So on this near birthday, full moon, natal bar mitzvah Torah portion, I had a few words – mostly about reconciling divinity and the drama/trauma of living.
Yeah, a few words is apparently 35 minutes. Whoops. 😂💜 What can I say? I love Torah.
Also features my life partner and cat, Murky, being all up in my space.
Hineh sulam, Behold a Ladder. Rejecting the vertical for a grounded self.
A midrash, A lesson, A prayer: Shabbat Toldot 5781
In Sotah 13a our rabbis tell of Ya’akov’s burial. Esav arrives and angrily tries to to claim the burial spot as his. Isn’t he the firstborn after all? An argument ensues, reminding him that he sold the honor of birthright. He, in Karen fashion, demands papers, bills of sales, the manager, proof! They argue with words of Torah about who has the right of way, until Chushim ben Dan – hard of hearing, perhaps not hearing the words of Torah but seeing only threats – beheads his great-uncle for so desecrating his grandfather’s body and memory.
And Esav’s head rolls into the cave to rest at the feet – and some say in the very bosom – of Yitzchak.
This parashat has so many takes, so many lessons, so many simple and deep readings. Why /does/ Yitzchak love Esav more? How could our hero be the brother who seemingly steals a blessing? Why do the rabbis hate Esav so much when the pshat plain meaning does not give us a sign of evil?
Ya’akov is described as tam, simple. What is simple? Not the pejorative word we think in English, but simply what it is. Simple. Uncomplex. Whole and wholesome. When born, Ya’akov’s sentence doesn’t even have the verb “to be” in it – simply, it says “Ya’akov, a simple man” When he is born there is no defining feature beyond his grasping at the heel of his brother.
But Esav’s name says it all. It is connected to the verb ‘to be.’ Esav in our story already is. He arrives fully formed, red and hairy. Complete and unchanging.
Our rabbis ask, why is Esav described as “A man knowing trapping.” Some interpret this in the plain text; he is simply a hunter of game as we already know. Some of the midrashim tell of Esav’s evil focus on the physical – adultery and rape, murder and cruelty. Others focus on a related sentence, that Yitzchak loved the taste of that game meat, to hint Esav’s evil was in his words, that he would ensnare his father with clever questions. And thinking his son pious and intelligent, Yitzchak fell into a trap of the mouth, of clever lies.
How do we reconcile this – the Esav that is a physical bore and the clever Esav who tricks his own father in a tangle of meaningless questions?
Ya’akov is simple. What does this mean? He is whole, a complete human.
Esav is not. Esav – the Ancestor of Greek/Rome – separates his mind from his body, refusing to acknowledge they are all of one piece, one whole cloth.
In trying on Esav’s presence to gain the blessing, Yaakov learns the layers of self, seeing his selfs split, sensing the uncanny valley of not-being. And when Ya’akov leaves the tent? “Yatzoa yatzah Yaakov” Read not, “Yaakov had just left” but “Yaakov went out twice,” now split.
We all try on other people’s patterns, using our culture and language and love to learn how to be in the world. Ya’akov incorporates it and begins his hero’s journey. Esav stays, never changing his behavior or his being. Because Esav never experiences the terror of self introspection, he can never be our hero.
So what of Esav’s head, rolled into the cave tomb of his ancestors? The rabbis say it is only in death and only his head that is holy enough to be buried there. Yaakov, the whole, the tam, is buried fully. Once described against his brother as “smooth,” it is a word that can also be read as a part or divide. Ya’akov only gains texture after that first break. He leaves the tent in pieces and spends his life re-incorporating his self and paying for that one moment in the tent. No longer smooth, he goes out.
Hashem, Hashem
So many times I have run away –
Yatzoa Yatzah – in pieces large and small.
Shaddai Shaddai
Two sides of the small coin
My sibling and me
The other and I
Myself and my self
El Roi, the One who sees Me
Help me be whole
Help me see completeness
Help me piece these parts into a Life
May we merit fixing what is broken.
May we merit finding wholeness in our minds, our bodies, and our spirits.
And we merit that greatest gift of all – shalom, the peace that comes with knowing completeness.
It’s Kislev, the best Jewish month. No, not because of Channukah and not because it’s my birth month, though thanks. 😉😏 But because it’s the Jewish month of sleep and dreams! And that friends, is totally my jam.
Kislev breaks into two words – Kis means ‘pocket’ and Lev means ‘heart.’ This month can certainly feel like putting your heart away for the winter, tucking it in to rest after the emotional high of the yamim noraim. And Kislev’s Torah portions are filled with dreams and visions, showing up multiple times some weeks!
Remember, dreams and sleep are intrinsically tied together in human culture. You can’t have one without the other. And even our non-sleeping dreams don’t come easily if we haven’t slept, haven’t rested our whole bodies.
This next moon cycle – !we just had a new moon! – join me thinking about dreams and sleep beyond the basic physical. How can we rest well in such times of stress? Where are our dreams telling us we want to go? How do we navigate a world that does not reward rest and personal (non business) dreams?
💜💤💜 I admit, I don’t know the answers. It would be sheer hubris to think I did. But I hope we can think about it together friends. Let us rest and dream. And let our renewed selves reveal when we awaken.
Erev Shabbat Chayeii Sarah 5781
Rabbi opened and said “What is the edge of Erev Shabbat?” As it says “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”For when you see the face of your neighbor as your own, she [Shekinah] is present.
This is a powerful Shabbat, a deep parasha about mourning and the force of death. Chayeii Sarah, the life of Sarah, starts with her death.
Sarah is hard to see as a heroine, in the epic heroic sense. She does have her intensely miraculous pregnancy and birth in her old age, but otherwise the stories that stick are her insisting Abraham sleep with a servant, Hagar, and then hating her for it. Oh and also managing to literally laugh at g-d! Not exactly traditional heroic qualities. And yet Sarah is the first Jewish woman and we extol her praises constantly! How can we hold these two truths at once?
The rabbis make many reasons the holy Sarah would do such horrible things like turning Hagar and Ishmael out despite – from the simplest meaning of the text – getting exactly what she wanted, a male heir from her servant. They paint Ishmael as wild, cruel to Yitzchak, as possibly even sexually assaulting him. They paint Hagar as haughtily parading her pregnant belly around the ever-barren Sarah. They say she was a daughter of Pharaoh, more prone to elevating herself above others! And yet, the plain text just shows us her, a foreign woman and her child cast out into the desert even after doing everything right – after her owner has sex with her and birthing a child claimed by the woman who owns her. Horrifying and expected. Here she is. Hinenah. Hagar, the cast out, the shadow Shekinah. Weeping, so thirsty and distraught that she drags herself away, trying to not watch the physical act of her child’s death.
Given Avraham’s riches and comfort it is unforgiveable.
But here is a hard truth about Sarah. The people who are the most in danger, the people the world hurts the most, have learned to build boundaries to protect themselves. Those who feel safe in the world can not understand how much effort and energy is spent protecting your very self from the greater world at large. I’ve read Sarah’s narrative as trans before and it heightens those feelings. But no matter Sarah’s sex or gender or any of those things, the essence of Sarah is someone who has had miraculous changes, but who has changed at a cost. Avraham has societal safeties she does not. And so she must make boundaries that he never has to consider.
There is a midrash that the Akedah – The Binding of Yitzhak – happens because Avraham does not make sacrifices at Issac’s weaning. Avraham forgets to remember that all of this is just divinity, that he is not the creator of his fairy tale ending. Satan arrives to argue against him. And so Avraham receives a test. The Test. The Ultimate human test of what you do.
Avraham, he who added a divine letter, who escaped the fires of Ur Chasidim, who sees the Compassionate One Who Gives Life, the First Jew – what do you do when HaShem tells you to raise up your son on a mountain in a time known for human sacrifice. For if HaShem is truly the compassionate one, one who cares about humans, how can there be a requirement to kill something this close to you? Yet to “rise up upon a mountain” is nothing but “Sacrifice” in that world. And in that moment between himself and his son, between the memories of his uncaring father and the tyrant king of his childhood near-death experience, Avraham dared to dream of a greater divinity. A g-d that would not command you to slaughter your child. Raise up. To test you. Raise up. To give you the chance to prove yourself, to re-envision the face of the divine and the face of humanity.
The other midrash of this winding drash story is one of juxtaposition. The Torah does not tell us why Sarah dies. The parasha before gives us many harrowing stories, almost a glut of near misses, of high drama, of literal destruction, and then – the Akedah. And after the Akedah? Chayeii Sarah. The life, the death, of Sarah. Sarah died because of the Akedah, the strain of such a test was too great. She was a mother who put up harsh boundaries to protect her child from perceived danger. And her death is the realization that it did not save her child.
Sarah, the ever barren, the one who will not live without change, the outsider bond/married to an outsider. She who was beauteously gazed upon as Yiscah, who declared herself Sarai “my Princess” to own her sense of self. She who threw out her husband’s original heir and the heir’s mother. Such a powerful sense of who she was and how to protect her life and yet the boundaries did not protect the life of her only son.
Yes Avraham considers killing for his g-d.
But Sarah is willing to die herself at that terrible vision, of a g-d that would give so much only to take it away, a g-d at odds with her reality of the world.
The Pitzcner Reebe, the Esh Kodseh wrote of this parasha in the Warsaw Ghetto with a deeply felt teaching.
“One might … argue that Sarah’s taking the binding of Isaac so much to heart that her soul left her body was a [deliberate] act taken on behalf of Israel. It was intended to demonstrate to God that Israel cannot endure an excessive amount of suffering. For even if, by the grace of God, he remains alive after the period of suffering, nevertheless, a part of his strength, mind, and spirit are broken and lost. [As the Talmud says (Bava Kama 65a)], ‘What difference does it make if one is killed outright, or beaten half to death?’ This explains the point of the words, ‘These were the years of Sarah’s life’ (Genesis 23:1). For it would appear that Sarah sinned by shortening her own life span; had she not taken the binding of Isaac much to heart, she would have lived longer. But since her action was taken on behalf of Israel, Scripture hints ‘These were the years of Sarah’s life.'”
I can not say why Sarah dies when she dies, what physically happens. But I can say why Sarah lived. Because she put down boundaries. Sarah moved across the world when the idea of a world was young and she was a woman in a society that used that against her. It was a world of constant deprivation, of starvation fears and dying thirst. To survive in those ancient worlds, boundaries and safety sometimes came at the expense of others. This modern world does not have such excuses.
Much of parasha Chayei Sarah – the Life of Sarah – is taken up with reconciling the work of life after Sarah, life after the terror of the Akedah. Avraham grows old and well supported, the father of physical nations, multiple children. Yitzhak and Yishmael are on speaking terms, possibly reconciling over the very trauma Avraham inflicted in his search for a better self. Eliezer uses his dutiful lazar focus to find a suitable spouse for Yitzchak, a true sidduch, a partner and a match. These are all each of the characters’ worries as the life of their patriarch winds down, as they watch their own lives shifting.
Much of that healing may have been due to Sarah’s death. Just as we also know that some of that trauma came from Sarah’s life. And to be human is to hold both of those things, one in each hand; to sometimes hold them together in all their complexity.
May the lesson of Sarah’s life on this yartzeit week of both Comrade Leslie Feinberg ז״ל – May hir memory be a blessing – and Hannah Szenes/Senesh הי״ד – May Hashem avenge her blood – be this: There is only so much punishment humans are able to withstand. The human animal longs for bone deep happiness, to be in real honest connection with the self and with the other. It is something we can never achieve with capitalism or facism. Both insist that the model relationship is one of domination and hierarchy, that there are inherently humans that are better. Instead we must face the truth of a Compassionate Divinity, that if we insist that G-d is compassionate, we have to reflect that compassion into reality. And doing that means being the best at what humans are, seeing beyond what we are to what we can be. Envision a world of humans with needs met, a world where basic compassion is a baseline expectation, where everyone has food and clothes and the medical care we know is available. A world where we do not need to turn the stranger out and certainly not one where we convince ourselves we don’t have enough in a nation of plenty.
“Every instance of new lights appearing is preceded by tzimtzum”
Etz Chayim 8:2
INTRO
The first step of self creation for many trans folks is certainly not something perceivable by other people. In fact, the first step of trans self-creation sometimes isn’t even perceivable to the person experiencing it. These first steps are often as seemingly insignificant as creating that small still space within ourselves. This space doesn’t whisper “I think I’m trans” or “I was assigned the wrong gender.” This space simply allows for the possibility of questioning. It may be brought on by something as simple as reading an article about a trans person. It may be as intimate as having a trans lover or partner. It may be as profound as a life long sense you don’t “belong.” It may be apropos of nothing. But there it is. A space. A small dot of possibility. A pintele trans. (1)
I was not one of those people you hear about where I always knew I was trans. There are stories of child-me crying at being forced to wear dresses. There are also stories of child-me refusing to go somewhere unless I got to try out make up. While I was not a girly girl, I didn’t think of myself as a boy either. Even during my uncomfortable teenage years, awkward with my body, and consumed with pre-emptive prudishness, I still didn’t think I was a boy. But at some point I started to consider exactly what made me so different. And while it was months before I figured out even the slightest beginnings of my identity, the allowance of what I might be and who I might become made my current life possible.
TZIMTZUM – Contraction
If g-d is omnipresent, how is there space for the world?
Yes, I recognize it sounds similar to the classically ridiculed question “Can g-d make a rock so big even g-d can’t lift it?” Still, to some (2), it’s a valid rabbinic train of thought. If g-d really is everywhere and if g-d has some form of physicality – which many rabbis and the Torah clearly thought Ze did (3) – then how does the world exist? Outside of g-d? Within g-d? Some kind of strange unexpected time/space continuum equation worthy of a Star Trek techno-babble sequence? D- All of the above?
The Kabbalists answered this question with the idea of tzimtzum (צמצום). Tzimtzum means contraction or withdrawal. The Lurianic creation myth states that g-d began the process of creation by contracting, by creating a space within Their self, a hollow for this world to exist. G-d takes Their divine infinite light, the Or Ein Sof (אור אין סוף) which pervades everything, and allows the infinite light to become finite. Creating this chalal hapanoi (חלל הפנוי), this empty space, is what allows us to exist in what was previously filled with infinite homogeneous divinity.
This myth seems remarkably different from what we usually think of as the Jewish creation story. The story told at the beginning of Genesis/Bereshit is a tale outlining order from chaos, an account of clear physicality, whereas this kabbalistic tale is lacking in human scale and tangible formation. It seems odd to imagine these two creation tales coming from the same tradition. However, the rabbis connect both stories, insisting on both/and rather than an either/or because that’s what rabbis and Judaism often do (4). But even with the connections the rabbis make, it still seems odd to those of us raised with Genesis/Bereshit as the authoritative Jewish creation story.
INTERNAL VERSUS EXTERNAL
The traditional Jewish story of Creation is an external story. G-d says things and they happen. G-d exerts His (5) power of creation through words and onto the world. When g-d says “יְהִי אוֹר” (Let there be light), why then וַיְהִי-אוֹר (and there was light). When g-d orders the waters to divide, they comply. When g-d calls for grass and seeds and trees, the earth responds by breaking forth into greenery. But the Kabbalistic creation story changes this. No longer is g-d’s first act of creation an external one; it is internal. In this story, the first required act for creation is self-change.
Many people and therefore many stories, attach creation to physical action – by which they usually mean an action others can perceive. Even those who do not attach creation to a traditionally physical act still connect it to the thought of creation, the thought of the action that will be performed. The main storyline of Bereshit – the formation of landscape and animals and Adam – happens seemingly disconnected from the kabbalistic creation myths. And it is that story that is full of spoken words and physicality. The kabbalistic act of creation however seems at least one step before that, before even the thought.
According to Aryeh Kaplan’s notes to Sefer haYetzirah “This constriction of hollowing of the Divine Essence did not occur in physical space, but rather, in conceptual space” (6). And so the rabbis say that the tzimtzum wasn’t to be misconstrued as a physically noticeable action. I too see the tzimtzum as something internal; not just in the sense that if g-d is everywhere then this must literally be internal to g-d, but also not in a mental/internal versus physical/external sense (7). When I read about tzimtzum, what I see is g-d making a space available for the consideration of the world, creating what allows the possibility of the thought rather than the actual thought itself. Aryeh Kaplan’s notes in Sefer haYetzirah also seem to point towards this conclusion, “The Kabbalists therefore teach that before creating anything else, g-d created the concept of ‘Cause’ (8)” Not the thought. Not the action. Not even the cause, but the concept of it.
REVELATION THROUGH CONCEALMENT
In much the same way that creation is often seen as an external “physical” act, creation is also seen as a revelation – the act of revealing a newness. While the creation in Torah is not exactly creatio ex nihilo (9) – for example the spirit of g-d hovers over the already present water (10) – it is a revelation of order from chaos. And yet in the Lurianic myths, tzimtzum is an act of concealment, not revelation. To allow the space/time necessary for our creation, g-d makes a point from which the infinite divine light is concealed. (11) In creating the world (olam – עולם), g-d creates a concealment (helem – העלם).
One of the most traditionally feminine moments I consciously had as an adult was in my late teens. While I hadn’t yet realized I was trans, much less come out as such, I was beginning to have inklings that something wasn’t working for me. And so I tried even harder to conceal my nature by going full on femme to a dance. I had a dress. I had flowers. I had long hair done in some fancy updo. I had the makeup I dreaded. I was creating a persona for myself, concealing myself as I knew my self at that time, and – in that concealment – was hiding the burgeoning possibilities of being trans. I hear a similar story from trans friends and trans acquaintances all the time; this story of concealing yourself – to the world and to even to yourself – at the very cusp of realization. And I often hear the corollary that soon after throwing themselves into their assigned gender, they finally had to call it quits, to recognize another path was needed. Perhaps it is the very act of that concerted, often painful, final effort that propels us into true openness (12).
There is, due to society’s misunderstanding and even hatred, an often automatic move towards concealment when it comes to trans issues. Cis (13) society prefers that genders outside of their expectations both reinforce the narrative they expect (‘I mean, I know you’re trans but why can’t you at least try to look normal!?’) and remain hidden (‘Why are you always talking about being trans so much?’). Trans people are compelled in a variety of ways to mask and veil our trans status. This spoken and unspoken coercion to keep gender variant people silent and invisible is what reinforces the very denial/concealment of ourselves. And, as tzimtzum is the beginning step of creation, it is often at the edge of realization that we try the hardest to hide. While the concealment of ourselves is painful and usually negative, it can often be the impetus to creating that necessary space, that tzimtzum of possibility.
In B’reshit Rabbah there is a midrash (14) that the angels did not want g-d to make humans:
Rabbi Simon said: When the Holy One, blessed be [They], came to create people, the ministering angels were divided into camps and factions. Some said, “Let g-d create humans;” others said, “Let g-d not create humans.” This corresponds to the verse: “Kindness and truth met; justice and peace came together” (Tehillim 85:11): Kindness said: “Let g-d create humans, for they will perform acts of kindness.” Truth said, “Let g-d not create humans, for they will be full of deceit.” Justice said, “Let g-d create humans, for they will perform righteousness;” peace said, “Let g-d not create them, for they will be full of divisiveness….” (15)
And while the angels are arguing about the pros and cons of this decision, arguing our future out of existence, g-d just slips out back and makes people in all our complex beauty. Sometimes we do the same, creating our new selfs even as we logically argue against change or, unawares, focus on other life issues. Sometimes we are both g-d and the angels.
Even in the traditional Jewish story of the beginning, there are aspects of the power and pain located in separation and creation. On the second day g-d separates the waters, parting them into the waters above and the waters below. This second day is also the only day never labelled as “good.” But on the third day; when g-d makes something of the separation, when g-d turns the waters into sky and sea and creates land, when something comes from the pain; then that day is doubly blessed.
G-d in these stories seems far more compassionate than the angels, far more willing to give humanity a chance to exist, despite knowing we will screw up and hurt each other. Sometimes I envision a g-d who is more compassionate simply because Ey knew the suffering of separation, because They felt Their Selfs pull away during the tzimtzum, felt the withdrawal from that previous completeness, while the angels in their unchanging perfection can never know that pain. Did it hurt g-d to create that space? Was it painful to limit Themself, to see the disconnected emptiness that used to be Them? Or did that space create joy? Was there happiness in knowing what that change would lead to? Is this what makes a compassionate g-d? The ability to know that all too human intertwining sense of loss and possibility, grief and hope?
CONCEALMENT FROM SELF
The concealment many trans people face seems – of course – markedly different from the concealment of tzimtzum. I mean, comparing an infinitely divine unknowable with what a human encounters seems almost … sacrilegious. Perhaps even heretical? And yet the Kabbalists continuously insisted that what they wrote of the heavens was mirrored in humans. In the words of Dov Baer, the Maggid of Mezritch (16), “I teach everyone that all the things described in the book Ets Hayim (17) pertain also to this world and to the human being.”
While the literal event of the tzimtzum is clearly not in hiding due to societal concerns (it’s difficult to hide from society when matter doesn’t even exist yet), it is a restriction nonetheless. It is through this concealment – as opposed to the order of traditional Torah reading – that the world is created. It is only through the tzimtzum’s state of potential that the world is eventually revealed. Trans people and ultimately all people need the physical, mental, and spiritual space to create themselves anew. Tzimtzum speaks to this. It allows us to recognize that when we withdraw, it is sometimes a necessary step for our lives and our well being, for our preservation and our self-creation.
Another form of concealment the Kabbalah often talks about is the sephirot (18) as a type of clothing for the divine. The concept of enclothment (hitlabshut – התלבשות) is the concept of how the divine light shifts into finite form. Just as tzimtzum creates finite space from infinite space, it also entails forming finite light from otherwise infinite light. Compare it perhaps to the light shifting through a prism. Everything is white light until it is refracted, then it becomes enclothed in different spectra, different vessels of wavelength. Moses Cordovero in his work Pardes Rimmonim (Garden of Pomegranates) compares it to water flowing through colored vessels. The water is still water, but is tinted and shaped by the container. So too is the concealment of the divine light tinged by the vessel it is clothed in. “By clothing itself in the sephirot, Ein Sof (19) conceals itself, yet this concealment is simultaneously an unfolding manifestation of Ein Sof” (20).
And it is through clothing many of us conceal ourselves, discover ourselves, reveal ourselves anew to the world. We hide our hips in baggy pants. We secretly, in the safety of our room, slip on a dress. We bind. We tuck. We pack. And we go forth. Through our garments, we tell our story. Through clothing we may conceal certain parts, but reveal even more by trying to show the world the narrative of our gender, of our lives.
INFINITE TO FINITE
But how does an infinite omnipresent being that fills the entire universe, that is even beyond the universe, fit Itself into clothing? How does an almighty divinity separate from Itself and squeeze a part of infinity into finite time and space?! Because, in this myth, that’s what g-d is doing. In concealing the light and creating an empty space, g-d changes the principles of the universe. G-d limits infinity.
One of Issac Luria’s great contributions to Kabbalah would seem small to many. It has to do with the nature of tzimtzum and how the infinite becomes finite. The Kabbalists are very interested in how g-d can constrict. While earlier Kabbalists created a series of small tzimtzum, full of gradual incremental moves towards finite-ness, Luria viewed this as the Kabbalistic equivalent of Zeno’s arrow (21). It never quite got there. And so Luria proposed a dilug, a jump from infinite to finite, a radical act of divine will that brought the finite into the universe. This quantum leap (22) is what makes everything possible. Without this the universe does not exist.
As we trans people move from the small space of possibility to the finite realization of being trans, we make a radical leap from allowance to possibility, from possibility to probability. Tzimtzum starts by creating the space within ourselves, a space of potential. As a ray of light (kav – קו) begins to pierce through the vacuum, we begin to consider the possibilities. The empty space is no longer empty, but becoming filled with the light of our trans selves. We begin clothing – enrobing – these possibilities, giving them space in our heads, allowing them room to grow, allowing them space to root.
Trans people, through allowing this space to consider their own trans-ness, often must consider carefully what kind of gender and what gender presentation they have. Most cis people assume their gender to be innate and “natural.” Trans people though – even those who firmly know their inherent personal gender – still must constantly grapple with what their gender means and how to present that gender in a society that will judge them harshly. We must take the comparatively infinite possibilities – especially compared to traditionally acceptable Western cis genders – and coalesce them into a finite presentation. For trans people and others who transgress against the societal standards of gender, it is rarely a simple question such as “A’int I a woman?” but instead a myriad of considerations. “What kind of woman am I?” “Do I like dresses?” “Do I even fit into the binary?” “If I don’t fit the binary, what am I?” “What about makeup? “Do I feel comfortable wearing a tie and vest?” “I prefer ze/hir pronouns, but would I be comfortable with “they” in more complicated public situations?” “Where are the places I can dress how I want?” “Does this mean I’m gay now!?” And all these internal questions multiply further with each new social interaction and each new intersection (23) to be measured and judged and questioned.
We take the seemingly infinite and morph it into the finite gender of the time and space we occupy (24). But we know there are more possibilities. We are aware of the spaces we’ve created to find our full selves. We comprehend all too well the choices we made in this dark world and the small points of light each of our lives create.
And now there is a small space amongst the infinite, a vacuum waiting to be filled, a place of possibility. Divine light – the filtered Or Ein Sof, the Light of Everything/Nothingness – begins pouring into the vacuum. A quantum leap from infinite to finite. From nothing to something. A spark to pierce the dark (25). Like a prism splitting the spectrum, the light begins to separate, to coalesce.
“Rabbi Shimon got up and said, “Grandfather, grandfather, … the clothing that one wears in the morning is not the clothing that is worn at night, and the clothing of one day is not worn the day after.”
Tikkunei HaZohar, Tikkun 12
References:
1. A “pintele trans” is my playful take on pintele yid, a yiddish phrase. There is a tradition that every Jew has some indestructible point of Jewishness within them. My rabbi Valerie Cohen, the Jacksoner rebbe, often used the pintele yid and the idea of the Jewish neshamah – a Jewish soul – to welcome converts. Rabbi Noach Dzmura writes about the pintele yid being a “flamer” in Torah Queeries (p. 129-134). I feel the same applies for trans people. There is some small shining point of trans-ness, whether you knew as long as you can remember or only realized when you were 50. There’s still that internal shimmering spark, that indestructible point.
2. To others, most famously the author of the Tanya – the Alter Rebbe, Rabbi Shneur Zalman – the thought of there being any space without g-d is a patent falsehood and simply a limit of human perception.
3. “A cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the presence of g-d filled the Tabernacle, and Moses was not able to enter into the tent of meeting” (Exodus 40:34-35). This is a proof text used by some rabbis to explain that g-d has some physicality that takes up a presence of space.
4. Talmud – in many ways The Text of rabbinic Judaism – is mostly rabbis arguing and disagreeing, but there are sometimes no official answers. While there may be multiple answers, the arguments often just continue on or switch gears. And even when there is an official answer, the other not-so-official answers are still there, enshrined in Talmud for as long as there is Talmud.
5. I did say I don’t ascribe he, him, his pronouns to g-d. However, the g-d in the Hebrew of the Torah is a masculine g-d with masculine pronouns and He (all to often) often comes with all the crap that being a man carries in a patriarchal militaristic society.
6. Aryeh Kaplan Sefer HaYetzirah p. 14. I use Aryeh Kaplan’s translation. See the above note 2 for how amazing Aryeh Kaplan is. Also feel free to, you know, gift me with any Aryeh Kaplan books you’d like because I want them all.
7. I don’t even think the binary mind/body split works well with us flesh and blood folks, but that’s another topic that’s simply too large for this writing and these foot notes (though Daniel Boyarin writes wonderfully about it in Jewish versus Christian lines of theological thought, particularly in Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture). Of course, the continuing western notion that the mind and the body are separate, is simply that – a notion. It, as many notions before it and after it, contains its own pros and cons, and its own fallacies. The mind is another part of the body. When neurons fire and thoughts or emotions arise, that is still a physical action of your body. It may not be an action others can perceive, but it is an action nonetheless. And it is through that action – whether thought or emotion or both – that other actions arise.
8. Aryeh Kaplan Sefer HaYetzirah p. 58
9. Creatio ex nihilio – Latin for “Creation from nothing.” Because I have to use my B.A. in Classical Studies and nearly a decade of dead language studies somewhere.
10. וְרוּחַ אֱלֹהִים, מְרַחֶפֶת עַל-פְּנֵי הַמָּיִם. “And the spirit (breath) of g-d hovered above the face of the water.” Genesis/Breshit 1:2 This water is clearly already in existence before g-d begins to create within the story we have. Rashi points this out.
11. Helem and Olam are linguistically connected and various Kabbalists draw attention to this.
12. Now I do not think suffering in hiding is necessary for the trans experience and I do not even like the idea that suffering makes people “better.” I’ve also seen too many people who would be far better served by having housing or never having lost their job, than by the “character” that suffering built. And yet I also recognize that in our suffering, many of us discovered ourselves and increased our compassion for others in different places of hurt and forgotten-ness..
13. Cis and trans are both latinate prefixes. Cis (on this side) is the opposite prefix of trans (across, beyond, through). Therefore a cisgender person is someone who is comfortable with the gender they were assigned at birth and feels no compulsion or want to move away from that gender.
14. A midrash (מדרש) is a story based commentary based on Torah. Midrashim – the plural of midrash – are ultimately an interpretive act drawn from deep textual reading, a way for the rabbis to creatively interpret questions about the text.
15. Translation from Jacob Neusner’s Confronting Creation: How Judaism Reads Genesis: An Anthology of Genesis Rabbah, page 61.
16. Maggid Dov Bear of Metzeritch was a student of and the successor to the Baal Shem Tov. In Daniel Matt’s The Essential Kabbalah.
17. Etz Chayim is a compilation of Rabbi Issac Luria’s teachings by his student Chayim Vital. This work is the primary source text when learning specifically of Lurianic Kabbalah.
18. We will discuss what the sephirot are later. But, for a quick overview, the sephirot are considered emanations and attributes – middot – of g-d.
19. Ein Sof is the infinite, the “no end” of the divine. According to the Kabbalists, this is the completely unknowable unity of g-d from which the sephirot – and all of our perceptions of g-d – emanate.
20. Tiqqunei ha-Zohar, quoted from Daniel Matt’s The Essential Kabbalah p. 172
21. Zeno states that for motion to occur, the arrow must change the space it occupies. Zeno also states that at any given moment the arrow is stationary. If time is composed of moments and at each moment the arrow is stationary, then motion is impossible. If you wish to use this construct in space instead of time, just look up Zeno’s wonderfully paradoxical story of Achilles racing the tortoise.
22. Aren’t we all “putting things right that once went wrong and hoping each time that this next leap will be the leap home.”
23. Intersectionality is a way to discuss the complexity that is the overlapping and independent systems of social categories that affect oppression and privilege. It was coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw to address the exclusion that black women routinely experience. Here’s a quick primer and guide: http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/01/why-our-feminism-must-be-intersectional/
24. This – of course – also applies for people with multiple genders, demi gender, or no gender. While much of this writing revolves around the word gender and around having a single gender, this is simply because I am someone who identifies as gendered. This same formation of ideas and the struggle of moving through, beyond or to differently gendered states is something that readily applies to people who have no gender or multiple genders. Agender and multiple gendered people face much of the same discrimination and the similar internal conflict that monogendered trans people do simply by existing in a society that insists you must be one of two gender options and that you must remain in the gender you were assigned at birth. They also face the added discrimination that comes with not accepting the binary genders, much less the gender standards of the society we live in, as well as the discrimination of people who insist all humans have one single intrinsic gender.
25. “from Battery Park, way up to Washington Heights”
Shabbat Vayera 5781
We are at a point in the parashah, in Avraham’s story, where even the win feels like a loss. There is a breaking in what Avraham does. In not sacrificing his son, in seeing a greater g-d, one that demands life, he broke with tradition. But also? He broke his son – his only, his beloved, Isaac.
This is a time of breaking where even “wins” are Pyrrhic victories. But if you believe breaking is possible, try try try to believe fixing is possible. Hold on to that great and greatest human ability, change. After all, the whole world is a narrow bridge. Our ancestors knew this. And people of color and LGBTQ+ community folks know this power too, how to find a point to stand on in this ever changing world.
This is the eternal difficulty, the eternal question, the eternal point. Where is the boundary. Where do you draw the line. When is enough enough.
The breaking always hurts. But to be human is to be intrinsically intersectional, to be made of parts, patchworked experiences. And some boundaries are not just good, but ultimately blessed. There are some humans I refute and refuse. There are human actions I will not condone.
And that? That’s a clean break.
17 MarChesvan 5781
Today is the 17th of Marcheshvan in the Jewish calendar. This is the day the rains began to fall during the first part of The Flood – המבול.
The rabbis ask “Why did HaShem destroy the world in Noach’s time but not during the Tower of Babel?” And the answer they come to? Is that during the attempt to reach the heavens, humanity worked together. As it says “נבנה – We will build!” Despite trying to overthrow divinity itself, the humans survived simply because they got along.
In terrifying contrast, midrash says the generation of The Flood tried to stopper the rising flood waters with the bodies of their own children.
I fear the mentality of the Flood still runs through us. Better to shove other’s children in cages, better to let the old and the infirmed die, than to inconvenience the great idols of rugged individualism and manifest destiny.
The rain is starting. I don’t think it will stop in 40 days.
Shabbat Samhain, Shabbat Lekh Lekha 5781
The story of Avraham is one of recognizing sterility in the place you were born, of being willing to tear yourself away from the connections that humans prize – place and people and comfort – to find the self, to find /your/ self. It is the story of someone who keeps all tent sides open to possibility.
Others pay the price for this openness. Avraham pays a price too, to relive the trauma of his own childhood. A popular midrash tells of young Avram smashing the stone idols of his father. That midrash also relates a story we tell less, the dark reverse, that Avraham’s own father let the local king throw him into a punishing fire for his idol-smashing crime. And that, though Abraham escaped, his brother died in punishment at the hands of a tyrant and an accomplice father.
How does a human truly become human? By recognizing the trauma. By learning to accept it from a place of compassion to yourself. Avraham does not give in at the mountain, at the akedah. His insistent vision of a g-d of Chesed, of open loving kindness, draws down the very voice that stops him.
He merits a divine letter added to his name. Now Avraham, the ancestor of nations. Now Avraham, the heh (ה) a sign of understanding, of compassion, of the womb. Avraham – Av Racham – the Father of a Womb, the compassionate ancestor, only becomes so by struggling to find compassion and connection in the world, by realigning what g-d can be in this world.
Ultimately whether you believe in divinity or not, believe in the power of yourself to stop the generational trauma and cruelty. Believe that you draw goodness into yourself and those near you when you work to better the world. Not through you alone, but yes through your life and your work and your compassion. I believe in you. I love you.
eish zarah 