I recently attended an event in Salem, Virginia, put on by The Salem Choral Society titled “People Get Ready,” directed by S. Reed Carter IV. This popular group has sung on numerous occasions locally as well as performing at Carnegie Hall in New York City and the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. The choir (11 men and ~45 women) sang fourteen selections. The song arresting my attention was “People Get Ready.”
From Wikipedia: “‘People Get Ready’ is a 1965 single by the Impressions, the group’s best-known hit, reaching number three on the Billboard R&B chart. The gospel-influenced track was a Curtis Mayfield (1942–1999), American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and record producer. This particular composition displayed [his] growing sense of social and political awareness…. In 2021, Rolling Stone named this song the 122nd greatest song of all time. Martin Luther King Jr. named the song the unofficial anthem of the Civil Rights Movement and often used the song to get people marching or to calm and comfort them.”
~~~ “Supporting neighbours. Protecting communities. Providing supports. Rebuilding lives.” Donna De Jong, Executive Director of The John Howard Society, Hamilton-Burlington, Ontario, Canada. ~~~
I think often about why and how community matters. About joy and justice and hope and healing. And indeed, the importance of spaces such as our own here on FAR, this community of poets, writers, artists, activists, advocates, allies, academics. Each whose choice to put pen to page, affords light and life to throb and to thrive.
This post was originally published on Aug. 6th, 2012
There is a strong thread of fatalism in modern Greek culture that has been a powerfully healing antidote to my American upbringing in the culture of “I think I can, I can.” When confronted with an obstacle, many Greeks throw up their hands, raise their eyebrows, and say, “What can we do?” This phrase is not an opening toward change, but a closing–an acknowledgment that there are many things in life that are not under our control.
In American culture we are taught that if we work hard enough, we can achieve our goals. This view can bring a light of possibility into fatalistic cultures. The truth, however, lies somewhere in the middle–between fatalism and belief in the power of individual or collective will.
I met with a new friend/colleague of mine this past week. We were discussing the election results, and I was discussing the work I do in the field of religion. Living and teaching in Central Europe, I have quite a lot of experience navigating the study of religion in a place that is quite atheist and/or actually anti-religion. In fact, it has been somewhat of a struggle to have the study program, Gender Studies, in which I teach, recognize its importance. Many of my colleagues, I think, are under the impression that religion is personally not important and/or just not that important in general. Yet, as I have mentioned here, and as my new friend brought up as we sat over coffee, religion underpins so many aspects of our patriarchal society.
There’s this boy band I’m a little obsessed with. Try to love me. I know some of their early stuff has the toxic masculinity you’d expect from a group of teenage boys. But not only do they openly admit their faults, they keep learning and trying to do better. They’ve really matured as artists, with a genuine desire to help make the world a better place. They sing about love, and female empowerment; loneliness, social justice, and inclusion. And even though they’re from another country and culture, I love listening to them, and it’s fun to get to know them through their interviews and little jokes.
Grounded in an ancient theodicy, Ki Tavo (Deutoronomy 26:1-29:8), the Torah portion for September 17th, is an emotional rollercoaster. In it, the Israelites find their lot in life directly linked to their own behavior. Follow the commandments to gain blessing; ignore them at your own peril. While the commandments listed here are laudable from a feminist perspective, the deity’s response to non-concompliance is problematic. It is full of victim-blaming and empty of compassion. Furthermore, Ki Tavo’s portrayal of divine expectations leaves no room for human nature to actually be anything other than complete perfection. This is unacceptable.
As should sound familiar to the reader by now, Ki Tavo speaks to a specific historical context: the Babylonian exile. As we are aware, the typical theodicy of the Babylonian exile places blame for the Israelites’ lot in life on the Israelites themselves, specifically on how their behavior (or their ancestors’ behavior) has warranted divine punishment. In other words, the Isrealites have not observed the commandments and thus deserve what is happening to them. This justifies an understanding of the divine as vengeful, spiteful, jealous, and victim-blaming.
That being said, what exactly happens in Ki Tavo? Ki Tavo, also like many Torah portions, discusses commandment observance. From a feminist perspective, the portion rightly focuses its description of the commandments on justice and fairness within the community (27:16-25) as well as care for the widow, stranger, orphan, the poor, and the disenfranchised (26:12-13, 27:18-19). Its interpretation of the commandments seem to be truly about how, according to its time, a community, that puts the downtrodden and outcast first, should function. These are generally good principles.
Taken by author.
Ki Tavo then lists, in varying degrees of specificity, what happens to the Israelites when and if they observe the commandments. If they heed the commandments, they receive abundant blessings. These blessings focus on material, this-worldly rewards (28:3-13). Most offer abundant crops, flowing, deep rivers, good bread, fertility of human and animal, and rain, while, unfortunately, there are a few which mention blessings in terms of gaining power-over and, thus, influence. (Here it is impossible to give specific verse references as many verses have a combination of material blessings and less tangible, power-focused ones.)
When the Isrealites fail to heed the commandments, they incur divine wrath. This is depicted in Ki Tavo as curses or cursing. The curses are sometimes quite mundane and other times absolutely disturbing. There are the typical droughts (28:22, 24), plagues (28:22, 38-39, 42), diseases (28:22, 27-28, 35, 59-61), wars (28:49-53) and so on.
And, then, there are some not-so-common curses. One intriguing curse is exile, which forces the Israelites to practice idolatry (28:36). Interestingly, here idolatry is not a breaking of the commandments, but a punishment for doing so (28:36). Exile signifies the physical breakdown of the group, while idolatry distances that same group from their covenantal relationship with their chosen deity (28:64). They are not a people any longer as they live in foreign lands and worship different gods.
The uncommon curses go one step further and remove any semblance of the Israelites’ humanity through cannibalism. In Ki Tavo, this is a result of war. The deity wages a vicious war against the disobeying Israelites, using other humans (28:57). Their cities are so mercilessly besieged to the point that the people completely run out of food. With nowhere else to turn, they are forced to resort to cannibalism (28:53). Even the most gentle and well-behaved man and woman becomes, when this happens, cannibals (28:53-55), eating their own children to survive.
Yet, who is to blame for the death of their community and their own inhumanity? The deity who punishes? No. Ki Tavo makes it clear that it is the Isrealites themselves. By punishing the Israelites’ non-observance, the deity is only being faithful to the established covenant to which both parties freely agreed. This victim-blaming might have made sense of the Babylonian exile for those who were living through it, but it is also clearly a product of patriarchy. Back then victim-blaming justified war and disease. Now, it condones such practices as domestic violence, rape, and various manifestations of power-over. It is problematic because it does not acknowledge who is most often truly at fault: other, more powerful, humans.
Ki Tavo also paints a one-sided picture of divine understanding when it comes to good and evil. There is either goodness (in Ki Tavo, observance) and blessings or evil (non-observance) and curses. There is no middle ground, no explanation, and certainly no compassion.
This lack of divine compassion is what bothers me the most in Ki Tavo. Even though humans are divine creations, the writers of the Torah have depicted the Creator as so disconnected from creation that there is no compassion and no understanding of humanity, only sheer anger and divine wrath. According to Ki Tavo, our Creator is more than willing to shattered the community, our relationship with the divine, and even our own humanity than practice forgiveness and mercy.
Thank goodness that the Jewish tradition’s understanding of the divine does not stop at Ki Tavo. Rather, Jewish tradition teaches us that we, in the covenant, have partnered with the divine who understands us, showers us with compassion and mercy, and does indeed forgive us (when we don’t always behave as we should). We have a faithful deity who is abundant in goodness and rarely upset or disappointed. We can put our hope and our faith in the goodness of the Holy.
As we enter the High Holy Days, may Ki Tavo’s understanding of the divine as wrathful, angry, destructive, and vindictive stay in the past where it belongs. In this new year, may Compassion embrace us, gifting us with a sacred empathy for others and also for ourselves. May mercy and goodness be with us this year and all the days of our lives. And, may the world and our hearts be at peace.
L’shana tova umetukah! (For good and sweet year!)
Ivy Helman, Ph.D.:A feminist scholar and faculty member at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic where she teaches a variety of Jewish Studies, Feminist and Ecofeminist courses.
Moderator’s note: This marvelous FAR site has been running for 10 years and has had more than 3,600 posts in that time. There are so many treasures that have been posted in this decade that they tend to get lost in the archives. We have created this column so that we can all revisit some of these gems. Today’s blogpost was originally posted August 2, 2015. You can visit it here to see the original comments.
It’s one of my favorite T-shirts. Every time I wear it, people who know who Durga is comment. So do some people who don’t know who the Hindu goddess is.
“What would Durga do?” is of course an echo of the question What would Jesus Do?
I’ve just done a bit of research and learned that this phrase may come from the Middle Ages, that it was famously used in a sermon in about 1891, and that it became very popular among evangelical Christians during the 1990s. What would Jesus do? I think he’d remind us to pay closer attention to the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5, 6, 7), especially the Beatitudes and the Golden Rule: “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them” (Matt.: 7:12). The Golden Rule is of course given in the other major religions, too. WWJD has also been turned into WWBD—“What would Buddha do?” I think the Buddha would tell us to live more mindfully.
I wanted to pull myself away from the ugliness out there and take time to honor the Egyptian Goddess, Isis, as Her birthday is recognized to be in the latter part of July. My husband, Roy, and I formed the Isis Ancient Cultures Society and the Iseum of Isis Navigatum, in Los Angeles, sometime ago and for more than a decade, in Her name, we sponsored Moon Circles to promote diversity, Salons to teach, and we put out a quarterly newsletter when you still had to fold and mail them – remember that? But the premier events every year were the Isis Birthday Tea and the Isis Navigatum or Festival of Isis, every March. Our aim was to reconstruct Isis rituals in a modern context and make them relevant for today.
We put on the Isis Tea in prestigious locations like aboard the Queen Mary and the Isis Navigatum in various public locations including The Japanese Gardens, in the San Fernando Valley, and on the beach on Point Dume, in Malibu, California. So detailed were our events, sometimes the public joined us thinking we were a movie crew and our organization was written about by a anthropologist/folklorist citing the detail and depth of the material culture of contemporary Isian devotees.
This week’s Torah portion is Vayikra (Leviticus 1:1 – 5:26). Vayikra is essentially one long discourse on animal sacrifice with an occasional grain or oil offering included. This killing of animals, their subsequent burning and the shared eating of their flesh was the predominate way deities were worshipped in ancient Canaan. It was believed that the smell of cooking meat appeased the gods and most importantly stifled their anger. It is no wonder then that the ancient Israelites so integrated within the surrounding culture adopted similar methods of worship.
Yet, there was always present within Israelite society a minority opinion that the deity didn’t desire sacrifice. The prophets, who strived to create the most just society possible, often said that sacrifice had little effect. Sometimes they even suggested that the divine has never requested sacrifices, such as in Jeremiah 7:22 which says, “For neither did I speak with your forefathers nor did I command them on the day I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning a burnt offering or a sacrifice.” Yet, most of the time, the prophets argue that what is most important is how one behaves and the type of society the Israelites create more so than the offering of sacrifices. Prime examples of this line of thinking are the prophet Amos (5:14-15 and 21-24), Isaiah (1:11-17 and 27), Hosea (6:6), Micah (6:6-8) and Jeremiah (6:20). Continue reading “Vayikra: No Temple Required by Ivy Helman”
This week’s Torah portion is Vayikra (Leviticus 1:1 – 5:26). Vayikra is essentially one long discourse on animal sacrifice with an occasional grain or oil offering included. This killing of animals, their subsequent burning and the shared eating of their flesh was the predominate way deities were worshipped in ancient Canaan. It was believed that the smell of cooking meat appeased the gods and most importantly stifled their anger. It is no wonder then that the ancient Israelites so integrated within the surrounding culture adopted similar methods of worship.
Feminism and Religion 