On Barbie, Miriam, and Seeds of Hope
As you may have seen, Oscar nominations were released earlier this week. On Tuesday night, Jimmy Kimmel, host of this year's awards, quipped that Ryan Gosling being nominated as Ken while Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig were snubbed for their respective awards "was kind of the plot of the Barbie movie."
Interestingly, this story is not new. This week's Torah portion, Beshalach, famously features the Song of the Sea, Shirat HaYam: a long and ancient poem attributed to Moses, that is so important that it gives this Shabbat the moniker "Shabbat Shirah" ("the Shabbat of Song") and has come to be recited daily as part of the traditional shacharit (morning service) liturgy. Moses's poem is long, too: it takes up almost a whole column of Torah (Exodus 15:1-18), and is easy to recognize in the Torah scroll because of its distinctive brick-like layout. The Song of the Sea is followed by a much shorter song sung by Miriam and the other Israelite women who celebrate together upon safely arriving at the other side of the sea after crossing out of Egypt (Exodus 15:20-21):
Then Miriam the prophet, Aaron’s sister, picked up a hand-drum, and all the women went out after her in dance with hand-drums.And Miriam chanted for them:
Sing to Adonai, for [God] has triumphed gloriously;
Horse and driver has [God] hurled into the sea.
Many Biblical scholars today believe that Miriam's song was likely the original; somehow she (like Robbie and Gerwig) were snubbed when it came to who gets the credit. Professor Carol Meyers (with whom I had the privilege of studying as an undergrad at Duke) writes:
"Exodus attributes the poem to Moses, with Miriam's rendition considered an antiphonal response. But a number of considerations support the possibility that, from a tradition historical perspective, the poem was Miriam's before it was Moses'." (Click here to read Meyers's whole article.)
Despite the fact that Miriam's song is shorter and doesn't get picked up in our liturgy for daily recitation, many traditional commentators have noted that Miriam’s leadership style is distinctive. For instance, HaRav Moshe Lichtenstein, co-rosh yeshiva of Yeshivat Har Etzion, cites a Gemara text (Sotah 30b) to show that according to the ancient rabbis, Moses’s song was recited in a call-and-response fashion, evoking “a mode of leadership in which the people were passive.” In contrast, he has the following to say about Miriam’s song:
“What was special about Miriam? She took initiative and aroused sweeping enthusiasm among the women in response to Moshe’s song. The women go out after Miriam spontaneously; their response is not limited to passive repetition.” (Click here to read his whole piece.)
Lichtenstein seems to be arguing that there is something about women's leadership that is collaborative, empowering, and can elicit collective action.
To be clear, I am not a gender essentialist. I grew up on the core “torah” of Free to Be You and Me: that it is good to think expansively beyond the bounds of society’s gender constructs, and we need not limit our paths and life choices based on gender. I love that this week's parashah is paired with a haftarah (prophetic text) that also features a powerful woman - Deborah - and her song (see Judges 5); she is a judge, warrior and poet all at the same time. But I am also incredibly grateful that today, we have come to appreciate gender as a spectrum, not a binary (one of my own kids is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns… I am so glad to live in an age where a wide range of options for gender identity are available to all of us!)
And still, as I look at the patterns here - from Miriam and her song in this week's parasha, to this week's Oscars nominations - I can't help but wonder what our world would be like if the playing field were just a bit more level, and women's voices more easily heard? Patriarchy and sexism go hand-in-hand with so many other forms of oppression and hatred: xenophobia, racism, dehumanization, and more. How might our American political landscape look different -- and healthier -- if so much airtime wasn’t given over to “alpha male” bullying? How would the reality on the ground be different in Israel and Gaza right now if women were part of Netanyahu’s war cabinet, or if a wider range of leadership voices and styles played more prominent roles in both Israeli and Palestinian politics?
At a moment when it’s easy to despair, we have an obligation to search for kernels of hope. And this is precisely the week to do so; yesterday was Tu BiShevat, the "Birthday of the Trees" that comes in the dead of winter. This week, we plant trees and celebrate seeds; we consider the potential for new growth and renewal that lies - always - just around the corner in spring, both literally and metaphorically.
During the Torah service at our Shabbat Morning Minyan this past Saturday, I shared a poem by Rachel Goldberg-Polin (and incidentally, the Hebrew word for "poem" and "song" are one in the same). Her 23-year-old son Hersh is one of the 130+ hostages still being held by Hamas in Gaza; she has emerged over the last couple of months as "the international face of the hostage families" according to this article in The Forward. In December, she composed the following poem and shared it in a speech to the United Nations in Geneva, explaining that she had written it "for a woman in Gaza" who "knows who she is." I invite you to read it now, again or for the first time, slowly, and to take in her words:
"One Tiny Seed"
by Rachel Goldberg-Polin
There is a lullaby that says your mother will cry a thousand tears before you grow to be a man.I have cried a million tears in the last 67 days.
We all have.
And I know that way over there
there’s another woman
who looks just like me
because we are all so very similar
and she has also been crying.
All those tears, a sea of tears
they all taste the same.
Can we take them
gather them up,
remove the salt
and pour them over our desert of despair
and plant one tiny seed.
A seed wrapped in fear,
trauma, pain,
war and hope
and see what grows?
Could it be
that this woman
so very like me
that she and I could be sitting together in 50 years
laughing without teeth
because we have drunk so much sweet tea together
and now we are so very old
and our faces are creased
like worn-out brown paper bags.
And our sons
have their own grandchildren
and our sons have long lives
One of them without an arm
But who needs two arms anyway?
Is it all a dream?
A fantasy? A prophecy?
One tiny seed.
Like Miriam, whose collaborative leadership emerges in Parashat Beshalach at a moment of trauma, rupture and loss for the Israelites, Rachel Goldberg-Polin's words emerge from this very bleak moment. And yet, even in this dead of winter, she has the courage to give voice to a future in which Israeli and Palestinian mothers might someday drink sweet tea together in their old age, and raise children and grandchildren together in peace. This is kind of prophetic vision we need right now: a picture of what is possible, the promise of hope and of tiny seeds that lie buried, but can be watered even by our collective tears in order that they may grow.
May this Shabbat Shirah -- this Shabbat of both poetry and song -- and Tu BiShevat give us the power to dream and to hope. Ken* yehi ratzon -- so may it be God's will. [*Barbie pun intended! ;-)]
Rabbi Rachel Nussbaum
