Tag: historical figures

We gathered for our penultimate session of the Bilhah and Zilpah homecoming. Today we grounded our welcome by naming historical or biblical figures who have been meaningful in our lives, sharing a bit on the lessons we have learned from them. Audre Lorde (1934-1992), Shifra & Puah (Exodus 1:17-19), Judith (Judith 13:10-12), Colin Ward (1924-2010), and Eartha White (1876-1974) were named. We also continued our tradition of inviting in the memories of ancestors fueling our learning: the persistence and resilience of a maternal grandfather to overcome fear; and Mi’kMaq great and great grandmothers, who were very fierce tenacious women, connected with during an ancestorial homeland visit to Newfoundland (Ktaqmkuk), Canada were brought in to support and enhance our learning…

Our recap of the first three parshiot of Bilhah’s and Zilpah’s homecoming, Vayeitzei, Vayishlakh, and Vayeshev, was offered before bringing in the stories of the upcoming parasha Miketz. On the surface, these portions tell the story of Yaakov leaving home, to save his life from the wrath of his brother Esav and seek a wife, ultimately acquiring four wives which is how we meet Zilpah and Bilhah. It is the tale of sending gifts to appease a brother heading his way accompanied by four-hundred men that sweetly resolves in a joyful reunion and an invitation for Yaakov to join Esav in Seir that is refused in lieu of Shekhem and the rape of Dinah. It is a story of settling down in a father’s homeland, raising a family, and mourning the ‘death’ of a favorite son; with a full chapter interlude of the righteous insistence of Tamar to have children, before returning back to Egypt where a very much alive Yosef has been sent to the dungeon for refusing the sexual advances of a wife with a powerful husband. The narrative will continue this coming Shabbat with Yosef freed by his ability to interpret dreams for a confounded Pharoah and the suggestions made that protect (and enrich) Egypt from the same famine that ultimately reunites Yosef with his family.

All that might be added to expound the single run-on sentence parshiot summaries would be details nuancing the broad brush strokes painted above. The call to center Bilhah and Zilpah invited closer consideration of ways to bring them in, especially in a portion which does not invoke either character. This offered opportunity to build on previous study and interpretations for reading solidarity between Bilhah and Zilpah with Leah and Dinah. This insight with Leah comes during Lavan’s search for his idols in the mountains of Gilad (Breishit 31:33) with it’s odd ordering of entering Leah’s tent, entering the shared tent of the two enslaved, and then exiting Leah’s tent before entering Rachel’s tent. Could Leah’s sense of herself as a second-class first-wife induce empathy with the second-wife realities of Zilpah and Bilhah? The invitation to envision solidarity with Dinah lies in Bilhah and Zilpah, as women who navigated orchestrated sexual control by others, witnessing the consequences endured by Dinah after her rape by Shekhem followed by her brothers deciding the fate of so many.

Beyond these primary female characters of Leah and Dinah, we looked at other women, some named and others merely noted, who existed within Vayeitzei, Vayishlakh, and Vayeshev. Miketz offered another chance to explore other women within the text, there was only one, Asnat who was given as a wife to Yosef. So, Bilhah and Zilphah entreated looking at the transitions between the narratives of women across the parshiot where they dwell, whispering to go back and include Toldot as a foundation. It is easy to miss this sequencing of matriarchal stories operating the background because of the focus on completing the full set of twelve sons that become the Israelites and in setting up the Jewish foundational narrative of being betrayed and enslaved by Pharoah. We had quite the spirited conversation of the archetypal messages subconsciously conveyed about women’s purpose and place, and the conditions under which autonomy of action by women is interpreted as righteous or wrong.

Our conversation introduced Modern Matriarchs which considers the stories of historical women alongside Bilhah and Zilpah. Modern Matriarchs grew out of understanding Bilhah and Zilpah as surviving lack of bodily autonomy amid their voices being silenced, a reality of many women today, if not all women to varying degrees. Bilhah and Zilpah have a lot to teach about navigating oppressive conditions. Connecting biblical wisdom with the secular insight of other women who survived kindred realities emerged as a powerful framework. The list started with Lucy, Anarcha, and Betsey (the women who made modern gynecology possible between 1845-1849); Nancy, Mary, and Lizzie (two enslaved sisters and a third enslaved woman married to the same man in 1855); Emma, Carrie, and Vivian Buck (three generations of women sacrificed to legislate control over women’s womb’s which came to a head in 1927); and Henrietta Lacks (whose cells made modern drug testing and development possible in the 1950s); women largely controlled in medical settings.

We met modern matriarch Recy Taylor (1919-2017) whose yartzeit is December 28. Recy was a twenty-four year old mother of one when she was abducted at gunpoint by seven men & raped by six in 1944, while walking home from church with another woman and the woman’s son. A car had passed several times that evening as the trio navigated along peanut plantations lining the highway in Abbeville, Alabama. Recy was forced inside the car by men armed with knives and guns, claiming they had been deputized to bring in an assailant who cut a white boy. Recy knew the men who raped her, and was warned to be silent, but she told what happened to her. There was no redemption for her from those men despite going through two trials and enduring intimidation. Recy’s voice might set her apart from Bilhah & Zilpah but little reveals whether or not Bilhah and Zilpah used their voice to affect their reality, beyond potential creative solidarity reads presented above. Recy’s story endures in part because of her brave resolve which ignited national organizing around the conditions of sexualized violence black women faced daily, that in turn provided the foundation for a civil rights movement to fight for the right to sit on a bus which was ultimately easier to win than protection of female bodies. This is part of Recy’s legacy, born from the brutality she endured that left her unable to have more children. The only formal redemption received was an apology by the Mayor of Abbeville in 2011 after the release of At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance­–A New History of the Civil Rights Movement From Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power by Danielle McGuire. This highlights how voices can be erased even when raised. That history already shared through the words and actions of black activists appears unheard until written as a book by an author whose About page never names herself as white (or anything else) for a book that notes ‘Black’ twice in its title.

We brought Bilhah and Zilpah back into the conversation through the following journal prompts:

• How do Bilhah’s and Zilpah’s biblical realities relate to historic ones around the globe and ours today?

• How might Bilhah and Zilpah have channeled what they endured into actions that paved the way to better realities for their daughters?

• How do we interact with figures like Recy Taylor and understand them beyond one moment that came to define them? How do we do the same for Bilhah and Zilpah?

We returned to ritual explorations begun at our last session, now considering existing ritual moments connecting to characters discussed or the time of year:

• Yartzeit (annual commemoration of a death)
• Yizkor (communal ancestral remembrance four times each year on Yom Kippur, last day of Sukkot, last day of Pesakh, Shavuot)
• Ushpizin (inviting seven guests, traditionally male shepherds of Judaism)
• Omer (counting the 49 days between Pesakh and Shavuot)
• Amidah (prayer recited while standing during all daily services)

אֱלֹהֵי אַבְרָהָם אֱלֹהֵי יִצְחָק וֵאלֹהֵי יַעֲקב

God of Abraham, God of Isaac and God of Jacob

וֵאלֹהֵי שָׂרָה אֱלֹהֵי רִבְקָה אֱלֹהֵי רָחֵל וֵאלֹהֵי לֵאָה

God of Sarah, God of Rebecca, God of Rachel, and God of Leah

• Chag haBanot or Rosh Chodesh l’Banot or Eid-al-Banat, a North African Chanukah festival of daughters celebrated by some Jewish communities in the Middle East on Rosh Chodesh Tevet during the Jewish holiday of Chanukah. The holiday was most preserved by Tunisian Jews and also celebrated by Jewish communities in Libya, Algeria, Kushta, Morocco and Thessaloniki.
• Rosh Chodesh

Chevruta pairings yielded rich conversations that referenced Kindred by Octavia Butler, compared midrash as Jewish fan fiction, asked what it means to build a shared tent (during Sukkot and beyond), considered saving a bus seat for Elijah as an empetus for action during Pesakh, envisioned ways of weaving Bilhah and Zilpah into the Kabbalistic approach to counting the Omer using sefirot (attributes of God), considered the ethical issues of modern gestational characters where birth mothers are often excised from children’s lives distinct from biblical characters where mothers often remain in the picture, and pondered erecting altars to flawed individuals rather than requiring an image of perfection that requires erasure to warrant admiration.

After more group discussion, we brought in the ritual elements identified at the previous session, and split into small groups to look for objects, actions, prayers, and lines of Torah that might inspire ritual or be borrowed into it. We considered bat mitzvah, commonplace today yet didn’t exist until 1970, which may feel far away but is far from ancient. Bat Mitzvah has become so commonplace within the past fifty-five years that we are currently witnessing the continuing morphing of this ritual as it transforms from bar and bat into ‘b’ which stands for both and welcomes people for whom those categories are nuanced. The example demonstrates how Judaism needs us to create the rituals we need for our lives, which in turn keeps Judaism alive.

We considered:

• What ritual opportunities are inspired by the lines that invoke Bilhah and Zilpah?
• What modern historical characters have kindred experiences with Bilhah and Zilpah?
• How might you imagine celebrating daughters through Bilhah and Zilpah?
• How might honoring Bilhah and Zilpah open opportunities to acknowledge other biblical women?

Our engaged study took us right to the end of our time together. We were slow to part but looking forward to our last Bilhah and Zilpah Homecoming session on December 29 when we will explore Weaving Matriarchal Legacies, looking to the generations and story threads that tie us together. Register to join us. We would love to study with you! Until then, listen for Bilhah and Zilpah whispering to us.