The Bilhah Zilpah Homecoming, our largest event of the year, was well attended. This annual event, now in its third year, has become a meaningful way to reclaim, remember, and celebrate these Jewish matriarchs. While Homecoming closed when Zilpah and Bilhah were named for the last time in the Torah, for this year, we have an opportunity to bring their perspectives to our readings of other sections, before Deuteronomy closes the Torah with the accounting of those who become the Israelites. While the final numbers do not name Bilhah or Zilpah, or any woman, the men over the age of twenty could not have been counted without the children these matriarchs, and many nameless women, birthed into the Torah.
The Bilhah Zilpah Project also continues to proliferate–we have been invited into three learning communities over the last six months:
Temple Shalom in Newton Massachusetts invited the Bilhah Zilpah Project for an in-person Scholar-in-Residence weekend which included a Kabbalat Shabbat d’var sermon with learning conversation, Shabbat morning text study, and ritual development workshop.
Dorshei Tzedek in Newton Massachusetts invited the Bilhah Zilpah Project for an in-person Torah service learning. While there, the seventh grade class learned about Igbo Jewry through a report-back on the Teshuva Across the Waters trip to Nigeria on January 11-22, 2025 hosted by the Black Jewish Liberation Collective in collaboration with the Jewish Multiracial Network.
Beit Kohenet invited the Bilhah Zilpah Project for an expanded Bilhah Zilpah: Ancestral Stories virtual text study series exploring midrashic references, that goes through January 11, 2026. Ancestral Stories is the newest offering of the Bilhah Zilpah Project that includes deconstructing fascinating texts and grappling with translating some sections only available in Hebrew… a daunting and exhilarating task that expands the body of study available to know and reclaim these Jewish matriarchs.
Reach out to erica at danserica@gmail.com to explore bringing a customized Bilhah Zilpah Project experience to your learning community, using text study, creative midrash, and creative practice sessions offered in a flexible variety of sessions for a range of ages.
Jews of Color Sanctuary is undergoing some big organizational shifts to strengthen and build on our growth, as we continue to provide a sanctuary where Jewish folks of color can center and ground their relationship with Judaism for their needs in meaningful ways.
While Jews of Color Sanctuary centers Jewish people of color, the experiences of this broadly diverse collective holds vital wisdom for all Jews. That Torah is woven into both affinity and open events. As we enter January and look toward Martin Luther King Day and Black History month, commemorating the birth of a modern prophet and a single month to celebrate influences that black North Americans of African descent had on those in this land, and internationally, is important history for all.
There is profound beauty in weaving the wisdom of the Torah into the mundane everyday of our modern lives. The silent wisdom gleaned from Bilhah and Zilpah offers a powerful invitation through Modern Matriarchs, which links the wisdom of these biblical matriarchs with women throughout history who navigated kindred silences, lack of bodily autonomy, and suffered control exerted over their children.
Borrowing from the Jewish tradition of commemorating yartzeit anniversary of death, modern matriarch Carrie Buck died January 28, 1983 at age 76. Like Zilpah and Bilhah, many don’t recognize the name of Carrie Buck who was sacrificed to normalize controlling women’s wombs. Carrie survived sexual violence, was committed to an institution which controlled her activity, and her child was taken into another family. The events that led to the 1927 Supreme Court ruling that forced the first state mandated sterilization on Carrie, directly affected three generations of Buck women, and continued to sterilize many others, targeting women who were disproportionately people of color and/or impoverished.
Carrie became the test case that weaponized the Virginia Sterilization Act of 1924 as a vehicle of state control over procreation. This bill was enacted on the same day as the Racial Integrity Act of 1924. The flood of surgical procedures performed by Virginia, including sterilizing Carrie’s sister Doris at age 16, encouraged other states to pass similar laws to control women’s autonomy, and influenced using sterilization as a Nazi extermination strategy. Parameters around the sterilization act have been amended, but “the Buck v. Bell ruling has never been formally contested and overturned.” The racialized relationship between these two 1924 acts solicited praise of “Nazi sterilization for economic efficiency” in 1935 and proceeded to have “more black women coercively sterilized under government welfare programs by the 1970s than feeble minded people compelled to be sterilized under the 1920s eugenics laws.”
The tragedy of this history, linking multiple genocides, is compounded through forgetting. The Torah too holds tender parts. Remembering is Jewish wisdom. As we enter a new Gregorian year, listen for intersections between secular and biblical Torah. Listen for the whispers of Bilhah and Zilpah. Remember the sacrifice of Carrie Buck. May learning guide our relationships and actions, and honor the source of creation.
Joyful wishes for continuing sweetness into the Gregorian new year.
Jews of Color Sanctuary 