ReReading Torah- Take another look...

We are constantly being bombarded with notions of patriarchy in the world. The Biblical Canon is no different. Living in the liberal Jewish world I am constantly surrounded by friends, colleagues and students, reading the biblical text ready for a fight. Ready to react with incredulousness around the patriarchal ideas within our biblical stories. And yet, if we look at the stories without the rabbinic gloss of "Jewish heroes", we might see something surprising. Our characters and stories, are rife with complexity. A barren mother, Sarai, takes her handmaiden, Hagar, and makes her into a sister wife, to produce an heir. And in a turn of fate Hagar becomes the mother of Sarai’s child and the the tables have turned, the oppressed handmaid assumes authority over the matriarch. And when Hagar feels power over Sarai, and Sarai feels diminished, she takes her power back through abuse.
Cycles of oppression are laid out in front of us clearly and now that we as a world can name those systems we can see that our biblical text is not a guide book for healthy living. Rather a playbook for living within an oppressive society with a hope for change. Living within a system of oppression we are required to fulfill roles that uphold the system. Our Rabbi’s unable to identify that system struggle to make sense of a text that is difficult. They do what they must, to make the text fit with their own values and ideas about life. They flip the texts on their heads to prove that our fore-parents lived ethical lives and were chosen for their greatness.

​But the truth lies in the text not in, rabbinic calisthenics.

​Biblical society is based on a patriarchal system and when one lives within a system, rather than within their own truth they run the risk of oppressing others to maintain the status quo.