VOICES OF FAITH Group embodies LGBTQA+ freedom
For the last three and a half years, I’ve taught a weekly women’s class studying the Jewish text, Pirkei Avot, an 1,800-yearold digest of ancient rabbis’ sayings and ethical maxims. The Pirkei Avot is a favorite text, studied today by both men and women along the whole spectrum from progressive to traditional Jewish communities.
But the makeup of my group and my role as teacher breaks new ground for the Jewish community. The Jewish Federation of Northeastern New York created The Women’s Table as an opportunity for local women to study and learn together. We began this journey as a disparate group who selfidentify as females, with a wide range of Jewish and life experiences. Our group spans ages. We have members who are very observant and others from a completely secular Jewish background. We have straight women and members of our LGBTQA+ community.
As facilitator, we have KB Goodkin, who works on diversity and inclusion for the federation. I am the group’s teacher, an out and proud lesbian reform rabbi. KB and I are both members of transracial families and brought the perspective of white allies to our study. Other women are children or grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, parents of disabled adults and interfaith families.
We’ve found that Judaism doesn’t just tolerate this plurality, it revels in it. Having ethical conversations with people from such diverse backgrounds and points of views has made our discussions and our learning rich and deeply meaningful. We learned from the text, but even more so, we have learned from each other.
This goes for me as well. My books are covered with pencil notes capturing new thoughts and perspectives brought by the members of this class. In his book “Pirkei Avot: A Social Justice Commentary,” Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz makes the point that, although traditional Hebrew translates the title of the text to mean “Chapters of the Fathers,” in modern Hebrew today the word avot equally means “ancestors.”
I’ve seen this myself in the Israeli Reform prayer book, which uses the word avot to refer inclusively to Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob, Rachel, and Leah. And although Hebrew is an incredibly gendered language (verbs as well as nouns and adjectives have gender markers), there is very exciting work being done right now to create new, nongendered grammatical forms.
Modern Hebrew is slowly evolving to become a more inclusive language, as Judaism itself continues to evolve toward inclusion. See for instance Transtorah.org and Nonbinaryhebrew.com.
These are exciting developments for me, a rabbi who is a Hebrew grammar nerd and has more than a passing familiarity with ancient Near Eastern texts and cultures outside of ancient Israel. We’ve come a long way!
And yet, the impulse toward equality and inclusion is encoded deeply into our oldest Jewish texts, and my familiarity with this background has proved crucial for the Pirkei Avot class.
One of the things I can say about all the women in the class as that we share a commitment to feminism, variously defined. Reading a text composed by men two millennia ago, generally translated and commented upon by contemporary men, has posed challenges to women who understand themselves to have equal agency and standing in the world with men. I have been able to help the members of this diverse class connect with the text across uncomfortable passages by offering deeper translations, by grounding the text in the context of the world in which it was written, and by bringing passages from other Jewish texts.
It is easy to mistake our assumptions and knowledge about the world for universal truths. Widening our perspective, the website of Keshet, an organization dedicated to promoting LGBTQ equality in Jewish life, discusses the first parashah (portion) of the Torah in which humanity is created. In Genesis (Bereshit) Chapter 2, the Eternal creates Adam and says, “It is not good for Adam to be alone; I will make a fitting helper for him.”
As author and editor Gregg Drinkwater puts it: “When reading Bereshit through a queer lens, you see something different.”the divine plan is still there, with its focus on synergy and the joyous harmony of creation. But where the traditional view finds the climax in the union of a man and a woman, the queer read sees the joining together of Adam and Eve as merely a vehicle for the real end point: love. More specifically, love as tikkun — “as repair and as a solution to the ultimate loneliness of being.”
The Jewish Federation has provided us this opportunity to discuss a traditional Jewish text with the diverse group of women from every perspective. We learned. We prayed. We welcomed each other’s discomfort. We sometimes cried and we often laughed. We have learned from each other with opened eyes and open hearts. When June arrived this year, I’d never been prouder than that June, the month of Pride.
Deb Gordon is rabbi of Troy's Congregation Berith Sholom.