Transcript
Speaker: Hi there, and welcome to Red Tent Midrash. We're a mystic, a pilgrim, and a storyteller, gathered to ponder the feminine themes of the Bible.
Speaker: We are women who nurture a love for our faith, even as we grapple with reclaiming scripture from traditionally male and religiously charged contexts. We three are writing books and curating experiences that connect women to themselves, to one another,
Speaker: and to the divine as they live their stories. This podcast is a safe space where we commit to keep learning together. We invite you to join us.
Speaker: Hello, everyone. Hello. Hello. but Well, ah we have gathered together for a little bit of a different limited series ah for a Red Tent Living podcast. and ah initially, this was my harebrained idea. um And the two of you said yes to it.
Speaker: Um, So I'm going to take a minute and talk about what it is that I pitched to the two of you. And then I think you can talk about why it intrigued you and what we're hoping this space becomes and is for the three of us and for any women who choose to listen in and men who choose to listen in That's fine too.
Speaker: But I have ah started this Independent study, I got kind of captivated by the idea that there are so many stories in Scripture and they chiefly center on men.
Speaker: I actually first started noodling on this because I was asked to start help editing children's curriculum for um a Christian school Bible program. And it wasn't until fourth grade that a woman besides Eve was introduced in the Bible curriculum. And it was from this very progressive, like, you know, earnest man who was writing this and, you know, involving other pastors and writing it. And i was like, nobody thought, nobody thought. And so i I started this project called Lost Stories from Hebrew Campfires. And the initiative is to tell these stories with women together. who are mentioned in scripture at the heart of the story. Because I have to imagine that there were young children whose mothers told them bedtime stories and the story was about Rebecca, the brave and mysterious shepherdess, and the man who happened to meet her at a well, right?
Speaker: um I just think that those stories lived alongside the ones that got written down during Babylonian captivity to serve a very specific purpose. So I'm i'm wanting to kind of find those women again and creatively mid-rash what their story could have looked like. So I'm in the thick of that research and I just wanted some conversation partners.
Speaker: And the two of you are in the thick of your own areas of study and research. And so that's why I reached out to the two of you. And Beth, I don't know, maybe you go first. What was, looked you into this?
Speaker: Well, saying yes to talking about women in history and the Bible with you two was an easy yes. But it aligns so well with my own passions.
Speaker: mean, we're Tracy and I are now in our fifth year of leading women's pilgrimages to Turkey and Egypt. Turkey led me down, you know, this big this rabbit hole that ended up in a book, Lost Women of Turkey, and Egypt then opened up a similar vein of what are the lost women of Egypt stories out there. And it's gotten under my skin in a way I didn't anticipate happening. I'm really focused right now, this summer I'm doing a series on my sub stack around the women kind of circling ah Sinai Desert and Mount Sinai, starting with women from
Speaker: the 19th century and going all the way back to what we'll be talking about some in this podcast and just the layers of stories and history. I'm really intrigued by the historical and cultural context around what we understand from some of those simple children's Bible stories that you'll be editing, um understanding what else informed and shaped how those stories
Speaker: came to be. So I'm an armchair historian who wishes she had ah doctorate and doesn't want to take the time to get one. But I do my own research because I'm so passionate about it.
Speaker: So excited to have these conversations with you too. who love that. and Yeah, I mean, it and so it was an easy yes for me for those same reasons. And i think I, you guys feel very, um each of you sort of sinking down into like this historical narrative around women. And I and i think where I find myself and what i'm what I'm working on right now is more like the seasons and stages of a woman's life.
Speaker: And so this, the history and like the passing down of those stories and the passing down from women to women, you know, to grandmothers and then to grandchildren, that it all it all fits.
Speaker: you know, very much in there. And, and I think this is, it's gotten stirred for me in, in part because of what I started a long time ago with Red Tent Living and just the value of creating spaces for women to share stories again and and how that got lost. But it's been fueled, um, in, in large part also by going with Beth, like the places that we've been and the stories that we've found. And, how those were preserved when they were, how they were lost as they got lost.
Speaker: And I'm just curious to see what what what it is that we're meant to pull all the way through till now, what it is about how God created women, what's just intrinsically true about us that doesn't change over the course of time, that the celts believe The Celtic um belief around time is that it's circular.
Speaker: it's not So it's not as linear as it is circular. and i And I think that that's part of what I'm saying right now too, is like, what if it's what if it's not this straight line that's being drawn, but that it's actually this more so circular space that we're in. And so what was then is now.
Speaker: um And what is that what does that mean for us? What does that meant to mean to me? but It's making me think of reading. One of the books that I'm reading is called Reading Women of the Bible. It's by Tikva Freimer-Kensky.
Speaker: And she talks about that her belief is that, especially in Exodus, which is where we're where this series is focused, that there's this capacity of women for resistance because their natural hierarchy and their misogynistic culture had them othered and had them subjugated just as a matter of course.
Speaker: And so when they're experiencing similar disenfranchisement in their role as slaves, they are not shut down. They're like, oh, and so and so we do the work. they They have more capacity. Perhaps she wonders if they have more capacity to move and to lead as resistors because they're so familiar with this context of like...
Speaker: um crisis and oppression and not being heard and having to get a little bit creative to show their strength. um And it just makes me wonder, like, misogyny is never okay.
Speaker: um But I think the places where we've known, rooms where we've been ushered out or not welcomed as leaders or not heard, like, I wonder if there's a similar kind of creativity that women have access to today. And I think there is.
Speaker: um What was then is still now. And maybe the way that we read texts and maybe the way that we lead and call for change is like directly rooted in that.
Speaker: I was just, I was, I was doing some research this morning and it was talking about what I was, what I was reading was like a shift that happened culturally, the shift that happened when television began to show up in people's houses.
Speaker: And in Ireland in particular, they had this practice of, they they called them rambling house is what it was called. It was in these tiny villages. And it was this house that was oftentimes, it was an older couple that lived there. And the and the idea was sort of that, you know, they had they had lived long enough to hear all the things and not forget.
Speaker: And so they they were like this source of wisdom and welcome. And this house was a house where you could just walk through the front door. You didn't knock. It was just kind of known that once it got to be suppertime or after suppertime, you could come and you could come in. And what happened was this... like communal sitting around the table and the passing, the passing on of like the stories of the day, but stories from long ago. and and it's where, ah you know, courting would start because young people would be sitting next to each other at this table or whatever. And this was like centuries old.
Speaker: And then television was invented and everybody got a TV in their house. And within one generation, it had totally disappeared. Wow. ah It struck me because I think often we think about, well, when they were nomadic or, you know, back then when they sat around the campfire, you know, that's when stories got passed this way.
Speaker: and And that's not true. Stories got passed this way for a long, long time. And I think that's the, like, a story told on TV isn't the same. Right? it's held in It's not held in community. and um And I think we've watched the continued denigration of that, you know, with our devices. And we're just more and more and more and more and more disconnected from the stories that that formed us, from the stories that matter, from the stories that tell us, this isn't actually new. Like what's happening isn't new.
Speaker: This happened a long time ago. well And what I love is you're painting the picture of these elders in a community who are putting their own spin on whatever story they're passing down, their own perspective, their own interpretation.
Speaker: um And that is what that is what used to happen with scripture. That is what right the the ancients did. the The teachers, the rabbis would...
Speaker: would sit around and riff on verses and put their own spin, their own perspective, their own interpretation on it based on the day, the age of the time they were in or the location of where they were.
Speaker: no human comes to as a blank slate. And so those elders, those teachers pass down these different understandings. And I love that about midrash as we you know think about that word. And what we're trying to do in this little space right here is just kind of filling in white space in between the texts, just imagining all that's not said and not spoken through our perspective, our interpretation, um and how there's just so much, like historically among the Jewish people that was so accepted.
Speaker: Like there there was no fear in that, in being able to riff over scripture. there was an embrace of the imagination around what that might mean. And we might not have it right. We don't have that today.
Speaker: no our evangelical, you know, American Christian culture. That is not, that is not safe. um But there's so much beauty in that.
Speaker: And i love that we're going to try and, bring a little taste of that into this space. And so now we're we're officially in it, but I want to do two things before we like kind of keep going.
Speaker: One, i want to just acknowledge that the three of us decided together. So this series is intended to be a ah connecting point of all of our various interests. And we're we're treating this like a classroom or like a library or like a study group. It's not fully baked.
Speaker: We're not presenting anything polished. We are just in the thick of it wondering aloud. And so with that comes all of the grace of casual classroom ponderings, right? Like, um and I hope that listeners feel invited into that and curious about that and inspired to read their own things or ask their own things in the comments. We would love that.
Speaker: But we We picked Exodus. So I want to talk about why we picked Exodus. And the other thing I want to do is just for anybody who's never heard the word Midrash, which is possible, give a definition of that. And mom, I feel like you're working on a course with Midrash. And so you should define it because you're working on curriculum around this.
Speaker: Okay, let me get my let me get my notes out. So I think one of the things that feels important to say is that the three of us don't believe that the Bible is fragile.
Speaker: And what I mean by that is, and and I think without, I wouldn't have put it that way, but I was raised to feel like it was fragile. Like I can't press on it very hard. It has to be taken literally. It has to mean exactly this thing. And and there's not room to wonder around it.
Speaker: And if that's what some of our listeners are used to, then I want to just say, you know, and I don't, I'm not asking you to set that aside, but but we're asking you to like, would you like to consider something more?
Speaker: ah And there there is there is value. Midrash values the the understanding of the context. It values the the fullness of of what the Bible has to say.
Speaker: um So we're not diminishing that. We're valuing that. It is an interpretation. It assumes that the text is exploding with meaning and that in that, like, there's a lot for us to discover. The word um midrash, the root word is drash, which means to study or inquire or seek, explain, investigate, interpret.
Speaker: um And so the practice of midrash is like a persistent attempt to create meaning. that we're going to stay in it and we're going to keep searching and we're going to keep exploring those ancient texts for what we might what we might find, what might be there. and And so it uses questions to keep spiritual meanings open.
Speaker: And so I think our listeners will experience us asking one another questions and asking questions of the text. But it allows for possibilities and sort of levels of faith-filled meaning would be one way to think about it. Yeah.
Speaker: One of the, ah some research that I did talked about that there are the levels of understanding of scripture, that we have the literal meaning of scripture and that that's actually the least helpful to the soul and possibly the most dangerous for history.
Speaker: That there's the deep meaning and it's like the symbolic or allegorical application There's the comparative meaning, which is where you combine texts in your search. And then there's the hidden meaning. And this gets at like the mystery itself that's that's in the scripture.
Speaker: And the first person to practice Midrash was Jesus. Like it's what he did with the scribes and the Pharisees. It's the questions that he would ask them. And you think about like they would give him some text and he would ask them a question.
Speaker: And he was always mining for the deeper meaning beyond where they had taken something so literally.
Speaker: So that's, that's what we're talking about. And I love it because I think it feels, it it feels like it creates a little bit of room for us to play and imagine. And, imagine and not to create meaning that isn't there, but if the, if the word of God is living and active and sharper than a two-edged sword, which is what we're told in the new Testament, then what is, what does that mean?
Speaker: If it gets to be living and active today and um and and we get to wonder about it together.
Speaker: So then with why we picked Exodus, it, Seems like it felt like the perfect intersection of everything that we're about. You guys have led these pilgrimages. Mom, you're doing a lot of work with Celtic Christianity, but it has some pretty compelling roots in Egypt. Beth, you're in the Sinai right now.
Speaker: And then I'm looking at women from Hebrew scripture and there's a whole bunch of them in Exodus. So it just felt like the right land and story to kind of bring us all together.
Speaker: so with that, our theme for this first episode is labor. um And we all did with that what we willed, but what were things that struck you about the theme of labor in Exodus?
Speaker: I think the first thing that pops into my mind, just even as you say that again, is second book of the Bible. that is already feeling like a Bible about ah a word about men for men is so humorously full of stories of women.
Speaker: And one of the biggest themes is ah theme of labor, which is a very womanly experience. i like This is a story about laboring to bring forth a nation.
Speaker: And that too feels so feminine. So I'm just laughing inside at how, um again, as three women come to the text, what do we see?
Speaker: i see a lot of femininity in it. So I'm excited about that. What about you, mom? When we talked about doing this, like my my first thoughts went pretty literally to things that I...
Speaker: saw and things that I read about as as we were taking women to Egypt. So i i found myself wanting to wanting to go back and and and read some of those stories and and read some of those passages. And and then i so I think what stood out to me is that you know the the the book of Exodus is this leaving of Egypt But they'd lived there for so long.
Speaker: I mean, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. i And so I think I just found myself thinking about that and like how how much of what the Hebrews were doing and the Hebrew women and how they were experiencing birth and talking about birth and labor, how how much, how how combined had that become?
Speaker: with Egyptian practices and we can't go obviously find them. They're hidden. Like their stories are hidden and sort of tucked in and around and behind what is so well preserved.
Speaker: um in the story of particular Egyptian royalty where birth is like, ah yeah i can go watch it on a, i can go see the progression of it on a wall in a temple.
Speaker: So those are, I just found myself thinking about that and and wondering about that and how that plays um as they leave all of that to become their own people.
Speaker: I think the parallelism that you're both touching on between birth and the Exodus itself is really like insightful.
Speaker: It connects with something and I want to give credit to Claudia Bergman was the one that I read with this word who made this bridge, um,
Speaker: she notices in Hebrew scripture that like in the stories of difficult births, when that baby is born, it comes out. That's, that's the phrase used. The baby came out.
Speaker: Um, and the word is Yatza. And it's, best known. That word is best known for being the Exodus, for the word to come out of Egypt. um And when God promises Jacob, out of you will come a great nation, it's Yatza. And so it's Yatza, Yatza, Yatza. And so you have this story that starts Yes, with a genealogy, but then with midwives and then ushers in the birth, the difficult birth of a great nation. um And it's like, that is what this story is. God is midwifing this nation into existence out of oppression.
Speaker: um and that the whole thing is a very feminine, image. And then you have these feminine heralds at the beginning. You have midwives and you have the daughter of Levi and you have the daughter of Pharaoh and you have Miriam all coming around for this birthing experience that gets its embodiment in Moses. That's who becomes our face for a little while, but very feminine themes.
Speaker: Well, and, you know, I think we'll talk more about Miriam in other episodes, but There is some tradition that wonders if she was one of those midwives, she and her mother. And if she she played that role for Moses, how beautiful the image of her at the end of the sea that has literally divided like a birth canal.
Speaker: for the nation, for Israel, for the people to pass through. and she is at the other side with her tambourine or her sistrum, which was a musical instrument that we saw all over the temples in Egypt that women would use in celebrations and worship. And so she is there singing a song of worship at the end of this proverbial birth canal.
Speaker: That the people are passing through. um and I love that 40 years later, they pass through another body of water.
Speaker: And 40 years, of the parallel of 40 weeks of a normal pregnancy and what God is doing to to gestate desert.
Speaker: israel in the desert in those 40 years and just the picture, like the the labor and delivery imagery in that is so rich.
Speaker: Yes. And you're you're kind of already touching, Beth, but what you were saying, Mom, with like time being circular, it's like an Israel will be reborn again and again, and it will learn the same lessons again and again. like and And such is life, right? Like this this becoming, this molding, this like passing it on to the next generation and then needing to learn it and all of that.
Speaker: Yes. But at this stage, they're so infantile. they're They're this disparate group of people, not probably not even just the original descendants of Abraham and the 12 sons, but probably a collection right of other peoples who were also enslaved in Egypt, who also wanted to leave. 400 years of forgetting who they are Or even what did they know at that point? Because in Genesis, God is really just described as El, which is a pretty common name for Lord in the region.
Speaker: And so they're so infantile at this point. They're not a nation. They don't know Yahweh. They're not monotheistic, probably. like there's just so much here that's at the beginning of that, of what will become what you said, Katie, just rebirth and rebirth and rebirth and growing and maturing.
Speaker: But here we're at we're at that beginning gestational stage. Yeah. And like what that was making me think of was like even like they're going to learn to attach. Like God is going like attaching to God and to one another. And to like, so there's identity forming. There's like, who are we in relationship to God? I mean, we know because when Moses goes up for the commandments and they make a golden calf, which is tied straight back to what they felt like they needed from Egypt, right? Like, and what the Egyptians would have done in that moment.
Speaker: um And you two can speak a lot more eloquently to that and to the iconography of the cow and Egyptian goddesses and all of that. But like, no, they they're just doing what they think they're supposed to do for self-preservation. Well, it feels...
Speaker: It has felt like such a privilege to to go and walk around in in the actual place where all of this happened because... Just the the understanding, at least for me, how much deeper and wider my understanding is about what was going on.
Speaker: And to your point, Katie, that they they were just doing what they knew to do. They didn't just come up with that out of nowhere, right? And they had so many gods for so many different things. And one of the things, and this was Beth's idea when we were trying to figure out when we were taking women to Egypt this last time, How are we going to talk about all these gods and goddesses? And Beth said, you said, you know, I think we should be thinking about what need is being negotiated.
Speaker: what What is it that this particular goddess or God is is negotiating of human need that these people have? And that was so brilliant. And it it was so helpful for us as we then started looking. It was like, oh my goodness. Okay, it's here, it's here, it's here. And then...
Speaker: You know, our understanding of the 12 plagues and what they represented and the specific gods that they were tied to. And so, like, what God is doing here is is so much bigger than I understood after years of Bible college and, you know, all all of the things. that that I had learned, i hadn't i hadn't learned what what he was really doing and how he is showing himself like he is someone different. He is the living God. he is the beginning and the end. And it it just, yeah, I mean, it's just, it's so, it it is so beautiful um what's happening. And
Speaker: And such this picture, you already said, like it is this picture through this canal and this birthing. And it's like, you know, there's a transition that's happening. and man yeah That's ultimately what we're saying. And I was reading last week, this guy named, his last name is Van Gnep. But he believes that every transition has a three-stage structure, that there's a separation that occurs. Then there's this liminality space where you don't know what's going to happen yet. And then there's this incorporation where you come back.
Speaker: And i and and that we see that here. Like that is they they have to separate. God separates them. He takes them out. He puts them in exile, which is very liminal. He meets them there. It's like this formless phase. There's no social rules. There's no, like everything has been stripped down. And then there's this re-entry like this when they go into the land of Canaan they become a people and they're like coming back in and I think there's something there for us too you know Tracy you talk about the the embodiment for us of being there and going from you know we started in Egypt proper
Speaker: Nile Delta side. And so that is where they would have been because nobody lives or can can sustain themselves too far away from the water source.
Speaker: And then the fertile valley where everything grows is they also knew that they were not, I mean, they, in many ways, life was cush, even though they were in slavery, there was plenty of food.
Speaker: There was plenty of water. um It's why they complain so much. is because now you go into the desert and I've never experienced a desert like that. Right. Where there's literally no sign life.
Speaker: of life Right. um And there is, there's little, you know, streams tucked in. There's tree here a tree there. and you have to go like follow a goat to find it because your natural eye is not going to notice it.
Speaker: And it's not like the Sahara where it's just endless as far as you can see it's sand. It's this... fierce, rocky, craggy, rugged landscape. And so this is where they go.
Speaker: and there is no, there's not enough food. There's not enough water. And so back to the, this whole gestational kind of idea of these 40 years, AKA 40 weeks, they're in their own little womb. They're in the wilderness where God's sustenance, all that they need is provided in the cloud and the manna and the miracle well that keeps appearing.
Speaker: And it is enough to sustain them to do the work that needs to be done in those 40 years. And I just, I love that, that we get kind of a um exclamation point on that concept when Moses goes up to it's the second time actually he's up there and he,
Speaker: Here's for the first the first description God gives is, i am a merciful and gracious God. That's how we translate it English. That word merciful is the Hebrew word rakum, which is the word for womb.
Speaker: And so God's first description is, I am a womb like God. I do for you what a womb does. I sustain, I nurture, give.
Speaker: provide life for you. And I just, I love that that we've we're given that word after we're given a picture of what is actually happening for them in that in that wilderness season.
Speaker: i think that the vulnerability of pregnancy in part is you can do nothing. You can't do anything to ensure that everything is going well.
Speaker: you You could take your prenatal vitamins and you can not eat tuna fish and, you know, like ah all the things that they tell us now, right? That you don't, don't do. These are the, don't do, don't do, don't do.
Speaker: And, you know, take these vitamins, drink enough water, but you have no control over how that being is, is being knit together. Well, and then ratchet that up to ancient Mesopotamia. i mean, there were regions where the mortality the infant mortality rate was 50%. So mean, think about that gestational journey as a woman, like where you are literally every day coming to this existential place of like surrender where it's like, this might be
Speaker: the death of me, right? We have that story in in scripture with Rebecca when she's like, This is, this child will kill me and does.
Speaker: And it's the midwife who's like, you will have a son. He will be born and she delivers him. And and she is both death doula and birth doula all at once. And like, that is what it is to labor in ancient Israel. That is what it is to go into the wilderness where it's like, it could be death or life. And we are we are just out here with this God. We don't know yet who says she's our mother.
Speaker: And we hope that's enough. And that she's trustworthy. Yeah. And not capricious. Like we've been seeing about yes a lot of the goddesses over in, you know, back in Egypt.
Speaker: So there is still a like, who are you? What are you going to be like? What I love about that is there's ah some of the reading I've been doing is, you know, there's all these stories about that the gods and goddesses in Egyptian culture and Greek culture in part so that the people could answer questions about why is life the way it is.
Speaker: And what does it mean to be human? And we don't get that in the Hebrew scriptures. But we what we do get, I mean, we get God, but the stories of the matriarchs and the stories of those women hold that role. So when you think about those women at the start of Exodus, they're performing the role that the goddesses, this is what humans are like, right?
Speaker: they're They're brave and they defy pharaohs. They're smart and they protect their young. They advocate, they're clever. Like we learn so much about women and so much about the Hebrew people in these nameless characters, just in in the first two chapters who tell us this is what it is to be part of this nation. This is what it is to be a part of this people.
Speaker: And it's it's such a, like, i they're so feisty. Like, I love this people. It's like, holy cow, you you're bold.
Speaker: Mm hmm. Yes. So was sassy. Yeah. So sassy. Um, so this is just a taste of the things we're going to talk about every week. and I hope lots of people tune in each week.
Speaker: Um, but we kind of want to, it's going to like end in like live, raw, messy space. Cause again, we're all just like working these thoughts through, but something that we want to purpose to do each week is,
Speaker: feature one of the folks that we're reading, um talk about why we like what they're saying, and just kind of honor that we are in conversation with scholars who have done so much work and have so much expertise that they're imparting to all of us. So this week, I'll kick things off with the book that I referenced while we were chatting. It's called Reading Women of the Bible.
Speaker: It's, um, a new interpretation of their stories by Tikva Freimer-Kinsky. Um, she is absolutely brilliant. Um, this book won the national Jewish book award. She has since passed away, but when she wrote this book, she was, um, at the divinity school at the university of Chicago. So she is Jewish. She is, uh,
Speaker: expert in Hebrew studies and a really um great theologian. She kind of has these, she sees women in scripture reflecting four different um roles, virgin or bride, voice of God.
Speaker: um There are two others with V's and now I'm totally blanking because I decided to spontaneously talk about this. um But one is one it is not villain. None of them are negative.
Speaker: Victor. Victor. And she says she says that some victors are called villains. Just just a couple of them. But they are victorious. And...
Speaker: and ah I'll think of, I will think of the final fourth one later. But it's so thorough. It um very closely quotes and examines scripture, but she gives her own interpretation of it every time, which is really cool to hear her talk about why she interprets it the way she does. So anyways, it's a fabulous book.
Speaker: It is super cheap on Amazon. I think I got it for $12. So like, order that. And yeah, really, really fascinating. And with that, we'll be back next week.
Speaker: Thanks for chatting. It was a delight. This is Red Tent Midrash, where a mystic, a pilgrim, and a storyteller ponder feminine themes in the Bible and the Christian faith.
Speaker: We share this space to learn together and to grow, pointing to wiser and more studied scholars who have served as our guides. We do not claim to offer a definitive interpretation of scripture, but we do seek to consider it from multiple perspectives and encourage you to do the same.
Speaker: If you loved this episode or have a question to share, connect with us at Red Tint Living on Instagram.
