Deborah's Journal

Because my friend is dying
I went on to the land she loves
            To say Kaddish for my mother,
Under fir trees, through overgrown thistles
Past the echoing barn,
The last holdouts of summer blackberries,
Following a horse trail,
            a goat trail,
            a deer trail,
            a labyrinth carved by the generations: Exodus.

A cricket told me where to rest,
There by the single daisy,
            the Queen Anne’s lace.
Thorns snatched at the fringes of my prayer shawl.
I prevailed.

We do prevail, said the twilight.
We prevail from our ashes,
            in the sea
            in the cedar grove
             on the mount
            on the mountain
            at the wall
            at the wailing of the day.

I traced the Aramaic letters,
            stumbling like a stranger to my own faith.
And then, as if in the beginning,
            Bereshit,
A voice rose up through me,
A song that made itself up as it went.

This memory is all I have of you.
This moment is all we have ever had of one another.
This grief is a verb.
This peace is always, always becoming what it will be.

Deborah J. Ross
17 Tishrei 5774

From Ha'aretz.com: Medieval siddur battles gender inequality via Jewish prayer

The traditional morning prayers include one recited by observant Jewish men, blessing the Creator for not making them women. The women's counterpart runs, “Blessed are You, Lord our God, Master of Universe [the "blessing" formula] for Creating me According to your Will.” No surprise, Jewish women through the ages have found this offensive, and men have used it as a justification for insisting on their own gender superiority.

Now it turns out this may be a modern distortion of Jewish values. A siddur (prayer book) written in 1471, specifies the women's prayer as, "... For You made Me a Woman and Not a Man.” The clear intent was for each person to appreciate and celebrate who they are. The siddur was written by Rabbi Abraham Ben Mordechai Farissol (1451-1525), a well-known Northern Italian scholar, cantor, and physician.

“This Siddur proves that the degrading attitudes towards women, which we are seeing in certain extreme religious communities in Israel today, are a modern distortion of Judaism,” said Rabbi [Julie] Schonfeld. “Ironically, treatment of women in certain extreme sectors of the community is far more denigrating to women today than even the attitudes of the late Middle Ages." Schoenfeld is executive vice president of the Rabbinical Assembly, Conservative Judaism’s official rabbinical association.

To remain true to the spirit of the text, celebrating who we are, how are we to honor our transgendered brothers and sisters? One way might be to allow each person to choose the text that speaks for them. Another would be to move toward a universalist version, applicable to all people, expressing gratitude that we all are as we are, that we are all glorious and precious.

The story is told of the Jewish diplomat and scholar Isaac Abrabanel (1437-1508), chancellor to King Ferdinand of Castile, that he was once asked by the king how much he owned. He named a certain sum.

"But surely," the king said, "you own much more than that."

"The property I have, I do not own," Abrabanel replied. "Your majesty may seize it from me tomorrow. At best, I am its temporary guardian. The sum I mentioned is what I have given away in charity. That merit alone, neither you nor any earthly power can take away from me."

We own what we are willing to share.

From To Heal A Fractured World; The Ethics of Responsibility, by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks