Posts
1. In Bringing the Hidden to Light, I read Anne Lapidus Lerner’s essay, “Rib Redux: The Essentialist Eve.” Lerner refers to the rabbinic view that God created the first human being as an andrygone, and split it apart into male and female. According to this view, God didn’t remove the first human being’s rib, but rather his/her side. There are feminists who like this view because the woman isn’t taken from the man, who was made first. But Genesis 2:23 says that woman was taken from man, using the gender-specific ish. How did the rabbis who believed in the andrygone address that?
Lerner says on page 143 that the rabbis didn’t consider their “andrygone” interpretation to be revolutionary. They most likely weren’t aiming to be feminists! They were just offering a rabbinic interpretation, which existed among other rabbinic interpretations! And they were influenced by their culture, for the andrygone appears in Greco-Roman culture.
2. At Latin mass this morning, the bulletin talked about prominent people who don’t put on airs. They don’t act more important than others in their presence.
I’ll leave that to set in me and any of my readers who are interested.
