What’s in a Blessing?

It has not escaped me that, after Bilaam blesses us, things are …. different. Despite Bilaam not being able to curse us, once the foreign prophet blesses us, we encounter Pinchas immediately after. And ever after Pinchas’s ‘covenant of peace,’ the vav of each word of peace in Torah – shalom – is scribed severed in half.

We then enter the bein hametzarim, our communal time Between the Narrows, fasting and mourning the breach of the Temple’s walls until Tisha B’Av when fires raged at our ancestors’ holy site. And after, the rest of Av and Elul is introspection preparing for forgiveness, hoping our sins and hurts and mistakes will leave, that we can be sealed for good.

The blessings Pinchas brings are violent and sectarian. The blessings of Bilaam, our “good tents” and deep connection, ultimately destroy what they blessed by turning our tents against each other.

Perhaps, just perhaps, the blessings of non-Jews is not a blessing for us.

A Taste of Torah Trans-cestors

Avraham is the embodiment of Chesed – expansive loving-kindness – because he is tumtum, because there is a trans-ness to him.

To be tumtum is to be sex indeterminate in the Talmud. The same Talmud tells us Avraham, the first Jew, was tumtum. In kabbalistic terms, Avraham is the embodiment of the divine attribute of Chesed – wide-open loving-kindness.

Avraham is the embodiment /because/ of this trans-ness, because finding his sex/gender involved revealing the hidden and opening the closed of his own self.

I’ll be teaching about Torah Trans Ancestors and Their Kabbalistic Overtones tomorrow night for friends. If you, fair reader of this blog, wish to participate – please contact me at eishzarah @ gmail . com (though without the spaces). The next offering is the last Saturday of this month – July 30th – tentatively at 6 pm Pacific.