Tag: Jill Hammer

The Kreismesser: Women and Magic Swords in Jewish Tradition by Jill Hammer

I have always had a particular fascination with women warriors—particularly ancient and medieval ones.  Joan of Arc was a favorite, as was Artemis, Greek goddess of the hunt. My father had a sword from Spain hanging on his wall in his study and I used to stare at it with curiosity and longing—and once even took it off the wall when a babysitter’s boyfriend scared me. Later on, I learned about the women warriors of Dahomey in West Africa, Mu Lan Hua of China, and the Scythian women who were the real-life inspiration for the legend of the Amazon.  The story of Durga, the warrior goddess of India who combats demonic forces and destroys illusion, also compelled me. I think, having felt under siege from relatives and schoolmates early in my life, the image of the woman warrior made me feel safer, even if in real life, my college karate class made me feel uncomfortable.

In my own tradition, I explored the biblical character of Devorah, the prophetess and tribal leader who directed the Israelites in battle.  Then I discovered the apocryphal Judith, who defended her city of Bethulia by cutting off the enemy general’s head–Judith is celebrated in art in a variety of European paintings and on Chanukah menorahs.  Judith is also celebrated during the North African Jewish holiday ritual of Chag haBanot or Eid Al-Banat—the Festival of the Daughters, a day that honors women and girls.  In addition to these legendary women, I was moved by other, non-legendary women who fought for justice and their people in a variety of ways.   Continue reading “The Kreismesser: Women and Magic Swords in Jewish Tradition by Jill Hammer”

The Holy of Holies and the Umbilical Cord: The Evolution of a Ritual Object by Jill Hammer

In the Jewish calendar, we’re just past the holiday season—the High Holidays, the harvest festival of Sukkot, and the concluding festival of Simchat Torah when the last verses of the Torah are read and the first verses are started again. The Torah readings for these holidays speak often of the offerings once made on the altar in the Tabernacle in celebration of these festivals.  Particularly on Yom Kippur, the readings mention the kodesh kodashim: the holy of holies. This enclosed sacred space contained, according to legend: the tablets of the Commandments inside an ark, topped by two cherubim that held up an empty space between them—an empty space understood to be the amplified presence of an invisible God.  As I think back over my powerful summer, which was largely spent with Jewish priestesses on various retreats and adventures (in Connecticut, Mississippi, California, Costa Rica, England and Scotland), I am thinking about a unique ritual object we use, and realizing that in its own way, it is a kind of Holy of Holies.

Continue reading “The Holy of Holies and the Umbilical Cord: The Evolution of a Ritual Object by Jill Hammer”

The Prophetess: Greta Thunberg, Global Warming, and the Legacy of Prophecy in Our Own Day by Jill Hammer

My community and many others have been watching in awe as Greta Thunberg makes waves around the world—her lone climate change protest in Sweden growing in a single year into a climate strike with millions of demonstrators around the world.  Of course, Greta isn’t asking us to listen to her.  She is asking us to listen to the science that will save us.  And Greta is not alone: there are young indigenous female protesters like performance poet and peace activist Lyla June Johnston of the Dine (Navajo) and Tsetsehestahese (Cheyenne) peoples and water protector Autumn Peltier of the Anishnaabe people, who are speaking before the UN and in other public settings about global warming, and revitalizing our spiritual relationship with Mother Earth. Yet Greta knows that her fame (and her youth) gives her a platform. She is conscientiously using that platform to testify before Congress and the UN, Tweet, post on Facebook, and do whatever else she can do to make an impact.  Recently, I’ve noticed that some people in my home Jewish community, when they post about Greta on social media, have given her a nickname: they call her “the prophetess.”

This appellation has deep history.  The Hebrew word for prophet is navi, and the word for prophetess is neviah. These words come from the root nun-bet-alef which means to announce or proclaim.  At one event I attended, a woman enacting the role of a prophetess announced: “I am God’s microphone,” and that is what a navi or neviah does: amplify the voice of the sacred. Continue reading “The Prophetess: Greta Thunberg, Global Warming, and the Legacy of Prophecy in Our Own Day by Jill Hammer”

Sappho’s Poems as an Ethos for Women’s Ritual by Jill Hammer

Photo by: Zac Jaffe

For by my side you put on

many wreaths of roses

and garlands of flowers

around your soft neck

 

and with precious and royal perfume

you anointed yourself.

 

On soft beds you satisfied your passion.

 

And there was no dance

no holy place

from which we were absent.

 

–Sappho (trans. Julia Dubnoff)

 

Sappho, the poet from Lesbos (630-570 BCE), was considered one of the greatest poets of her time—one of her epithets was “the tenth Muse.” I discovered the poems of Sappho in my thirties and was utterly captivated.  I had newly embarked on a relationship with a woman and Sappho’s love poetry (though by no means exclusively lesbian) supported the expression of eros between women.  Yet even more than that, Sappho’s poems supported an erotic relationship between self and world—a relationship that included ritual as a form of intimacy.  I’m not a Greek scholar—I experience Sappho’s poems in translation. Yet the translations I read back then were a revelation: a world in which women lived in circle with one another.

Continue reading “Sappho’s Poems as an Ethos for Women’s Ritual by Jill Hammer”

Spring Blossoming: The Holy Orchard as Goddess by Jill Hammer

Every year when the cherries, pears, plums, and apple trees begin to bloom, I go out walking.  I look for every spot in my vicinity where white and pink blossoms are blooming in exquisite profusion like foam on an ocean. Every year I take photographs, even though I already have so many.  I walk at every hour of the day because, as the light changes, the colors change. I have albums and albums of pictures of my beloveds, the trees.

For me, the apple and cherry trees are a manifestation of Goddess.  Of course, everything is a manifestation of Goddess, but these, for me, have an extra measure of that life-giving beauty and abundance I associate with the indwelling Presence in the cosmos.  My enjoyment of the blossoms is both a sensual appreciation of the gorgeousness of Being and a poignant awareness that they will not last forever.  Sometimes these glories manifest for me as feminine, sometimes as masculine, and sometimes just as Life itself.

 

Continue reading “Spring Blossoming: The Holy Orchard as Goddess by Jill Hammer”

Tree of Life: The Festival of the Trees in an Age of Treefall by Jill Hammer

Almost every day, I walk in Central Park.  There are certain trees there I’ve come to know: the gnarled cherry trees by the reservoir, the bending willows and tall bald cypress by the pond, the sycamores that drop their bark each summer, the hawthorn not far from Central Park West.  Lately I’ve been taking photos of the trees to try to capture their essence, their posture in the world.  The trees around me feel like friends, which is what an ancient midrash (interpretation/legend) called Genesis Rabbah says about trees: that they are friends to humankind.  To me, they’ve always been a central manifestation of Mother Earth.

Currently, the national parks in the United States have no staff because of the government shutdown. Some people have taken the opportunity to cut down the rare and endangered Joshua trees in the Joshua Tree National Park—just for fun, I guess, or as a trophy of some kind.  Meanwhile, President Bolsonaro of Brazil recently has indicted that he wants to remove protection for the rainforest, in order to allow development.  It appears that my friends the trees have enemies.  Sometimes the enmity is for personal/corporate gain, and sometimes the enmity seems to have no reason at all.

Continue reading “Tree of Life: The Festival of the Trees in an Age of Treefall by Jill Hammer”

Jewish Hair, Witch Hair, and the Problem of Identity by Jill Hammer

This is a time of increased vulnerability for many minority populations in the United States: people of color, immigrants, LGBT people, native peoples. The policies and rhetoric of the current administration have left all these groups exposed to hostility.  Women are also feeling the pressure, as the gender split in voting in the past election suggests. And, Jews also are facing increased visibility.  In addition to the murders in Pittsburgh, anti-Semitic incidents around the country have increased in the last few years.  All this has me thinking about visibility, chosen and unchosen.

My father, an Ashkenazi Jew with curly black hair, green eyes and dark skin, came from an immigrant family that arrived here in the early 20th century from the region of Poland known as Galicia.  His mother in particular valued assimilation into American identity, and prized blond hair as a sign of this identity– she in fact later dyed her black hair blond.  His aunt had blond hair and it was considered a family coup.  (There’s much to say here about developing an assumed American identity of whiteness, as well as the presumption of Christianity.) When I was a little girl, I had blond hair and blue eyes.  My father used to call me his blond-haired, blue-eyed girl.

“No,” I would insist.  “My hair is brown and my eyes are green.” Continue reading “Jewish Hair, Witch Hair, and the Problem of Identity by Jill Hammer”

Challenging Christian Feminists to Re-Imagine the Goddess by Carol P. Christ

From the 1993 Re-Imagining Conference:

Our mother Sophia, we are women in your image:
With the hot blood of our wombs we give form to new life.
With the courage of our convictions we pour out our life blood for justice.
Sophia-God, Creator-God
let your milk and honey pour out,
showering us with your nourishment.

From my reflections on the Re-Imagining Conference presented at Hamline University on Novemeber 1, 2018:

One reason the creative re-imagining of God as female has not taken hold in churches and synagogues is fear of paganism and the Goddess. The creators of the Re-Imagining Sophia ritual took great care to guard against this charge by connecting it to Bible and tradition. Commenting on the reasons for the backlash against the Re-Imaging Conference, Sylvia Thorson-Smith stated:

One was the liturgical use of the biblical image of Sophia – but blown up as evidence of Goddess worship. Second was the milk and honey ritual – an ancient part of early Christianity, but attacked as a pagan substitute for communion.

While I understand her reasons for doing so, “the lady doth protest too much, methinks.” Continue reading “Challenging Christian Feminists to Re-Imagine the Goddess by Carol P. Christ”

Michal the Priestess: Midrash, Multiplicity, and the Tales of King David by Jill Hammer

When I was in my late teens, I discovered midrash: the Jewish exegetical process by which commentators weave creative and additive interpretations into the sacred text.  Midrash comes from the word “to ask,” “to seek,” or “to divine.” For example, the tale in which a well follows the prophetess Miriam through the wilderness is an ancient midrash. The story in which God stops the angels from singing as the Egyptians drown in the Sea of Reeds is a midrash. Each of these stories derives from a particular close reading of text, whether a Torah text or a verse elsewhere in the Bible.  Each of them allows a new generation to add its own perspectives to the tradition.

Contemporary feminists, and many other contemporary artists, writers, and exegetes, have used a modern form of midrash to add liberatory perspectives to Jewish tradition and to biblical lore.  From Miriam to Vashti, female biblical characters shine in the creative interpretations of feminist midrashists.  Judith Plaskow’s “The Coming of Lilith” made a huge impact on the reading of the story of Eve and the legend of Lilith. Anita Diamant’s The Red Tent changed the conversation on Dinah forever. Alicia Ostriker, Norma Rosen, Veronica Golos, and many others have joined in this creative play which highlights marginalized voices within the text.  Wilda Gafney has made contributions to a Christian and womanist form of midrash.  Voices like Andrew Ramer and Joy Ladin have invited us to see queer and trans themes in the text. And of course many others, from poet Yehuda Amichai to bibliodramatist Peter Pitzele, have added to this rich tapestry.

Continue reading “Michal the Priestess: Midrash, Multiplicity, and the Tales of King David by Jill Hammer”

The Thirteen Attributes of Shekhinah: A Prayer for the High Holidays by Jill Hammer

On Rosh haShanah and Yom Kippur (the Jewish New Year and the Day of Atonement), and on the festivals throughout the year, traditional Jewish liturgy includes the Thirteen Attributes of the Divine. Exodus 34:6-7 is the first to mention these thirteen attributes, or thirteen names really, for God.  This Rosh haShanah, as part of my work as a creative liturgist, I offered a new meditation on these thirteen attributes, dedicated to the Shekhinah, the Divine Presence.

In the biblical story, Moses asks God to show him God’s face, and God’s response is that Moses cannot see God’s face but “I will make all My goodness pass before you.” God hides Moses in the cleft of a rock, passes by the cleft, and recites the following:  YHWH, YHWH, compassionate and gracious, patient, abundant in kindness and truth, extending kindness to the thousandth generation, forgiving mistakes, and cleansing…”  The liturgy actually cuts off the rest of the text, which is harsher, in favor of retaining the loving divine attributes. At the new year, when the liturgy invites us to reflect, consider our actions, and acknowledge the brevity of our lives, Jews recite the text as a prayer to invoke God’s mercy.

Thirteen is a somewhat uncommon sacred number in Jewish tradition (seven, ten, and twelve are more common), but it’s a frequent sacred number in my practice.  In my spiritual tradition, at the Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute, we place at the core of our work thirteen netivot, or paths, of sacred action.  We also call them the “archetypes,” the “priestess paths,” or “the paths of Shekhinah.” Each of these paths—maiden, midwife, prophetess, mother, wise woman, shrinekeeper, lover, weaver, etc.– comes from an ancient way in which women embodied the sacred.  As a community, we use these paths as a guide for how to serve the sacred and one another, and we also understand them as faces of Goddess. Continue reading “The Thirteen Attributes of Shekhinah: A Prayer for the High Holidays by Jill Hammer”