The Leviathan’s Roar

Rosh Chodesh Tevet 5782

There’s a midrash that once a year of Rosh Chodesh Tevet the Leviathan rises from the tehom deep to let loose a massive roar!

This roar scares some larger fish that are merciless in their consumption of the smaller fish, realigning the balance of power through divine mean.

We’ve awoken from the dreaming rest of Kislev to this, a yawning roar! Awake! Arise!

What is your roar right now?! What ferocious furor can you use to protect those in more dangerous positions than you? This is the month Esther was taken into the palace. How are you using your unexpected power to undermine the structures of harm?

This month is crowned by a monster. What are ways forward to healing, acceptance, and even compassionate love toward the monsters other people make of us?

This is the month against the evil eye, a protection against those roars sometimes used cruelly against us. How can you protect yourself when feeling attacked in healthy ways that don’t repeat past trauma? What are some rituals you can make or find to reclaim in positive ways the harm used against you?

These are big hard questions I admit and ones I don’t have answers to. I put them out there to engender more questions and more midrash and more Judaism and more connection.
Wake up; stretch those arms gently overhead; yawn your jaw loose. This Shabbos let yourself roar in joy; and, after, go into the month ready to clamor in righteous anger!

Yoseph – Lethe’s Trickster

Yaacov is a trickster by pressure and by choice, but he always knows he is a rogue, has a sense of owning that towards solidifying maverick power.

Yoseph is like a trickster who can’t know they’re even that. A charmer who doesn’t seduce. A trickster that doesn’t seek the win. And yet they slip and slide through troubles with linguistic cleverness and shifting sense of identity. All Big Trickster Energy.

Yoseph names their own son about trying to forget :
וַיִּקְרָ֥א יוֹסֵ֛ף אֶת־שֵׁ֥ם הַבְּכ֖וֹר מְנַשֶּׁ֑ה כִּֽי־נַשַּׁ֤נִי אֱלֹהִים֙ אֶת־כָּל־עֲמָלִ֔י וְאֵ֖ת כָּל־בֵּ֥ית אָבִֽי׃
Joseph named the first-born Manasseh, meaning, “God has made me forget completely my hardship and my parental home.”

But naming that you are forgetting is just another way to remember. And Yoseph tries to block what some part of them can not forget – the terror of their near death at the hands of jealous murderous siblings.

Something of me understands. My childhood is a foreign land I can’t access. Something blocks it. And while it doesn’t concern me, I see how our brains – trying desperately to protect ourselves – help us forget. Every day this happens in a thousand tiny ways to every being, but sometimes some-peoples it happens in massive swaths.
As a trans person how much was I forced to forget, to pretend it’s non existence? I came out in a time we were told to create a new childhood, to ignore the girlhood that shaped me. What was elided in the wash? What did Yoseph lose when gendered violence loosed itself upon them, ripped their clothes off and threw them down?

I wish I knew. But I can’t remember.

Sometimes though, late at night when I dance gently about my room in the low light, I think I remember the vision of the form of what it was to be whole. I hope Yoseph found some of that too, added it back slowly and surely, found their way back in a thousand small everyday ways, and in massive shining swaths.

Chadeish yameimu k’kedem. חדשׁ ימינו כקדם

My Life As Mikveh

I started my Erev Birthday by buying dinner for my two coworkers and the trainee that’s been shadowing me. Tomorrow I’m making patacones/tostones for Hannukah time with my housemates.

I haven’t been this excited about a birthday since I turned 33 (because it’s the Hobbit age of majority and so I was finally officially an ‘adult’). It feels great to be going into 40 with connection and giving; and – of course – food because I’m southern and Jewish. 💜 I feel so good, whether in spite of or because of all the changes and the painful growth. Despite my exhausted brain/body, despite the lack of sleep and the weird moving-related bruises, despite the hurt and pain and silence, I am beyond joyful for finding more life.

Fucking L’Chayim y’all!

Kislev is drawing to an end and a new month is dawning:
May this time of light and darkness illuminate and focus your path.
May this holiday of dedication remind you what you love and care for.
May the rest and dreaming of Kislev help you find clarity.