Andrew Ramer – Jewcy

Twice a Heretic

Andrew Ramer — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 04:47:16 +0000

"Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh," we say to You in prayer, three times over. "Holy, Holy, Holy." And now I find myself before You, at thrice the age of a boy who has had his bar mitzvah. I cannot count the times over all these years that I have awakened and called out to You, still in my bed, that I stand before You, God. I have thanked You for the purity of my soul, for the wonders of my body. I have praised and exalted You, over and over again, in words of my own, in synagogue, joined with my people in common prayer, Sabbath after Sabbath, festival after festival, fast day after fast day. I’ve read psalms and even written them to You, as all of my friends have, calling out to You, O God of Israel. When I was twice the age of a bar mitzvah boy I remember asking the rabbi of my youth this question: "After all of these years of calling out to God, why hasn’t He called back?" The rabbi’s answer was simple. "To the prophet Elijah He spoke, we are told, in a still small voice." I knew nothing of still small voices. Our household was always filled with people, and our prayer halls are always jammed and noisy from men’s prayers. Curious about how I would ever hear that still small voice, I asked my Christian friend Rolando about silence, for I had heard that Christian monks spend long periods of time alone, silent, in prayer. He told me what he knew, gave me a book of his to read, which invoked the same passages about the still small voice. So I found places to still myself, in the attic, the cellar, in the synagogue at times when no one else was there. Once, feeling very brave, I asked Rolando if I could go to church with him, and he took me, at a time when mass was not being offered. He led me to a tiny chapel, where candles flickered before an image of a saint. I was nervous and yet curious. He knelt and I stood in silence. But I did not hear Your voice, God, although we remained there a long time, and I have tried, in the middle of the night, when I wake, to feel my way to You in the silence, to open myself up to You, in the silence. But You never spoke back to me, God, not one single time in all of those years. Once when we were boys, and he had just come back from mass, I remember Rolando telling me about the mystery of Jesus, how he was God Himself, come to earth, come into a human body. That he was born, suffered, and died for our sins. It did not make sense to me, why the Creator of all that is would have to do that. But it makes sense to me now. The first time I saw him, God, come into a room, I felt as if a comet had shot its way down from the heavens, down across the sky, sending its fiery tail out behind it, illuminating the night. I felt as if that comet had flared its way across the sky and then careening downward, had slammed into my chest with the force of a gigantic cannon ball, crumbling my defenses, smashing through all of my protective walls, setting me on fire. Each time that I saw him, God, walking in the city, in the market, in the bathhouse, I burned. And if I saw him with any other men, such rage flamed up in me that I feared for my actions. And I ran from him, turned my back and fled each time I saw him. I am not a boy, God, as you know, and this foolish youthful passion is unseemly. So why did You do this to me? Why didn’t You just speak, as You spoke to the prophets, directly, or spoke to the rabbis of old, in a lesser voice, which we call the daughter of a voice? God, I would fall to my knees before You if you spoke to me in the great great granddaughter of a voice, in a voice so tiny that it would make a whisper sound like waves crashing on the shore, or the crack of lightning shattering the sky, or the thunder of horses across a plain, pulling iron chariots. Instead, you have come to me this way, turning me into a Christian. For now I understand what Rolando was telling me all of those years ago. You do enter the world. You can be born. But this time it is me who suffers, me who is dying, me who yearns to sin and live for my sins. What madness, to be twice a heretic, for now I believe like a Christian and not a Jew. But I cannot join their church for I do not believe that Yesu was Your only begotten Son, but Abdul. Abdul ibn Rachman, the son of a minister to the king. Abdul ibn Rachman, even his name sends shivers through me. I ran from him. You know that I did. I turned and ran, double heretic that I am, falling in love with a Muslim. And now yesterday, in a voice so loud that I could not deny it, You called out to me through him, and I ran to You. A cart out of control, thundering down the Street of the Tailors, just as I was passing. I heard it before I saw it, and I threw myself up against a wall as it passed. But there ahead, there was a crowd. They too did the same, all of them, press themselves flat against a wall. But the horse was wild, and the cart was rocking from side to side, and a single man with his back to me was struck as the cart shuddered by. I saw it rip into his shoulder, and I heard his scream. Being a physician I ran toward him, as he fell into the street, holding his shoulder, in agony. A woman beside him began to scream for help, as I fell to the ground beside the fallen man. "I’m a doctor," I said to him, as I lay a gentle hand upon his back. "You’re going to be all right." I did not know that. It’s something that we always say. You know that. So I said it, as I slipped a hand down his back and slowly lowered him to the street. You did this to me, God. This is the way that you have answered all of my years of prayer. For when I turned him from his side to his back, it was those same dark eyes looking up at me, now in terror. I pulled my shawl off, rolled it up and quickly put it beneath his head. He smiled at me weakly, upside down. I told him I had seen what had happened, and asked him how his shoulder was. He winced as he tried to move his left arm toward his right, to feel from the outside what I knew from his grimace must be very painful. Was his shoulder dislocated, broken, torn? Blood was seeping through his clothing. I was about to say something else when two servants came running through the crowd which had gathered. They were servants of his father’s. But You know that. You know how they gently lifted him and carried him back to his father’s house, and how I followed them. And You know how all the way there he clenched my hand and would not let go, and how each time the servants slipped or loosened their grip on him, he would shudder, wince, cry out in pain. Later, when I had examined him and found out that nothing was broken but skin, nothing dislocated but our hearts, he told me that he was ashamed that he’d cried out. And I said to him, "Every cry is a prayer." And he said, "This is the first cry of mine that has ever been answered." Surely this is a sign from You, that two men find each other who have been looking for You without success, who find You in each other. And so I say, thank you.

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Queer Midrash

Andrew Ramer — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 01:29:41 +0000

Across the street, over the rooftop, in the next building, a young man in blue cooks his single dinner over a tiny flame. Perhaps a student, I saw him once in the marketplace, bent over a wooden tray of lemons from North Africa. Sidling up to him, smitten by his pale green eyes, by the ringlets in his beard, by his dark fingers, curled around a lemon, cradling it in his palm, I began to tremble. Such beauty should not be allowed. Without him noticing me, I followed him to a grain vendor’s stall, and watched him purchase a handful of rice and a handful of beans. Then I lost him in the crowd, and now – curse and blessing – he lives across from me, in a tiny attic room, with a fireplace just big enough for a single iron pot to hang above the flames. O the flames that rise up in me, that burn me, as he turns and bends, cutting something I cannot see, on a board that I can’t see either. Only the rise and fall of his arm, the way that his shoulder muscles swell and then stretch out, the rest of him out of view through his tiny window. Did he see me!? I turn to look down at my book, then look back, like David on his roof, captivated by Bathsheba. I would kill for him, like David did. But how much better it would be if he were the son of a king and came to me freely, like Jonathan came to David, swearing his devotion. He is gone now. And so is my ability to read. The text before me, "Berachot," is meaningless. What blessings can come to me with him living across the courtyard? I will have my windows sealed. I will move my study to another room. Down to the small one that faces the street. It’s cooler there anyway, in summer. He is back. He has changed his robe. Now in brown, with lighter stripes, are they tan or gray, I cannot tell from here. This robe is looser, a little bit open in front. God of Israel, have mercy on me. Through the opening, as he turns for a moment toward me, toward me without seeing me, a wash of dark hair, like a wave coming in on that beach near Cadiz, with all of its sailors, beach that we visited when I was a boy, the beach where first I knew the direction my heart turned, toward the west, away from Jerusalem. I will sell this house. I will live all year outside the city walls with my mother, in her summer house, overlooking the olive groves. No, Ezra. Now you are being foolish. Open your book again. Read. Read and look out. Read and look out and recite the blessing your father taught you when you were a little boy, the blessing to recite when you see a king and his court. For if all the men of Israel are princes, this young man is surely a king, and the fire, his pot, and whatever he is chopping, are surely his retinue. "Blessed are You, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who has given of Your glory to mortals." And tomorrow, I shall go shopping again, back to the same marketplace, where if I’m lucky, I’ll see him again. But should I wear the red robe with the yellow sash, or the green one with gold? And which sandals? No, this is holy ground. I should go barefoot.

Photo by Angela Garbe, August 22, 2007, posted at http://slog.thestranger.com/2007/08/19-25

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Queer Midrash

Andrew Ramer — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 02:47:36 +0000

Don’t tell me about the Shekhinah. How God’s female aspect is a sacred part of our tradition. The word "aspect" gives it all away. Your Shekhinah is God’s sidekick chum Purim drag costume. She’s His sad dark girlfriend evicted from her Jerusalem apartment by the Romans and wandering ever since. I don’t want an Aspect in my prayers not even that upgrade to First Class Yah Shekhinah. Yah is a masculine form not the Tah Shekhinah that would make it truly female. This is what I want and nothing less if we really mean that God isn’t Male. I want prayers to Her that don’t frighten us into thinking "This is paganism. Heresy. Something we’ve avoided for two thousand years!" I want Her presence to be felt Her names to be called Her blessings to be known Just as His are. I want: May She who makes peace in Her high heavens. I want: And on the seventh day She rested. I want: Holy Holy Holy is the Lady of Hosts the whole earth is full of Her glory. I want new liturgy to Her or I want us to throw out everything stale and male and old. I want generations of Jewish girls and boys to grow up hearing us pray to Her. Creator Sustainer Mother of all. I want us to bask in Her magnificence. Her glory. I want us to midrash Miriam in the cleft of lightning-struck tree as She flashes by shining. I want the cosmos to be Her challah shaped and molded. The universe her handiwork. Her offspring birthed from her Sacred Self and never separate from It. Is this too much to ask of a tradition that has reinvented itself over and over again for three thousand years? Not contracted fear but expansion and open embrace. Reverence. Recognition. That we see in Her what we find in ourselves and see mirrored in ourselves what we find in Her: One Eternal Ever-present Creator of the Universe Source of Life. Our Mother Our Comfort Our God.

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Al Andalus: Tales of an Imaginary Spain

Andrew Ramer — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 07:44:56 +0000

"The most important thing in this portion is seldom noticed," Rabbi Solomon ibn Uzair said, as he lay on a pile of cushions beside his lover Joseph. A small scroll of the Torah lay open in front of them, rolled to the beginning of the book of Shemot. Beyond the rabbi’s study, in the square below, they could hear the sounds of the market, heavy wooden wheels of carts, and the horses that pulled them, sounding on the hard dry earth of summer. The cacophony of shoppers’ voices, the cry of vendors calling out their wares, all mixed together and rose up into the room, bringing the heat of day into that chamber, lit only by the shafts of light that poured through the open lattice-work shutters. "And what is that?" Joseph the younger man asked his lover, running a slim dark hand over the rabbi’s forearm, running against the grain of coarse hair, his own hand then stopping over the page, like a golden yad above the text, pointing. The rabbi smiled and let his own hand caress his partner’s shoulder. "Joseph, you aren’t paying attention to what I told you last week, when we were finishing Bereshit." "How can I pay attention, when the day is so hot and dusty?" Solomon leaned over the young man to grab a pitcher off the small round copper table that sat beside the divan. Tall and thin, the pitcher of green glass was filled with water, which he poured into the two empty cups on the table. "You mean the water?" Joseph asked. "There’s water in Bereshit and now there’s water here, the river." The rabbi smiled. "You’ve got the right idea. But go back to the text and read for me." Stumbling over the Hebrew words, Joseph read the first passage. The room was still. He could feel his lover’s impatience with him, in the controlled rasp of his breathing. These were moments when he hated Solomon, only five years older, but acting as if he were the wisest man in all of Jewry. He glared at him for a moment. The older man’s hand extended over the open scroll, about to point out what he had missed. "Don’t! Let me find it," Joseph snapped. Solomon pulled back his hand. He hated it when his temper rose, especially when it rose up against Joseph, so sweet, so good to him. Without waiting, Joseph dived back into the text. He read slowly, with an edge of hostility in his voice. And then he came to the beginning of the story about Moses, to the fifteenth word, and the sixteen. "Ki Tov!" "That’s it, isn’t it? That’s what you wanted me to see. That Bereshit begins with God saying Ki Tov about creation, and now, at the very beginning of Shemot, Moses’s mother says that about her baby son!" Solomon reached out a broad hand and rumpled Joseph’s hair. Usually when he did that Joseph hated it. "I’m not your horse," he’d snap, "so get your fingers out of my mane." But this time, the heat, the words of Torah, and the tender warmth of his lover’s dark hand, telling him that he’d learned the lesson of the day, made him smile, grab that hand, pull it to his mouth and sink his teeth into the web between Solomon’s thumb and index finger. "Ouch!" the rabbi shouted, pulling his hand away. But Joseph grabbed it back and licked where his teeth marks remained. "Ki Tov," he whispered, then licked it again, as Solomon, with his other hand, rolled up the scroll of the law and placed it on the table.

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