vayera: yitzchak imeinu
sholem aleichem friends,
It's Wednesday as I write this, and I just got back from teaching a calculus class on the Chain Rule, in which we calculate how quickly a large gear is moving in time based on how quickly it is being turned by a smaller gear. Wheels, as Ezekiel saw, within wheels. So I'm in that classically mystical mood that always comes from teaching mathematics, and when I'm feeling mystical, I like to study the Sefer Yetzirah.
[non-exhaustive content warnings: coercive sexual surgery, conversion therapy]
In the Sefer Yetzirah, creation is formed/sealed out of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The letters are divided into different groups, the first of which are the "mothers": א, and מ, and ש. There is a delightful almost-pattern to these three mothers: א is the first letter of the alephbet, מ the middle letter, and the ש is the....second-to-last. In her (essential) commentary on the Sefer Yetzirah, Rabbi Jill Hammer notes that some people believe this almost-symmetry exists specifically to obscure (and thus, to hint at) a secret mystical truth: that ת, the final letter of the alephbet, is really the third mother instead of ש. However, Hammer explains, ת is clearly a double (a letter with two names -- tav and sav) and therefore cannot be the third mother.
To which I, a transsexual, respond: excuse me? Just because ת was assigned double at birth does not mean she cannot become a mother! So let's imagine she is a double-to-mother transsexual. In the Sefer Yetzirah (and eleswhere), when ת is described as a double, its name is spelled תיו, which has a gematria (numeric value) of 416. If ת transitioned from double to mother, losing its doubledness, its gematria perhaps would also transition from the double-gematria of 416, to one half of that double: 208.
My fellow queers, 208 is the gematria for Yitzkhak.
Personally, I think this is the real secret being hidden by the "asymmetry" of ש as the third mother: Yitzkhak is in fact a matriarch, not a patriarch. I'm not the first to come to this general conclusion, although as far as I know I'm the first to find it via this trans gematria. For example, Chaim ibn Attar (17th-18th century Moroccan Rabbi) commented in Or haChaim that Yitzkhak was born having only feminine "emanations of the soul". Of course, he teaches this in the most misogynistic way imaginable, but we can separate the content of his teaching (that Yitzkhak was born with a feminine soul, whatever that means) from his own personal interpretations of how bad that would be.
We don't even need to turn to a Kabbalist like ibn Attar for this. In the Talmud, we learn (h/t to brin solomon) that
Rabbi Eliezer says: In Tishrei the world was created; in Tishrei the Patriarchs were born; in Tishrei the Patriarchs died; on Passover Isaac was born
You don't need to be a professional mathematician to follow the logic: if the Patriarchs were born in Tishrei and Yitzkhak was born on Passover, then Yitzkhak is not a patriarch. (Of course not, as we now know that she is our mother ת.)
Ibn Attar goes further than merely claiming that Yitzkhak had a female soul, arguing that the Akedah, the Binding in this Torah portion, was a kind of ancient conversion therapy ritual to either replace Yitzkhak's female soul with a male soul, or at least add male soul emanations in. I think this is clear from the text of the Torah itself. At least, it is clear that Avraham is aware that Yitzkhak is not their son and that haShem wants to change that. Let's take a look at the text.
When haShem commands Avraham to bring Yitzkhak for the Akedah, haShem says: "take your son, your only son, Yitzkhak, whom you love." Why this redundancy? Well, we could imagine midrashically a conversation between haShem and Avraham going something like this:
haShem: take your son
Avraham: Ishmael? But you had me banish him
haShem: your only son
Avraham: yes, my only son is Ishmael
haShem: Yitzkhak, whom you love
Avraham: I mean, okay. Yitzkhak is my daughter, but go off I guess...
In the end, of course, Avraham does take Yitzkhak to the binding. The obvious question is why. Why does Avraham take Yitzkhak for this ritual? Perhaps because Avraham themself went through a similar experience. Avraham was born, the Rabbis teach us, a tumtum, a person with indeterminate/concealed sexual organs, who later had his sexual organs reformed (by haShem, perhaps, and seemingly for the purpose of becoming a patriarch):
Rabbi Ami said: Abraham and Sarah were originally tumtumin, people whose sexual organs are concealed and not functional, as it is stated: “Look to the rock from where you were hewn, and to the hole of the pit from where you were dug” (Isaiah 51:1), and it is written in the next verse: “Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you” (Isaiah 51:2), which indicates that sexual organs were fashioned for them, signified by the words hewn and dug, over the course of time.
This sugye has sometimes been quoted to me as trans-affirming, but I think that might get this backward. Fashioning indeterminate/"nonfunctional" sexual organs into determinate/"functional" sexual organs is not necessarily an example of consensual transition. To me, it could also read like an example of the coercive surgeries (horrifically) performed on intersex people to force them into more normative social/sexual roles. Maybe, I have to wonder, Avraham liked being a tumtum. Maybe Avraham wanted a different role and body than what they were ultimately forced into to be a "patriarch".
In any case, whether you agree with that reading or not, Avraham does as haShem commands. Yitzkhak is bound on the altar. And then, an angel saves her. The Rambam tells us that teshuvah (return/repair/repentance) is only complete when we are in the same situation where we had previously done wrong, and we make a different choice. Perhaps haShem realized that they were doing the same thing to Yitzkhak that they had done to Avraham, and made a different choice here. Perhaps, this whole ritual was orchestrated precisely to allow haShem to do teshuvah. Alternatively, if that's a step too far for you, we could even say that having the angel save Yitzkhak is the Jewish people doing teshuvah for...failing to save Yitzkhak in an earlier version of the story! Indeed, Biblical source critics note that throughout the story of the Akedah, the name used for haShem is Elohim. When the angel arrives to save Yitzkhak, the name used for haShem changes to the four-letter name. For this, and other reasons, the part where Yitzkhak is saved is believed by many to be a later addition to an earlier story where the binding actually proceeds.
I think it is very important that we remember this, that we remember that the binding, this conversion therapy ritual, was incomplete (at least, in the repaired/returned/teshuvic version of the story we have). Too often, we in the queer and trans community cite midrash like Or haChaim's (or like my own above) for "representation", but do not uphold our responsibility to take this midrash seriously, even as we accept the angel-savior emendation as canon. We tell this story, and then immediately turn back to treating Yitzkhak as a cis man (whatever that means in context) and a patriarch. That's nonsense. Yitzkhak was born with a feminine (I might argue, transfeminine) soul -- the trans soul of ת-as-mother -- and the ritual to alter this was not completed. She is our mother, not our father. (But Ada, wasn't your last newsletter all about holding contradictory readings? Sure, but this one is hardly ever truly held, even by trans people.)
This entire story is ultimately encoded in the mystical nature of the double-to-mother trans letter ת. In the Sefer Yetzirah, the double ת/ת represents the spectrum from ממשלה (power/rulership) to עבדות (slavery). The gematria of עבד is the same as that of חביון, a hiding place. We could therefore understand this ת/ת-spectrum as being between truly inhabiting yourself-as-yourself (sovereignty/ממשלה in your self, openness in yourself) versus being hidden from yourself / having yourself ruled by others. In my last commentary, I mentioned that the gematria of לך לך (lekh lekha, haShem's command to Avraham) is the same as עבד, another indication that Avraham's experience was of being forced by haShem to serve the role of Patriarch, to inhabit the עבדות side of ת/ת. The intention of the Akedah was to move Yitzkhak in the same direction. It is very important, as I said above, that we remember that this binding of Yitzkhak to that role was not, thank g-d!, completed.
Fully realized as a mother, ת takes on the role of ש in the Sefer Yetzirah: the mother of fire, of the sky/heavens, of guilt, of summer, of the head. I could go on forever analyzing these aspects of Yitzkhak, but right now I honestly just want to finish my coffee and meditate on all of these together. So I think here is where I turn these thoughts over to you. What can ת/ת in transition bring to our understanding of transfemininity? Of Yitzkhak? Of motherhood? Of power and identity?
Gut shabes y'all,
ada