The Torah portion for November 2, 2024 is Noach. The portion includes the stories of Noah’s ark and the tower of Babel and ends with Abraham and Sarai settling in the land of Canaan. In my feminist analysis of Noach, I will focus on the ecofeminist potential of divine acknowledgements and how the divine is portrayed.
As ecofeminists at the intersection with religion, one task we have is to interpret those sacred texts which have something to say about nature and animals. Within Judaism, there are numerous such texts, and parshah Noah is one of them. Afterall, most of Noach revolves around a great flood in which the deity destroys the earth and most of its inhabitants, animal and human.
The divine destruction of the material realm is problematic. The deity blames the divine decision to destroy creation on the rampant corruption of the flesh: human and animal alike (6:13). In feminist thinking, linking material existence to corruption is unsettling since patriarchy often disavows material existence by linking it to evil. In addition, in Noach, an aspect of the material world, water, is used in bringing about that destruction. However, water is also ironically what all flesh depends on for life.
Continue reading “On Noach and its Ecofeminist Potential.”
My birthday was last Wednesday. Perhaps more than any other time of the year (yes, even more than Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur), the days and weeks leading up to my birthday are filled with personal reflection. Not that religious and secular new years don’t give me pause to reflect, but I think the lack of buzz around this personal event seems to offer me more space and time to think.
Feminism and Religion 