{"id":3919,"date":"2011-09-02T00:07:26","date_gmt":"2011-09-02T07:07:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/216.92.17.21\/?p=3919"},"modified":"2011-09-17T01:30:44","modified_gmt":"2011-09-17T08:30:44","slug":"introduction-%e2%80%94-rebbes-queer-daughters-%e2%80%94-1-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/?p=3919","title":{"rendered":"introduction \u2014 the rebbe’s queer daughters \u2014 1.1.1"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tell me the tale, she insisted, and so at last I did.
\nAnd hungrily she wrote it all down, as she thought she ought.
\nFor her daughters, and her daughters\u2019 daughters she dedicates this tale.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Il mundo si esta kimando in braza biva, y tu estas durmiendo endriva de\u2019l buz
\n<\/strong><\/em>The world is burning in a blazing inferno, and you are asleep on a block of ice.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I\u2019m not surprised, and you should not be either, that an atheist\u2019s tale, a tale of alternate teachings, and (to be honest) a tale of lust, should begin in the cottage of a tzaddik, a holy man, and that it has the beginning (but not the ending) of a fairy tale.<\/p>\n

So. This is my warning. \u00a0Don\u2019t expect this tale to be what you are expecting, or to think anybody might be able to take courage from it. Don’t expect even to like this tale. \u00a0I can\u2019t change it for you.\u00a0 A tale has its own tale.\u00a0 If you want it different, you\u2019ll have to just live it yourself.<\/p>\n

(And if you need help along the way, I promise that at some point I will remember to write out an aleph-bet for you if you need it, draw you a picture of the Tree itself, or give you a glossary someday (if necessary), although a glossary cannot even begin to tell you what anything really means.\u00a0 And I\u2019ll try to tell the story as best I can (being a crappy storyteller myself because of my impatience).<\/p>\n

It begins, as many tales do or ought to:<\/p>\n

Once upon a time there really was a rebbe with five very queer daughters.\u00a0 He also had a son\u2014a psychotherapist\u2014not even a real doctor, who was neither the eldest nor the youngest among them.<\/p>\n

The eldest of them all was Hochmah, but everyone (except her father) called her Sophie.\u00a0 She had hair that was thick and straight and shiny black. And she had what people sometimes call ‘smoldering’ black eyes, which means only that she looked a little scary, like she could burn you at will. \u00a0But she averted those eyes out of respect, usually, and certainly not out of modesty, and she otherwise employed said eyes fairly judiciously. \u00a0But not always.<\/p>\n

Sophie had a silent twin and so she was named \u00a0Binah, of course.\u00a0 In this way, Understanding \u00a0emerged into the world only moments after Wisdom, \u00a0in a labor their mother would neither forget nor forgive.\u00a0 Thus, right from the beginning of our tale you can see that the rebbe, in naming his twin girls for the paired Sephirot at the top of the \u00a0Aitz Cha\u2019im \u00a0\u2014the Tree of Life\u2014 was either filled with great hubris or had a fabulous sense of humor.\u00a0 Or both.\u00a0 Or perhaps he just enjoyed tempting fate, or giving the Almighty a good solid nudge for not giving him the son he had been so patiently awaiting.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cWhat would you, Lord,” he would say, “with such daughters as these?\u201d<\/p>\n

And the Almighty responded with more daughters.<\/p>\n

And as a result, the rebbe knew that the Almighty had it in for him.<\/p>\n

Still, there was no question. \u00a0The birth of any healthy babe, even another female one, surely was a miracle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 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\u2019 daughters she dedicates this tale. \u00a0\u00a0 Il mundo si esta kimando in braza biva, y tu estas durmiendo endriva de\u2019l buz The world is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[250,216,812],"tags":[196,809,806,714],"class_list":["post-3919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays","category-kaddish-in-two-part-harmony","category-altteach","tag-kabbalah","tag-megilat-malkah","tag-the-rebbes-queer-daughters","tag-tzaddik"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3919"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4033,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3919\/revisions\/4033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}