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: Well, hello there. Welcome back for episode two. Hello. Hello. so we kicked off our first episode with a bang, sort of...
Speaker: ah Describing all of the ways that Exodus inherently is such a feminine story. And our theme for this episode is water, which feels like such a perfect extension of the conversation. I almost feel like we can pick up right where we left off. We were kind of contemplating, especially the moment of Israel walking on dry land through the Red Sea, almost, Beth, you used that metaphor of birth canal, where it's like, it almost feels like that is is what is happening there. And i wonder, like, maybe maybe we start there, but I want to hand it right off to you as we kind of ponder why water
Speaker: What does that have to say about femininity, especially in this context of Exodus? I remember mentioning last episode that the first description we receive of God is that God is rachum, which is the womb, womb-like God. And I mean, I think about the womb and I think about water and I go back to Genesis where the spirit is hovering over the waters. And so we have this massive womb that we live in essentially covered by water, 70%. I actually did a little rabbit trail dive once to just to try and figure out how much of our body is water. I wanted it to match perfectly the amount on earth, but it doesn't, but.
Speaker: The spirit, even that word in Hebrew is a feminine word hovering over the waters and So I think about all of that as a precursor to the birth canal of the sea that they walk through and the importance of water that I think we also mentioned last episode of going from such fertile land and a life that relied upon like living along the Nile River to this desolation of the wilderness. Like water is key to the Israelites at this point. And
Speaker: And there's so much metaphor in that and literal Hebrew words for us to consider around the femininity of water, both literally and metaphorically.
Speaker: And so as I picture them there in the parting seas, I'm i'm looking at that passage in Exodus where they've made it through and the song begins. And there we are again with this picture of um of ah of our feminine heroine, Miriam, and her role there at the sea. And I'm going ah i'm going to toss it to you both because we've I think we were all drawn to that song and her part in it.
Speaker: What stood out to you guys in that?
Speaker: I... was immediately, I mean, I was drawn to the Song of the Sea in part because we're pretty sure it's one of the oldest, it's it's older, our records of it are older than the rest of the story. And so as we're holding oral tradition that finally got written down,
Speaker: We know that when this story was getting written down, the sea the song of the sea and Miriam's song preceded it. So it was sort of informing how the rest of it got captured in written word.
Speaker: um But then i yeah i'm immediately I was immediately struck by, wait the Song of the Sea is so much more comprehensive than what we have captured of Miriam's. And that didn't feel quite right to me. I mean, you know, Beth, we came into this space and I wanted your wisdom right away. I was like, is this right? like i I feel like she had more to sing than just a refrain at the end.
Speaker: Well, and i don't I don't think I questioned that until Tracy and I were in Egypt and we were in you know the Grand Museum and we were seeing the instruments that the priestesses used in worship of some of the goddesses. And they looked a whole lot like the description of Miriam's tambourine, right?
Speaker: And what I've read is they were exclusively feminine instruments. Men did not play them. No, it was the role of of women to sing and dance in worship. And so that then led me to consider if that was a primary role that that women in in the prophetess priestess space in those 400 years that the Israelites were in Egypt, that that's what they would have known. then I'm thinking she played more of a role than just two lines. And so I did some digging and there's far more to do. But in the Qumran caves that were discovered in the 1940s, they found fragments of some of the of Exodus.
Speaker: that they've dated to 75 BC, second temple period. And there is there are seven lines, 19 words that that they can read legibly, there's more there, that are Miriam's song.
Speaker: And it it tells us that more than likely this was a call and response singing and that would have been common and that she would have had a parallel length of song that she was probably singing herself.
Speaker: And there were lots of women joining her in the music and the dancing, but that then creates a completely different picture of her role to the nation. Well, that they're not a nation yet, but to the people, the equality,
Speaker: of that for these two, you know, brother, sister, but two key leaders to be doing a call and response positions Miriam in a completely different light as we enter into the wilderness.
Speaker: I think it's interesting. least So it was interesting to me that the the song of Moses starts in chapter 15 and it says, then Moses and the people of Israel sang this song to the Lord.
Speaker: So they're singing to the Lord. But when we get down to Miriam, it says, and Miriam sang to them.
Speaker: And and i just I think that that's interesting. It it feels like there's there's she's doing something that Moses isn't doing.
Speaker: She's leading something that Moses isn't leading.
Speaker: Well, and it makes me think, like we talked about last episode, this naturally we were very present with the idea of labor and midwifery. And even that the Talmud kind of like considers that Miriam might be one of those original midwives. And it's like this moment, this creation moment for this narrative, she's performing this sort of like midwifing blessing of the child, right? Like the child is being born and she's like naming
Speaker: that child as as it emerges, giving it an identity, like affirming who it is.
Speaker: Katie, talk a little bit about what you've learned about this this story in context of a creation birthing type story or song.
Speaker: Yeah. I was trying to situate this story and came across, this is this is a longer academic tradition, but I want to give credit to Paul Kong cool Cho, whose dissertation is actually what I was reading. And he's since published this in a book, but he gives a very compelling case for where the song of the sea and Miriam song are very intentionally playing with the tropes and the themes of the Enuma Elish, which is the Babylonian creation story. And,
Speaker: So it's it's a different kind of creation story than what we have in Genesis 1, but it's such a powerful image that he is claiming like the people of Israel are intentionally like laying hold of to say, this is our God, this is where our people came from and like putting it in intentional relationship with some of these better known and very like we have very old recordings of these Mesopotamian creation myths. And where Genesis one doesn't necessarily map on this Exodus, the song of the sea does. And so it does kind of have this interesting second birth kind of weight to it that I did not realize before doing digging for this episode.
Speaker: I love so you know starting to consider more and more, for me at least, the impact of where they actually were geographically and in time, historically, and and just all that they absorbed from around them culturally and um and even all of the different deities that were being worshipped in those different cultures and far more interaction than I think we would assume and travel than we would assume now. But I was also curious the the number of times in the song where they talk about his right hand, God's right hand, and extending his arm, stretching out his arm in this power move. And i was remembering again in Egypt, the number of statues that we saw of the Pharaohs with the arm out the right arm outstretched. And i did a brief little dive into this to see that indeed the gods of Mesopotamia in the ancient Near East all similarly had outstretched arms.
Speaker: And it it reminded me of the Anatolian Museum. I went to an Ankara where we like we have Hittite culture and Assyrian culture, ancient, ancient culture and statues and bas-reliefs that they've found, again, with the with the deity, with the outstretched arm.
Speaker: And I think, you know, they're they're establishing that our God has done this. Like, like powerful gods do.
Speaker: This is what we know. This is how a powerful God is is imaged in this region, in this time. And the Israelites are saying, and our God did this and led us through and out of slavery.
Speaker: And see, our God is powerful like this. And even the writers to the Israelites to assure them, your are God is powerful like that.
Speaker: Well, and there there was nothing in ancient Mesopotamia that was more threatening and chaotic and unknown and more difficult to control than the sea.
Speaker: So like if you were if you were gonna make a claim about an all powerful being, the sea would be quite the place to start. um And i think I think we feel that even in the Hebrew story, in the Genesis creation story, like this idea of these these wild waters getting separated. And then we know like the flood is the ultimate like puncturing and return of chaos, right? so like this this ebb and flow of water and the ability to control it is a very fearsome thing.
Speaker: And it is making me think right now. I got um i got this book called Mother Prayer, and it's it's the pregnant woman's spiritual companion. ah It's written by the same woman I talked about last week, Tikva Frymer-Kinsky, but she goes back for all of these midwifery chants from Mesopotamian culture. And she has this one preserved from it's um it's Babylonian.
Speaker: i might look for, i I don't want to take all of our time right now. I'll hunt for it. But um it honors the deep waters inside of the woman forming the baby.
Speaker: And so it's, I'm like, there's this wild space of like, commonly held a fear and and an unknown and a wildness about the sea. And yet it's contained in the feminine form as the place where new life is knit together. So it's this, you this good wild quality.
Speaker: Well, and it goes back to water and femininity. So I think about Miriam again and how She was, you know, for centuries, jewish Jewish mysticism and Midrash rabbis have written about how she, they had water because of her.
Speaker: And she represented the the water, the God's provision to them through water. When she died, the very next verse in Numbers after her death is at the well dried up. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: I think it's so interesting. I thought that was so fascinating also that the Jewish rabbis felt it necessary to Midrash about her and, and to fill in what feels like this missing space where, where only really Moses and Aaron are, are highlighted.
Speaker: And I just thought that's, isn't it? Why was that important? And I think there is like in in Judaism, there there is an honoring of women.
Speaker: There is an honoring of women and and the role that they have and and what they do. And, you know, even at the ah at the Shabbat, i the woman is is honored as it as it begins. Yeah.
Speaker: right this This honoring of her and and the naming of her as as valorous, virtuous. So i that was that was curious to me. i did a deep dive. I found this ah i found this website called ah the Jewish Women's Archive.
Speaker: And there's a whole a whole section on Miriam and and Midrash about her. And it goes through, it it takes you all the way through the Miriam, the prophet, Miriam, one of the Hebrew midwives, the song of the sea leader of the Israel wilderness, the well, the Kushite woman and the skin of like all the things.
Speaker: And um it's a lot. and And it's a lot of men that midrash about her and wrote about her and, ah and the importance of, of honoring that she's, she's more significant than it would appear at first glance.
Speaker: Let's talk about the well so and wells. I mean, like what we see around wells in scripture. Like I'm also thinking another literal space where women, we see women over and over again at the well.
Speaker: i think about Hagar meeting God at a well. all of the different but you know betrothal type scenes that occur at wells, even Moses and Zipporah at the well. There at Mount Sinai where they end up is apparently supposedly the well where Moses met her, met Zipporah.
Speaker: So what do you think is so significant about wells and women? think we have to go back to the water. I don't know how you don't go back to the water. And and and I think about, ah you know, the the all of those places. So, ah you know, whether we're talking about the land in Turkey where the Hittites were and Panam Aram and where that would have been, or we're talking about ah the base of Mount Sinai and where that well would We're talking about desolation.
Speaker: I mean, there is no water anywhere And so that that well is the source of life. The water there is life giving. um So i I think there has to be some of that. And I do think it's interesting. And you just mentioned it, like these wells become these scenes of betrothal.
Speaker: Right. And the and the pattern is sort of the man is traveling to the foreign land and he comes to the well and she comes and she draws the water out and then she runs to tell her family and the marriage is arranged like that this covenant is is decided based on this exchange at the well. And if we pull that thread forward, you know, it it just, it invites us to wonder why did Jesus meet the Samaritan woman at the well? If it's about more than the fact that it was a divine appointment and she'd be there late in the day, like, which is the typical stuff we hear, but it's bigger than that. I mean, I think it's bigger than that. What what it was saying culturally, how it would have been understood as she ran back, I met a man.
Speaker: And he told me, right, that he's the living water. Like the the symbolism in that is just expanded as I as i was doing that. radio I was like, oh, no one's ever taught. I've never heard anybody talk about that.
Speaker: Well, and for Jesus to be sort of riffing on this pattern where it's like the the ancient Hebrew stories, the women are the wellsprings, the women are the water keepers, and they're these, their choice to join with Isaac, their choice, like, you know, Jacob, those moments are where the nation is reaching its next form, right? And so the women are the living water, they're the wellspring that is like, inspiring that next
Speaker: Evolution will come through them through their body. Right, exactly. And so it's, it's a very like intentional physical expression metaphor for what is happening there and, and the holder of the water is not the man.
Speaker: right And so then it like Jesus does in each of his stories and each of his interactions, it's to take a spin, to reimagine, to flip it on its head.
Speaker: He does precisely that with the Samaritan woman at the well. They're all hinge points, aren't they? They're all, you know, they're also literary devices to, to shift the story to the next portion.
Speaker: I think that's interesting, Beth. How often does the, how how often if we start to notice, does the story shift on on a woman's presence? Every time a woman enters the story, the plot has a meaningful radical shift. I mean, you can trace that through, we can go beyond Exodus, but like every time a woman enters the story, the the plot is,
Speaker: furthered substantially. The energy of the story picks up. And how often are they critical to whatever is happening? I mean, in this moment, I'm thinking about Esther, right? and Who she is in the story, critical to the preservation.
Speaker: Ruth, critical to that next pivotal step. Mary, critical to the next pivotal step. I mean- Rahab. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: who I wonder, we were sitting in that like sitting in that space of hinge points and thinking about the Exodus narrative and like, unto what are we headed?
Speaker: um We have been talking about that the Hebrew people's relationship with water changes drastically with that walking through the Red Sea. And so butre we're having this birth narrative, this moment, it's like grand and wonderful, but actually what they are headed towards is something sparse and vulnerable. And like, we're the precarity of water and of Miriam as that like source of the well, like that's very real. i
Speaker: I was reading um Carol Myers talks about in her book, Rediscovering Eve. um She takes time to talk about what a garden means for the Hebrew people because the garden was this essential like origin story for them. And like the main thing, the main thing that makes a garden a garden is where the water comes from.
Speaker: And it's the fact that the water flows and it's rivers and it's lush and like, it is not based off of rain, which is like their whole dry farming, subsistence farming reality that they are headed towards was all about raining and hoping that the water would come. um And i I don't have a agenda with that, but I just wonder what do you both make of that? Like, so we have this rich feminine metaphor, water is so important and they're headed to a place where it's scarce. Like, what do we, what do we do with that?
Speaker: They never plant anything. I mean, there is no, they're, they're completely dependent on God's provision as they wander And even when they make it to the promised land, we have metaphors of that land flowing with milk and honey. Right. But we know.
Speaker: We know it doesn't. we I mean, right. It flows with milk and honey. Well, I mean, you know, I guess there's a lot of bees and a lot of goats. i Because that's all I remember seeing.
Speaker: Yeah. What does that mean? Right. and and there and and there are there's fruit. and But as you think about Canaan and as as they went into that land, where are they actually? And then their proximity to water and their proximity to the sea. And and that is very different from the proximity wandering in in the wilderness of sin.
Speaker: I mean, Beth and I, we we wanted to, we wanted we thought it might be good to possibly have an option for our women when we took them in February, if there were any who didn't really want to ascend Mount Sinai. Like we wanted to, like, do we do we have options? Is there something else that women could do? Or if they want to you know, go for some sort of a walk. And the the idea is that, yeah, the beautiful place that would go is to the wadi.
Speaker: And a wadi, you kind of go, oh, like, what is that? It's going to be some sort of oasis in the middle of, you know, this barren nothingness. And I i know I had conjured in my mind that it was going to feel like that. When we got to the wadi, you were going look down and go, oh, wow, isn't that amazing? I mean, it's just lush and and and green and and I'm going to see some sort of water down there. And no, it was, there that is not what it was.
Speaker: but Not even close. The wadi was, I was like, we both looked at each other and went, yeah, we're not going down there. I go back to, I think I said this last time, like if we imagine that they are gestating, like even though, yes, we have the birth canal image, we have the Jordan River on the backside, like, but if we remove that, they are spending 40 years, AKA weeks,
Speaker: And they are becoming a nation. And they're told early on, I am a womb like God and a womb provides everything essential And that is what they must learn to live on quail and manna and whatever water comes from striking that rock or Miriam's you know mystical well. And that's it.
Speaker: And they have to learn how to so subsist on that so that they will learn how to rely on God. And in the midst of all that, yes, they are they are gestating. that That's literal and metaphorical because they are in the desert. Those 40 years are long enough for an entire new generation who will only have known that to be born. So everyone who only knew Egypt, right? Think about 40 years. Who is dying off and what is dying off?
Speaker: Right. And so, and so God is, is cultivating a a nation of people who will only ever know what it is to be fed and watered and guided and protected by him.
Speaker: And so then, and then what does the wilderness become? i mean, nobody, you guys, who, but who says, Oh, let's go to the wilderness. Let's go take a vacation in the wilderness. Right.
Speaker: Let's go someplace where there's no water, no vegetation. And we don't do that. Isn't it interesting that that's where Jesus is led for 40 days?
Speaker: And Paul and Moses. Right. And so there and I love the word that you used, Beth. It's like it's it's a place of becoming. I know like one of the things that that I've heard said about the wilderness is like it's where identity is formed.
Speaker: So the wilderness is about identity forming. desert, the places of exile, this is where identity is formed. And so there's there's something, in order to in order to know who we are,
Speaker: there is a stripping that has to happen the only way, like, this is what I think we, this is the the story of the Bible. I mean, I think is that, is that it's the invitation to understand that the only way to know who you are is to be stripped of, of all that, that um tells you who you think you are.
Speaker: and and i it well And I think we don't we we we don't welcome stripping. you know we kind of we we We kind of stand back and and look and go, ooh, you know what they do.
Speaker: Why? how did How did that happen? you know We all want to be better than Job's friends, but it's hard to stay present. in the midst of of what is clearly the the stripping of someone.
Speaker: They don't know how to be with themselves. And so it makes it very hard to know how to be with them. And I just wonder like how all the grumbling, we get the little you know hints of it. We just want to go back to Egypt. Did you bring us out here to like let us die But can you, yeah i just, what were those conversations, you know, Katie, free like what were the actual conversations around the campfire in the first two years while they're all just out there like?
Speaker: What did we do? what
Speaker: Why? why is this and why is this better than what we came from? So I'm always wanting to go, all right, you know, so... So what, what, what ah what, I mean, what do we want? What do we want the women listening to us today? Like, what do what do we do with this? Where do we go with our wondering about it?
Speaker: I wonder, we already know that we want to talk about identity. It's one of the themes, I think we've sort of set the table for tune in next week. Yeah. Cause I feel like that's where we should dive in deeper.
Speaker: um But the other thing that we want to do to your, so what mom is like, This conversation is just like a brief smattering of all of the places where our heads are living right now. And there's so much more content to like consider and engage. So like who's an author or a mind that one of us engaged with this week that would be worth recommending to the women who are listening?
Speaker: Well, I could recommend Will Gaffney's. Mm-hmm. Miss Midrash, which I know we all are looking at. um This particular one is reintroduction to the women of the Torah and the throne. And so there's only one chapter in here on Exodus, but as a liberation theologian and a feminist theologian, her perspective on scripture is, is the challenge of, of seeing things differently, reading between the lines, considering who is the marginalized voice in the scene.
Speaker: And who can I recenter? So she pulls out Miriam, she pulls out other women. And it's, it was really refreshing for me to find, find her and start learning more from Will Gaffney. She has other books as well.
Speaker: Yeah, I think that's a fabulous recommendation. And I love, she goes that step beyond, you know, there, there's a reality that feminist theology is still wedded in some ways to patriarchy because it largely centers white Western voices. And what she does with her womanist reading is like, as a, as a woman with a heritage of marginal, marginalized voices behind her she can embody and question and engage like what the Hebrew women were in the midst of in a
Speaker: in a really gorgeous way that I think is well worth considering beyond just, there's lots of books out there, but she goes a step further and has a fantastic chapter at the beginning of that book about what womanism really is. It like sit down at her table. It is well worth a read about what it looks like to have an inclusive space of mid-rashing and engaging scripture critically based on your own story.
Speaker: Yeah, and I would just, i I think I would add, you know, i think that there are probably women listening to us that if they order Will's book and they and they open it up and they start to read it, something inside of them is going to feel resistant. Something is going to go, ah i I don't know. i and and this is what I want to say is that the the you may not agree with all of her theological positions where she goes with things. You may not agree with that, but the value is in the invitation that is so missing for us to notice a woman's story in a new and different way. And I think that was part of the gift that I felt when I started reading her was that i nobody had invited me to think about women in the Bible the way that she thinks about them and writes about them and talks about them and humanizes them.
Speaker: Because, you know, we talked about this before we actually hopped on you know, that because if we have heard about these women, they're one, it's one of two things, right? We're either hearing about women and they've been deified, or we're hearing about women and they've been vilified. These are our options in scripture. And and she does a beautiful job of humanizing them.
Speaker: I have my words. And her... Her close reading of the actual text, her attentiveness to what scripture truly says and her word by word translations, yes exquisite. Like you will not find better textual research in the midst of a midrash process.
Speaker: Well, come back next week. We're going to be talking about identity by Will Gaffney's book, Read It. And thank you for what you brought today.
Speaker: This is Red Tent Midrash, where a mystic, a pilgrim, and a storyteller ponder feminine themes in the Bible and the Christian faith. We share this space to learn together and to grow, pointing to wiser and more studied scholars who have served as our guides.
Speaker: 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. If you loved this episode or have a question to share, connect with us at Red Tint Living on Instagram.
