Sexuality & Spirituality

The Seven Who Danced in Paradise*

[by Phyllis Ocean Berman and Arthur Ocean Waskow, from their book TALES OF TIKKUN: NEW JEWISH STORIES TO HEAL THE WOUNDED WORLD.]

Imma Shalom was dancing like a storm of fire. Not for nothing did the people call her “Mother of Peace, Daughter of the Flame!” For all her solid middle age, she was no staid matron but a blazing energy.

She leaned even deeper into the dance, looking around for the others in her study band of six: gentle B’ruriah, who showed deep wisdom in her loving knowledge of the Torah; awkward Akiba, who was so deft with language; the dour Elisha ben Abuyah; and the two tall Shimons — ben Zoma and ben Azzai. B’ruriah had joked again and again that it took all four men to keep up with the Torah-learning of Imma Shalom and herself.

[Some passages below are from Rabbi Arthur Waskow's book Godwrestling (Schocken, 1978) and were incorporated in Godwrestling -- Round 2 (Jewish Lights, 1995), along with other thoughts on the Song of Songs. This book can be ordered from The Shalom Center. Send a check for $12.95 per copy plus $3.50 postage per package to -- The Shalom Center, 6711 Lincoln Drive, Philadelphia PA 19119.]

According to tradition, during Passover every year there is a special reading of the Song of Songs—just as the Book of Esther is read for Purim and the Book of Ruth for Shavuot. So in the spring of 1973 the women and men of a Washington havurah, Fabrangen, gathered in the house of one member family to sit in a circle on the floor, munch fruit and matzah, and for the first time fulfill the mitzvah of reading the Song of Songs together. …

Dear dear chevra,

It is an unending joy for me to be able to open my Email here, even in the middle of a sleep-deprived night,  and find such thought-full, thought-provoking letters. (Our list is not always this way; let’s not, as I am about to say, forget the shadow; but let’s celebrate the light as well.)

Some thoughts, perhaps some spice for the nourishing stew we are collectively creating about the relationships among charisma, domination, sexuality, and abusiveness, and especially about how to deal with some gifts that come from the same people who are otherwise abusive:

1. Avraham Avinu sent one wife and one son almost to their deaths in the wilderness, took the other son up a mountain to (almost) kill him. What behavior could be more abusive? Gafni & Carlebach pale beside that. Are we wrong to remember him ALSO as a great spiritual adventurer, idol-breaker, walking forth to search within, challenging God?  

When Philadelphia P'nai Or's Shabbat-morning Torah-study group gathered to learn Torah on Shabbat Naso (June 2006), something unexpected happened:

As we studied the teachings in Numbers 6 and in the Haftarah about the consecrated role of Nazirite, we found ourselves addressing what happens when a spiritual teacher turns to sexually abusing students and staff subordinates.

The learning was at two levels – in process and in content.

Process first:

When I lead Torah-study, my usual mode is inter-experiential, in which I "weave" more than I "teach," and wisdom arises from the kahal (grass-roots community) rather than through my imposing my interpretation.

Obviously, this is oceans away from a teacher's literally jumping up and down to drive the kahal "higher," and then using the aura of his "hyper-highness" to – you might say – "jump the bones" of students.

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow

Today (May 2006) as on some occasions before, we face the discovery that a respected teacher with great spiritual gifts has turned them to the service of sexual abuse.

We face the rediscovery that a spiritual teacher may think he is deepening a community into ecstasy when he is actually only stimulating it into frenzy, in which his own intensity domineers over the community's self-understanding.

And then he may use the frenzy to press his sexual desires on his students or other subordinates. Or he may create emotional and intellectual dependencies that are not quite physically sexual, but damaging all the same.

Rabbi Arthur Waskow, 6/9/2005

In the biblical story, Ruth was welcomed onto the fields of Boaz, where she gleaned what the regular harvesters had left behind. Boaz made sure that even this despised foreigner had a decent job at decent pay. When she

Rabbi Arthur Waskow *, 4/7/2005

What did John Paul II intend, and what did he accomplish, in his long reign?

First, a personal vignette of my own. During the pre-war crisis of early 2002, some American activists who opposed the war knew that the Po

Chris Cormier & Ted Jacobs, Esq., 3/24/2005

Dear Rabbinic Chevra,

I am enclosing here an invitation for us as individual rabbis to join in an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief favoring the legitimacy of civil-governmental same-sex marriages, and if we wish, to encourage our congregations to join as a body in the brief.

2/16/2005

Born & raised in Chicago, Wendy A. Rabinowitz is a Judaic weaver/mixed-media artist, eco-feminist & peace activist. She returned to Judaism through 'hiddur