In the beginning ... of Patriarchy (version 2)

It may still seem a little edgy to some, but this is the version of my Bereshit d'var Torah that I intend to deliver for teens. 

Bereshit is an oft-questioned and commented on parasha. Why are there two creation stories? Who is the snake? Was Eve, as some bumper stickers may have led you to believe, framed? Do we live in a patriarchal society all thanks to this text, or is it only possible to read this text as patriarchal through tired eyes wearied by centuries of oppressive medieval misogyny?

            Up until very recently, I thought it was the latter. I tend to think of the images of “The Fall” and Eve as the “mother of all sin” as very Christian concepts, and assumed it was due to some pervasive Christian ideology that we continue to frame our Genesis story this way, even occasionally as Jews. But I’m not so sure anymore. This week, for a Parashat HaShavua class, I had to read Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg’s analyses on Bereshit. In one of her books, The Murmuring Deep, Zornberg discusses the language of seduction in our Torah. When God “took” Adam and put him into the Garden of Eden, Rashi says “took” is more like “lured with beautiful words.” Then, of course, we have the serpent luring Eve to eat the fruit, and Eve handing the fruit over to Adam to eat. Zornberg sums up this chain of enticing thus: “Eve stands, then, at the hub of the narrative of seduction; she is both object and subject of this treacherous activity. She has gone down in cultural memory as both feeble and slyly powerful; incapable of resisting seduction, she is nevertheless irresistibly seductive. The weak link between the serpent and Adam, she has borne the brunt of responsibility for events read, quite simply, as a Fall.” Zornberg also later points out that the serpent’s awareness of Eve’s weakness and strength in the arts of seduction was what so easily allowed him to manipulate her and Adam to transgress, validating the lasting view of Eve, “and through her, of all women,” as “sinister and serpentine.”

            And this is where my reading is forever changed. This is where I become certain that it is not the fault of pervasive medieval Christianity informing an uncomfortable understanding of this text. This is the basis of patriarchy and a culture in which victim blaming, objectification, violence against women, and a denial of women’s voices are still pervasive even to this day and in the progressive Western world. This is the crux of our double standards and “she was asking for it” attitude. From the beginning of time we have read and believed that a woman is simultaneously too weak to resist a male’s instruction or her own base instincts and is too seductive to expect a man to resist. It is her own fault she allows herself to be manipulated, but it’s also her fault that Adam allows himself to be manipulated by her. She finds herself unable to say no, but to say yes leads her into trouble and a birth to victim blaming.

            Although we may be fighting thousands upon thousands of years of this mentality, I think we are up to the challenge. It is past time to change our attitude toward women, our view of autonomy for men and women, our victim blaming. The parasha also contains a verse in which Adam proclaims Eve the “mother of all life,” and Zornberg points out that what we categorize as a “Fall” is really an outward motion: the expulsion from Eden into a new world. The new reality Eve has borne to us is harder, for sure, but also richer and fuller. It is only through obtaining the knowledge of good and evil did we really become fully human, in relationship with God. Instead of stigmatizing this event, we should celebrate it. Instead of giving Eve all of the blame and credit, we should recognize that there are at least three “people” (though not human, the serpent is undoubtedly a person) with full agency participating in this text (possibly four; God’s role in causing this narrative to play out is a little more vague). I think it is absolutely time for us to promote a new, and just as legitimate, reading of this story and it is up to you, a new generation, to do it. I don’t know how often you participate in Bible study or conversations about Genesis, but next time you find yourself in such a situation, I hope you will hold your head up high and say, “There are three equal actors in this narrative, each with their own valid agency, and a resulting chain of events. There is no crime and punishment, and no one person to blame. Eve is not the cause of Original Sin and Eve does not represent the entire lineage of womankind.”  Maybe if we start at the source, we really can re-frame our cultural shortcomings to become a truly equal society for everyone. 

In the Beginning ... of Patriarchy (version 1)

I had to write a short d'var Torah on Genesis this week for a class, and I also have to give a d'var Torah at the teen minyan I'm leading in Westchester on Saturday. The two are pretty similar, but I'm sharing both. This one is a little more adult and academic. 

Maybe Eve wasn’t really framed. All my life I held to this bumper sticker feminist summation of Genesis, using modern understandings of feminism and misunderstanding of patriarchy to look back onto our narrative. I believed Eve was framed, set up for the Fall, tricked by the serpent and given up by Adam and blamed by misogyny for all the world’s sins.

            But the use of the word “frame” implies there was indeed a crime for her to be blamed for. Certainly eating of the forbidden fruit was transgressing, but was it criminal? Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, in her book, The Murmuring Deep, talks about the eating of the fruit as the beginning of a humanity that is recognizable to us (though, she argues, the first true humans are Adam and Eve’s children, born of woman instead of God). Rather than categorize the expulsion from Eden as a Fall, she points out that it is really an outward motion, a birth into a new life. One that is harder, for sure, but also fuller and larger. Does this sound like crime and punishment or merely action and consequence?

            Zornberg does not directly address the question of criminality, framed or otherwise, or
“fault” per se. She seems to be more interested in dissecting the texts and deciphering the psychology of the characters. But she does touch on subjects within the narrative that, to me, begs for new feminist inquiry, something deeper than “Eve was Framed.” Zornberg does not directly “blame” Eve, but she does say, “Eve stands, then, at the hub of the narrative of seduction; she is both object and subject of this treacherous activity. She has gone down in cultural memory as both feeble and slyly powerful; incapable of resisting seduction, she is nevertheless irresistibly seductive. The weak link between the serpent and Adam, she has borne the brunt of responsibility for events read, quite simply, as a Fall.” Zornberg also later points out that the serpent’s awareness of Eve’s weakness and strength in the arts of seduction was what so easily allowed him to manipulate her and Adam to transgress, validitating the lasting view of Eve, “and through her, of all women,” as “sinister and serpentine.”

            This is the beginning of patriarchy and modern day rape culture. We do not merely look back at a text that clearly contains the agency of three people and choose to blame one of them because of our current view of women, or even because of some oppressive Medieval view of women that has stuck. This is the text that has informed and continues to inform our view on women. This is the crux of our patriarchal double standards and “she was asking for it” attitude. From the beginning of time we have read and believed that a woman is simultaneously too weak to resist a male’s instruction or her own base instincts and is too seductive to expect a man to resist. It is her own fault she allows herself to be manipulated, but it’s also her fault that Adam allows himself to be manipulated by her. She finds herself unable to say no, but to say yes leads her into trouble and a birth to victim blaming.

            Although we may be fighting thousands upon thousands of years of this mentality, I think we are up to the challenge. It is past time to change our attitude toward women, our view of autonomy for men and women, our victim blaming. We can take it upon ourselves to recognize that every person is unique and equally susceptible to seduction, equally able to be seductive. We can take a modern feminist awareness and project back onto our text and say, “There are three equal actors in this narrative, each with their own valid agency, and a resulting chain of events. There is no crime and punishment, and no one person to blame. Eve is not the cause of Original Sin and Eve was not framed.”  

G'mar Chatima Tova!

            When I was younger, middle or early high school age, there was a short lived cartoon called God, the Devil, and Bob. The premise of the show was that a very Jerry Garcia-looking God is contemplating destroying the world again, but he’ll save it if one person can prove that it’s worth saving. The catch, of course, is that he lets the Alan Cumming-voiced Devil choose the one person, and, of course, he chooses Bob Allman, Grade A Schlub. In the first episode, Bob has great difficulty with the concept and asks God what exactly it is he’s supposed to do. God’s words echo those of this week’s Torah portion, “This is not new stuff! It’s written in scrolls, books, stone tablets! What do you want me to do, scribble it on a bar napkin?!”

            As we learn from Moses, the lessons that we need to guide us on daily life are not only written down in all sorts of books throughout history, they are very close to us. God is not in the heavens, not across the sea, not far off. God is in each of us, and we are here to guide each other, as much as we are to learn from Torah. And yet, sometimes, doesn’t it feel like it would be nice to have concise directions scribbled onto a bar napkin? We sit in services every Yom Kippur listing off sins, including ones we didn’t commit, and it starts to feel wearisome. It’s so repetitive. What are we even doing here?

            Well, we do it year after year, and year after year we remind ourselves of the closeness of God’s way, because we still constantly find ourselves missing the mark. We go searching for meaning in our lives, like we think it must be far off, that it will be hidden in a good job or an exotic land or at the bottom of a bottle. Maybe it’s in the oceans or the skies or the deserts or jungles, maybe it’s at the crowded Kotel in Jerusalem or the empty Choral Synagogue in Vilnius. Or maybe it’s much harder than that. Maybe God and the way to a better world is through Isla Vista and Ferguson. It’s in fighting for justice. It’s in discomfort. It’s in intersectionality and breaking down all institutionalized systems of oppression together. It’s in the tears that well up when you worry you’re not doing enough or that you’re doing it for the wrong reasons. It’s in the kind and friendly words you share with strangers, when you are mindful that “Friendly” or “complimentary” don’t cross into “cat-calling” and “harassment”. It’s in the challenge to look in the mirror and find your own flaws, it’s in checking your privilege, and it’s in opening up your world to be inclusive of those different from you. It’s in reading things that upset you. It’s in speaking out. It’s in tzedakah. It’s in g’milut hasadim.

We can only get there through true and honest t’shuva. It’s not going to be scribbled onto bar napkins for us. We can’t send someone into the heavens or across the sea to receive the directions straight from God as Moses was able to. All we can do is read and reread the directions we have, the Torah. All we can do is read between the lines to find all the extra hidden messages of faith, love, and righteousness for our time. All we can do is be honest with ourselves and God and each other at this season and make a point to do better in the coming year. So when we stand in this same place next year, t’shuva won’t just mean apologies and forgiveness, a clean soul and a fresh start. It will mean really looking back and saying, “Did I walk a little more along the Way? Did I stay on course? Am I actually any farther along this year? Did I make the world better?” And when that time comes, may we all answer: Yes.