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beitmalkhut.org

Author: mira

Mira Z. Amiras is Professor of Comparative Religious Studies and founder of the Middle East Studies Program at San Jose State University. She is past-president of the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness, and has served on the Executive Council of the American Anthropological Association. She is co-founder, with Ovid Jacob, of Beit Malkhut, a study group in Jewish sacred text. She's most attached to the creatures of her body and her household — first and foremost, her kids, of course: Michael and Rayna — and then the other folks large and small of various species, including Roshi and Vlad, a whole lot of hummingbirds, the old parrot who lives next door, and a beautiful garden that does what it will.

a kaddish for qaddafi. of sorts.

Posted on 21 October 2011 by mira

I feel like I’m supposed to write a kaddish for Qaddafi.  And I’m having a lot of trouble doing so. What I want to do is defend him somehow.  Say that he’s been maligned for decades. Tell you about the jokes Tunisians (Libya’s neighbors to the west) used to tell about Qaddafi, all the way…

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sephardi pride, ashkenazi arrogance 1.1.9

Posted on 13 October 201113 October 2011 by mira

“Peasants!” the rebbe would mutter under his breath, when his wife Sarah’s customs went too far for his Ashkenazi sensibilities. But of course, her people were not peasants. They were proud of a long and sanctified lineage.  Proud of the language they had retained since the 15th century.  Proud of those they claimed as their…

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avram and the not so barren sarah — 1.1.8

Posted on 7 October 2011 by mira

It was not that Sarah was barren—it was more, perhaps, that she had had enormous difficulty holding a child to term.  And those she had lost had all been girls and were not counted by the fathers of her lineage, nor troubled over by the master of her house.  The rebbe retreated to manuscripts and…

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orah, the androgyne — 1.1.7

Posted on 2 October 20112 October 2011 by mira

Malkah, too, however, was not the queerest of them all. There was a fifth daughter that the rebbe had, although that should not be, especially after the fuss of Vavah. Especially after the birth of perfect Malkah. And yet there was one more. And she, needs be, was the mysterious light of the rebbe’s eye,…

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enter Malkah upon the broken stage — 1.1.6

Posted on 28 September 20112 October 2011 by mira

The rebbe’s fourth daughter, as I’m sure you must have guessed, was our Malkah, for what other name could this sweet child possess?  Malkah was now sixteen and obedient (it would seem) albeit in an ethereal sort of way.  She mostly tended the family garden and goats, or ran nimbly up and down the cliff-side…

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Vavah steps out into the wicked night — 1.1.5

Posted on 27 September 201128 September 2011 by mira

And so Vavah went out, in day or in night, and that clunker of the rebbe’s car seemed happiest most of all when its engine was revved enthusiastically at night. And when the rebbe’s third daughter escaped her chores and tore out across the gravel drive, her wheels screeched their escape, as they headed off…

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the tzaddik’s dollar — 1.1.4

Posted on 21 September 201128 September 2011 by mira

The rebbe sighed frequently when he thought of the enigma of his daughter the so-called Yesodite, but in the end he felt that this too must surely be exactly as it should, and that Vavah, too, must needs be perfect in every way, and that any fault in her lay primarily in his own blindness…

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almighty one, rebbe zero — 1.1.3 —

Posted on 17 September 201128 September 2011 by mira

The third daughter of the rebbe tended to be called (affectionately) Vavah.  It was one of those perhaps unfortunate infant names conferred upon her at long-last, after her sainted mother claimed to have witnessed her utter those long-awaited first sounds, not even words, but   —  ו  ו  ו  ו  —va-va-va-va. That the chatty babe…

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binah in silence — intro — 1.1.2

Posted on 5 September 201117 September 2011 by mira

The twin sephirot, as their father the rebbe liked to call them, were twenty-four when our story begins.  And their younger sisters, like clockwork, manifested themselves each precisely two years younger than the previous, all managing, and despite the vagaries of the lunar calendar, to emerge into the world on the first day of Nisan. …

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introduction — the rebbe’s queer daughters — 1.1.1

Posted on 2 September 201117 September 2011 by mira

  Tell me the tale, she insisted, and so at last I did. And hungrily she wrote it all down, as she thought she ought. For her daughters, and her daughters’ daughters she dedicates this tale.    Il mundo si esta kimando in braza biva, y tu estas durmiendo endriva de’l buz The world is…

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Categories

  • kaddish in two-part harmony (552)
    • essays (158)
    • guest essays (11)
    • podcasts (388)
    • project news (13)
    • tzaddik stories (31)
  • Seymour Fromer z"l (16)
  • the rebbe's queer daughters (11)

Posts

  • kaddish for anke akevit (2015-20)
  • a kaddish for too many suicide victims—but it gets better!
  • a kaddish for sigrid syltetøy vang, b. 2006, d. 27 February 2018
  • guest kaddish: velvet marquesa flicka storm, 11 august 2005–9 april 2015
  • the stones I cannot place
  • oh amy, how could you — a kaddish for amy smith
  • guest kaddish: Gudrun Fossum Vang (16 June 1905–3 April 1972)
  • occasional kaddish: for Josephine Selvig Anderson (11 April 1915– 22 January 2012)
  • and death is so much closer than it was—a kaddish for rebecca fromer
  • easy come easy go: a kaddish for adrienne cooper
  • nyt remembrances—a kaddish for departed strangers
  • guest kaddish from David Mohr—for Kimba
  • killing you loudly—a kaddish
  • anything, anything but a mystical experience
  • daily kaddish: our project’s yahrtzeit

Contact the authors

email mira and erin: kaddish@beitmalkhut.org

Archives

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Copyright

© 2010–22 by Mira Z. Amiras and Erin Vang (beitmalkhut.org). All rights reserved worldwide.

thank you—תודה רבה

Permission to use Lev Kogan's "Kaddish," © 1982 by Israel Brass Woodwind Publications
In-kind support: Global Pragmatica LLC®

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