Breishis: not only for profit or pleasure
Gut shabes my friends!
It's a bit of a gloomy day here, but the sun is supposed to peak out a bit later. I just got back from teaching class, where I seem to have left my umbrella. Fortunately, I'm now mostly dry at my desk, with a mug of hot tea to my right and my shtender-with-chumash on my left. Let's go.
Since this is the first of these, I thought I'd get some introductory stuff out of the way. If you don't know me, my name is ada. I do a variety of things: I teach, I add big numbers together, I play music, I take care of my cat. Mostly, though, I'm a Jew trying to get through life one day at a time.
The purpose of this newsletter isn't to figure out what Torah tells us to do. I don't think Torah works that way (you are welcome to disagree). My goal here is to listen to the voices of Torah, participate (in my own small way) in that conversation, and think about how to live life. Like I tell my students, my goal is never to find the right answer, but to be wrong in interesting and fruitful ways. So please, let me know if you disagree with me on anything! I likely disagree with myself.
I will try to provide content warnings for what I think are heavy topics, but please understand that Torah is pretty heavy most of the time, and of course I cannot predict what you might think needs warning. Feel free to email me if you have any specific requests. In this newsletter, there are non-graphic mentions of forced sterilization, fertility/infertility, murder, ableism and transphobia.
Let's take it from the top, chaverim.
This week, we get the creation of the world, including the creation of the first human Adam. This latter story occurs twice, first in Genesis 1:26 and later in Genesis 5:1. Sandwiched between these two is (among many other events) the story of Adah and Tzilah and Lamech.
This is a story that lives mostly in Rabbinic legend. All we learn in Breishis is that Lamech, a descendant of Cain, has two wives: Adah and Tzilah. Adah has two children: Jabal (the ancestor of shepherds) and Jubal (the ancestor of musicians.) Tzilah also has two children: Tubal-Cain and Naamah.
Something happens (the Torah doesn't say what), and Lamech says to his wives:
“Adah and [Tzilah], hear my voice;
O wives of Lamech, give ear to my speech.
I have slain a man for wounding me,
And a lad for bruising me.If Cain is avenged sevenfold,
Then Lamech seventy-sevenfold.”
That's the whole story in the Torah, but midrash expands on this (see Breishis Rabbah and Sefer HaYashar). When Lamech took two wives, he was participating in a custom in his generation to have one wife for procreation only, and one wife for pleasure only. The wife for procreation only would otherwise live as a widow, and the wife for pleasure would be sterilized.
The Rabbis agree that Adah was intended for procreation and Tzilah for pleasure. But this complicates things. Adah's name, in some interpretations, means "ornament" -- but she was only for procreation. Tzilah, on the other hand, was sterilized, and yet she has two children (the Rabbis disagree over whether Tzilah tricked Lamech or the sterilization simply failed. You can read more in Daas Zkenim, a book of midrash that, one could argue, is titled "~intimate~ knowledge of beards").
But perhaps this contradiction is exactly what we are supposed to learn from this story. Indeed, the root of Tzilah is tzel/shadow, the same root which appears when we learn, just a few chapters before, that humanity is made b'tzelem Elohim, in the image of the plural-yet-singular G-d. We are, each of us, multiplicity. We cannot be reduced to just one thing, or just one purpose.
There are so many questions I have whenever I think about this story. Who in my life am I using only for what they can produce for me (as Adah is used), or only for the status/pleasure they confer on me (as Tzilah is used)? Who is using me in these ways? Equally importantly: in what ways am I treating myself as if I'm only good for what I produce, or for what pleasure I can bring others? It is so difficult to treat ourselves and other humans as fully human, as shadows of Elohim, but this story emphasizes that, whether we realize it or not, all humans are definitionally and by creation more than just one thing, more than just what they are to/for us.
Before we continue the story, I think it is necessary to say that, while this interpretation is (I think) productive, it deals in an abstraction, and to only deal in abstraction with real suffering is unethical. Forced sterilization is a very real, concrete evil in the world today. Trans people around the world are often required by law to become sterilized in order to transition, or "merely" forced to become sterile by a lack of resources and an excess administrative hurdles (this is my own experience). Disabled people around the world are still sterilized in horrific acts of eugenics. This is a fight the Jewish world could do more about, that I should do more about.
And the story continues: Lamech is blind, and is guided in shooting his bow by his son Tubal-Cain. Tubal-Cain makes a mistake in identifying a target, and Lamech kills Cain. In his rage, Lamech (perhaps accidentally) kills Tubal-Cain. Adah and Tzilah both leave Lamech over this, and the final quote from Torah is his plea for them to return.
I think it is important to think of ourselves as Lamech in this part of the story, even if it is uncomfortable. We need to understand the parts of ourselves that, like Lamech, use others for profit and pleasure. The parts of ourselves that, like Lamech, can lash out in anger and cause untold harm. And the parts of ourselves that, like Lamech, try as hard as we can to escape responsibility for that harm.
We don't know how this story ends. At least, I couldn't find anything in the Rabbinic literature I surveyed. We know Adah and Tzilah left Lamech and he pleaded with them to return, but I'm not aware of any midrash on their response (let me know if you know of any!) There are some claims made by the Rabbis that in the end this was all Adah and Tzilah's fault for being jealous wives, but I think we have enough of those stories already in Torah, so there's no real need to make that up here. I like to think that they stayed together in solidarity, but I think we need to be okay with leaving the story where it is.
A practice
I won't do this every week, only when there's something that calls to me. A common thread binding our matriarchs is infertility and "miraculous" birth. Tzilah, from this story, is the mother (by miracle or trickery) of Naamah who (according to legend) became the wife of Noah. So there's a pretty direct line of descent here from Tzilah through to the Jewish people. We'll talk more about the context of the flood and Tzilah next week, but for now I'll simply say that I might add Tzilah to avos v'imahos this week when I daven the Amidah. I think it is also worth spending some time meditating on the questions I asked above. What is one time you have felt like Lamech, like Adah, or like Tzilah? Feel free to write in!
Word of the Week
As above, I don't know if this will be a regular feature, but since I did name myself after Adah, I'd like to say a few things about the word עדה. This word has lots of potential meanings, depending on vocalization, context, and moment in history. It can, among other things, mean ornament, intentional community, and to pass between. These meanings come from different roots and sources, so these intersections of meaning are (as all the best are) puns:
עדה: ornaments indicating belonging to a community (queer flagging)
עדה: to pass between communities (transition)
עדה: ornaments of passings-between (transition clothes)
Correspondence Corner
There's no correspondence today! If you have any questions or comments, please reply to this email or email me directly at quasiada@gmail.com. I will always ask before adding your correspondence to the newsletter -- I'm more than happy to have private correspondence as well.
In the absence of any correspondence, I will try to bring you a brief teaching from someone other than myself. This week, I want to bring to you a gorgeous teaching I learned from Binya Kóatz about the same phrase b'tzelem referenced in my drash above. I'm doing this from notes I took on her SVARA session last summer, so any mistakes here are mine and mine alone.
Just after the story of Adah and Tzilah, in Chapter 5 of Breishis, we are given an account of the descendants of Adam. It begins:
When Adam had lived 130 years, he begot a son in his likeness after his image, and he named him Seth.
After the birth of Seth, Adam lived 800 years and begot sons and daughters.
Breishis 5:3-4
There are two main observations Kóatz makes about this:
Seth is begot in Adam's likeness after his image (btzalmo/btzelem) and, earlier in the Torah/midrash, we learn that Adam was created both male and female (and b'tzelem Elohim)
After giving birth to Seth, Adam begets sons and daughters (about whom no similar likeness-and-image claim is made)
This pattern continues: Seth begets Enosh, and then sons and daughters. Enosh begets Kenan, and then sons and daughters. This chain continues all the way to Noah (whose named parent is named Lamech, in what appears to be a pure coincidence that caused me a lot of anxiety when originally writing this issue.)
In other words, from Adam to Noah (and beyond, for other reasons) there is an unbroken chain of nonbinary/trans/intersex/queer people who are the foundation, the spine, the throughline of our Jewish tradition. Amen selah!
Gut shabes y'all,
ada