The Torah portion we read this coming Shabbat starts with the story of Yitro, Moses’ father-in-law, giving him some tips about refining his leadership model, delegating, becoming more effective in his leadership.
Then, fast-forward. The people Israel are hanging out at the base of Mt. Sinai, while God gives instructions to Moses. This translation is misleading; there’s no “warning” and no “staying pure.” God tells Moses to קדש the people—to make them holy, sanctified, set-apart.
It’s clear from the verb that Moses needs to do a thing to them. So then Moses goes back, and he does it! He קדש them. Sanctifies, makes holy, sets apart, something. It’s still not clear what the action is, but he does it. Plus the clothes washing thing. There’s no warning.
And then *record scratch* he keeps talking.
“Don’t go near a woman.”
God didn’t say that.
Suddenly, Moses is only addressing men. Women have gone from being subjects—part of the people—to objects. Who are sexual temptations who must be avoided.
In one sentence, Moses simultaneously cuts women out of Revelation and turns them into sexual objects.
Women aren’t the ones being told to prepare for Torah, here, after all. They’re just a problem.
Traditional commentators make sense of all this by suggesting that קדש is a command for Israel to attain a state of ritual elevation/purity, akin to where they must be to offer sacrifices in the Temple. Since seminal ejaculation would imperil that status, that’s what God meant.
Only problem is that קדש is not that state. We have a word for that. טהר.
Moses dumped his human stuff into his command from God. His ideas about gender and power and hierarchy and who matters and sex and whatever else. He twisted a command from the Holy One to suit his agenda.
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The State is asking citizens to report their neighbors, whose children will be wrenched from them. If the parents don't face criminal charges this time, they will in the next round of bills.
You can't do all of these, I imagine, but I also bet that you might be able to do more than zero of them:
Show up when you see or hear of an action happening.
Support organizing (can often include lots that can be done virtually.)
Call your congresspeople. Call your senators. Call your state reps and senators. Your school board, mayor, everyone. Tell them that trans rights are human rights and anything less is them losing their job.
AKA-- safe is good. Legal is good. But "rare," apropos of @toddiepeters' talk on our culture's implicit claim via Christianity that we need "appropriate" moral justifications for abortion--"rare" is stigmatizing.
How does it feel to be part of the 1 in 4 people who can get pregnant who will have had an abortion by the age of 45 who hears "safe, legal, rare"?
Do you feel more or less like you can tell your story to someone you love?
Do you feel more or less shamed?
Does "safe, legal, rare" help grow connections, honesty, truth, intimacy, or does it cause people to feel that they must close off parts of themselves, afraid that someone might ever find out?
In the 7th c BCE, Judean mercenaries began arriving to the Egyptian Elephantine island in the Nile, with their families. After the Babylonian conquest of Judea, more refugees came and a thriving Jew-ish community was rocking over there.
A whole storehouse of ancient papyri from the 6th-4th c BCE- has been found—so this is while parts of the Hebrew Bible are getting written , for context—that offer an amazing glimpse into their lives.
So my latest is about the bigger (they had a temple! They fought with the local Egyptian priests! We have info about how they celebrated Passover!) and more gorgeously (or, sometimes, just relatably) mundane stuff in this community.
The act of preparing for Passover can feel deeply spiritual in its way, but it also invites us to ask whether we're removing the spiritual leaven from our lives as well as the physical stuff.
A lot of traditional commentators describe leaven as puffy & swollen—think of bread rising. They talk about spiritual chametz as the puffy, overextended parts of our ego—how we preen, to be someone in the world (or in the room)...
rather than just existing as we are, gentle & modest, a mere humble matzah....
These commentaries tell us again and again that in this season, we must ask ourselves: Where are we too proud? How are we too puffed out, leavened? How do we take up too much space?
This is major--BUT "A Vatican statement said the papal bulls, or decrees, 'did not adequately reflect the equal dignity & rights of Indigenous peoples' & have never been considered expressions of the Catholic faith" -- isn't quiiite owning the atrocities it encouraged/sanctioned.
Someone asked me to explain what’s happening in Israel now.
1/x thread.
Picture it:
Trump won in 2020.
Has Senate & House, both by a narrow margin.
Steve Bannon is Senate Majority Leader.
Stephen Miller is Speaker of the House.
They’re trying to pass two laws:
One, that anything illegal Trump ever has done or ever will do in office is A-OK (👌, if you will )
And two—well, the judicial overhaul bill doesn’t quite translate given how our branches work, let’s just say they’re trying to smash +
That branch of government entirely. Or that it’d be a proposal like: from now on the federal government gets to do the gerrymandering. We know what that’d mean—they’d set it up once and be in power forever, right? Like that.