sex & seder: a new queer midrash for passover

Passover Eve 5772/2012

(scroll down for Hebrew version)

“And God saw our suffering”: This refers to the prevention of the course of nature, as it is written “And God saw”, and also, “And God knew”. 

I’d never paid attention before to these words from the Passover Haggadah. This year they called out to me.

This rabbinic reading of the Exodus story—the “prevention of the course of nature”, or prishut derekh eretz, literally “the separation of the way of the world” —is interpreted as a prohibition on sexual relations. During the enslavement in Egypt even intercourse was banned, and men already worn down by hard labor were forbidden from having relations with their wives. Pharaoh had demanded that Hebrew male children be killed, and according to legend,  the Hebrew leaders responded by forbidding procreation altogether, fearful of having to murder their own offspring.

The enslavement of the Hebrews was also the enslavement of their sexuality.

Until, according to one legend, little Miriam came and convinced the men to return to  their wives. Or, according to other legends, the women enticed their men, with gifts of fish and wine and little mirrors, seducing them back into the sensual, sexual and procreative pleasure that is the victory of hope and future over the bitterness of bondage and despair.

That separation of husband and wife was not just about procreation. It was the prevention of love, intimacy, the comfort of eye to eye, hand in hand, sacred consolation and deep knowledge of another —  all that is implied by the verses “and Adam knew”,  “and God knew.”

And I

From the narrow places I called out to You.

“Our sufferings” these are the sufferings of the heart, the pains of longing, the shame of solitude and sexual repression;

And this separation is what my rabbis have demanded of me because of my love for my own kind which is forbidden.

And some of them demand it still from some of us.

This is Egypt, Mitzraim, the “narrow places”, the land of narrow-mindedness.

They who call for these separations of soul and body prevent the course of nature, a course of love, kindness, intimacy, tender care, and freedom. They who call for these separations diminish Torah in the world because Torah goes hand in hand with the way of the world, and love, which is the way of the world, the course of nature, even precedes Torah.

May it be so.

May the knowledge that we are made in the image of the Divine assure us that deep within there is the promise of liberation, a way out for each one of us, an exodus out of the narrow places of bondage and separation and suffering and shame and loneliness into the vast land of freedom and togetherness and hope and promise and pride, today, each day, as in those ancient times.

And we will come out, as we did from Egypt, “with a strong hand”, and with open arms; and with festive joy, together, packing courage,  peace, and our worthy love.