Hello Friends,
It has been quite some time since I last wrote to you. For me, these past few months have been marked by loss and transition and new beginnings. And as such, I’ve been in a flurry of thoughts and mostly in need of good music, sipping coffee in the sun, and snuggles. But now, I have something I want to say for this, pride month.
Additionally, In case you missed it, here are two previously published pieces that talk about queer stuff and Jewish text:
Does the Torah Really Say Don’t Be Gay?: No. And A New Argument About Those Lines In Leviticus
Coming Out Esther: Visibility, Queer Stuff, and The Queen of Purim
Thanks for being here.
Love, Meg
It is pride month. This is a month that has evolved in my own consciousness into a time of deep reflection. Much like the month of Elul asks us to take account of our behavior from the past year, or like counting the omer invites us to strengthen our character, pride is a time of something. But of what? In the past, I might have said that pride was a time of a “coming out” of sorts. Without question, pride is always a time of history, courage, and protest – we don’t know who threw the first brick, shoe, whatever, but we do know that Storme DeLarverie, Marsha P Johnson and Sylvia Rivera were there at The Stonewall Inn in June of 1969. Blessed are those who brought us to this moment. Blessed are those dreaming about tomorrow.
Today, I find a new lens for this month. Before we move into the text, I want to remind you of a piece I wrote some months ago about angels, as defining this cosmic entity is essential before moving forward.
The following are snippets from my piece: All About Angels on D’var Torah: Malak
The word for angel in Hebrew is malak מַלְאָך it occurs 213 times in the Hebrew Bible. Primarily, malak means messenger but can also mean, as we are discussing, angel or ambassador.
Image G-d as all of the intelligence of the universe, typed out on a typewriter. The typewriter is constantly clicking away, considering creation is happening all the time. Ok, and then imagine, every once in a while, a piece of that writing is ripped off, sealed in an envelope, and delivered to you.
An angel is like a letter carrier from the great beyond – bringing you a tiny piece of the infinite. An angel is an intermediary. Sometimes a poem feels like an angel.
This week, the haftarah portion comes from the book of Zechariah (a later prophet who had some bizarre dreams around the time the Second Temple was being built). We get this line:
Zechariah 4:1
The angel who talked with me came back and woke me as one is wakened from sleep.
וַיָּ֕שׇׁב הַמַּלְאָ֖ךְ הַדֹּבֵ֣ר בִּ֑י וַיְעִירֵ֕נִי כְּאִ֖ישׁ אֲשֶׁר־יֵע֥וֹר מִשְּׁנָתֽוֹ׃
What does it mean to be “awoken by an angel” as one wakes from sleep? It is not that our speaker is being woken up from sleep by an angel. Rather, our speaking is being “awoken” as some other thing, as if awoken from sleep.
The Jewish tradition teaches that when we wake up after sleeping, it is as if our soul has returned to our body. When we sleep, our soul goes off and mingles with other souls, or maybe just sits somewhere and catches up on the crossword (not mine, but maybe some of y’alls). At this time, our soul is not in our body – there is a separation. We know this because every morning the first words we are taught to say are:
I offer thanks to You, living and eternal Source of Life, for You have mercifully restored my soul within me.
מוֹדֶה אֲנִי לְפָנֶיךָ מֶלֶךְ חַי וְקַיָּם, שֶׁהֶחֱזַרְתָּ בִּי נִשְׁמָתִי בְּחֶמְלָה. רַבָּה אֱמוּנָתֶךָ
To wake up, in a Jewish imagination, is to be re-ensouled. To be reunited with your wholeness after a separation. To wake up is to give thanks for this reunification of body and soul.
So I ask again, what does it mean to be “awoken by an angel” as one wakes from sleep?
Perhaps meeting an angel is an awakening. In other words, the primary interaction between person and angel is that of becoming aware of your wholeness – your divinity and corporeality. But our divinity and corporeality not as opposites, but as sides of our oneness. When we encounter an angel, we remember that we are unified beings.
Body and soul are categories that emerge from this conversation. Body and soul are categories that emerge during pride. A Jewish philosopher, Philo of Alexandria (born in Egypt in 25 BCE), once said that “The body is the soul’s house. Therefore, shouldn’t we take care of our house so that it doesn’t fall into ruin?” Are we a soul that merely lives in a body? Are we our body that invites in a soul?
Or are we precisely the chevruta (partnership) of the two – the magic that happens when our earthly material form is animated by some electrical life force?
From here, questions of gender, socialization, attraction, sex, love, and identity, sort of roll off the tongue, don’t they? What questions bubble up for you?
It seems to me that these are questions of pride. Ancient questions about what it really means to wake up. To wake up to yourself.