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- Havdalah #9: More Covid, Movies, and the First Agunah
Havdalah #9: More Covid, Movies, and the First Agunah
26 Tevet, 5784 / January 6, 2024
White Rose RI
January 06, 2024
Hey everyone,
It’s rough out there. I could list some of the ways, but you probably don’t need me to. Even so, I am going to list one thing, because so many people in power are keeping it out of the news: the current Covid surge is very bad. It’s worse than last year. Covid spread is at the second highest it’s ever been in the US. Hospitals are understaffed and being pushed past capacity again. And you are tired of it, and I am tired of it, we are all so tired. And it’s still happening. And we are not powerless.
This month, if there is a precaution available to you that you don’t usually take, now’s the time to take it. Wear a mask in public indoor spaces and crowded outdoor spaces. Opt for a cozy evening in and a phone call with a loved one, knowing there will be future times when it is safe to dance together again. Or if you need to gather, ask folks to take rapid tests before gathering. Get creative. You know your options, and you know your limits. Do what’s doable for you. When it’s hard, know that you are not doing this hard thing alone. We are out here doing our best right along with you.
It will be difficult to see the difference. We will still be in the midst of a Covid surge, and there will still be plenty of people who don’t seem to care. But there will also be someone whose wait at the ER will be a bit shorter because the ER will be a bit less full, and it will make a difference to them.
As with all our advocacy and community care, let’s keep helping each other keep each other safe.
In solidarity,
Lee
Rally to Support the Palestinian People
When: Tuesday, January 9 and every Tuesday, 3:00pm-4:00pm
Where: Gather at the intersection of Francis and Gaspee Streets across from the Providence Place Mall
The Rhode Island Anti-War Committee will meet every week to express solidarity with the Palestinian people. Make your support visible with signs or use the ones provided. They are calling for: ceasefire now; stop the Israeli onslaught on Gaza; end the siege of Gaza; humanitarian aid to Palestinians immediately; and no U.S. military aid to Israel.
While this is an outdoor event, there is still a Covid surge, and the point of a rally is to come together, so make sure to wear a mask!
Free At-Home Covid-19 Tests
Every home in the U.S. is eligible to order an additional 4 free at-home tests beginning November 20. If you did not order tests earlier this fall, you may place two orders for a total of 8 tests.
Your order of Covid tests is completely free — you won’t even pay for shipping.
If you already have Covid tests but they’re reaching their expiration date, double check — some of them have had their expiration dates extended:
Power Half-Hours for Gaza
When: every day, Monday through Friday, 3:00pm EST
Where: online
Jewish Voice for Peace is holding Power Half-Hours for Gaza every day — join us as we channel our fury and sorrow into collective action to stop genocide.
The same link will work every day.
Continuing Actions for Palestine
The siege of Gaza has continued and intensified. Palestinians are in desperate need of water, fuel, medical supplies, and more; however, this aid has been locked up at the border and prevented from entering into Palestine. Please contact your representatives to call on them to work for a ceasefire and to get aid into Gaza.
This toolkit has a variety of links, including call scripts, groups accepting donations, phone banks, petitions, and more:
Telecom services in Gaza are periodically being disrupted. This makes knowledge of what is happening there very difficult to get and to verify. Various social media websites — including and especially Twitter — while vitally necessary in getting ordinary voices heard, have also been full of dis- and misinformation of people deliberately trying to cause trouble. Especially now, be aware of who is sharing information and why they’re doing it.
Al Jazeera reporting has continued to be the most accurate and reliable so far:
Help A, an Incarcerated Activist
A is a Providence-based activist who is currently incarcerated and expects to be granted parole in early spring. Before A was imprisoned, she participated in Never Again Action Rhode Island actions and is eager to re-engage upon release. A, who is a trans woman, is currently being held in a men's prison.
A was at the Wyatt Detention Center protests in Rhode Island, Facebooking live for Never Again. She has also protested for Climate Action Rhode Island and attended Black Lives Matter rallies protesting against systematic racism and police brutality. She has struggled through all this while suffering from childhood trauma, PTSD, suicidal thoughts, and housing inequality coming from her being a trans Latina.
Funds raised will be used to help A with rent, clothes, technology, transportation, and an emotional support dog. A has experienced and resisted much systemic and interpersonal trauma, and these funds will help her build a more stable, peaceful life that she has never been afforded. Please contribute to help set her up for a smooth transition back into society and into her community to which she has dedicated so much care and love, and to show our thanks and to support her in her time of need.
Stories in Stone Film
What: Cross’ Mills Public Library is doing a film screening and discussion of Stories in Stone. However, with the recent Covid surge, we’re not comfortable promoting in person events. If you have interest in seeing it anyway, send the library a note to ask for a remote streaming option.
Check Out the Tomaquag Museum’s Education Newsletter:
We know there’s no shortage of online anti-racist educational resources, but we wanted to highlight a resource focused on our local communities. The Tomaquag Museum is led by Indigenous people and is Rhode Island’s only museum entirely dedicated to telling the story of the Indigenous peoples of this land.
Film Description: Native people have been shaping stone to purpose for thousands of years. It's no wonder that they adapted this skill to meet the needs of colonists in order to survive in a changing world. For generations, Narragansett stone masons have continued to transform the trade of masonry into an art form, creating beautiful unique works of art in stone.
Disclosure Film
What: Barrington Public Library is doing a film screening and discussion of Disclosure (2020). However as we said before, with the recent Covid surge, we’re not comfortable promoting in person events. If you have an interest in seeing it anyway, send the library a note to ask for a remote streaming option to join the discussion, or watch the film yourself on Netflix.
Disclosure is an unprecedented, eye-opening look at transgender depictions in film and television, revealing how Hollywood simultaneously reflects and manufactures our deepest anxieties about gender. Leading trans thinkers and creatives, including Laverne Cox, Lilly Wachowski, Yance Ford, Mj Rodriguez, Jamie Clayton, and Chaz Bono, share their reactions and resistance to some of Hollywood’s most beloved moments. Grappling with films like A Florida Enchantment (1914), Dog Day Afternoon, The Crying Game, and Boys Don’t Cry, and with shows like The Jeffersons, The L-Word, and Pose, they trace a history that is at once dehumanizing, yet also evolving, complex, and sometimes humorous. What emerges is a fascinating story of the dynamic interplay between trans representation on screen, society’s beliefs, and the reality of trans lives. Reframing familiar scenes and iconic characters in a new light, director Sam Feder invites viewers to confront unexamined assumptions and shows how what once captured the American imagination now elicits new feelings.
James (he / him)
Lilith has seen a meteoric rise in cultural relevance in recent decades. Much of this, it should be noted, is certainly due to gentile neo-pagans and feminists portraying (and decontextualizing) her as a mysterious, countercultural foil to Chava / Eve, a sexy girlboss maligned by patriarchal “organized religion” for her disobedience. Leaving aside the implied misconceptions inherent in these assumptions regarding both of these figures, flippantly attributing Lilith’s new status solely to how she is caricatured by New Age movements is reductive, and a disservice to more than just her.
For one thing, Lilith’s current place in the popular imagination would not exist were it not for her excavation by Jewish feminists during the mid-20th century. The erroneous idolization, ahistorical deification, and misguided airbrushing of Lilith by gentiles all follow upon the coattails of scholarship by Jewish women.
All this is to say: even with her role as mother of demons, wife of Ashmedai, and specter of infant mortality, there is basis within history, contemporary culture, and her originating Midrash for feminist readings of Lilith. Engaging with her story, as with any other Midrash, carries powerful redemptive potential, and is not cheapened by the incidental oversaturation and appropriation that has occurred to her character outside of her original Jewish context.
Case in point: I believe that Lilith is the First Agunah. This interpretation can be further developed by viewing it through the lens of dybbukim. Within this reading, there is potential to rework the common understanding of this Midrash to center accountability for Adam, the First Get-Refuser.
Let’s begin with a summary of the Midrash:
Lilith, the first woman, and Adam’s first wife, made not from his rib but, like her husband, from the dust of the earth, demands recognition as his equal. In many iterations, this is stated as her wanting to lie on top of him, or otherwise refusing to lie under him. In any case, her refusal to submit to his dominion – or maybe, his refusal to abdicate his imagined supremacy – is the catalyzing disagreement. When HaShem is consulted, He rules in Adam’s favor; Lilith, as Adam’s companion, has been created exclusively to serve him. There is no obligation of symmetry or reciprocity in this prototypical marriage. Her existence is meant to be auxiliary.
Lilith’s dissent is decisive: in the most famous moment of this Midrash, Lilith allegedly says G_d’s true name, which, like a spell, allows her to fly. She departs Gan Eden, taking her chances with the Great Unknown and leaving her husband alone in his garden. Adam, the first man to discover the indignity of one-party divorce, again appeals to HaShem for the return of his pride and what he considers his. HaShem sends His angels in pursuit of Lilith, and they catch up with her as she’s flying over the vast sea.
What ensues is a struggle that makes Jacob’s tussle with the angel look like a daycare squabble. Multiple angels take hold of Lilith mid-flight, determined to drag her back to Gan Eden, which to her is more a ghetto than Paradise. Lilith is equally hell-bent on her freedom. Somehow, despite Lilith being outnumbered and outclassed, she and the angels are suspended in a stalemate as they hurtle through the sky above the ocean. She cannot escape their grip, but they too cannot wrangle her back to her ordained place.
All the while, Lilith screams invective, bloody vows, oaths of revenge; she swears that she will kill every last child sired by Adam, and then every descendant after that. In the midst of her fury – and, one can presume, her grief and her terror – she makes a desperate offer: yes, she will bring death to every infant she can find; and yes, every morning she will birth thousands of demons – sheydim – and every night watch her “illegitimate” children be slain, only to birth thousands more the following morning; all this she will do. However, she promises, should her name be invoked, by talisman or by amulet, the infant under its protection will be spared, for this usage of her name will be a reminder of this promise made in exchange for her emancipation. The angels accept, and she is released.
In line with this bargain, incantation bowls bearing inscriptions of Lilith’s name and epithets are prominent archaeological examples of ancient Jewish apotropaic magic. It’s intriguing that Lilith’s name, like G_d’s true name, apparently has power when uttered or written. Coincidentally, the name of Lilith’s rumored consort, Ashmedai, also frequently appears in apotropaic contexts. It is with the incantation bowls that we must now segue into the discussion of divorce proper.
There has never been a religious prohibition against divorce in Judaism. On the surface, this may seem refreshing and even progressive to some who are used to traditions like Catholicism, where divorce is unavailable, or other Christian denominations where divorce, while grudgingly tolerated, is to be avoided whenever possible. I would caution the reader not to rush to sing our praises in this area; the Jewish process of dissolving a marriage is just as logistically and institutionally misogynistic as any religion in which this is not an option.
The marriage contract, in Judaism known as a ketubah, can only be dissolved with the granting of a get, the legal religious document that codifies the divorce. According to Jewish law, as the Organization for the Resolution of Agunot (ORA) explains, “a marriage can only be terminated once a husband willingly delivers a get to his wife, and the wife accepts the get of her own free will.”
The issuing of a get, while often far from a clean break, is the first step to a new life for many people. However, due to the inability to divorce without the consent of a spouse, this first step can easily become an impossibility. Get refusal is a form of abuse in which a husband – or wife, although this is far less common for obvious reasons – refuses to acquiesce to a divorce and essentially traps the other spouse in legal limbo. The social consequences of such a state of precarity and captivity can be dire.
From ORA:
“Without a get, a couple is still considered to be married according to Jewish law, even if they are civilly divorced or have been separated for years. Consequently, pursuing a new intimate relationship before a get has been given is forbidden by Jewish law for both the husband and wife. Should a woman produce children from such a relationship, they would be considered mamzerim (illegitimate) according to Jewish law and forbidden from marrying within the Jewish community.”
This becomes more relevant within Orthodox communities, which are often insular. Women with no support within the community and no connections outside of it are left with no recourse when their husbands refuse to grant a get. These women are called agunot, or “anchored women.” While there are unofficial avenues to exert pressure upon recalcitrant husbands to relent, an agunah is still vulnerable to the whims of her community. Rabbis have, in the ugliest cases, profited from acting as middlemen by negotiating hefty prices for women to pay for their freedom, then taking a percentage of the husband’s winnings for themselves as a “fee” for their mediation. Networks of men enable and ratify the behavior of abusive husbands, while agunot are isolated and left to either fight for themselves or else be eroded by the collective will of their spouses’ accomplices.
How does the fate of the agunah become intertwined with Lilith’s legacy?
The incantation bowls.
In addition to amulets intended to ward off infant mortality, plagues, and sheydim, ancient gets have been discovered in the medium of pottery.
So what if, all along, the pacifying measure to protect babies from Lilith’s wrath has been to give her what she’s wanted all along? These bowls inscribed with Lilith’s name – an exorcism? Protection, a reminder of a promise? Or simply a long-withheld get? Like the bowls, all of these interpretations carry water. But in the vein of exorcism, I turn now to the final odd synchronicity in the story: dybbukim.
The dybbuk, a word translating roughly to “clinging spirit”, is the disembodied soul of a deceased person who died before they could perform teshuvah, repentance. The dybbuk, appropriately, clings to a living person tighter and tighter, with disastrous consequences for the host. The Jewish version of the archetypal possession narrative, there are only two ways that a dybbuk can be pried away from its victim: teshuvah, or exorcism.
Maybe it’s appropriate that dybbuks are typically (but not always) male, and their victims typically (but not always) women. Maybe it’s telling that dybbuk stories often begin with a wedding, the bride’s affliction coming over her like a fever on the eve of her marriage.
Maybe a better centering of the get refusal is not of the agunah, the anchored woman, but of the get-refuser, the dybbuk, the parasite clinging to a body he claims and will not be dissuaded from. This is the same horror story, but from the other side of the mirror.
You’re a woman, and your body is not your own. Something is creeping in at the edges of your life. Your memories are not what you remember. People treat you as though you’re ill, or mad, but you know that there is an interloper here. You know that this is not you. And yet it is you they are trying to cure. It is you who is sick, but it is not you who needs to repent. It is not you who needs to be excised, like a tumor. When the rabbi comes, he will sound a shofar; the ram’s horn that blew down the walls of Jericho, that heralds the new year, that banishes the entity in every Jewish exorcism. You’ll feel the roar of the shofar in your chest cavity and you’ll have tinnitus for a few weeks. But you’ll be free. You'll be clean. You’ll be your own.
What if get-refusers could be exorcised when they disdain repentance?
What if, instead of deferring to their Rabbi, the angels had rallied outside the walls of Gan Eden, blowing shofars and banging pots and pans, waving colorful signs and shouting shame and abuse loud enough to drown out Haman’s name until, after unceasing embarrassment, Adam surrendered a bowl full of letters, and with it, his demand for the return of his complement?
What if, on those long nights when Lilith cannot sleep for all the nightmares of a heavy weight on her, Ashmedai holds her through the gasping and the shaking, the embrace of a loving husband exorcising the most persistent of demons – quietly, but quaking just as mightily as the holy horn?
Thank you to Julia Barton, Connor Alsheimer, and Roxanne Fay for the initial lightbulb moments that sent me wool-gathering in this direction; Noraa Kaplan and Rabbi Lex Rofeberg for their encouragement of this train of thought, which gave me the confidence to take seriously my own engagements with Torah; Brady Kettle for facilitating that final left-field penny drop on dybbukim during late-night / early-morning meandering discussions; and Jeannine Freeborn for nurturing everything else that led to these conclusions.
The primary source for the lion’s share of my research was Rabbi Geoffrey W. Dennis’s Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic, & Mysticism.
Additional information was loosely interpreted and idiosyncratically incorporated from:
Ancient Jewish Magic, Gideon Bohak
Jewish Magic and Superstition: A Study in Folk Religion, Joshua Trachtenberg
The Dybbuk and the Yiddish Imagination: A Haunted Reader, Joachim Neugroschel
Between Worlds: Dybbuks, Exorcists, and Early Modern Judaism, J.H. Chajes
For more information on the Organization for the Resolution of Agunot (ORA) and the important work they do, please visit their website.
Needle Drop: “Red Football” by Sinéad O’Connor
The wheel of the year has come back around to the start. We find ourselves and each other once more in an election year, scrolling our phones feverish and fatigued as candidates throw their hats in the ring, while our neighbors engage in Nazi sticker blitzes and hunting season at City Council meetings opens for whichever group of Undesirables is on the menu this week. This newsletter issue drops on the third anniversary of a flashpoint that is only too eager to be repeated.
Standing in this too familiar place, there is nothing profound to say, at least nothing profound that is also new. Anything we need to hear now are reminders, maybe even mantras. The feeling that pervades this moment is insidious, dangerous: it is the feeling of futility.
This feeling is beyond a luxury; it is basest self-indulgence. For whatever lies ahead, past our capacity to predict, perhaps even past our ability to endure, make no mistake: resistance may be futile, but it is also not optional.
We stay in our books. We clench our jaws. We grit our teeth. We keep our heels down. We remember that resignation, defeat, and eradication are not acceptable.
To paraphrase a beloved poem: this is not our grave. Get the fuck up.
The Rhode Island Assembly has finally released its dates and deadlines for the 2024 year! See below:
Legislative Dates and Deadlines:
Opening Day - Tuesday, January 2, 2024
Last Day for Senate Public Bill Introduction - Thursday, February 15, 2024
Last Day for House Public Bill Introduction - Thursday, February 15, 2024
Winter Recess - February 19 – 23, 2024
Reconvene - Tuesday, February 27, 2024
Spring Recess - April 15 – 19, 2024
Reconvene - Tuesday, April 23, 2024
Last Day of Legislative Session: June 30, 2024
The Rhode Island Legislature tends to play a bit loosey-goosey with their deadlines, so if you’re interested in this it’s good to periodically check in
When we hear about important bills, we’ll put information about them here!
