About six months ago I was hired to write a curriculum for a Jewish organization on biblical women in ancient and contemporary midrash. Midrash—the ancient process of creative interpretation of sacred text that began two thousand years ago and continues to this day—has been one of my fields of expertise, and women in midrash is a particular specialty. I knew the first lesson I wrote would be on Eve (Chava in Hebrew), the first woman of Genesis. Yet as I began to write lessons, I started with Sarah and Hagar, then proceeded to Rebekah and Lot’s wife, Rachel and Leah, even Asnat (Joseph’s wife) and Naamah (Noah’s wife). It became clear over the months that I was avoiding Eve. Whenever I began to think about beginning “her” lesson, I grew anxious and immediately began to think of something else. Only when I had already written six of my ten lessons did I finally, reluctantly, begin to research ancient legends and modern feminist poems on the first foremother of the Bible.
Why was I avoiding Eve? In part, because she seemed like such a huge topic. Generations of Jews (and, of course, Christians) have had a great deal to say about Eve, her creation, the fruit of knowledge, the serpent, Eve’s relationship with Adam, and more. How would I encapsulate it all? And then there was Lilith, Eve’s alter ego, and all of the legends about her. Choosing a handful of midrashim out of this vast corpus seemed impossible. Plus, there was a whole literature about the relationship between Eve and ancient Near Eastern myth I wanted to allude to—Eve as a kind of human version of the Goddess with her Tree. How to choose what to put in and what to leave out? Continue reading “Eve, Revisited by Jill Hammer”
— for Alex, a nurse I met who is also a poet, and all nurses
When I wrote Murder at the Rummage Sale, my agent warned: “You have to have a sequel in mind!” I was supposed to write a second domestic cozy, same setting, same characters, different victim. But what came to mind was a memory. When I was a troubled teen visiting England, my uncle gave me a map and let me go sightseeing in London on my own. It was early winter 1968, the war in Vietnam was raging. I did not want to be an American; so I faked an accent, wore an eccentric hat, and called myself Eliza Doolittle. When a man picked me up, I did not know how to break out of character. I ended up drunk in his flat. I just managed to fight off rape. The man must have figured out that I didn’t add up and could land him in trouble. He took me back to my uncle’s office. The kernel for All the Perils of this Night is: what if he hadn’t? What if, like so many others, I had been trafficked? I couldn’t shake that “what if.” So I wrote the standalone sequel, no domestic cozy but what I would call a numinous thriller. 
I woke up this morning with a terrible itch in my mind. I want to sue the government. I’m not a lawyer, at least not yet, and I know that governments have sovereign immunity that typically prevents them from being sued. But, it didn’t and doesn’t seem right that I feel so lied to and unprotected during this pandemic. What is more, I know I am not deluded. Either it is bad or it isn’t. Either it is spreading and lethal, or it isn’t. Either precautions help, or they don’t. It can’t be that ambiguous from a viral-behavioral perspective. Government leadership refuses to speak or model a consistent, truthful, and accountable model for the social welfare, leading to such absurd reductions (in Ohio, for example) as that each individual school child can decide whether s/he wants to wear a face-covering this fall. So, what gives? Why all the half-, mixed, mis-, and disinformation?
For the past four Sunday afternoons, I’ve walked along Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia, to observe firsthand the changes happening to the statues of Confederate generals placed there a century or so ago. I focus here on the Robert E. Lee statue. Robert E. Lee (1807-1870) “…was an American Confederate general best known as a commander of the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War” (Wikipedia). These days, Lee’s statue seems to be home base for activists who are working diligently to keep protests and demonstrations ongoing, yet peaceful.
“I think you should take medication for anxiety.”
Sara is a naturalist, ethologist ( a person who studies animals in their natural habitats) (former) Jungian Pattern Analyst, and a writer. She publishes her work regularly in a number of different venues and is presently living in Maine.
As Pride Month and Black Lives Matter protests co-exist, the spirituality of queer women of color teaches white allies how to listen.
Feminism and Religion 