Community Blog

Shabbat Shalom! This week’s Torah portion is Parashat Tzav, the second parasha in Leviticus, and it continues the detailing of the sorts of sacrifices that will be made in the Mishkan and eventually in Temple service. It also continues several reiterations of the commandment that the fire on the altar used for the sacrifices must never go out: Aish Tamid Tukad al HaMizbe’ach lo tikbeh. 

Today is also Trans Day of Visibility, and so I would like to share with you some words of Torah about the Aish Tamid by Noach Dzmura, a trans Jewish educator and writer and editor of Balancing on the Mechitza, a collection of personal essays by trans Jews. In his essay for Parashat Tzav in Torah Queeries, a series of divrei Torah for every parasha written by LGBTQIA writers and through a Queer lens, Dzmura makes the argument to reclaim the pejorative term “flamer” or “flaming” as a descriptor for Queer people by connecting it to the eternal flame of this parasha. 

“The symbol of the eternal flame tells a story about Jews’ relationship to God, first and foremost. But the story of this symbol also provides insight into Jews’ relationships with neighboring cultures. By tracing the eternal flame back to its earliest moments in the text, we learn something about stewardship - about the resources a culture values and those it can afford to expend. The eternal flame can help Jews understand their role in manifesting and maintaining God’s presence in their lives. It can give new insight into the meaning of the word eternal that we might not otherwise have surmised. This brief survey of the ner tamid shows that eternal might have less to do with notions of ‘unchanging’ or ‘the status quo’ and more to do with a ‘well-tended relationship that changes and grows.’ Most important for LGBT people, the story of the ner tamid tells how a God outside of human beings became a God who becomes visible in human hearts through human action in the world.”

Dzmura goes on to quote the Rambam, the Sifra, and Yiddish mystics to suggest that all Jews are commanded to tend to the ner tamid, not because it is a part of the ritual sacrifices, but because doing so cultivates the connection to the Divine, and that it stokes the spark of Jewishness that lives in every Jew. Dzmura doesn’t include this connection, but given the context and the fact that several of the essays in Balancing on the Mechitza are in fact Jews by Choice,  I would add that spark of Jewishness is inherent in all people with Jewish souls - whether or not they were born Jewish, whether or not they have completed their conversion process, whether or not they are ritually observant. Dzmura calls attention to the fact that earlier in the Torah, Parashat Tetzaveh toward the end of Exodus, a different sort of eternal flame is commanded: one in an oil lamp, as distinct from this wood-burning fire on top of the altar. All things are transmutable and yet remain true at their core. An eternal flame is an eternal flame, whether in an oil lamp, in a bonfire, or in our hearts and souls. A trans man is a man and a trans woman is a woman, before and after and excluding medical transition. A Jewish person has a Jewish soul, whether they attend minyan every day or haven’t stepped foot in a synagogue in 20 years, whether they were born to a Jewish family or not. 

Tamid is often translated as “eternal” but we know that the eternal flame was not quite eternal. The Temple was destroyed and the fire put out. The electricity that lights the eternal lights in every synagogue are prone to black outs, or the light bulbs die out eventually. Rather, Tamid in Biblical Hebrew means a constantly or consistently performed task. We must cultivate the eternal lights, physically and spiritually, to maintain our connection with the Divine. The physical act reminds our spirituality toward the task, and connects us as well with the wider community who will share in the physical light. Similarly, we must continue to cultivate our inner sparks that make us who we truly are, and we must consistently work toward creating communities that fan the flames of all those who seek that Divine and communal connection. 

May this be a community where all find their inner sparks ignited and where any “flaming queers” are able to shine bright. Amen and Shabbat Shalom.