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Judaism

Abuse and Mystical Language

by Johanna Stiebert on
portrait of the author

Today’s post is by Dr. Ruth Kara-Ivanov Kaniel, who is senior lecturer in the Department of Jewish History at the University of Haifa, as well as research fellow in both the Kogod Center at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem and the Tel Aviv Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis. Her research is focused on the intersections between mysticism, gender, and psychoanalysis. Her books are Holiness and Transgression: Mothers of the Messiah in the Jewish Myth (Academic Studies Press, 2017), The Feminine Messiah: King David in the Image of the Shekhina in Kabbalistic Literature (Brill, 2021), and Human Ropes – Birth in Kabbalah and Psychoanalysis (De Gruyter, 2022). The latter won the Gorgias Press competition in the category Jewish Thought. Her forthcoming book deals with dreams and revelations of kabbalists. Ruth is also a poet and editor of poetry, as well as translator of Russian poetry into Hebrew. 

Ruth has researched the topics of prostitution, incest, and abuse in terms of how these are rooted in sacred textual sources such as the Bible, Midrash, and Kabbalistic literature. In recent years, she has been supporting women who have experienced sexual abuse, alongside therapists working in this area.

*This post is an adapted and updated version of an earlier publication by Ruth (see here). **The picture is used with Ruth’s permission.

In recent years, harrowing accounts have come to light in Israel, as women have reported experiences of ritual and group-facilitated sexual abuse during childhood. The memories they suppressed (believing them to be fantasies or delusions) are now being recounted, set in motion by testimonies of other women who were harmed in similar groups and ways within ultra-Orthodox and Religious Zionist worlds. These women often suffer from severe post-traumatic stress. Eight testimonies were recently compiled and brought before the Knesset; these testimonies were recorded with the complainants’ faces and identities concealed (see here).

According to the survivors’ testimonies, the abusive rituals involved the use of biblical verses, the recitation of prayers, and the performance of brutal acts based on perversions of mystical and Kabbalistic practices. Distressingly, the phenomena of ritual abuse, paedophilia and child abuse exist far and wide. Nevertheless, there is a distinctive dimension to the perversions and violations perpetrated by rabbis and other figures of religious and halakhic authority. This article seeks to illuminate some of the Kabbalistic roots of these power dynamics operating within Jewish circles of exploitation and abuse, and to examine their conceptual, theoretical, and spiritual dimensions.

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Charismatic rabbis have engaged in exploitative relationships and both spiritual and sexual abuse; they are responsible but addressing the harm this abuse continues to cause rests with all of us.

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Great power and magic are inherent in Kabbalistic theories of redemption growing out of sin; these theories claim that the means to redemption are found through breaking boundaries and reversal of good and evil. This theme of inversion cuts across the Zoharic literature and the writings of Rabbi Isaac Luria (the ARI) and appears also in many Hasidic sermons. Paradoxical Kabbalistic approaches contain the principle according to which not only God has “created worlds and destroyed them” (before creating our world, as described in Genesis Rabbah 3:7) but human beings also destroy while completing their task of repair (tikkun). As early as rabbinic literature we find sayings such as, “greater is a transgression performed with good intent than a commandment performed without good intent” (Gedolah aveirah lishmah me-mitzvah she-lo lishmah, Babylonian Talmud Nazir 23b); these were later woven into Kabbalistic and Hasidic messianic mythology.

Clear examples can be found in the writings of Rabbi Mordechai Yosef Leiner of Isbitza, in particular his Mei HaShiloach, which develops an in-depth theory of the greatness of the sinner’s soul. His thought has gained considerable popularity in the world of Zionist-religious yeshivot,[1] especially in the “spiritual” streams (in yeshivot such as Otniel, Eli, Siach Yitzhak, and even in streams like Merkaz HaRav and Har HaMor), and also in new-age culture, in the neo-Hasidic space that has developed in recent decades.  [I discuss the mystical background of the Mei HaShiloach’s Judaic and antinomian[2] messianism and its influence on contemporary spiritual approaches elsewhere. I am happy to provide pointers to exploring this further to anyone interested.]

Next, I will briefly address the danger of copying mystical and spiritual language, whose goal is cleaving to the divine and attainment of holiness and union with God, into exploitative human-to-human relationships, which take place in contexts of gender-based power hierarchies and/or bonds between teacher and student and where the goal is achieving sexual, emotional or other satisfactions at the expense of harm to another human being.

I do not write this in a vacuum. In recent years, terrible incidents have come to light, of charismatic Jewish spiritual leaders, some of whom have come from the Kabbalistic-Hasidic and neo-Hasidic world, who through their teachings and authority have exploited and harmed women or male students. Has the idea of the “holy sinner” come to serve as a corrupting and dangerous example? Should we routinely view with suspicion groups of men studying in hevruta,[3] who are fascinated by the theory of redemption borne from sin? It seems, yes. It should be noted that in almost all research on neo-Hasidism there is scant treatment – and often complete disregard – of ethical questions and of the use of the rhetoric of “holiness” for the purpose of exploitation, including sexual exploitation. But when this is not acknowledged, it cannot be warned or guarded against.

One attraction of the Mei HaShiloach’s thought is the freedom this work assumes for the rabbinic teacher as interpreter and the apparent freedom he bestows on his students. These are joined by originality of thought, extreme creativity and teachings of Zoharic and Lurianic Kabbalah.[4] From the time I first encountered such teachings in my youth, I also admired the teachers who revealed to me the dialectic of the reversal of good and evil, redemption and sin. Later on, I devoted my first book to the study of this topic in the Midrash[5] and the Zohar, in order to explore the multifaceted messianic myth that was developed from the stories of the house of David.[6] In my book, I seek to address the price women pay for redemption, alongside giving recognition to their contribution to Jewish history. One of my claims is that in the face of death, exploitation, sexual abandonment and harm, David’s foremothers – the daughters of Lot (Genesis 19), Tamar (Genesis 38), Ruth (book of Ruth) and Batsheva (wife of David and mother of his royal successor, Solomon, 2 Samuel 11–12) – give birth and bring forth life. Indeed, in this messianic lineage, the journey to giving birth passes through using women’s bodies: this being the only resource available to these women to gain any measure of agency; their bodies are the tools for survival and struggle against their male-dominated reality. In the conclusion of my book, I propose that perhaps the myth has been inaccurately understood by men who have sought to use it to develop a theory that glorifies sin and transgression of boundaries. When considering the contemporary context, it is valuable, I find, to make use of psychological theories to further explain the kinds of boundary violations we see both in traditional sources and contemporary society.

Confusion of tongues

Many cases of sexual violence can be attributed to exploitative relationships that take place between teachers and their students or between older, empowered men and (usually young) women. Such, for example, was the case of Rabbi Ezra Sheinberg from Safed, who committed sex crimes against multiple women on the pretext that he was providing therapy and helping them heal (see here).

In order to explain the victims’ submission and the way in which the transition is made from enchanted, subversive thought or ideas to abuse realised in practice, I will utilize the psychological theory developed by Sandor Ferenczi. Ferenczi, a Hungarian Jewish psychoanalyst, coined the term “confusion of tongues” to describe a mechanism of exploitation in the family for application in therapeutic structures.[7] A typical way in which incestuous “seductions,” for instance, may occur is this: an adult male and a child love each other and the child nurses the playful fantasy of taking the role of the mother vis-a-vis the adult male. This play may assume erotic forms but remains, nevertheless, on the level of tenderness. It is not so, however, with pathological adults who mistake the play of children for the desires of sexually mature persons or who—irrespective of any consequences—follow their own sexual drive and consciously violate the child (Confusion of Tongues, p. 227).

According to Ferenczi, the conflict in the soul of the child between love and identification with the adult who had formerly protected them, and the assault that they experience, causes confusion, until “[their] trust in the testimony of [their] senses is broken.” This deluded and deceptive state is the key to why the victim is rendered acutely vulnerable and compliant. In this imbalanced and manipulative relationship, the child is not able to believe (or perceive) how the adult with whom they identify and to whom they direct love is the one who harms them with cruel exploitation. They are in a state of “paralyzing confusion.” The breaking of trust in the testimony of their senses may even cause them to perceive the horrific deeds done to them as somehow benevolent.

Using Ferenczi’s example of the confusion of tongues between children and adults, I can see analogies with other cases of sexual exploitation that are infrequently discussed: namely, “seduction” that relies on the confusion of tongues between Kabbalistic spirituality and lawlessness, holiness and licentiousness. Here, the theory of redemption borne of defilement may distance a person from their gloomy life and daily hardships; for some it may provide an apparent solution to the sense of guilt at their sexuality, sexual proclivities, or the weakness they feel with regard to their sexual urges, and to shame regarding acts that are perceived as taboo from a Kabbalistic perspective, such as “spilling of seed.” Glorification of the sin might provide a person with a feeling of self-mythologization and an aura of radiance, an illusion of omnipotence, a feeling of rescue from emotional suffering (however temporary), or integration into an anarchistic, nationalist and/or cosmic movement. The scope for harm when this transpires in sexual exploitation – even if confusion leads to a paralysis, a suspension of resistance, or apparent compliance – is considerable.

An example of such exploitation by a powerful religious figure is the case of the Breslov leader Eliezer Berland who fled Israel after he was arrested for sex crimes. Later, however, he continued to lead the Shuvu Banim community (having served a short time in prison to be released on a plea bargain). Some of the women who testified against Berland said that he promised “to raise them to the world of Atzilut (nobility),” and forced them into sexual relations while reading the Tikkun HaKlali of Rabbi Nachman.[8] In cases like this, spiritual concepts are weaponized by authority figures. Presumably, the abused women were steeped in the concepts and ideals related to Atzilut and Tikkun, and this helped to confound or anesthetize their opposition and to bring them into submission to a charismatic authority figure with many staunch followers.

I myself can testify that I have met rabbinic figures who claimed that they were reincarnations of Jewish heroes, Rabbi Nachman or the Baal Shem Tov, and who did what they forbade to others, adopting “messianic” customs and using concepts such as “transgression for its own sake” and hora’at sha’a (“the demands of the hour”) to explain away their subversive acts. While reading sermons that glorify the power of the sinner’s repentance, both students and teachers can be tempted to say to themselves, “I am not a regular person. The law and the limitations were intended for simple people, but not for a great and deep soul such as mine. Crossing a boundary is my way to personal redemption, and from there also to general redemption.” In such cases, there is danger both to the person who believes this and to those who might fall under their spell or force. On the one hand, within such a person there is a likely rise of narcissism, and the language of crossing boundaries and prohibitions might overcome inhibitions and transpire in transgression. On the other hand, behaviour deriving from this may become characterized by instrumentalizing and abusive conduct.

The appreciation and admiration of a student for their teacher and the charismatic aspect in a spiritual leader’s persona are constantly in the background of learning relationships, but it seems that the danger is especially prevalent in study halls (batei midrash) in which the main work is based on emotional mystical experiences, and where the learning process is built on what Emmanuel Levinas has termed “the temptation of temptation.”[9] In these cases, the preoccupation is not with the content of the Torah itself, but with the way in which it attracts a person to be tempted to follow or not follow it, transgressing the Torah’s boundaries and the individual’s boundaries.

Spiritual Harassment and Emotional Perversion

It is easy to imagine the dizzying feeling of a powerful connection with an admired and trusted teacher – especially a teacher who promises experiences of walking on the edge of the abyss, of exaltation and of excitement that intermingles holiness and sin, loftiness and erotic transgression. However, it is precisely in these liminal or extreme spaces that faithfulness to ethical and humane values is especially necessary, as is a strong grounding in the soil of the real world. Any exploration and growth from there to the domains of the infinite requires firm foundations.

Moreover, we live in an era where there have been many revelations of harm caused by systemic abuse and abuse of authority, including in religious settings. Consequently, we must be alert to appeals to spiritual ideals which could constitute a powerful person’s means to controlling those less powerful than themselves, including for the satisfaction of their own abusive desires. This can and does take the form of men coercing women to “serve” them, including with appeals to sacred sources and by claiming “devotion” or “submission” are exalted feminine ideals. It can and has also taken the form of a teacher manipulating a student into having sex so that something of the teacher’s spirit can, allegedly, be “transmitted” to the student. Another example can take a different form, of teachers appropriating and taking credit for students’ work, taking advantage of their efforts while erasing their names. This, too, can be done while using Kabbalistic terminology – such as on the pretext that this is part of the “process of repair (tikkun),” or a “descent for the sake of ascent,” or the nullification of self for the sake of the tzaddik, the great one of the generation, the unique chosen one. The history of Jewish messianic movements shows multiple instances where women’s efforts and activities, too, were appropriated by men. It shows traces of women prophets and mystics whose names are lost to us, women leaders and heroines whose labours were erased, with credit and prominence going to the men in these movements.[10]

We should listen carefully when charismatic leaders talk about “being a vessel for the infinite,” or “a conduit for the overflow” that descends from above. Sometimes these words are said in innocence, but sometimes with the power to “train” others to become accustomed to instrumentalization or subservience. Such words can prepare one to being used, excusing the matter as having spiritual, ennobling value. These instances and similar ones testify not to holiness but to perversion and/or exploitation.

Abusers get satisfaction from enslaving another to their desires. This can seem harmful not only to the victim but to the abuser’s own soul. Marie-France Hirigoyen writes about this double injury, the spiritual and the social, in her book, Moral Harassment: “This is clear, albeit hidden, violence, violence whose goal is to harm the identity of the other and to deprive him [sic.] of any trace of self. This is a process that causes real emotional destruction.” This destruction can also undermine the ability to distinguish between good and evil persons, since every abuser, sexual or narcissistic, seeks to draw others into their behavioural patterns, until they too distort the rules they used to follow. Thus, the destructive power of the abuser expands.[11]

This process is an assault on the individual, dismantling personal and moral boundaries, and implanting a fantasy of a symbiotic world without separations, prohibitions or limitations. The psychoanalyst Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel claims that the pervert-abuser seeks to deny the very concept of boundary – such as, the boundary between parents and children, and between permitted and forbidden.[12] Ruth Stein notes that perversion, “is the attempt to penetrate into the other without being penetrated” – it is a selfish act, aimed at the other’s destruction.  The pervert identifies the needs of the other with their sharp senses, “and he [sic] fills them, but not in order to create a real connection …, but rather to strengthen the covenant of bondage.”[13] As Dana Amir, following Stein, emphasizes, the pervert-abuser “adopts the syntax of the other” but with the purpose of entrapping them. This allows for a “smooth” infiltration into the soul of the other and of dispossession, while their guard is down.[14]

Similarly, the Kabbalistic and Hasidic myths of “redemption through sin” express the wish to mix between the divine and the human, between fantasy and reality, and the attempt to break the boundary between self and other and to disrupt the order of existence. Consequently, there is scope for abuse, when the pseudo-spiritual messianic pervert leaves the abused other defenceless, vulnerable on account of their wish for redemption, which exposes them to brokenness and their desire for healing and repair (tikkun) unfulfilled and exploited.

***

Reflection on the scope of harms currently taking place in religious community and in spiritual circles indicates multiple instances of “social confusion of tongues.”  The strength of the power relations, authority and superiority of rabbis, alongside the clear hierarchy between men and women, teachers and students, lead to additional confusion of tongues: under the guise of authority, protection and holiness integrated into the discourse about repair (tikkun) of the nation and the cosmos, instances of exploitation occur under the auspices of halakha. Given the lack of institutional attention to this, the bulk of the burden remains on the victims. This is an outrage and an injustice.

It is teachers and rabbis, men and women, all of us who can, who need to take care and take responsibility where we can, including with the content of what we teach, and with the deference we extend to authority figures. We have to resist injustices, including the protection and defence of perpetrators – no matter how scholarly, influential or admired they are. We need to look out for and attend also to obscured and hidden nefarious motivations in the process of teaching and leadership well before these gather pace and inflict harm. The cost of not taking responsibility is simply too great – because of the emotional and psychological damage to the individuals who are abused and exploited, and also for the foundations of faith and holiness, and society at large.

[1] A yeshivah (from Hebrew ישיבה, literally, “sitting”) is a traditional Jewish educational institution. The plural of this word is yeshivot. Yeshivah education is focused on the study of Rabbinic literature, the Talmud and halachah (Jewish law), with Torah and Jewish philosophy  studied in parallel.

[2] “Antinomian” refers to views that reject laws or legalism, often arguing (or being considered to argue) against religious, ethical or social norms and conventions.

[3] Hevruta (or chavruta or chavrusa) is a highly interactive Jewish method of studying texts in pairs that is characteristic of yeshivah education (see note 1). The word is derived from the Aramaic word for “fellowship” or “friendship” and the practice involves two partners reading, debating, and deeply analysing textual passages together. It can involve analysis both of the text and its modern meanings or applications.

[4] The Zohar is the foundational text of Jewish Kabbalah (mysticism). Scholars are divided on the question of whether the book was written by Ramdal (Rabbi Moses de León) or by a group of kabbalists who worked together in Castile, around the years 1280-1300. Lurianic Kabbalah is a school of Jewish mysticism developed by Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534–1572) in Safed, in the Galilee. It reshaped Jewish thought by introducing mythical concepts like tzimtzum (divine contraction) and tikkun olam (cosmic repair) to explain the origins of creation and the problem of evil.

[5] Midrash is a genre of exegesis from a word meaning “to lead out.” “The Midrash” indicates here the whole Rabbinic corpus written from 2nd to 7th centuries, both in Babylonia and Israel, by the Sages of antiquity. 

[6] Ruth Kara-Ivanov Kaniel, Holiness and Transgression: Mothers of the Messiah in the Jewish Myth (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2017).

[7] Sándor Ferenczi, “Confusion of the Tongues between the Adults and the Child—The

Language of Tenderness and of Passion.” International Journal of Psychoanalysis 30 (1949):

225–230.

[8] Ten psalms are arranged by R. Nachman of Breslov to atone for the sin of wasted seed. The emission of semen in vain is regarded as a particularly grave sin already in the Zohar, a matter that gave rise to many perversions and extremisms, and also fostered a sense of guilt and shame among boys growing up in religious education. See, Shilo Pachter, Shmirat habrit: the history of the prohibition of wasting seed, Phd thesis, Jerusalem, 2006.

[9] Emmanuel Levinas, Nine Talmudic Readings, trans. Annette Aronowicz (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990), 30–50.

[10] Ada Rapoport-Albert, Women and the Messianic Heresy of Sabbatai Zevi, 1666–1816 (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2011).

[11] Marie-France Hirigoyen, Moral Harassment: The Perverse Violence of Daily Life (Ramat Gan, 2022), 17-18, 129 [translated from the Hebrew].

[12] Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel, Creativity and Perversion (London: Free Association Books, 1985).

[13] Ruth Stein, “Why perversion? False love and the Perverse Pact.” International Journal

of Psycho-Analysis 86 (2005): 775-799.

[14] Dana Amir, Cleft Tongue: The Language of Psychic Structures (Routledge, 2014), 58.

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When Sex is about Male Power: Rabbinic Readings and the Rhetoric of Multi-Coital Encounters

by Johanna Stiebert on

Today’s post is by Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, who contacted the Shiloh Project with an offer to write a post on a topic that ventures beyond biblical texts and into the fascinating territory of rabbinic interpretation.

Rabbi Klein earned his MA in Jewish Education from Middlesex University/London School of Jewish Studies. His Bible and Rabbinic scholarship have appeared in such journals as Hakirah, Jewish Bible Quarterly, and the Journal of Halachah and Contemporary Society. He is the author of G-d versus Gods: Judaism in the Age of Idolatry (Mosaica Press, 2018), a traditional exploration of Bible depictions of the struggle against idol worship. He can be contacted by email at [email protected].

In my 2024 paper “Male Virility and Biblical Power Dynamics” (JBQ vol. 51:1), I try to cast fresh light on certain striking rabbinic interpretations of Biblical narratives by examining how these deploy what I identify as the motif of “sex as power.” At stake here is not simply the salacious detail that the rabbis occasionally read multi-orgasmic or multi-coital encounters into Biblical scenes even, sometimes, where the Scriptural text makes no explicit reference to any sexual act; instead, I argue, these rabbinic moves reveal deep-seated assumptions about the ways sexual prowess can function as a symbolic or literal assertion of male power. Furthermore, I maintain, my reading shadows cultural dynamics that we might now recognize as indicative of rape culture.

To ground my argument, I focus on three striking cases in which the Babylonian Talmud (the centrepiece of rabbinic knowledge) asserts that famous male figures — namely, King David, Zimri, and Sisera — each accomplish multiple acts of intercourse in one discrete narrative episode. The Bible itself makes no such claims; it is rather the oral rabbinic tradition preserved in Talmud that transforms these episodes into sexual feats of mythical proportions. These amplifications are not simply ribald embellishments to the Bible; in the rabbinic mind, they are entangled with displays of male dominance, virility, and control.

Let me illustrate this dynamic with the episode of Zimri and Cozbi, as interpreted in the Babylonian Talmud (Sanhedrin 82b). The Biblical story, found in Numbers 25, recounts how Zimri, an Israelite prince from the Tribe of Simeon, brings Cozbi, a Midianite woman, into the Israelite camp (25:6). If this was a prelude to fornicating in public view (there is mention of being in the sight of Moses and the whole community of Israel) — this would be a flagrant act of rebellion against Moses’ authority and Israel’s covenantal norms. But in the Talmud’s telling, Zimri not only commits a transgressive sex act, he engages in 424 acts of intercourse with Cozbi. The number itself derives from a gematria (the alphanumerical equivalence) of the word zarzir (“starling” or “greyhound,” Proverbs 30:31), suggesting a connection between animalistic virility and Zimri’s action of extreme defiance.

Leaving aside the physiological capacity (or otherwise) of multiple male orgasm, this Talmudic assertion is still puzzling. Why does the Talmud magnify this episode to such excess? In my reading of this hyperbolic scene, Zimri’s sexual display becomes a performance of challenge and defiance, whereby he attempts to overshadow Moses’ spiritual and political authority. In rabbinic thought, his action is not just sexually deviant but leveraged for destructive political ends. The woman, Cozbi, is little more than a pawn — the gameboard upon which the masculine rivalry between Zimri and Moses plays out.

In my essay I trace this same dynamic in two other rabbinic expansions. The first depicts King David’s supposed virility in his old age (Sanhedrin 22a). Again, the interpretation is rooted in the number of words or verb inflections in a single Biblical verse. Here, too, the underlying message is clear: David’s powerful kingship is signified by his sexual potency. The rabbinic commentators thereby rebut the claim that David grew frail and lost the masculine vigour necessary for royal authority. Such might, after all, be implied by the Biblical text that describes the elderly David as being kept warm by a beautiful virgin, Abishag, with whom he did not have sexual intercourse (1 Kings 1:1-4). Again, hyperbolic sexual performance functions in the Talmud passage as proof of David’s power; again, sexual performance signifies a political credential that is played out with the body of a woman (in this case, Bathsheba).

The story of Sisera and Jael (Judges 4–5) also receives rabbinic elaboration. Sisera, the defeated Canaanite general, flees to Jael’s tent where, according to Yevamot 103a, he fornicates with (read: rapes) Jael seven times before falling asleep, whereupon Jael drives a tent peg through his skull. The Talmud’s numeric claim rests on a hermeneutic device that focuses on the repetition of Hebrew verbs used in Deborah’s poetic retelling of Jael’s heroic role in the Israelites’ victory. The reading could also suggest that rape is imagined as the last desperate act of a man attempting to reclaim his power. In the rabbinic framing, Sisera’s multiple acts of coitus are a final, grotesque assertion of masculine control in the face of military failure. It was his final act before his star fades away and the roles are reversed, as he faced death at the hands of a woman. Indeed, Jael’s “manly” act of penetrating the Canaanite general’s skull, is, arguably, not only one of vengeance but of retaliatory penetration, even revenge rape.

What unites these three episodes is a display of hyperbolic male sexual prowess and my longer essay notes that traditional rabbinic sources have debated over the exaggerated numbers attributed to sexual acts. These exaggerated figures themselves, however, signal that they are not intended to be read as realistic but more likely as literary or narrative devices. Hence, the rabbis employ stock numbers for the acts of coitus — seven (Sisera), thirteen (David), and 424 (Zimri) — that align with other rabbinic uses of “round” or symbolic numbers. The hyperbolic numbers, then, serve as a shorthand to express the men’s claim to power.

By reading these three cases together, I suggest that rabbinic midrash does more than fill in Biblical gaps or ambiguities; rather, it draws attention to them and throws into relief the deeply gendered and hierarchical dynamics embedded in these ancient texts. Sex, in these midrashic readings is sometimes not “just sex” — it is a potent weapon of male power, often clearly indicative of rape, and a performance of status-assertion. It is used by powerful men to show other men that they “have what it takes.” The women — and it is not deemed relevant or dwelt upon whether they are willing or not (with Jael most clearly unwilling among the three) — become mere conduits of male power, which, in the case of Zimri, is displayed for all to see.

These examples show how rabbinic texts, like some other ancient textual traditions, encode examples of the dynamics that we nowadays recognize and label as sustaining rape culture — this being a term modern scholars use to describe a system in which sexual violence and coercion are normalized and instrumentalized. When the Talmud turns Zimri’s public sexual excess, David’s bedroom performance, or Sisera’s humiliating defeat following his rape bravado, into fantastical tales, it demonstrates how male sexual acts (both consensual and coerced) can be constructed as expressions of power and dominance. It also demonstrates that women tend not to be depicted as agents but as conduits or facilitators of male power. The exception, however, is Jael who subverts the dynamic of gendered power and goes on to retaliate.

Finally, I would add that reflecting on these rabbinic interpretations is more than “just” an academic exercise. These texts continue to be read, interpreted, and consulted for guidance and learning. Hence, our readings of them inevitably echo into our contemporary worlds. The normalization of sexual violence or even merely the valourization of (tall)tales of sexual conquest can shape cultural attitudes toward sex and power in ways that are neither neutral nor without consequence. To study these motifs critically, as I do in my essay, is to bring these social issues to the fore so that the very act of reading the Bible and its interpretations can become an opportunity to confront, question, and perhaps transform our views on sexual ethics.

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Meet Seán Henry and his new book: Queer Thriving in Religious Schools

by Chris Greenough on
Book cover: Queer Thriving in Religious Schools

The Shiloh Project caught up with Dr Seán Henry @seandhenry, Senior Lecturer at Edge Hill University, to find out more about his new book, Queer Thriving in Religious Schools. Seán’s book will be launched next week, Wednesday 24th July, 6:30-8:30pm at Edge Hill University – the event can also be accessed online via this registration link: Queer Thriving in Religious Schools | Book launch event | Edge Hill

1. Tell us a bit about you.

My name is Seán Henry and I currently work at Edge Hill University, where I research and teach modules in religious studies, theology, and education studies. Before moving to the UK, I lived in Dublin (where I’m from), where I studied to be an RE and English teacher before moving into higher education. It was in Ireland where I conducted most of the research informing “Queer Thriving in Religious Schools“. 

2. What motivated you to carry out the research for this book?

I studied to be an RE teacher in Ireland, where the vast majority of public schools are privately managed by the Catholic Church. As a gay man studying to be an RE teacher in mainly religious schools, I started my teaching career sensitive to some of the tensions that can play out when schooling, religion, gender, and sexuality meet. After all, it is often assumed that religion and progressive education on sexuality and gender are opposed to one another. At the time, I wondered how it could be possible to be openly gay as an RE teacher in a religious school if you were also expected to align your teaching with the faith tradition of your employer. I was asking these questions at a time of great cultural change in Ireland too: the influence of the Catholic Church was waning, evidenced in Ireland becoming the first country in the world to legislate for marriage equality as a result of a popular vote. So, my research for the book was initially motivated by a desire to respond productively to these questions, in a way that would move beyond setting religion, gender, sexuality, and schooling in opposition to one another. 

3. What impact do you hope it will have?

I hope the book goes some way in challenging the view that Jewish, Christian, and Muslim schooling are always necessarily homophobic, biphobic, or transphobic. Indeed, throughout the book I draw from queer theologies across each of these traditions to show that there are ways of navigating Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions that can allow LGBTQ+ staff and student to thrive (and not just survive) in religious school settings. This is not to say that homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia don’t exist in these traditions. Rather, what I hope my book can show is that Jewish, Christian, and Muslim faith traditions are not only homophobic, biphobic, or transphobic, and that religious school communities can draw from alternative kinds of theologies and stories in building inclusive spaces for LGBTQ+ staff and students. In this sense, I hope the book can broaden educators’ theological and religious imaginations in ways that move beyond religious homophobia and transphobia as starting points for exploring sexuality and gender in religious schools.  

4. What else are you working on?

Often religious, theological, and educational discourses assume children are lacking in agency or autonomy (a lack that religion or education can then “fill” or compensate for). In light of this, I’ve started researching children and young people’s lived experiences of religion, and how these experiences can point to more empowering ways of imagining children’s agency and autonomy in religious and educational spaces. So that’s something I’ve begun to read a lot more around lately. As well as this, I’m currently working on a project with my colleague, Dr Francis Farrell, exploring how religions and worldviews education can help young people engage in civic and political issues. 

5. Where can we find out more about you?

You can find out more about me on my Edge Hill staff profile, here: https://www.edgehill.ac.uk/person/sean-henry/staff/

6. Give us one quote to whet our appetites! 

“The book aims to navigate the relationship between diverse genders, sexualities, and religious schooling in ways that are focused less on whether such antagonisms can be ‘reconciled’ or not, and more on what is made possible for us when such antagonisms rub up against their limits. Put differently, this book does not aim to neatly resolve or erase the tensions that exist between religious schooling and diverse genders and sexualities. Nor does it seek to position religious schooling within a sentimental register that downplays or trivialises the ongoing hetero-and cisnormative violences of religious communities and institutions. Rather, it seeks to showcase what can happen when such tensions are exposed to the ‘condoms and lube’ that often characterise encounters with religions.” (p. 6) 

Dr Seán Henry
Dr Seán Henry
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Conference: Gender and Religious Exit, Moving Away from Faith

by Chris Greenough on

Tuesday, 28 November 2023 at 9:00–17:30 

Please use this form to register to attend the online symposium: Registration – Gender and Religious Exit (onlinesurveys.ac.uk)

Organisers:
Dr Nella van den Brandt, Coventry University, UK 
Dr Teija Rantala, Turku University, Finland 
Dr Sarah-Jane Page, University of Nottingham, UK 

From the conference organisers:

There have always been reasons for people to move away from a religious tradition, community or movement. Religious traditions are instrumental in providing individual members with a perspective on the world, a community and a relationship with the divine. Religious communities socialize their adherents regarding behaviour, embodiment and emotions. When people move away from their religion, their experiences may pertain to all or some of these aspects and dimensions. Leaving religion is thus a varied and diverse experience.

The one-day online symposium Gender and Religious Exit starts from the premise that motivations for moving away from religion range from experiencing cognitive or emotional dissonance to social marginalisation to a critique of power relations. The notions of ‘moving away’ or ‘religious exit’ should be considered in a layered and nuanced manner: they raise questions about what exactly individuals consider to leave, and what elements of behaviour, embodiment and emotions remain part of their environments, lives and futures. 

Moving away from religion can thus involve complex processes and negotiations of all areas of life and understandings of the self. An intersectional perspective and analysis of leaving religious is long overdue, since notions and experiences of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, race and dis/ability are central in shaping identity and the self. The multidisciplinary symposium invites scholars to investigate the variety of contemporary dynamics of leaving religion in the lives of individuals and communities.

During the opening plenary session, research findings will be presented that emerged from the Marie Skłodowska-Curie funded two-year qualitative research by Dr Nella van den Brandt (Coventry University, UK) on women leaving religion in the UK and the Netherlands. Keynote lectures on gender, feminism, apostasy and non-religion / leaving religion in various national and cultural contexts will be provided by Dr Julia Martínez-Ariño (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, the Netherlands) and  Prof. Dr Karin van Nieuwkerk (Radboud University, the Netherlands). During parallel sessions, we will further look into current international and intersectional perspectives on moving away from religion.

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Jewish and Christian Women in the Ancient Mediterranean – New Book!

by Chris Greenough on
Jewish and Christian Women in the Ancient Mediterranean

Sara Parks, Shayna Sheinfeld and Meredith J. C. Warren have a new book, Jewish and Christian Women in the Ancient Mediterranean. It is an engaging and accessible textbook that provides an introduction to the study of ancient Jewish and Christian women in their Hellenistic and Roman contexts. The book has a virtual launch on the 13th December, and those interested in finding out more can register here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/book-launch-jewish-and-christian-women-in-the-ancient-mediterranean-tickets-204368731377 We caught up with them to ask them to find out more.

Congratulations on your new book! Thank you for taking the time to be part of our interview.

Thank you for letting us tell you more about it! This is something that we’ve developed in collaboration over many years of research and feedback from our students, and we really believe it will be a warmly welcomed resource in a broad range of classrooms and communities.

Tell us about yourselves. How does your book relate to your work as a whole and how did this book come about?

Sara Parks is Assistant Professor in Biblical Studies (New Testament) at Dublin City University, Ireland. Sara’s recent book Gender in the Rhetoric of Jesus: Women in Q argues that Jesus’ earliest sayings point to a respect towards women in varieties of early Judaism, which eroded as Christianity developed. Sara just finished a Leverhulme working on the intersection of misogyny and anti-Judaism in early Christianity.

Shayna Sheinfeld is currently a Fellow at the Frankel Institute for Judaic Studies, University of Michigan, USA. She’s working on a book called Big Tent Judaism that examines diversity in Jewish leadership by challenging androcentric ideas of authority in both ancient sources and contemporary scholarship; she includes women, enslaved, and other marginalised people, as well as marginalised sources, in her work. She has also organised two conferences on gender in antiquity through the Enoch Seminar, one volume of which was recently published as Gender and Second-Temple Judaism.

Meredith Warren is Senior Lecturer at the University of Sheffield, UK, where she is Director of the Sheffield Institute for Interdisciplinary Biblical Studies and editor in chief of the open-access Journal for Interdisciplinary Biblical Studies. She has written often on food and taste in antiquity, for example, her 2020 book Food and Transformation in Ancient Mediterranean. She has also written about Rape Culture and Revelation for both an academic audience and for the Shiloh Project blog and the #SheToo podcast, and is working on an article on slut shaming the Samaritan Woman.

So we are all working on different aspects of gender and ancient Mediterranean religion, especially early Judaism and early Christianity. But the book really started almost 10 years ago, when we were all graduate students together. Sara had pitched a module called “Reading Women in Greco-Roman Judaism and Early Christianity,” not expecting it to be accepted because there were so many post-grads and only one or two teaching slots per year. But the module was approved! Together we pooled our collective expertise in Greek and Roman religions, the early Jesus movement, early Jewish literature and religion, and later antiquity. Our powers combined resulted in a really great class and we got invited to teach it again the next year. We’ve all been teaching versions of it whenever we can ever since. But setting it up those first years was really difficult because there were no text books or set readings then, just sourcebooks, and these were too compartmentalised, treating either Judaism or Christianity or Greek and Roman religions. We had to compile our own collection of sources, activities, and readings about method and gender, basically from scratch.

Then in 2015 we were all attending the SBL in Atlanta, and Meredith was approached by Routledge Press asking about her future book projects. Instead of mentioning her own next monograph ideas, Meredith was suddenly inspired to pitch a co-authored textbook on ancient women, with Sara and Shayna (which was a surprise not only to them, but to Meredith herself)! We had a contract not long after, and we likely would have had the book done a bit sooner if we hadn’t had a couple of other monographs and a pandemic in the meantime.

The origins of the textbook in a spirit of collaboration stuck with us as we completed it. Shayna managed to get some money to hire student research assistants at one point, and she used them for our book rather than her own research; Sara used some of the Leverhulme funding to hire an indexer for it; and Meredith used some research funding from Sheffield to hire a PhD student to work on the images and copyrights. The only reason this book exists is because we did our best to reject the isolation and competition that is so typical in academia, and instead to be conscious of trying to create a collaborative community, not just with each other, but on down the line. Each of those decisions—to share rather than hoard whenever we’ve gotten a leg up—is now going to result in a wonderful teaching resource.

What are the key goals of this book?

We had a few main goals, aside from creating a resource for teaching about women and gender in ancient religion. We also wanted to approach the question of methodology directly in the introductory chapters. This arose from our own experiences where none of us was exposed to using theory or made to articulate our own methods until late undergraduate or even Masters work. We wanted to be deliberate about promoting conscious use of methods as early as possible, which is how we teach. So we set out to include a variety of approaches, in an accessible way, up-front, and then give students examples and chances to practice them in every subsequent chapter. This is part of our aim of decentralising the historical-critical method as the only way to do proper scholarship, which some people maintain. We wanted people to see it instead as just one tool in a big toolbox with lots of other ways of learning about antiquity and interpreting textual and material evidence.

We included methods from a variety of fields because we wanted the textbook to be interdisciplinary, and readily usable for colleagues in a number of disciplines. This resource is not only meant for theology or biblical studies departments; it’s for any department within arts and humanities. We’ve designed it so there’s no previous knowledge of the time-period or of gender theory required. We wanted it to be not only accessible to students, but also to diverse instructors.

Another thing that is really important in all our work is to treat Judaism, Christianity, and ‘pagan’ women together, rather than tidily separate from one another, as if everyone weren’t mixing and talking to each other in antiquity. When we treat, for instance, female protagonists of novels, women rulers, or women religious leaders, we don’t separate them out using anachronistic concepts based on contemporary canons and categories, but instead divide them by other types of proximity, whether geographical, temporal, or generic. We always want to help our readers see just how blurry the boundaries are, perhaps especially where someone has tried really hard to draw a firm line between things.

What ideas emerge in the book that will be of particular interest to Shiloh readers?

We do talk about sexual violence and rape culture in the book (with ‘difficult topic flags’), and cover sexual violence against men as well, using some research by Shiloh Project members. We also approach the material in the book in a way that I think will resonate with a lot of Shiloh readers. We try to take an intersectional approach, and encourage our readers, and in particular any students using the textbook, to practice looking out for the multiple ways that power, gender, status, and race intersect in the evidence we have from antiquity. We use the Samaritan woman in John 4 as a recurring example to demonstrate how various methods might be used, from Marxist to queer to post-colonial criticism, encouraging people to think about women’s lives and gender as social construct in a way that isn’t isolating and that is reflective of the multiple facets of ancient (and contemporary!) identities. We include examples of non-binary figures from antiquity where we can, from rabbinic discussions of six different genders and Greco-Roman ‘one gender’ (rather than binary) models, to the figure of the Gallus priest in Roman religion, to the common idea found in antiquity of women ‘becoming men.’

What do you hope readers will take away from this book?

 We hope they will appreciate just how diverse religion in antiquity was, and how many different ways there were to participate in religion. We hope readers will see the interrelatedness of Judaism, Christianity, and other religions of the ancient Mediterranean, and see how common trends, for example in types of leadership options for women, changed in sync over the period. We want our readers to think more broadly about where they look for evidence–not only in canons, and not only in written texts–and to pay more attention to marginalised experiences wherever we can find them in antiquity. We want them to imagine alternatives to the normative expectations of elite men from the various traditions. We also want readers to feel enabled to think directly and speak explicitly about their positionality and their use of methodology to approach their own research, and to perhaps apply the methods we explore in the book to other corpora, other time periods, and other geographies.

Give us one quotation from your book that you think will make readers want to go and read the rest.

P 232: Some texts and artefacts (like coins) from the ancient world include descriptions of sexual violence when they use symbolic women to “think with.” Sexual violence against these women-as-symbols acts as a means of reinforcing what the author is presenting as “correct” behaviour. The authors either use the image as a trope to describe misbehaviour being “punished” (sexually, and by a man), or they picture the violent acts to illustrate one entity’s submission to another (using a female symbol of submission and a male symbol of authority). When such texts fall within biblical canons, they pose a problem for people who hold that canon as sacred; responsible and ethical interpreters of scripture ask whether these texts condone—or even encourage—sexual assault and gendered violence. One might think that a fictional Babylon pictured as whore, or a fictional nation of Israel portrayed as an unfaithful wife, are obviously not “real women,” and therefore using violent imagery against them is acceptable as it is only being done symbolically. This view misses several important points. Just because these women might be literary fictions and “flat” characters with which ancient authors are tackling other issues doesn’t mean that the choice of women as the “sinners” and sexual violence as their “punishment” has any less impact on ancient and contemporary readers. In fact, the choice of these literary symbols tells us dreadful things about the ancient societies where these narratives took shape, as well as—importantly—those groups that up to today continue to adopt, use, or accept such literary representations without questioning them.

Plus the activity box that accompanies this section:

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Disobedience: Reading the Sacred Text Otherwise

by Yael Klangwisan on

Today’s post is by Yael Klangwisan, Senior Lecturer in Education at the Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand.  In this post she reflects on the violence of a sacred text towards the lesbian community through the lens of Naomi Alderman’s novel “Disobedience”, and the 2017 film directed by Lelio. 

Disobedience: Reading the Sacred Text Otherwise

[Rav]: In the beginning Hashem made three types of creatures.  The angels, the beasts and the human beings.  The angels He made from His pure word.  The angels have no will to do evil.  They cannot deviate for one moment from His purpose.  The beasts have only their instincts to guide them.  They, too, follow the commands of their maker.  The Torah states that Hashem spent almost six whole days of creation fashioning these creatures.  Then just before sunset, He took a small quantity of earth and from it He fashioned man and woman.  An afterthought?  Or His crowning achievement.  So, what is this thing?  Man? Woman?  It is a being with the power to disobey.  Alone among all the creatures, we have free will.  We hang suspended between the clarity of the angels and the desires of the beasts.  Hashem gave us choice, which is both a privilege and a burden.  We must then choose the tangled life we live. (Opening lines of “Disobedience”, Lelio, 2017)

The relation of tradition and sexual freedom is a tangled space, particularly for those identifying as LGBTQ+. Naomi Alderman’s 2006 novel Disobedience explores this space, and particularly the signal themes of faith, truth, and freedom in the context of lesbian desire. In 2017, the cinematic realisation of the novel was directed by Sebastián Lelio. Like other films of its kind, Lelio portrays the disconnect between the frum (religious) world and the secular world and traces the personal cost of this divide in terms of sexuality with great effect. Alderman’s novel has a striking point of difference to the film, and this is the strangely affirming arrangement of each chapter around the Torah and the interpretive writings of the sages as the plot evolves. This positioning rests subtly on the wings of a particular kind of creative, resistant reading of the sacred text.  It is a compilation and interpretation of sacred texts in such a way that their violence against women expressing same sex desire is disempowered.  In Alderman’s novel, and similarly in Lelio’s film, the role of speech in defining and realising women’s sexual freedom, is at the fore.  Alderman’s presentation of this real struggle as the narrative progresses is heart-rending. The twist is when freedom to realise one’s true sexual self is incarnated from within the very texts and traditions that repress it. 

Alderman’s novel is set in an orthodox Jewish community in North London and begins with the death of the revered Rav Krushka, which is then followed by tumult over the appointment of a successor. This appointment is a contentious process that is cast into further disarray when the Rav’s estranged daughter Ronit returns from New York for the Hesped (her father’s eulogy).  Ronit stays with her cousin Dovid, the ascendant rabbi, and is surprised to find that he has married her best friend and first love, Esti.  Ronit finds herself falling in love again with Esti and this presents a crisis for them all. 

Joseph Nacino of Lesbian News describes Lelio’s film Disobedience as “a transfixing consideration of love, faith, sexuality, and personal freedom” (2018). Stephanie Zacharek from Time Magazine describes the two female protagonists, Ronit and Esti, as “circling each other warily, each cautious about disrupting the pattern of the other’s life” (2018). For Zacharek, these very patterns and cycles of orthodox Judaism bring comfort but can also lead to alienation and intense loneliness for those who are estranged.  Zacharek describes Rachel Weisz’s character Ronit as assertive yet dreamily wistful, and Rachel McAdams’ character Esti as subdued and pragmatic about her life in the orthodox community. Esti has kept her true desires and sexual identity tamped deeply down and this fiercely suppressed part of herself is about to burst out.  

In the film, Alessandro Nivola plays the character Dovid.  Dovid is deeply observant and, in terms of tradition a good husband. However, for Esti, Dovid’s generosity, patience and benevolence are suffocating.  Captivation and care are entangled. As Zacharek notes, “In Disobedience, three people reckon with the cost and meaning of freedom. Everybody pays. But if it were free, what would it be worth?” (2018). Joel Streicker, who reviews the novel for the journal Shofar, suggests that “the novel’s sympathies shift from Ronit’s anger and bitterness to Esti’s unfolding self-understanding and self-assertion” (2008). While Ronit seems to have found a certain troubled freedom in New York, and certainly one on her own terms, Streicker points out that for Esti, it is in fact God who makes space for every creature’s freedom to disobey tradition—though one “cannot escape the consequences of disobedience” (2008, 204).  There will always be a price. This is the crux of the theology both in the film and the novel—God might be an ally.  For Streicker, Alderman’s novel enacts “a reconciliation between Orthodoxy and lesbianism, between individual desire and collective constraints on it” (2008, 205).

Lesbianism is not strictly considered a breaking of the law in Judaism.  It is not mentioned in the Hebrew bible and only became a concern to the sages in later periods.  Thus, in Sifra, the midrash on Leviticus, in its commentary on Lev 18:2-3, there is reference to a prohibition against lesbianism or mesolelot.  In the Talmud (Nashim) Yevamot 76a, the sages consider whether lesbians could marry priests and try to answer the question of whether lesbians are “virgins”.  The Mishnah contains the text of a debate over whether lesbianism is a minor or major infraction for the Jewish community.  And in probably the strongest denunciation, in the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides associates lesbianism with an ambiguous Torah reference to the “practices of Egypt” and prescribes flogging.  Maimonides says in the Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Issurei Biah 21:8:

It is forbidden for women to enmesh [play around] … with one another and this belongs to the “practices of the Egyptians” [of] which we have been warned: “you shall not copy the practices of the Land of Egypt” …  However, a flogging for disobedience (mardut) should be given, since they have performed a forbidden act. A man should be strict with his wife in this matter, and should prevent women who are known to engage in this practice from visiting her, and prevent her from going to them.

Lesbianism was outlawed by the sages primarily because it is considered a danger to the community, to men’s control of their marriages and symptomatic of the apparently rebellious nature of women. It is ironic that while clearly not a capital offence, it does, for the sages, make a woman impure for a period of 12 days and at the end of this time, she is considered “straightened out” enough to return to her husband, children and community.

While in the novel Alderman does quote the sages on “the practices of Egyptian women,” this is not where she begins what could be a futile battle against tradition’s status quo.  She begins in the unlikely place of the Shabbat service with the most unlikely companions of Genesis and creation.  She begins with an exploration of wonder in a portion of prayer from the Mishnah Tamid 7.4 chanted in the Shabbat morning service: “And on the Shabbat, the priests would sing a song for the future that is to come, for that day which will be entirely Shabbat and for the repose of eternal life” (Alderman 2006, 1; also Neusner 1998). On the theme of the creative power of speech, Alderman offers the possibility that one might create her one’s own world through speech and does this through the old Rav’s drash (exegesis) on Genesis 1. 

“Speech,” said the old Rav. “If the created world were a piece of music, speech would be its refrain, its recurring theme. In the Torah, we read that Hashem created the world through speech. He could have willed it into existence. We might have read: ‘And God thought of light, and there was light.’ No. He could have hummed it. Or formed it from clay in His hands. Or breathed it out. Hashem, our King, the Holy One Blessed Be He, did none of these things. To create the world, He spoke. ‘And God said, let there be light, and there was light’. Exactly as He spoke, so it was. … The Torah itself. A book. Hashem could have given us a painting, or a sculpture, a forest, a creature, an idea in our minds to explain His world. But He gave us a book. Words … What a great power the Almighty has given us! To speak, as He speaks! Astonishing! Of all the creatures on earth, only we can speak. What does this mean? … It means we have a hint of Hashem’s power. Our words are, in a sense, real. They can create worlds and destroy them. They have edges, like a knife.” (Alderman 2006, 7-8)

Alderman recalls that the sages compare the Torah to the primordial water that covered the world (Gen 1:2). Without it, they say the earth would be nothing but a desert.  In a way, these waters of the Torah serve as a mikvah (ritual pool) for the world.  As a mikvah, Alderman hints that the very impurity that is created and attributed by the sages, for example, the laws that magnify Esti’s feelings of guilt, can also be washed away by the sages’ own sayings.  Here Alderman celebrates the sacred without allowing the strictures of a violent text to cultivate shame regarding a woman’s desire for another woman. 

“Without Torah, man too would be only a shell, knowing neither light nor mercy. As water is life-giving, so Torah brings life to the world. Without water, our limbs would never know freshness or balm. Without Torah, our spirits would never know tranquillity. As water is purifying, so Torah cleanses those it touches. Water comes only and forever from the Almighty; it is a symbol of our utter dependence on Him. Should He withhold rain for but a season, we could no longer stand before Him. Just so, Torah is a gift which the Holy One Blessed Be He has given the world; Torah, in a sense, contains the world, it is the blueprint from which the world was created. Should Torah be withheld only for a moment, the world would not only vanish, but would never even have been.” (Alderman 2006, 18) 

Yet while water covered the earth, chaos exists too.  Even from the beginning God wrested between order and chaos, life and death.  In tohu vabohu and the ruach elohim (Gen 1:2) there are tensions and balances that all beings are fated to navigate, as God did too in the beginning—that this very tension is written into the fabric of the world. Alderman takes the reader to the shacharit morning prayer: “All say: Blessed are you, Lord, our God, King of the Universe, Who did not make me a slave. Men say: Blessed are you, Lord, our God, King of the Universe, Who did not make me a woman. Women say: Blessed are you, Lord, our God, King of the Universe, Who made me according to His will. from shacharit, the morning prayer.” (Alderman 2006, 58). This prayer and its troubling gender binary invokes a certain kind of violence, but Alderman links this prayer to the story of the Sun and the Moon and deconstructs the presumed inequity from within the tradition.  As in that first great chapter of Torah, on the fourth day the sun and the moon were made by God, just as man and woman were made (as per what is written) and were originally of equal status, a mirror image of each other: 

“For it is written, ‘And God made the two great lights.’ But the moon complained at this, saying, ‘Two rulers may not use one crown.’ And Hashem replied, saying, ‘Very well, since you ask for one to be lesser and one to be greater, your size shall be diminished, and the size of the sun increased. Your light shall be one-sixtieth of its previous strength.’ The moon complained to Hashem at her plight and, so that she should not remain utterly without comfort, Hashem gave her companions – the stars.” (Alderman, 2006, 58).

In this story, at the end of days, the Moon will be returned to her former glory, and be once more equal with the Sun.  Alderman suggests that one might learn from this that God listens to creatures and these creatures can sometimes be in the right. “In the first place, we learn that the moon was correct, for Hashem hearkened to her words” (Alderman 2006, 58-59). But also, we learn that Hashem is merciful – that this God recognizes the plight of those considered lesser and gives comfort to those in need. Esti muses that the stars are God’s gift to the moon. Ronit and Esti’s girlhood love and desire are as a gift of Hashem, as if the Moon (the motherless and abandoned Ronit) was given Esti, who was like a constellation of stars to her.  As the narrative of Ronit and Esti winds through Alderman’s bricolage of the Torah and the sayings of the sages, Alderman reminds the reader of God’s propensity to hear, to listen and to change God’s mind. In the whimsical stories of the sages she offers the possibility that God hears and answers the cry of the soul (Ps 66:19).

“God instructed the moon to make itself new each month. It is a crown of splendour for those who are borne from the womb, because they are also destined to be renewed like her. from the kiddush levana, recited every month after the third day of the lunar cycle and before the full moon What is the shape of time? On occasion, we may feel that time is circular. The seasons approach and retreat, the same every year. Night follows day follows night follows day. The festivals arrive in their time, cycling one after the other. And each month, the womb…” (Alderman 2006, 101)

Alderman describes a beautiful scene that relates to the haftarah readings (cycle of readings from the prophets) associated with the new moon.  What is felt here in the writing is the rhythmic constancy of the Jewish calendar, its unceasing movement, as if the cycle of readings was tidal.  These patterns of practice are deeply embodied, finding kinship in the lunar rhythms of the womb.  These cycles are thus interior and hold the observant reader in a cultural and maternal embrace.  There is a sense that these cycles cannot be held back from their return. They are as inevitable as the seas and, just as these same cycles draw forth Jewish practice, Alderman wants to suggest they will inevitably draw forth the truth of oneself.  Esti is sitting in the sabbath service in the balcony reserved for women, and the Haftarah is to be read.  The reading happens to be from 1 Sam 20. It is as if even the seasonal readings from the Tanakh arrive as gifts to support Esti’s realisation of her desire for Ronit and what that might mean regarding for the elemental truths of her sexuality and moreover, her own community’s failure of love: “The tones of the Haftarah, more melodic and more poignant than those of the Torah reading, speak so often of faithlessness and betrayal, of Israel’s failures of love towards God.”(Alderman 2006, 101)

Esti is pictured following the English story of 1 Sam 20 with her eyes. She is captivated when Jonathan says to David “Tomorrow is the New Moon, and you will be missed because your seat will be empty.” (1 Sam 20:5).  Jonathan is the son of the mercurial King Saul, but also in a deep and abiding relationship with David (1 Sam 20:17).  David is King Saul’s favoured musician. In the Haftarah reading, King Saul’s anger at David inexplicably grows, and the King’s increasing aggression has the courtiers on eggshells. Incredibly, Jonathan, the King’s own son, has made an escape plan with David. He cautions David to hide in the countryside nearby. David would miss the start of the feast to celebrate the new month. Jonathan would wait to see how Saul took it. If all was well, Jonathan would send word that David could attend after all. But as it turns out, Saul was incensed, and when Jonathan tried to calm his father, Saul humiliates his son in front of the entire court: “Do you think I don’t know that you have chosen this David, son of Jesse, to your shame and the shame of your mother’s nakedness?” (1 Sam 20:30).

In Esti’s recounting of this tale, she notes the Haftarah reader was talented, that he could even reproduce King Saul’s rough and anguished voice.  It speaks to her and Esti wants it to speak to Ronit. “Do you remember? she whispers. “It’s Machar Chodesh. Tomorrow is Rosh Chodesh, the new moon. Do you remember what you told me once about this day?” Through the cadences of the reader’s voice, low and melodious, Ronit and Esti remember David and Jonathan’s meeting in the fields outside the city, telling of a love which the sages record, was the greatest that had ever been known. Alderman writes, “the notes fluttered up and down the scales, falling like tears and rising like an arrow sprung from the bow … Machar Chodesh. When we read about David and Jonathan…” (2006, 108-109).

In a later chapter Ronit will reflect on this same text again with Esti. It has a central meaning for Esti and her initial reasons for choosing to marry Dovid.  She had been trying to sublimate her desire for Ronit through the only legitimate avenue available to her, by marrying Ronit’s own cousin.

“‘Do you remember “tomorrow is the new moon”? The story of David and Jonathan?’ I nodded. ‘And do you remember how much David loved Jonathan? He loved him with “a love surpassing the love of women”. Do you remember?’ ‘Yes, I remember. David loved Jonathan. Jonathan died in battle. David was miserable. The end.’ ‘No, not the end. The beginning. David had to go on living. He had no choice. Do you remember whom he married?’ … ‘He married Michal. They weren’t very happy. Didn’t she insult him in public, or something?’ ‘And who was Michal?’ It clicked. I understood. Michal was Jonathan’s sister. The man he loved with all his heart died and he married his sister. I thought about that for a moment, taking it in. I wondered whether Michal and Jonathan had looked anything like each other. I thought about King David and his grief, his need for someone like Jonathan, near to Jonathan…”. (Alderman 2006, 210)

Esti finds within the cycle of synagogue readings that these have nurtured a kind of liminal journey to the truth of herself, though it has taken years of such cycles.  The novel and the film coalesce at this point.  The Haftarah of Machar Chodesh, and the intimate meeting of Jonathan and David in the field, coalesces with scenes from the Song of Songs.  In Lelio’s film, Dovid appears in a scene with his religious students quoting and commenting on the Song of Songs 1:13-15.

[Dovid]: “A bundle of myrrh is my beloved to me, that lies all night between my breasts.  My beloved is to me as a cluster of henna blooms … in the vineyards of Ein-Gedi.” 

[Talmid]: “Is it about sensuality? That is, the way in which true love manifests itself?”

 [Dovid]: “But it might also be that between a male and a female, there is something higher than that?”

[Talmid]:  But isn’t it that the references to sensual pleasures celebrate physical love here?  The enjoyment of that love becomes, in this context, the highest …

[Dovid]: “See, you are fair, my love.  You are fair.  Your eyes are doves.  See, you are handsome my beloved, yea, pleasing, and our bed is verdant.”

This scene segues into the next on the image, “Our bed is verdant.” This image then acts as a foil when Dovid and Esti appear in the intimacy of their home with the words “our bed is verdant” still drifting in our minds.  We see Dovid’s and Esti’s careful attention to one another, as if the other was so fragile they might break. The ground between them is a desert.  Even with their attentiveness and extraordinary care for the other, they both seem to know there is little flourishing there, that they are the companions of the other’s slow grief—two fig trees that never bore fruit. As if to intensify the contrast, there is a lovers’ interlude in Hendon, the grassed space of Golders Green in North London. The parkland is transformed via the elemental passion of Esti’s and Ronit’s love into the gardens and wild spaces of the Song of Songs, true joy.  Esti and Ronit walk down dark paths, and into a wintery domain, into the somber North London streets in the evening, as if they were the Song of Song’s lovers searching for each other in Jerusalem’s alleyways (Son 3 & 5).  Ronit and Esti share the intense beauty of their remembrances, their secret places, the scent of hydrangeas.  They listen at the door of their hearts for one another, revel in the rising of desire, searching the other out.  Eventually the inevitable culmination of their renewed relationship takes place.

As in chapter 5 of the Song of Songs, there is danger too in the shape of watchers, guardians of the community’s way of life, those who seek to maintain a certain way of life, those whom Alderman might suggest have misunderstood the Torah all this time.  Thus, pressure is brought to bear on Dovid by a community of brothers and uncles.  Dovid will need to keep the order of his own house and to “straighten out” the outré sexuality of his wife if he wants to lead the community.  What transpires, then, is a scene between Esti and Dovid reminiscent of Moses before Pharaoh in Exodus (9:13). In the film, the narrative of freedom is a spoken thing.  Esti, as the supplicant Moses, asks for her freedom – that is, the freedom to live in the dignity of who she is, to live and love truly – and Dovid grants it.  In the novel, Alderman also draws on Exodus and the Moses narrative when she has Ronit dream of the Passover, but in this dream, Ronit is the angel of death who flies over the city (2006, 253).

Alderman concludes her novel with the curious Talmudic tale called the “The Caving Walls of the Study Hall.”  The story itself is based on an interpretation of Deut. 30:11-14: “this instruction … is not too baffling for you, nor is it beyond reach. It is not in the heavens, that you should say, ‘Who among us can go up to the heavens and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who among us can cross to the other side of the sea and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?’ No, the thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to observe it.” Found in Talmud Baba Mesia 59:2, the tale is set as a classic debate on Torah, and concerns theology and the proper interpretation of the law.

On a certain day, regarding a certain interpretation of the law, Rabbi Eliezer brought them all sorts of proofs, but the other sages kept rejecting them. Said he to them: “If the law is as I say, may the carob tree prove it.” The carob tree was uprooted from its place a distance of 100 cubits. But the sages to him: “One cannot prove anything from a carob tree.”

Said [Rabbi Eliezer] to them: “If the law is as I say, may the river prove it.” The water in the river began to flow backwards. But they said to him: “One cannot prove anything from an river.”

Said he to them: “If the law is as I say, then may the walls of the house of study prove it.” The walls of the house of study began to cave in. But Rabbi Joshua rebuked the walls and said to the walls, “If Torah scholars are debating a point of Jewish law, what are your qualifications to intervene?” The walls did not fall, in deference to Rabbi Joshua, and nor did they straighten up, in deference to Rabbi Eliezer. They still stand there today at a slant.

Then said Eliezar to them: “If the law is as I say, may it be proven from heaven!” There then issued a heavenly voice which proclaimed: “What do you want of Rabbi Eliezer — the law is as he says…”

But Rabbi Joshua stood on his feet and said: “‘The Torah is not in heaven!’1” … We take no notice of heavenly voices, since You, G‑d, have already, at Sinai, written in the Torah to ‘follow the majority.'” (Ex 23:2)

Rabbi Nathan subsequently met Elijah the Prophet and asked him: “What did G‑d do at that moment?” [Elijah] replied: “He smiled and said: ‘My children have triumphed over Me, My children have triumphed over Me.”

“The Caving Walls of the Study Hall” is a profound text that holds the matter of the love of Esti for Ronit gently, and even more gently, Esti’s journey of self-realisation and sexual liberation. The delicate turn in reading here is in the image of a Hashem that smiles.  It is as if Hashem is at this very moment the embodiment of Ronit’s father, raised up with face alive with mirth:  “My [daughters] have triumphed over me”.  What is striking in the novel (and also in the film), is the way in which the narrative calls on the Torah and the Talmud, as allies on behalf of Ronit and Esti and their desire.  These two women are, each in their own way, alienated and estranged from their community.  They have also been a precious awakening to each other.  This is regardless of Ronit’s separation from her father, cousin and community and Esti’s attempt to live an observant life as a rebbetzin, frum wife and a teacher.  This love is made even more challenging in a sheltered community that cannot accept the truth of the otherwiseness of Esti’s desires.  “I have always felt like this,” Esti says to Dovid in Lelio’s film (2017), “I will always feel like this.”  The way in which the film and novel draw upon the sacred text to frame Esti’s untangling and unfolding acceptance of herself and her sexuality is deeply moving, similarly the resolution of Ronit’s quandary over her troubled love for Esti and the community of her childhood.  This connection is tender and honouring of an age-old and beautiful set of sacred texts and traditions, without forfeiting the sacred human right to dignity, freedom and the expression one’s whole self in ways otherwise to that tradition.  It is in this kind of reading that Alderman finds a liberating trajectory of scriptural interpretation on behalf of lesbian desire, that is, the possibility of finding sexual freedom in the very texts that violate it.

REFERENCES

Alderman, Naomi. Disobedience. London: Penguin, 2006. Kindle Edition.

Harding, James.  The love of David and Jonathan. London: Routledge, 2014. Kindle Edition.

Neusner, Jacob. The Babylonian Talmud :  A Translation and Commentary. Hendrickson, 2005.

Neusner, Jacob.  The Mishna: A New Translation. New Haven: Yale University, 1988.

Lelio, Sebastián. Disobedience. Film4, FilmNation, Element Pictures, et al, 2017.

Nacino, Joseph. “Love as disobedience,” Lesbian News (April 2018): 10-12.

Steicker, Joel. “Review of Disobedience,” Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, 26, no. 3 (2008): 203-205.

Zacharek, Stephanie. “Forbidden lovers seek grace in Disobedience,” TIME Magazine, 191, no. 19 (May 21, 2018): 54-54.

Image: Charles Landelle, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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The Rape of Men and Rabbinic Literature

by Johanna Stiebert on

Today’s post is by Tali Artman Partock and examines the much-neglected topic of the rape of men in rabbinical texts. Tali studied Hebrew literature and psychology as an undergraduate, followed by a Masters, and PhD in rabbinic literature, all at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. Her diverse research interests lie in the areas of Judaism and early Christianity; midrash, folktales and hermeneutics; gender studies; and the Bible in literature and film. Tali teaches at the Faculty of Divinity of the University of Cambridge, and Leo Baeck College.

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The rape of men is something that is often just hinted at in the Hebrew Bible. It tends to be confined to, or is threatened during times of war, or in warlike situations. The rape of men by men in “everyday life” is not only not mentioned, but is not even conceptualized, or labelled as rape. In fact, as both Judith Hauptman and Ronit Irshai argue [i], the word “rape” in the Hebrew Bible refers only to penetration of a female virgin without the authorization of her father.

The early layer of rabbinic literature (that is, Tannaitic literature, 2nd-3rd century CE), however, marks a radical change. Not only is the forced penetration of men here becoming marked as rape, but a whole discourse emerges to deal with its criminal and sacral implications.

The problem troubling the rabbis concerns the soul both of the rapist and of the raped. But above all else, the rabbis want to prevent the crime. Towards that purpose, from a Jewish legal perspective, the Mishnah allows an extraordinary thing: namely, the right not only of the rape victim but of any bystander to kill the attacker-rapist in (self-)defence.

The first text to address the issue in a legal codex appears in the Talmud in Mishnah Sanhedrin 8:7 (edited circa 220 CE). Here it says:

“The following must be saved even at the cost of their lives: he who pursues after his fellow to slay him or after a man or a betrothed maiden [to rape them].”

This is not only a recognition of the danger of rape of men by men, but a conceptual revolution. The idea of pre-emptive killing of the pursuer extends from the right to self-defence in the case of attempted murder. But how?  The answer comes from the fate of the raped betrothed maiden (mentioned in Deuteronomy 22:24), who is sentenced to death herself, even though she was raped, because the rape happened “in the town.” In other words, the rape, beyond being terrible in itself, leads to the victim’s death (on sacral grounds), and to the attacker’s death (on criminal and sacral grounds). In that sense, raping a betrothed virgin is like murdering her, making the argument of killing in self-defence comprehensible. The same logic is then applied to the biblical verses regarding male-male sex: here, too, the death penalty is threatened for both the penetrator and the penetrated (Leviticus 20:13).

The Bible does not address the problem of coercion when it comes to men, which poses an ethical dilemma for the rabbis, and an opportunity to learn something new: that in this case, too, rape is like murder, and killing in self-defence, therefore, permissible. This is in line with Roman legislation by Emperor Hadrian, which allowed de facto rape victims (male or female) and their family members to kill the rapist on the spot if caught in the act.[ii]

But what if an attacker is not killed in time (that is, before the rape takes place)? Are rape victims, male or female, to be executed, in the way that might be derived from Leviticus 20:13 and Deuteronomy 22:24? The rabbis have a new agenda here, too. In Sifre to Deuteronomy, Ki Teitzei, a Tannaitic midrash on the book of Deuteronomy, we read:

“Just as when a man rises against his neighbour and murders him (Deut. 22.26), teaches that all who are raped [coerced] in the Torah are blameless, but [also]  that we save them by the life [of the one who pursues them] only in this case. Where, then, do we learn that one should [do the same also in the cases of] he who chases his fellow to kill him and after the man [to rape him]? It is said: so is this matter (Deut. 22:26). Can one do the same to he who pursues a beast or desecrated the Shabbat or worships idols? The Torah said: ‘this matter’ [only] (Deut. 22:26), ‘this’ is punished by stoning and all the rest – not by stoning.”

The verse the Sifre relies on is no longer Deuteronomy 22:24, but Deuteronomy 22:25-26: the case of the betrothed virgin who is raped in the field (rather than in the town). In her case, she is found blameless and only her rapist is put to death. This is another step forward for both women and men as victims: not only does this passage offer victims protection (like the Mishnah passage), but it also cleans them of all fault and blame.

The Amoraic Babylonian sources (3rd-6th century CE), much like those from Israel (3rd-5th century) follow the same logic to the same result.[iii] An interesting point is made also about the strange spelling of the word for “maiden”: in Hebrew the word for maiden is na‘arah, whereas the word for a male youth is na‘ar. In Deuteronomy 22:26, unusually, the word for “maiden” is missing the final consonant (transliterated as “ah”). Noting that the spelling is gender-ambivalent, the rabbis reach their conclusion on the basis that just like in the case of a girl (na‘arah) so in the case of a boy (na‘ar) there is no guilt for the raped.[iv]

In its Roman context, the question of rape of men becomes more complicated. On the one hand, unlike in Livy’s testimony, according to which a man who has been penetrated could not stand in a court of law, unless he was raped in war or by pirates [v], rabbinic literature does not deny a raped man any legal rights. On the other hand, the Roman economy of desire, making boys and slaves particularly vulnerable, still influenced the rabbis in many ways – but that will be a subject for a different post.

[i] Judith Hauptman, Rereading the Rabbis: A Woman’s Voice (Boulder, CO and Oxford: Westview Press, 1998), 81; Ronit Irshai, “Rape of Unmarried Women: From Hazal to Maimonides.” Shnaton ha-Mishpat ha-Ivri 28 (2014-15): 177. (Irshai’s paper is in Hebrew.)

[ii] See Jane F. Gardner, Women in Roman Law & Society (London: Routledge, 1995), 118-19.

[iii] There are two main Talmudic traditions: the Babylonian Talmud (Talmud Bavli) and the Jerusalem Talmud (Talmud Yerushalmi). Talmud is aptly described as a discursive and intergenerational rabbinic discussion. It is one primary focus of traditional Jewish scholarship.

[iv] This might be surprising in a Babylonian context. After all, in the Zoroastrian tradition represented in the Videvdad (8:26-32), the punishment for a man who submits to anal intercourse against his will is “eight hundred strokes with the horse whip, eight hundred with the bastinado.” While the editing of the Videvdad might be two or three centuries later than that of the Bavli, much like the Bavli, it, too, reflects oral traditions that are centuries older.

[v] Craig Williams, Roman Homosexuality, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010),  106.

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COVID-19 Lockdown Interview Series: Barbara Thiede

by Barbara Thiede on

Rabbi Dr. Barbara Thiede

When my university (University of North Carolina, Charlotte) went on spring break March 2, I made the decision to see if I could put all my classes online. Because I also teach online for ALEPH Ordination Programs (a Jewish seminary which ordains rabbis, cantors, and rabbinic pastors), doing so was not as difficult for me as for some of my colleagues. In the meantime, my spouse, Ralf, and I moved roomfuls of furniture around in our little ranch house to accommodate our son and daughter-in-love, who moved out of a tiny one-room studio apartment in Brooklyn, New York,  into our tiny home library (now outfitted with a bed, sitting area, and workspace!).  We joked about how much the room would go for on Airbnb and promptly dubbed it R&B (Ralf and Barbara). We’ve been alternating the cooking, so I’ve been treated to some real culinary variety.

Next, we started a huge project in our backyard, clearing away a veritable mini-forest of dead shrubbery that wisteria had marked, claimed, and devoured, and built three raised garden beds. This also necessitated digging up loads of mulchy dirt, moving it aside, creating the beds, refilling the beds with the dirt and home grown compost, and planting our vegetables. This explains the picture of me lying face down in the grass while our son grins up at his dad. His back is stronger. So far, everything is thriving and we look forward to the first products gracing our table.

For the first weeks, working was very difficult indeed. Finding a routine was challenging. My students have felt the stress and, since we take the time to check in, it is clear to me that they are facing a range of serious issues.  One is a refugee whose mother works at Wal-Mart; another is taking care of an elderly and sickly grandmother. I’ve known what it is to have students in vulnerable situations every semester of my teaching life, but now, I think it is fair to say, they all are vulnerable. One student has a daughter whose best friend died of Covid-19 — she was in her early thirties; another was clearly suicidal and needed connections with health care professionals. Sometimes, I start our check-ins with lighter questions just to relieve the stress: “A package just arrived at your door. It is perfectly safe to open it. What’s inside?” Answers included, of course, masks, cures, vaccine. And they included: “My mom!” “A puppy!” “A boat!”

Which aspects of your work past and present might be particularly interesting for supporters of the Shiloh Project?

My current book, Male Friendship, Homosociality, and Women in the Hebrew Bible: Malignant Fraternities, treats a set of texts that  demonstrate how male friendship depends on women’s bodies for its creation and sustenance. I am also preparing a paper for SBL entitled “Gang Rape, Murder, and Dismemberment in Judges 19-21 and Little Bee: How Biblical and Modern Authors Inflict Moral Injury.”

How are you bearing up and what’s helping you most? Am I behind in my work? Of course. Do I feel — all the time — that I can’t actually grasp the depth of dislocation the world is experiencing? I do. Do I sometimes resent the “we can get through all this” when so many won’t? Yes. Do I fear that we will not learn the lessons of this experience? I do. Humankind is notoriously insufficient at caring for humanity and the planet it lives on. 
I am bearing up by walking a lot, by gardening as much as I can, and by listening to a lot of Sephardic-Ladino-Iraqi-Turkish music. It reminds me to dance. And I hope and pray for humanity to pay attention to the obvious lesson, here. We share this world unequally. We suffer its pain unequally. We are obliged to flatten that curve, too.

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Holocaust Memorial Day 2020

by Johanna Stiebert on

Today, 27 January, marks Holocaust Memorial Day  and 75 years to the day since the liberation of Auschwitz.[1] The Shiloh Project joins the many people worldwide solemnly marking this momentous day.

While other genocides and other mass human rights violations have occurred and continue to occur, the Holocaust is also singular. The Holocaust, or Shoah,[2] has taken millions of lives and has affected and warped millions more, as well as influenced the course of history, consciousness, scholarship and much, much more. For these reasons and others, it remains important to talk about, to remember and to commemorate the Holocaust if any good at all is to come from this tremendous carnage, in the form, for instance, of recognizing the enormous damage and tragedy that comes from the confluence of discrimination, dehumanisation, unquestioning obedience to authority and terror. This recognition is then, hopefully, taken forward as commitment to preventing any further human rights atrocities.

Given the focus of the Shiloh Project, let us point out, too, that sexual violence carried out as part of the Holocaust is slowly beginning to receive more attention.[3] This is demonstrated, for instance, in the important work of Shiloh member Miryam Sivan. Miryam has presented on sexual abuse in Holocaust literature at the Shiloh conference (see  here and here) and has featured in our series on the 16 Days of Activism (see here).

Last year, Miryam published her novel, Make It Concrete.  (For a review, see here.) This novel tells the story of Isabel Toledo, a strong and independent woman, living in today’s Israel. Isabel has three children, several lovers and works as a ghost writer, recording the narratives of Holocaust survivors. But her life and equilibrium is unsettled by a past that predates her life.

What is most affecting about Miryam’s novel is the feeling of the past bearing down heavily on the present. Her account makes clear that our grandparents’ and parents’ lives and the fear and pain of the past can resonate and reach harmfully into present lives and times. This is worth reminding ourselves of as we reflect today on the Holocaust and on the wars and atrocities and refugees’ fates of our own time: how might what is happening now shape and harm lives in times to come? What can we do better?

Please read Miryam’s novel: Miryam Sivan, Make It Concrete (Brooklyn, NY: Cuidono Press, 2019).

[1] This is not to be confused with Yom HaShoah, commemorated in the Jewish calendar on the 27th day of Nisan. This year, in a grisly coincidence, Yom HaShoah will begin at sundown on 20 April, the birthday of Adolf Hitler.

[2] I have written elsewhere about the names ‘Holocaust’, ‘Shoah’ and ‘Porajmos’, as well as about the problematic practice of ascribing the word ‘Holocaust’ to other grand-scale horrors, e.g. ‘The African Holocaust’ to the HIV and AIDS pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa. See Johanna Stiebert, ‘The African Holocaust: What Is In a Name?’ Missionalia 37/2 (2009): 192-209.

[3] For one example, see The Guardian (October 2019),reporting on Nazi atrocities committed against the Sinti and Roma. The article (see here) makes reference to Hermine Horvath’s ‘unusually explicit’ account of sexual abuse perpetrated by an SS leader.

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UN 16 Days of Activism: Day 6 – Barbara Thiede

by Barbara Thiede on

I teach full-time in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina Charlotte and serve as the Program Director for our department’s graduate program. I am also an ordained rabbi and teach for ALEPH – Alliance for Jewish Renewal.

In both settings, I teach a range of courses focused on gender, power, class, and race. These fall, broadly, into two categories. As a historian of Jewish history, I teach the history of European antisemitism and the marketing of the Holocaust. As a biblical scholar, I teach a wide range of courses that focus on gender, power, and violence in the Hebrew Bible. I am currently writing a full-length monograph entitled Male Friendship, Homosociality and Women in the Hebrew Bible. I am also working on a volume for the Routledge series “Rape Culture, Religion and the Bible” entitled Rape in the House of David: A Company of Men.

Writing about causes I support has been a significant part of my activism in public realms, too. For some twenty years I wrote for a regional section of The Charlotte Observer as well as for the Observer’s Viewpoint page as a community editorial columnist. Here, I was able to address a range of issues, from domestic violence and sexual assault to antisemitism and racism. Likewise, my blog, Adrenalinedrash, includes writing on sexual violence, racism, and antisemitism from a rabbinic perspective.

From my earliest days at UNC Charlotte, when I created the first women’s group for addressing eating disorders, to my campus involvement today in our annual Sex Week, addressing the very real concerns of my students has been one of my primary goals. One in every four of my female students will be the victim of sexual assault during their undergraduate careers. While teachers of Religious Studies regularly engage with class, gender, race, sexuality, and ability, classroom conversations are often detached from the rape culture that surrounds them. But the rape culture of the Hebrew Bible is familiar to my students for a reason; like today’s rape cultures, it relies on a web of male friendships, alliances, and social relationships that are essential to its preservation. In the classroom we can analyze how hegemonic masculinity that supports rape culture works both in ancient texts and in contemporary settings. And we can talk about what must be done to change the statistics and make college campuses safe for women.

Though I am involved with efforts to combat racism and gun violence as a speaker and rabbi, much of my activism has centered on working with local church and civic groups. For almost two decades, I have regularly addressed sexual violence and hegemonic masculinity in the Hebrew Bible in a wide range of denominational settings. Because biblical authors present sexual violence against women as permissible, we need to interrogate the texts we hold sacred.

I participate in marches and rallies and speak for a host of causes I support – from protecting voting rights to winning citizenship for undocumented immigrants to saving our broken planet. And I have found that my greatest impact takes place in classroom, faith, and community education. There, I can develop relationships, open doors, unpack a conversation, and empower those I am working with – from the eighteen-year-old college students to eighty-year-old grandmothers. We are all needed in the struggle against rape culture.

Between now and the 16 days I will be helping students at UNCC with the organization of this year’s Sex Week (sexual violence is a key topic), writing a piece for my blog on the male alliances that support rape culture in both the Hebrew Bible and our own time, and working with a full class of students who are writing their final papers – almost all of which center on sexual violence in Hebrew Bible. Teaching in two different academic settings, spending many Sunday mornings with faith groups, and writing offer me opportunities to address and confront the rape cultures we must combat and eradicate. And in our time.

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