professional crafter of artisanal queer tatterpigs | I'm the monster wreathed in smoke and orange blossoms


We continue in Genesis and honestly, there's not that much to talk about? This portion is about Sarah's death and the process of getting a burial plot for her; Abraham sending a servant to find a wife for Issac and us meeting Rebekah; followed by Abraham's remarriage, death, and a recounting of some of the lineage of Ishamel. A lot of it was just going over what happened, but what happened only has so much to read into.

That said, we did have some discussion of Abraham's wife after Sarah, Keturah. The tradition is divided as to whether she's Hagar again or a third woman, but the things to know are mostly that 1) she was righteous and 2) the sages really didn't like her kids and their associated lineages. It's another uncomfortable thing to learn about that fits into a broader pattern of the positioning of other peoples as inferior to Israel in the tradition, and the conversation started with observing how it's interesting that she isn't really named in a lot of places. This is explained on one hand by her not being in the direct lineage of Abraham to Issac et al, but it did lead to us discussing some counter-readings about how all these peoples are still fundamentally kin, and how that's made very present in conversion and how we treat Abraham and Sarah as our parents in the present when taking new names. There's a desire towards the universalist that can be expressed here against the traditional understanding of those peoples and the shared familial bonds that are present.

Meanwhile, the haftarah was the opening of I Kings, in which one of David's sons prematurely starts celebrating ascending the throne in which we learn that virgins are superior to the purpose of warming someone compared to non-virgins. Sadly, the sages did not enlighten us as to why this is the case.

Unfortunately, no pulls from the sages tonight- there just wasn't that much of specific interest or comedic value.


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