Mishnah Yoma Chapter 3 Mishnah 9 Pt. 2

Yesterday felt deeply destabilizing and was a day full of contradiction. The central one (for me and maybe for some of you) was that Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Day was the day in which we inaugurated Donald Trump Jr. as the 47th President of the United States. With Dr. King, we remember his legacy as a leader in the struggle for civil rights for Black people and the interconnected struggle for liberation for all peoples. With now-President Donald Trump, we are reminded of the ways that racism, homophobia and transphobia, ableism, and more, have continued to grow and take root deeper and deeper. While this sobering reality has been a part of many of our consciousnesses all day every day, it stung in a different way to have this reality infuse what should be a ritual of honor, full of hope for the future. An inauguration should be about lifting up a person to be in deep service of the people, in service of something greater than themselves. I wish the inauguration felt more like what we’ve been learning in Masechet Yoma.

Now cut me some slack—I’m sure some of you are feeling like that was a weak transition. But I don’t think so, and I don’t think our queer rabbinic ancestors would’ve thought so. Throughout our time in the Mishnah Collective, we’ve been asking ourselves a core question—how much did the rabbis see themselves in the lineage of the kohanim / כהנים / priests? Did the rabbis derive lessons about their own leadership and leadership structures from the Temple and its service? Of course, then, there’s a broader question for us—are there lessons about leadership and community that we today can receive not only from our queer rabbinic ancestors, but from the Kohanim כהנים too? I think today’s text, which is a part of a larger “inauguration”, as it were, of the High Priest in preparation to perform the rituals of Yom Kippur, offers us an insight. At first glance, it seems that we’re getting a mere stage direction—“deputy, stand here; head of the patrilineal priestly line, stand there.” But there’s something beautiful in the syntax of this direction: “מימינו/from his right” & “משמאלו/from his left”. In English syntax, we say “stand to his right” or “stand to his left”. While a seemingly small thing, I think what our text is telling us is that the people you have closest to you in these important moments of taking on responsibility should be people who have stood where you have stood, who have taken on that responsibility for themselves and know its weight, who know how sacred and volatile the task at hand is.

When I think of the people surrounding the 47th President at yesterday’s inauguration, I feel discouraged about how this country will be served. But then I’m reminded of Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who surrounded himself with the leaders and freedom fighters of many peoples, both to be in chevruta / חברותא (learning as comrades) with them, and to gird his movement with strength and solidarity. If Dr. King is not a model of a High Priest in our time, I don’t know who is. May one of the many blessings of our ancestors be to take notice of who stands at the right and the left of those we’ve placed in power, and to remember that true power manifests itself in the service and healing of others. Can’t wait to learn again with you soon <3