore (morally) deviant, and as such was not deserving of the most basic human rights or common courtesies (such as not having to justify who or why I was).

(And please please please do not comment with “But Ziva, just be who you are and don’t worry what other people say.” There is plenty of psychological and sociological research shows that platitude rarely if ever describes social reality. We negotiate many of our identities in accordance to the social, political, economic environments we inhabit, in addition to our biological structure...and this would include other people we encounter, whether in the form of inter-personal encounters, as cohorts, or even as members of aggregates. 

Please don’t misunderstand – I am not saying we should seek and rely solely on external validation to determine who we are. What I am saying is that those who advocate simply "being ourselves" and ignoring all others reveal a passing privilege that is unaware of itself.)

I have written here before how “Lech L’cha” – the idea of being drawn by that small yet powerful and insistent divine/Divine voice inside of us to go forth, whether to another land or  another career or to a new relationship, someone or something beyond the boundaries of our cherished comfort zones – touched me when I first read it. That was 3.5 years ago and my spirit and heart and soul still lurch and dance when I hear the passage. Indeed, when we discussed it in a recent Torah study I had to hold back big fat tears. (This was the second time I have had to do that since Rosh Hashanah 5774. Many around me have suggested I share those tears with my congregation. I am not sure I can do that yet, although it’s an exercise in trust I want to aspire to in this new Jewish year.)

So I end this particular blog post with this one thought:

The Women’s Commentary on The Torah highlights how the title of Debbie Friedman’s empowering,            reflective and haunting musical translation to this portion is actually the feminized command of the                  parsha’s title, the distinction being that instead of meaning “Go forth or “go forth for yourself”, L’chi              Lach translates as “Go forth…go forth to yourself” (82). 

Which, for me, is a beautiful and beautifully fitting interpretation. 

Marking the 75th Anniversary of Kristallnacht

No, I don't think a Jewish genocide on the scale of the Holocaust is possible in my lifetime or even the next generation to come. But history as an analytic lens shows that as a form of racism, Antisemitism re-configures itself to insidiously emerge with new societal institutions and culturally mores. (All forms of racism do this, as sociology has repeatedly shown). Every time one incarnation is revealed, another takes its place in proceeding generations. So then is another type of Holocaust possible? I believe it is, as long as Antisemitism remains cloaked in political justification.

As Racism is neither my forte nor academic focus I will leave it to others to examine why it lingers so. All I can advocate for is knowing history and not forgetting its lessons since, as many theorists (for example here and here) aptly point out, the past continually informs the present. Therefore those who regulate history (especially the official memory of the state) actively determine how the (nationalist) present is processed. Appreciating what has gone on before can only enable us to cast a more stringent and cleansing light on what is going on around us today.

http://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-News/Obama-75th-Kristallnacht-anniversary-a-reminder-of-what-silence-in-face-of-hatred-can-bring-331018

http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/kristallnacht/homepage.asp

http://www.ushmm.org/information/exhibitions/online-features/special-focus/kristallnacht

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24858670

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/150785/kristallnacht-german-scam

(Please feel free to add additional sites and resources.)

As for those who died that horrible night, the approximate 6 million who would die ("the martyrs of our people who have done but us to say Kaddish for them") and for ALL victims of racism - this.

Thoughts on Parashah Noach

8 Cheshvan, 5774

Thoughts on Parashah Noach:

-          Unlike Abraham and Moses, Noah utters not a single word in Humankind’s defense, nor does he even attempt to try to negotiate for Humankind’s redemption. And this is the figure that both The Torah and God see as the epitome of righteous during Biblical time? If so, what does this say about righteousness? That it does not include empathy or sympathy?

-          "What’s a cubit?"

-          It is interesting to note how the ancient Israelites (and other first readers of The Torah) imagined an ELE (Extinction-Level Event)…not by plague or invasion or assimilation or even Sarah Palin but by flood.

-          Gen. 7:8: “God then remembered Noah…” If we’re not indulging in anthropomorphism, then God does not forget (like I do every morning when searching for my keys). If God does not forget, what is God really doing when “God remembers” (which God will famously do with the pleading Israelites enslaved in Egypt.) Perhaps ‘remembering means acknowledging (which in of itself does not hinge on forgetting?) (Although it does carry its own value-laden meaning.)

-          Gen: 8:20: What is the significance of the animals in the Ark being pure at this point of The Torah? After all, there has been no mention of Kashrut Laws yet (which are derived from Leviticus and Deuteronomy) nor have there been any instructions regarding the individual’s or community’s state of purity/impurity (i.e. – handling a corpse).

-          Gen. 8: 21: God notes Human’s continued reverence even after surviving an apocalyptic event of God’s making…and through this revelation believes Humans transcend their own innate and inevitable “evil inclination”. (Yes, I will probably ponder this. For. The. Rest. Of My. Life.)

-          ******************************************************************************

The Babel Story

-          I love reading this tale as an anthropologic look at how the ancients struggled to understand diversity. 

-          I think The Women’s Commentary is spot-on in noting that, as per The Torah, God sees a danger in  cultural/societal homogeneity and does not condemn diversity as its remedy. (Although I am amused by the story’s implication that God understands Humankind will see Diversity and Homogeneity in the exact reverse.)

-          I think one cannot overemphasize God’s role as instructor here, for like any good professors, God pushes God’s students beyond the borders of their comfort zones, knowing this is the only lasting way they will learn. Welcome to The Struggle.