{"id":28231,"date":"2018-03-23T03:47:35","date_gmt":"2018-03-23T10:47:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=28231"},"modified":"2018-03-22T15:42:35","modified_gmt":"2018-03-22T22:42:35","slug":"transforming-judaism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2018\/03\/23\/transforming-judaism\/","title":{"rendered":"Transforming Judaism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rabbi Benay Lappe, founder and rosh yeshivah of Svara, in Chicago, taught Talmud at Congregation Or Shalom earlier this month. (photo from Or Shalom)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFor all you straight folks, let me tell you \u2013 you\u2019re all queer. Your job is to find that queer part of you, wear it on you, walk it through the world. That\u2019s how the world changes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rabbi Benay Lappe, founder and rosh yeshivah of Chicago\u2019s Svara: A Traditionally Radical Yeshivah, made this observation during a lecture at Congregation Or Shalom on March 10. Lappe is a passionate and unique teacher of Talmud, who is \u201cdedicated to bringing the Talmud to the 99%,\u201d meaning the majority of Jews who do not study it.<\/p>\n

As Lappe explained at Or Shalom, there are three kinds of queer. The first refers to, as she put it, \u201cme, a lesbian woman, and other people with non-heteronormative sexualities or folks who are trans or non-gender-conforming. The second refers to those who ally themselves with queers, embracing queer culture and rights. The third category is someone profoundly \u2018othered\u2019 or marginalized, who owns that experience and walks it through the world as a critique to the mainstream.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is in the third sense of the word that Lappe addressed the audience. \u201cThe rabbis who wrote the Talmud were a small group of queer, fringey people,\u201d she said, explaining that the talmudic sages were a small group of Jews who responded to a time of crisis in Jewish history with radical creativity. When the Temple was destroyed after centuries of colonization at the hands of the Romans, only one group was poised to respond effectively \u2013 the sages who wrote the Mishnah, and their spiritual descendants, who later wrote the Talmud. \u201cWhen the master story doesn\u2019t work anymore,\u201d said Lappe, \u201cit matters how you respond.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Lappe, for the Jews of that time, some retreated into the old story and built walls around it, many abandoned the Jewish story and assimilated, and a small group remained faithful to the Torah while radically transforming and updating it. The Talmud, she explained, records for posterity how the rabbis evolved Judaism. \u201cThe rabbis knew that master stories change,\u201d she said, \u201cand they encoded a set of mechanisms into their new master story that enabled constant change.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a>
(photo from Or Shalom)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The \u201cnew master story\u201d is embedded in the Talmud, which was updated to reflect changing moral and social sensibilities. It shifted Judaism from a Temple-based religion practised in Israel to a home- and synagogue-based one founded on a communal and personal discipline of halachah<\/em> (Jewish law) that could be practised anywhere. Lappe believes that, through studying the Talmud in a non-fundamentalist way, in a way that gives primacy to the power of our reason and moral intuition in confrontation with the text, we can learn lessons for how to transform and vitalize Judaism today. (Reason<\/em> is \u201csvara\u201d in Aramaic, the name of her yeshivah.)<\/p>\n

According to Lappe, Judaism is once again going through what she calls a \u201ccrash,\u201d a shattering of its master story, and the study of Talmud provides us with case studies in how to respond.<\/p>\n

Lappe has an enthusiastic supporter in Or Shalom\u2019s Rabbi Hannah Dresner.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have known Rabbi Benay for many years; we shared a spiritual community in Chicago,\u201d said Dresner. \u201cShe is fun and funny and tough and with the quickest mind. Her crash theory is a different languaging of Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi\u2019s theory of paradigm- shifted halachah. This is based on the truth that halachah, as a path, is meant to evolve and move forward, alive in the pilpul<\/em>, in the wrestling of how we can enact Torah now, in our authenticity.\u201d (Schachter-Shalomi is the founder of the Jewish Renewal movement to which Or Shalom belongs.)<\/p>\n

\u201cI always thought I was at the margins of Judaism, being a queer Jewish woman,\u201d said Alicia Jane Fridkin, who attended the weekend teachings. \u201cRabbi Benay helped me to realize that queer people are not at the margins: we are at the forefront of an ever-changing religion. She illustrated how each era of Judaism began with radical Jews who sought to practise in new and meaningful ways, including the era of rabbinical Judaism that we have been practising for the past 2,000 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fridkin added, \u201cI immediately blocked off the dates in my calendar for Queer Talmud Camp at her yeshivah, Svara, which I hope to attend this summer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Matthew Gindin<\/strong> is a freelance journalist, writer and lecturer. He writes regularly for the <\/em>Forward and <\/em>All That Is Interesting, and has been published in <\/em>Religion Dispatches, <\/em>Situate Magazine, <\/em>Tikkun and elsewhere. He can be found on Medium and Twitter.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rabbi Benay Lappe, founder and rosh yeshivah of Svara, in Chicago, taught Talmud at Congregation Or Shalom earlier this month. (photo from Or Shalom) \u201cFor all you straight folks, let me tell you \u2013 you\u2019re all queer. Your job is to find that queer part of you, wear it on you, walk it through the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28182,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[7972,3076,218,1384,22,2231],"class_list":["post-28231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","tag-benay-lappe","tag-education","tag-judaism","tag-lgbtq","tag-or-shalom","tag-talmud"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28231\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}