Despite all of the ways Western society has separated the spiritual pursuit from the material and deemed spirituality superior to physicality, the religious holiday of Pesach doesn’t. In fact, it is the physical liberation of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt that starts them on their path toward the covenant and an even deeper spiritual connection to the divine. The Exodus story overflows with images, tales and situations in which: bodies are not ignored; nourishment, comfort and care is addressed spiritually as well as physically and the divine’s spiritual gift, so to speak, to the Israelites is not some other-worldly paradise but a this-worldly land flowing with milk and honey.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that the story is perfect: it is replete with war, murder, militarism, forms of colonialism and other manifestations of patriarchal violence. Patriarchal influences encourage androcentric tellings of events and sexism as well. Three examples are the all-male priesthood, the tenth plague “death of the first-born” (of course the only first born that counts are boy children), and the over-the-top covenantal concern about women as menstruators, adulterers, untrustworthy and so on. These aspects are important to acknowledge and critique, but we cannot stop there. We must cherish the story for its insights as well. Continue reading “Pesach, Toilets, and Clean, Local Water: Seemingly Mundane Yet Necessary Components of an Embodied Liberation by Ivy Helman”
Feminism and Religion 