Turning it Upside Down: Tzav

I’ve been writing this here weekly blog on the parsha over the past year and a half, and there’s something that has lately begun to bother me more and more. It’s always bothered me, but just now it’s really weighing on me, and I’m not sure how to handle it going forward.

As a woman becoming a rabbi in a male-oriented profession, of course it bothers me that the focus of Torah is on the men for the most part; rarely do we hear from women and their point of view.

By focusing only on Torah in my blogs, I have felt like I am participating in and continuing the sexism that exists in Judaism and our holy books.

I also have not properly learned ungendered, nonbinary or feminine language for prayers. It doesn’t really matter to me personally because I don’t think of “God” in binary/masculine/feminine terms at all, really. I simply translate in my mind as I was taught to do in Jewish Renewal.

In fact, I don’t think of God as any gender at all, but rather as “The Divine” or “The Source of All Life.” Sometimes I say it out loud, sometimes just inside me (you can read more about my orientation and the Jewish Renewal movement by clicking here on this link).

Also, having grown up Jewish but mostly illiterate in Judaism, I needed to start with learning the stories of the Bible.

And I was told, “Start by solidifying your knowledge of biblical Hebrew.” So that’s what I’ve been doing.

Which has been fine, because it’s been part of my development as a rabbi. You have to know the stories of the Bible in order to be a rabbi! People won’t notice if you’re not so familiar with the Prophets or Talmud, but they will notice if you don’t know the Torah.

My recent learning has also meant that it’s been a very big stretch for me to learn new language that can substitute the old in order to update the orientation. I am aware that some people may be offended or feel left out, and I never want to do that.

But this year is the 50th anniversary of the ordination of the first female American rabbi, Sally Priesand. When I heard her give a talk about her experience during a Zoom meeting last Sunday, I had just finished reading the parsha this week.

And something that had stopped me in my tracks while reading was that “the males” were allowed to eat of the sacrificial animals—translated as, “only” the males of the lineage of the priests were permitted to do so.

It struck me as strange that the text had to indicate specifically that it was the males, and that the translation had to emphasize, “only.”

Why? Was there even a question that females from the priestly lineage would be able to participate?

Apparently so, or they wouldn’t have to say it.

Which could mean that there was a time when females did participate in such rites. In fact, it is known that women had a greater role in different times and various places as Jewish leaders. This is the root of the Kohenet movement.

Also, as Rabbi Sally Priesand said, I don’t believe that God wanted women to be excluded or silenced. I believe this is a human construct.

Priesand also points out that God introduces Godself as “Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” , I will be what I will be—meaning, anything we need God to be in any moment.

Which makes the whole male orientation of the Torah suspect, of course—meaning, which stories were canonized and who made those decisions?

From Priesand, I also learned of Regina Jonas who was the actual first modern ordained female rabbi, born and educated in Berlin in the 1920’s. She was with her community until her murder at Auschwitz.

I’d never heard of her, though I had learned of Janusz Korczak when I was child—the famous Polish children’s writer, doctor, orphanage headmaster who accompanied his young orphans as they were taken to Treblinka to be murdered along with them despite numerous opportunities to escape.

Was Korczak more famous because he was a male? Or because he was first a children’s writer?

Without a doubt, I think it’s safe to say that it was and is easier to become famous as a male for doing things like they did. We are less surprised and touched when a woman chooses to do the “motherly” thing of caretaking and accompanying.

And both Priesand and Jonas had a hell of a time becoming recognized as legitimate rabbis, or even as worthy of being ordained, simply because they were female.

So how do I proceed at this point with my writing, now that I am better schooled in Hebrew and the Torah?

I know what my next “stretch” is, but I’m not sure exactly how that will manifest. I feel a little impatient with myself.

In the Zoom meeting, Priesand was asked to talk about patience as a woman and how to remain so in today’s world with all the changes we feel we should have seen by now.

As women, we are so used to being asked to be patient. Patience is a virtue, they say.

Yet, we often feel like there’s no time for patience. Our patience is running thin—not just as women, but as humans, no matter what our label, who want to see a world that’s improving, not falling backwards.

Yet, again, in a sense, patience, like love, is something we must have. Without it, we lose our humanity.

I heard Krista Tippett ask Thich Nhat Hanh about this problem—who died recently at the age of 95—a man who had compassion and forgiveness for the American soldiers who were responsible for so much death in his home country.

He said violence cannot end violence; only compassion and understanding can do that: listening deeply; removing wrong perceptions is what will end war and terrorism. We need to be able to talk to each other. Restoring communication is what will create peace.

People in power would say they can not wait for communication to happen. But is there an alternative? The war in Iraq was based on wrong perceptions. We got caught in Iraq and Afghanistan for 20 years as a result. What will happen in Ukraine?

Thich Nhat Hanh said in this interview back in 2003, “You have the right to be angry, but you don’t have the right not to practice in order to transform your anger; you have the right to make mistakes, but you don’t have the right to continue making the same mistakes; you have to learn from the mistakes.”

He points out that the U.S. created more terrorism in the Middle East through our war against it. The same was true of Vietnam in terms of communism.

It follows that having less patience will not create faster change.

Yesterday was Purim, and on Purim, you’re supposed to turn everything on its head: get so drunk that you can’t tell your friend from your enemy.

That’s what this group of women is doing with the Torah in Beit Toratah (“Her Torah”); rewriting the entire Torah by feminizing all the masculine characters and language, and masculinizing all the feminine. It’s a fascinating practice, because when you read it with the changes, it doesn’t actually solve the problems of oppression and domination.

You realize how disturbing it is that now the women are the rapists and warriors and the men are the raped and murdered.

Is this really what we want? To simply turn the tables?

Not if it’s the same old Empire under a different name, like Putin identifying with Soviet Monarchs just as much as with the old Russian Tzars.

So, what do we do?

We focus on love, on sending love, on nourishing, on building, on feeding and caring for—even for our “enemies"—just like Tich Nath Hanh said and lived by.

Maybe this is women’s work, but again, we don’t need to define it that way, because both men and women are capable of the same. What we are trying to do is build a world that is non-binary, that does not differentiate between women’s and men’s domains—that acknowledges that all are capable of nurturing and caring.

This time around, let’s really turn everything on its head.

Only then will we overcome this world dominated by war and hatred.

We are in the death throws of the patriarchy, which would make anyone impatient. But we can still make a different choice.

Instead of reacting and smashing things, let’s practice love and patience—all of us, for everyone.

And let us say Amen.