Photo by Cheshire Issacs
I would like to dedicate my learning here to R. Benay Lappe, R. Margaret Holub, R. Dan Goldblatt, R. Batshir Torchio, R. Dev Noilly, and Morah Bonnie Kahn Martin.
It was hot, but we were under oak trees and a breeze was blowing. My people were gathered. Some were missing. I had longed for and dreaded this occasion for decades. And now it was here, and I had invited it, and this was really happening, and it was totally overdue and I was totally unprepared…..
A libation of Manischewitz poured and tasted; Blessings offered and received; Songs sung and heard. Rabbi Benay Lappe took the floor, turned to look directly at me and deadpanned:
“There are moments you remember all your life”. [pause]
I thought, “No way. Does she…? Wait… is she really…?”
She continued:
“There are moments you wait for, and dream of all your life.” [pause]
My eyes widened. “Oh my G!D, she does… Yeah, she is…” She smiled, as the look of recognition hit my face, and finished the quote, as I involuntarily mouthed:
“This is one of those moments.”
She continued, “If I had a better voice, I’d sing it. …I’m quoting, of course, from Masechet Yentl, from the sugya where Yentl is accepted into the yeshiva to finally learn Talmud—remember?”
Oh yes, I remembered. Benay’s opening citation unleashed, in a matter of seconds, a flood of feelings and past experiences. These memories struck and passed like a series of lightning bolts: time froze and flew. Barbra Streisand was a flintstone for me as a youth, and Yentl was the spark, and now, my ordination was the fire.
Benay turned her gaze from me to the gathered witnesses and continued her words:
This…is a moment I’ll remember all my life. To see one’s dear friend, colleague, teacher, and yes, student, take his place among the sages in whose lineage his own students will one day also stand, will always be one of the most joyous moments of my life.
But it is bookended by another moment that I’ll also remember all my life. It happened some 20 years ago, in the SVARA bet midrash, at GTU, in Berkeley, and I remember it as if it were yesterday. It was the early days of SVARA, in the first year or two after our founding, when the yeshiva was nothing more than, well, me, and a lot of smoke and mirrors.
It was the moment I met a new student who had shown up to this queer yeshiva, to learn Talmud. And this student so dazzled me with his intellect, his wit, his old-soul wisdom, his creativity, humor, and fiery passion, that I knew immediately that not only had I found a student, but I suspected that I had also found a teacher. And I had. For the last 20 years, Jhos, you have been my student, but in so many ways you are and will always be, my teacher.
I knew that moment so long ago that our paths had crossed for a reason, though I had no idea then just how much you would change my life, the life of my little yeshiva and every student in it, and the way my life’s work would eventually play out. I had no idea then that I would ever have the audacity or the courage to actually own and use the power that had been given to me, through my own ordination, to raise up not just students, but also rabbis. But here we are. Because of you.
I had no idea then that our double-helix path as teacher and student, student and teacher, would lead us here, to this moment, and to a future I can already see–that in fact we’ve already begun–of us standing shoulder to shoulder, toolbelt to toolbelt, raising up an entire generation of traditionally radical Jews, and yes, also rabbis.
And while your path to ordination may seem unconventional to some, I want to make sure everyone here knows that yours is actually the most traditionally Jewish path to semikha.
Jhos, it has been the blessing of my lifetime to have accompanied you on these last two decades of your thirty-plus-year journey of Jewish learning that has led you to your ordination. 30 years! Which, by the way, is probably the longest rabbinic study program in history.
In the brief pause between her citation from masechet Yentl and her following remarks, in the oak-leaf-dappled sunlight made comfortable by a persistent breeze, I relived a journey that actually connected those two dots.
I was a struggling 24-year-old senior at UCLA when Yentl—Barbra Streisand’s cinematic tribute to her father, feminism, Judaism, Talmud study, boundary-crossing love, the power of chevruta, passionately respectful disagreement, and gender outlaws all wrapped up in a gloriously kitschy, Ashkenazi, visually delicious musical—was released in 1983. Already a decade into being a Streisand devotee, I saw one of the first showings at the Los Angeles Cinerama Dome. As the film unfolded, I felt that I was staring at a psychospiritual mirror reflecting my soul’s every yearning.
I still get teary watching that yeshiva scene, because it takes me back to a time when it was hard to believe that I, or any of the other Yentls in the world, would ever find the encouragement, the brave teachers, and like-minded community where we would gain the skills to actualize sitting in our own Yeshiva. But in 1994 I started learning with my first chevruta, Joy Krinsky. Our Yeshiva was my basement and the text was anything in English we could find about golems. Not exactly the Eastern European ambiance or traditional texts, but it was thrilling nonetheless. A few years later, a bona fide Talmud teacher popped up in my life, the amazing Dr. Ron Reisberg, who took on a ragtag bunch of queer, disabled, and otherwise sideways talmidim to learn Bava Metzia straight up, Yeshiva style. We unpacked the text one word at a time (not quite the SVARA method, but pretty darn close), memorizing each word as we went. To this day, I can still recite that first Mishnah (Bava Metzia 2a–ask me more later). It would take another decade until I stumbled upon something called “queer talmud” with a Rabbi called Benay Lappe and her program, called SVARA in 2005. And yes, I will remember that moment all my life, cuz I found my rebbe there. Right around the same time I also started learning with Rachel Brodie, z”l, whose incisive mind and deep wellspring of learning gave me an example of what tying one’s lived truth to the tradition might look like close up. In 2015 SVARA launched Queer Talmud Camp, bringing two of Yentl’s spiritual descendants, R. Dev Noily and I, to become chevruta. Another pixel of Yentl’s dream fell into place.
Over the last 40ish years I’ve been blessed with incredible sideways teachers and have embraced both learning and teaching with a full heart. But I have, until now, had a fraught relationship with becoming a rabbi. And yet somehow, on August 15, 2024, after much hand-wringingand dodging my own heart’s desire) I found myself accepting Rabbinic semikah/ordination from my teacher, friend, colleague, occasional student, and always mentor, R. Benay Lappe. She couldn’t possibly have known how spot on her opening quote (“There are moments you remember all your life…”) and its origin were for me.
There is another backstory here. Yentl wasn’t the first Streisand vehicle that offered a critique of patriarchal gender roles. That honor would go to “Up The Sandbox” (1972) which I saw at the iconic Grauman’s Chinese Theater at the tender age of 13. I think it was enough of a coming of age experience to count as a b’mitzvah. It was the first moment that I felt seen by a film, rather than the other way around. And it turned me into a dedicated Streisand admirer. And like many young fans, I ideated that Barbra and I would meet one day and really hit it off. I actually developed the following prayer practice:
“Hear O, Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.
I pray to thee God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob for my mother’s health and wellbeing, for my grandparents health and wellbeing, for my health and wellbeing, and if I were to find favor in Your eyes, please give me five minutes alone with Barbra Streisand.”
I am not kidding you, I said this prayer every night before I went to bed for many years. And then on Jan 28, 1984 my prayer was answered. I was working for an exclusive West Hollywood caterer, and got called to do a high profile dinner in the Hollywood hills. The dinner went beautifully, dessert had just been served when a flurry of excitement ruffled through the kitchen. A few late arrivals had just shown up and one of them requested a cup of tea with honey. I set up a cup of tea, napkin, honey, and spoon on a tray expecting that one of the servers would take it, when an amped-up bodyguard came into the kitchen and ordered me to grab the tray and follow him. I did, and was led through the labyrinthian manor to a set of wooden double doors. The guard handed me off to the butler, who, rather than taking the tray, simply said, “Ms. Streisand is in here,” as he opened the door and sent a stunned me into the small dimly lit study, with floor to ceiling wooden bookshelves.
And there, sitting at a desk, in a dark leather chair was Yentl herself, illuminated by a banker’s lamp, holding a handset while she dialed a phone call. I shook as I walked to the desk and set down the tray as she put the phone to her head, she nodded towards me and, in a familiar Brooklyn dusted accent, said, “Thanks. I’ll be off the phone in just a minute.” I wasn’t sure if that meant she wanted me to wait, but she started her conversation before I could say anything. I hesitated for a few moments, while she shared with whomever was on the other end of the line that she had just come from the Golden Globe awards and that Yentl won for best picture and best director. I realized I was not needed and reluctantly turned to leave. But in the place the door I had entered, there was a doorless wood-paneled wall. I walked towards it, but even up close couldn’t discern a hinge, a handle, or any other hint as to where the door might be. I was literally trapped in a small room with Barbra Streisand. I tried pushing the wall as Ms. Streisand carried on her private conversation about Yentl. I started to panic a bit. I tapped quietly on the wall, pushed it to see if it would budge, to no avail. After several anxious moments the butler must have heard my attempts to get his attention and he opened the door. All in all, I think it was about 5 minutes from entry to exit. I learned that prayer works, but apparently, to quote the great Lily Tomlin, I hadn’t been specific enough.
The tangled knot of Barbra, my teachers, Yentl, the slow accumulation of learning, becoming a trusted congregational leader, stepping into being a teacher started to unravel. There, back under the oak trees, surrounded by family, mentors, students and friends, hearing Benay’s affirmation of who I am to her, something broke into my tough and fractured heart. Her words sorted the tangle and plaited the threads into the three-stranded cord of SVARA, Yentl, and me. SVARA as a Yeshiva for rigorous, traditional text-based learning, with a radically queer twist, has, for 20 years, been saying to every contemporary version of Yentl–every person who has been told they don’t belong or deserve to be part of this project–ta chazi! Come and see! Many of our learners have said that the first time they were handed a volume of Talmud as one of our queer fairies looked them in the eye and said, “Mazal tov, this is yours”, was a moment they will remember all their life. To find myself a respected member of this community, a teacher among sages, is the reward for not just praying but continually working towards becoming the one we are meant to become.
The great challenge is simply to keep following the dreams, despite the disappointments and setbacks. Some things we wish for are illusions and some things are the indelible needs of our souls. But we never really know which is which until either the dream dies or it becomes a reality. Which is why accepting smikha/rabbinic ordination from Benay has been so hard for me.
Like a good talmid, I have rejected her offer to make me a rabbi at least 3 times. Why? Some part of me felt like I wasn’t ready, that I would be besieged with imposter syndrome, or that I just didn’t have enough learning. I worried about what would happen to my “I’m a not-a-rabbi rabbi” identity. What would happen to being recognized for my intuitive Maggidic preacher’s talent? But most of all, what if, once made a legit rabbi, it didn’t turn out to be what I thought it would be? What if it lands in my “five minutes with Barbra Streisand” heap of misguided desires?
Every rabbi is probably plagued by similar versions of these doubts. To that point, Benay taught in her remarks that the most basic Talmudic ruling for assigning Jewish communal authority to someone can be found in Sanhedrin 5a during a discussion on who should be allowed to judge in monetary cases:
אמר ר’ חייא כגון אנא דן דיני ממונות ביחידי
איבעיא להו כגון אנא דגמירנא וסבירנא
Chiya said, someone like me should be allowed to make monetary judgments by myself.
The sages ponder this, and clarify: “Someone like me” means that I am learning and I am listening to my moral intuition.
The two words that leap out of this sugya are gamirna/ I am learning, and savirna/I am svaraing: intuiting, having a gut feeling, paying attention to my inner sense of right and wrong. I’ve heard Benay teach this piece on more than one occasion. The verb gemar conveys a sense of being complete, finished; to consummate something, even to the point of destruction, or especially, in the context of Talmud, it means to be completely learned, to memorize and to be able to verbalize what you have completely learned. The verb root S-V-R has meanings that are layered and watery, making it tricky to translate. Savar can mean to be bright, intelligent, worthy; to look out for, hope; to speculate, plan; to imagine, believe; to conclude, argue, understand; to have an idea; to look for, hope, trust. Again Benay turned to look at me and asked:
Jhos Singer, atah gamir? And I said: Gamirna!
Jhos Singer, atah savir? And I said: Savirna!
And it was that unfettered declaration that transcended the worries and hesitation, that dispelled the resistance, that broke down the scar tissue of doubt that had kept me from stepping into the rabbinate for so long. Being in the present tense brought the wall down. Of course I can say with integrity and humility gamirna v’savirna, because I am learning and I am reaching into my moral center all the time.
Being engaged in the impossible project of finding wholeness, being complete, while hoping and trusting, striving to shine, imagining and speculating, believing and arguing, having ideas and striving to understand is exactly what has always guided my path. But there have also been blurry visions and misguided ideas along the way. I desired some kind of prophecy that would lift me out of the quagmire of not knowing who the hell I was going to be, where I belonged, what was really important and what was merely an illusion. Because it is so very hard to believe that you have something to offer, to find the courage to speak your truth, to trust your svara in a world that says you don’t even exist. Of course I was looking for a prophet. Of course I couldn’t separate the artist from the art and came to believe that if I was alone with Barbra Streisand for a mere five minutes, I would be seen by her the way I felt seen by her films. It was a desire to gain some legitimacy from a respected radical in her own right, a cultural visionary. And, okay, it was a little off, but it was a start. And in a very roundabout way, it did lead me to believe that there was a place for me, that I could realize this dream, that I could find a yeshiva that would welcome me.
To have Benay articulate my impact on her, was, in fact, the answer to the essence of my adolescent prayer. What I was trying to ask was, “Please, G!d, may I be seen and appreciated by someone I revere. May my life be of some value to those around me. May my gifts be of service to more than my own ego. And may I absorb the light, wisdom, and svara of my teachers in order to reflect it on to my students.”
Somehow, Benay found the lever that pulled back the curtains and made me realize that by making that proclamation before witnesses, I was being recognized as being that kind of person. Being a rabbi isn’t about what I know, it is about what I’m willing to still learn. It’s not about being morally superior, rather it’s about constantly assessing my own ethics, dreams, and motivation. It’s not about power or fame or genius, rather it’s an arrival of accepting one’s own willingness to have and use one’s voice. It’s about noticing, and landing in a moment that has been waited for and dreamt of all one’s life.
