The biblical traditions of Miriam the prophetess have captured the imaginations of Bible-readers throughout the ages. Miriam, Moses’ sister, watches over Moses in his cradle (Exodus 2), and leads the Hebrew women in dance at the shore of the Sea of Reeds to celebrate redemption (Exodus 15). Rabbinic lore identifies Miriam with Puah, the midwife who saved Hebrew babies from Pharaoh, and depicts her as the herald of Moses’ birth (Exodus Rabbah 1:13; Babylonian Talmud, Sotah 12a). Contemporary Jewish feminists have established traditions of singing to Miriam the prophetess on Saturday night, parallel to the tradition of singing to Elijah the prophet at that time. It has also become popular among some feminist/egalitarian Jews to place a cup of Miriam on the seder table at the time of Passover. This cup is usually filled with water in order to recall the ancient legend that a well of water followed Miriam through the wilderness, quenching the thirst of the wandering people (cf: Babylonian Talmud, Taanit 9a). It was even said that healing herbs grew near this well, so that Miriam’s prophetic power became a source of healing.
The veneration of Miriam is especially deep in Sephardic Jewish traditions—those Jewish traditions stemming from the Spanish Jewish diaspora, which may be found everywhere from North Africa to Holland to Greece and Bulgaria. Sephardic women used incantations along with various rituals involving salt, herbs, and other substances, as healing for various ailments and troubles; women skilled in these practices were called precanteras or precantadoras. Some of their healing incantations invoke Miriam as the ancestress of all women healers, as in the following prayer:
Continue reading “Miriam the Prophetess as Guardian and Healer by Jill Hammer”
When I came to Goddess, I was in my mid-forties and I suddenly had this huge fire burning in my soul. I felt like I had missed opportunities to practice my “calling” for forty-five years. I finally knew what I was born to do and couldn’t get there fast enough. There was a part of me that felt that, because of my age, I had to hurry up and “get there.” Come to find out, we do not ever “get there!” We are simply always “getting there!”
“Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light.” – Theodore Roethke
Today is Spring Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere, a time to celebrate moving into light and abundance after the darker cold winter. While many of us are lucky enough to have shelter and access to food out of season, this is a time that continues to be a resurrection in countless ways. Not only is it a literal shift from darker days to increasing light, but a symbolic time that allows us to reflect on changes, that while seeming to be hopeless can blossom into new life.
Reflecting on our different choices to “stay or leave” the religions of our upbringings while writing Goddess and God in the World with Judith Plaskow, I was prompted to think again about the social and ethnic structures of denominationalism. One of the things Judith has been saying to me since we began discussing this question years ago, is that for her being Jewish is an identity that deeply affects her choice to stay within her religion.
There is no correlation between difference and danger. Yet, differences are regularly considered threatening. In fact, much of Western society’s patriarchal energy is spent categorizing, controlling, managing and fighting difference. Difference is so ingrained within the psyche that most differences are understood to be antithetical, perhaps even unbridgeable, opposites. Good/bad, black/white, rich/poor, women/men and human/animal are just a few examples. To further amplify this distinction, patriarchy considers one aspect of the difference more valuable than the other. 
Yesterday morning when I learned about the 
A friend recently asked me whether I believed in sin. It was a strange question for me to consider because the concept of “belief” as applied to “sin” already suggests that sin itself is not a self-evident or manifest reality. Considering the question, I had to answer that I didn’t actually believe in sin as an objective ontic something. Hurt, wounds, violence, injustice, suffering – these are objective realities that I have no trouble identifying. It was in naming the contrast or painful human experiences as sin with which I had the difficulty, since sin connotes moral, spiritual, intellectual, or volitional defect or evil. My intuition pushes back against this reading of the suffering the world reflects, at least in the microcosm, the imperfection of creatures, or perhaps better put, animals, and in a best case scenario, animals in process.
Feminism and Religion 