Parsha Questions: T'rumah

2 Adar, 5775

Reading through Parsha T'rumah - a.k.a. "The Ikea Portion of the Torah" - in prep for today's Trah study, some questions emerge, like:

 - just a few weeks ago, the Israelites built another in/famous structure, The Golden Calf, ostensibly to make a distant invisible God (connected to this new nation by a suddenly disappeared Moses) more visible and present in their lives. results were disastrous. (Anger management much, Moses and God? - although arguably we could not have expected more from a society Durkheim would have labeled as mechanic.) Is it coincidence then that a short time later, God instructs Moses to have the Israelites build a structure that would visibly represent God's presence in their midst? Leading one to ponder if the Tabernacle would have been built had the whole 'Golden Calf Incident' not have happened.

 - And just to be sure we're all clear which object God and the Torah prefer, we get elaborate instructions for the Mishkan, down to how the angels' wings on the lid of the Ark should be made, while we get no real details about Aaron's calf. (Yep, dude, totally throwing you under the bus here.) Also, please note that no Israelites were slaughtered in the aftermath of the Mishkan. (Whew!)

 - the dolphin skins, the dolphin skins, exactly how do dolphin skins make an appearance in The Torah? Ram skins, I get. Acacia wood? Absolutely. Dolphin skins?

 - "everyone...whose heart was so moved..." (Exodus 25:2) So yeah, I understand from a literary p.o.v. why it's important to add this, to show motivation. I think it's worth noting its inclusion inside a society that is clearly forming around mechanical solidarity. What I find so fascinating is that this one line did not need to be included - how many of us would have said, "Wow, if only those Israelites had volunteered their goods, that would have proved their devotion!" What are the Torah's writers'redactors trying to say here to their three-thousand year old audience? While Denise Eger in "The Women's Commentary" offers some compelling thoughts on the questions (470) they are written to a modern readership. What might the Babylonian exile have made of this passage?

 - In case you were wondering what a cubit is...

 - not a question but being very appreciative of the Golden Calf/Mishkan comparison. In the former, the Israelites construct a visual representation of (a?) God, while in the latter God calls for a dwelling so that God may still exist among them - invisible and nebulous as always. Remaining beyond the constructs of imagination is prioritized here (indeed, unto the death). What does it mean to be imagined by another, and how is that constraining to the one being imagined?

 - Finally, as one of my rabbis 'drashed: all the Israelites brought something to this project of God-dwelling construction - which leaves us with the question of what do we bring to our communities so that (our version of) God may find God's place among us?

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.