Something I was listening to while washing the dishes

I am not a Jew or in favor of women head pastors.  Still I like the incessant questioning that comes with some forms of Judaism.  I can identify with her struggle over the passage that she mentions in Deuteronomy.  Her response was interesting.

Ms. Brous: But sort of recognizing that this is mine and what works for me now might not work for me next year. And what works for next year might not work for me now. And, I mean, I've had people in my community who have been diagnosed with cancer who say, 'I now get for the first time what it means to pray to a warrior God, because I want God to be fighting the cancer in my body.' And I never would have thought about God that way before, because I'm a pacifist, you know? And so I mean, and there are things that happen in our lives and in the world that open us up to the possibility of, you know, different interpretations of things. And so I don't take things out of the book. I struggle with things, and there are things that I scream out against. I mean, I see them and I think, oh, this, you know, this either just doesn't speak to me or this just seems wrong, but it's still in the book, because next year I might get it in a different way. And I think that's kind of, it's sort of some kind of religious humility in a way. It's to say, like, it doesn't work for me at all, and yet I'm going to continue to struggle with it, or I'm at least going to continue to keep it on the page. And I had this experience, you know, in rabbinical school about every six months, and I was really in a love affair with the study of Talmud and …

Ms. Tippett: Yes.

Ms. Brous: … rabbinic text. And about every six months I would come across some text that I found utterly paralyzing as a woman, as a human being, as a Jew, I just felt like this is the text I'm in love with and this is what it's saying. How can I, you know, how can I deal with that? And I came to recognize those moments as incredible gifts also, because the relationship with Judaism should be no different than your relationship with your, you know, with your partner, your spouse, or your kids.

Ms. Tippett: When you find things about them that you don't like and you have to live with nevertheless.

Ms. Brous: That's exactly right. And you struggle with it.

Ms. Tippett: Can you remember an example?

Ms. Brous: Yeah, sure I can.

Ms. Tippett: OK.

Ms. Brous: There's a story in (speaking Hebrew), in this Tract 8 of Talmud that talks — it's talking about sexual relationships. And it's — it says that a husband and wife are allowed to do — basically, they're allowed to do whatever they want with each other sexually. You can enjoy each other, that's OK. That's not heretical. I mean, we're not an ascetic tradition and that's permissible. So then there's a story in which a woman comes before Rav, one of the great rabbis, and says, "My husband did this thing to me, and it's caused me incredible pain." And Rav says, "What can I do? The Torah permits you to him." And like, sort of throws his hands up in the air. And so, you know, I read things like that and I think of where is the, like, where is the understanding of human relationships here. Like, where is the understanding of how men and women operate and how law interacts with humanity. And you know, sort of read things like that. Even in the Book of Deuteronomy. I mean, this is not a rabbinic text but a biblical text, but you know, the punishment for raping a woman is marrying her. But you — your punishment is that you need to spend — you marry her and you're not allowed to divorce her. And you know, you read things like that and, I — read things like that and I think, my god, you know, this tradition is so painful in some ways and if I were writing the book, I would not have written that, I'm quite sure of it.

Ms. Tippett: Right. Right.

Ms. Brous: You know? But I didn't write the book and the wisdom that flows from this text comes from the same source as the excruciating pain that flows from it. And I feel now that that's part of being in a relationship with the, you know, with a tradition that's thousands of years old. And what's so powerful to me about this is, because I've cried so many tears over texts like this, I feel like my tears are now part of the mix of the, you know, of the conversation of Jews who, for the past 2,000 years, have used these texts as their, really, as their sustenance.

(Sound bite of music)

Ms. Brous: There's an amazing story that one of my teachers, Rabbi David Weiss Halivni, teaches and shares in one of his books. He's a Holocaust survivor and he was in one of the death camps and he was working and they came back for this day out laboring all day long, you know, on the verge of death, and from exhaustion and from hard labor, and from despair. And he saw this security guard who was eating this sloppy sandwich in a wrapper. And it was wrapped in this piece of paper, and he couldn't take his eyes off it, because he recognized that there were Hebrew letters written on the paper. So they traded their, you know, their food for the day in order to get this piece of sloppy paper that was holding together this sandwich. And he gave it to them, and they dried it out and it turned out to be a piece of Talmud. And I guess one of the ways that, you know, the Jews were degraded was they would take our holy text and use them in really, you know, like, you know, a variety of reasons. And so they took this piece of Talmud and he describes how the men in the bunker used to sit together every night when they come home from the field and just read this piece of Talmud together. And it saved their lives. But just looking at this text made them feel like human beings again and made them feel like they were part of a story that was, you know, thousands of years long and wouldn't die with them. It would continue, somehow, beyond them.  And I think about that often, and I think about the voices that were — that have been a part of that story. And the voices like mine, you know, women's voices that weren't a part …

Ms. Tippett: Right. Right.

Ms. Brous: … of those stories. And how do we start to fill in, you know, the conversation that's in the white parts of the page in between the black letters? You know, the white space in between the letters and part of it is through tears.

Ms. Tippett: And that is the spirit of midrash, isn't it?

Ms. Brous: That's right. That's right.

Ms. Tippett: OK.

Ms. Brous: And so, I mean, literally like I love when I'm studying and I cry and I see a teardrop fall into my book. I feel like that's the holiest act, because I'm leaving my imprint here, too, because men could have read that for thousands of years and not cried. When I read that, I cry. I really do.

Ms. Tippett: Right.

Ms. Brous: So, and now I feel like that's part of being in love, that, you know, sort of really struggling in that way, and knowing that something's wrong and that my partner, this tradition, has made mistakes and you know, God knows so have I. And it's, in some ways, you know, it's good to know that the tradition is not perfect.[1]