NOACH (GEN 6.9 – 11.32)
Really disappointed by both of the commentaries this week.
In the WTC, It felt like the whole essay was a huge stretch to just guess at aspects of Noah’s wife's life, when there is really nothing said about it in this Torah section at all. It all felt just completely speculative, which is fine, I guess thats what we do, all the time, when reading the Torah, but it felt, almost, like an exercise in imagination...
The TQ commentary went on about the Ham/ Noah storyline 9.20-9.27, where Noah gets drunk, his son Ham sees him drunk, tells his other brothers about it (apparently in a mocking way?) and then Noah curses him for it). It is for sure an interesting storyline yeah, but not really queer.
This is an issue I'm having as I go about this 'project' of mine (that being this blog/ as well as the whole reading the Torah thing in general. I was given Torah Queeries, the book, as a gift, and it was a very thoughtful gift, and I am grateful to have it. There is not a lot of queer-focused commentary that goes along, week by week, as far as I can tell, at all. So, as a resource, I felt lucky to have it and was excited. But one of the biggest problems with this book is that many of the contributers/writers of the commentaries are NOT QUEER. In the Introduction to the book *by David Schneer, it says
"In the process of gathering writers for this book, more than one colleague suggested that perhaps all the contributors should be LGBT rabbis, implying that the lived experience of a committed gay or trans Jew is the most fruitful lens with which to approach such a project. Instead, a significant percentage of the contributors to this volume identify as "straight allies"
I find this completely ridiculous. As a queer person, I tangibly feel the lack of queer voices over and over in the compilation. Where I am looking for community, I find none. I hear people talking ABOUT me, discussing a gay issue, maybe a transgender issue. But I don't find my experience in that book. I don't hear the voices of queer Jews, because they aren't there. They have propped up "straight allies" to talk about queer issues. What a waste of an amazing opportunity.