Polyamory, Poligamy and other Forms of Insanity
Students, parents and teachers at the Garden of Stones of the Museum of Jewish Heritage yesterday.
Dear friends,
Whenever I hear stories from my polyamorist friends I feel a combination of admiration, jealousy and gratitude. I find myself admiring their ability to overcome norms we’ve been fed for so long, and step outside of the gloriously, completely insane project of monogamy. I find myself jealous of their freedom, of the explorations they are conducting, both physically and emotionally. And I find myself grateful for the path I’ve chosen, and its innumerable gifts. From the safety of my rich monogamy I ask myself: could I do that?
This week’s parashah is not about polygamy. It’s about two lovers who are obsessed with one another. It’s about cheating, jealousy, rage and commitment. It’s about what happens when a desperate lover feels abandoned and strays toward another.
“Set me as a seal upon thy heart,” they say to one another, “As a seal upon thine arm; For love is strong as death, Jealousy is cruel as the grave; Its flashes are sparks of fire, the burning flame of Yah.”
This is the fiery love affair still going on between the people of Israel and our God. This week’s Parashah describes one of the most tumultuous moments in this relationship, the sin of the Golden Calf, where the people love another form of divinity.
“When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, the people gathered against Aaron and said to him, “Come, make us a god who shall go before us, for that fellow Moses—the man who brought us from the land of Egypt—we do not know what has happened to him.”
Yesterday, walking around the Museum of Jewish Heritage with 30 students and parents, I found myself wondering about this love affair between Israel and God. These eleven and twelve year old kids looked at objects of Jewish life in Europe before the war. A ketubah, an etrog holder, a grand Sukkah painting; The physicalization of this age-old love story. Then they saw evidence of a thousand years of persecution, Nazi stereotypes of Jews, photos from Germany, Poland, Ukraine. They passed by a Torah scroll saved from a synagogue on Kristallnacht, a photo of Jews making matzah in the ghetto, a pair of tefillin that a survivor of Sobibor said kept him alive. Even through that darkest of nights, the love affair continued, for some.
Most of us, however, who live in the shadow of the Holocaust, live with a very serious abandonment syndrome. Our lover stranded us, and now we walk alone, with only one other to love. Is it a wonder, therefore, that we live in this age of Golden Calves? “Calves everywhere,” my brother described it to me on the phone this morning.
And yet, despite my brain, my heart stubbornly loves. A sickness I long to feel, and when I do I know all is as it should be, even as I have no idea where I might find my beloved.
"Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you— if you find my beloved, what will you tell him? Tell him I am sick with love."
Some people can have multiple lovers at the same time. This Misha who’s writing these words has loved Lord Siva and Ganesh, Jesus, Allah, the sun and the moon, and countless other divinities. Nowadays he bows down before this one intense and crazy lover, the God – or lack thereof – of Israel.
PS
Many of you have asked me for the recording of the conversation about what's going on in Israel we held on Tuesday. It is available, so feel free reach out and I will share the link.
For those of you asking how you can help:
This Sunday at noon at Washington Square Park there will be a protest demanding a democratic Israel. Bring flags and signs or just show up. In addition, The New Israel Fund has created an emergency fund raiser, to which you can get more information and donate HERE.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Misha