Ariana: Hello, Shavua Tov. We're in a new week, and thanks for tuning back in to Left at Sinai. It was wonderful to get your reactions to our first episode and to Rabbi Jhos's gorgeous Torah. Keep the comments coming. And if you're jumping in now, welcome.

Left at Sinai is a weekly progressive commentary on the week's Torah reading, the Parashat HaShavua, with a different guest teacher each week. I'm glad you're here.

This week's Torah study is dedicated to the souls of those who died in the August floods in Nepal and the September flooding in Thailand. May their neshamot have an aliyah and their families find comfort however they can.

To sponsor an upcoming episode of Left at Sinai, you can head to bit.ly/leftatsinaisponsor

This week's parsha is Parshat Noah, Bereshit 6:9 through 11:32. I'm thrilled to be joined today by my dear friend, Rabbi Julia Watts Belser. Watts Belser is a rabbi, scholar, and spiritual teacher who works at the intersection of disability studies, queer feminist Jewish ethics, and environmental justice. She is a professor of Jewish studies at Georgetown University, senior research fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, and core faculty in Georgetown's disability studies program. A longtime advocate for disability and gender justice, she currently directs the Disability and Climate Change Public Archive Project, an initiative that documents the wisdom and insights of disabled activists, artists, and first responders navigating climate crisis. Her latest book, Loving Our Own Bones: Disability Wisdom and the Spiritual Subversiveness of Knowing Ourselves Whole, from Beacon Press, won a National Jewish Book Award. She is a passionate wheelchair hiker, an avid gardener, and a lover of wild places. Thanks for teaching us Torah today, Julia!

RJWB: Oh my goodness. Thank you for having me. So looking forward to this conversation

AK: Can you give us a quick rundown of what happens in this week's parsha, Parshat Noah?

RJWB: Absolutely. Okay, so the parsha begins by introducing Noah and his lineage. It tells us that Noah lived in a deeply corrupt time. The whole Earth was filled with lawlessness and violence. The, the Torah says that God decides to, quote, "Put an end to all flesh, to destroy the Earth and everything that lives on it," it's a terrible story, except for Noah and his family, who take refuge in the ark.

And they're in the ark there with chosen representatives of all the different animal species, as well as seed plants, and samples of everything we humans like to eat. So the Torah gives us a detailed accounting of the ark and the flood the 40 days of rain, and then more rain. The waters increase and wash away everything on Earth, and then eventually the waters recede, the ark comes to rest.

Noah sends out two birds to scout the situation, a raven and a dove. I think we'll come back to the birds later. And then eventually, Noah and his family and all the animals disembark and start a new life, which, spoiler alert, does not unfold like an idyllic utopia. So Noah begins his new life, makes a sacrifice, and God shows Noah the rainbow as a sign of the covenant, and promises to never destroy the Earth or all of its creatures again.

But on the human side, I have to say, the promise of that fresh start doesn't really land. Noah gets drunk from his newly planted vineyard. He is dishonored by his children. He curses his son Ham. This is a passage that has been used over the long course of history to justify terrible things: racism, enslavement, dehumanization, some of the worst violence that humans have done to each other And then to wrap things up on another cheery note, the Torah tells the story of the Tower of Babel, this massive project where humans come together to build a city to make this tower that is so high it will reach up into the sky.

And they get all arrogant about it, right? They say, "Let's make a name for ourselves. Let's make sure that we endure." God is shocked and disturbed and decides to break up the party and scatter them all across the Earth. God confounds their common language to keep them from conspiring together. And, it's intended, or at least the Torah suggests that it is a protective move, but I think for me it's also a reminder of how easy it is for us to become fragmented and divided, and how quickly we lose the ability to understand each other and to work toward a common dream.

So that's the parsha in a nutshell.

AK: We start out so strong. Oh, look, creation. We're in the garden. And even before last week's parshah is over, it just…

RJWB: it devolves quickly. Yeah

AK: Man. Thank you for orienting us to Noah. And, the, second half of the parshah really talks about the business of humans, like what humans are gonna do to each other in trying to conquer and dominate. And the first section, also the, the story of the flood, it's named after Noah, it centers around Noah. It talks about animals, but it sort of breezes past the fact that most of the entire world, that is almost every human, almost every animal, almost every plant, drown in this massive global catastrophic event. And it feels like in the Tower of Babel, that's human people's problems, but, and maybe debate with me and tell me how I'm wrong, 'cause that's my favorite. But the first half feels even more noticeable that this is a problem that affects every living thing on the planet. It's not just humans. And so what do we miss when we traditionally talk about the story of Noah,

RJWB: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. This is a great place to start. I have to say that when I first started getting deeper into the Torah, Noah was the parsha that really kept me up at night. Look, there's a lot to choose from. There are a lot of morally complicated, deeply objectionable moments in the Torah, but there was something about the story of Noah and the flood that I just could not make my peace with.

And here's what I think hit me the hardest. It was the fact that this story often gets lifted up as a kid's story, right? The ark, and the animals, and the rainbow. I would see that ark emblazoned on nursery walls and daycare centers. It is the cover image of so many children's Bibles, all in pastel tones with cheery elephants and zebras.

But this is a horrible story.

AK: Really dark. It's like the cover, or it's like the, the door from the Titanic being painted on a children's wall where it's like, "Yes, this is the evacuation vehicle, and we're gonna use it as an image of comfort."

RJWB: Exactly. This is the story of death and destruction and drowning on an absolutely devastating scale. But we are taught not to see that. We are taught not to look there Right? We are taught to keep our eyes on Noah, on the rainbow, and the promise of the happy ending, on, I don't know, the sweet gazelles and the giraffes and the hippopotamus.

All the ones who make it onto the ark, nice and neat, two by two. But my heart is with the drowned So when I think of The Ark is like the origin story of the gated community. It is a story about a handful of privileged survivors who stay snug in their boat while everybody else dies So there's a really brilliant book I wanna lift up by Jeffrey Cohen and Julian Yates.

The book is called Noah's Archive. And in Noah's Archive, Cohen and Yates argue that the ark is one of the most dangerous political templates of our time, right? It is this same impulse that leads us to border walls and bunkers, right? It's the fantasy that we will keep ourselves safe by tightening the hatches, by building a little safe space, a little ark that admits only a tiny chosen few.

I think about that so much in these days. We are seeing, oh, I don't even know how to na- we are seeing human catastrophe and ecological catastrophe on such an immense scale. So in moments like these, it feels really dangerous to tell this kind of ark story because it makes us think that it's enough to protect just one privileged family or just a few beloved species or a few favored seeds. I want us to learn how to tell a different story, right? The Torah that I teach is committed to that idea. I want us to refuse to let our whole world drown.

AK: Several years ago Rabbi Margo Holub when we were getting ready for Pesach said to me and a bunch of other rabbis on a JVP call said, "I think we might be the Egyptians." And my mother, Linda Katz, who you'll hear her Torah many times throughout this season talks about how people imagine themselves in a past life, and they say, "Oh I was Queen Cleopatra." Again, hello, Egypt. Or, I was royalty." And she's like, "No, you probably were sweeping the floors." If you think about the number of souls that exist, there were very few of them that were Queen Cleopatra in a past life. And in the narrative of Noah, I'm realizing I always see myself on the boat. I never hear the story of Noah and I think about, I don't ever think about myself as a New Orleans resident on the roof of their home when the hurricane comes. And there is a sharpness of what you're saying that requires us to broaden the lens that we read Torah with.

This will come up again and again, I think, especially through Bereshit, where we talk about the Jewish family drama, but there's an entire lineage from Ishmael down of family that has to find each other 'cause they're the rejected. And rejected family members or those who died in this catastrophe are not sideways or utility tools to tell a main narrative.

We have to train our attention to, to look to them see that they are the story.

RJWB: That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. When I think about the Noah story now, I increasingly, I cannot think about that story without thinking about everyone and everything who is in the water and who will not rise again, right? To see that as one of the most crucial parts of the story, right?

The Torah doesn't really give us that. The Torah talks a lot about the rain. It talks a lot about the storm, but it doesn't actually give us the pathos, the despair, the rage, the loss, the grief, right? What it's like to be overwhelmed, overrun. And that's where my heart is. That's where my heart is as a human.

That's where my heart is as an organizer, right? That's part of the ground of my thinking about climate justice, about thinking particularly about disability and climate justice, right? There's so many different axes of we can tell the story so many different ways of people who are more likely to not make it on the boat, right?

And I hold all of that but think a lot particularly about those, those axes.

So and I have been having conversations about how disabled community organizers and first responders have been responding to climate disaster for a long time, and it's coming up in so many different parts of your work. You have love for the Earth, just deep love for the Earth, also there's a, an inherent fear of what's to come to the people on it. And I think something that disability climate justice teaches me is that we have to save the Earth for the Earth's sake and for all life on it.

Yes.

AK: Curious about how we might use this story to think about climate crisis, climate justice, and all life on it, and maybe it's already bifurcating those ideas to separate them out, It's all together.

RJW: Okay, so the story of Noah gets used in a lot of different ways for thinking about environmental issues.

Is a reading of Noah that is still common in a lot of religious climate denying circles, right? That uses Noah to say, "Oh, we aren't at risk from climate change," right?

Because of the rainbow, God has promised to never again flood the Earth. Okay, so it's probably very clear, I think that is a terrible reading. Not just politically, but also in terms of the text itself, right? A covenant is a two-sided set of obligations, okay? At the end of the biblical flood, God promises not to destroy the Earth.

But what about us, right? What about our choices? What about our obligations? It isn't God who's drilling for oil and burning fossil fuels and bulldozing forests and fracking the Earth, so a few people and their companies can make a killing in profits. That's not God, that's on us.

... But here's another place where I think we really have to be careful because what I just said, that's on us, right?

That

Good

is doing a whole lot of work here, right? So let's unpack that because it is all too easy to say, "Oh, this is a human problem." Like we are all equally responsible, or like we are all in the same boat. That is not true, okay? So let's break it down. Jewish communities have laid out some really powerful Torah that reads the Noah- the story of Noah as a story of environmental warning, okay?

I'm thinking here of the brilliant work of Rabbi Arthur Waskow, ..., right? He taught us to read Noah as prophecy, as rebuke, as call to action. He says, "We live in a moment where the planet is warming, where the seas are rising, and so that means we have a responsibility to act, to preserve the goodness of this earth and all life that lives on it."

So that is bedrock for me. That's absolute bedrock. But in addition to that, I think there's two other things that we have to do when we tell the Noah story in order to tell it in a way that helps us grapple with climate change. First, we have to rethink the premise, right? We have to rethink the premise that those who drown in the flood are punished by God, right?

That they were wicked, and that's why they are justly wiped out, that they somehow deserve to die, okay? So that's just- whatever is going on in the biblical story, which I have to say I have some skepticism about whether that is a true story, right? Whether that's sort of true facts about the,

Oh my God, get off

How dare

Everybody, but Noah is wicked and unredeemable, right? I just don't, I just don't believe that.

But in addition to that, like regardless of what we think about the biblical moment, that's a... That idea that people who drown in the flood are, like, to blame for their own drowning

Wrong. It's also classic victim blaming.

Yeah

especially in the context of climate justice it obscures a really crucial issue. The people who are most likely to be most affected, and affected first the people who are hit hardest by climate change, are the people who are least responsible for climate harms. Okay, so that's the first thing.

The second thing is we... Related. We have to get a lot clearer about how we think about human responsibility, right? Who's culpable? Who's doing the harm? Now, I think almost all of us who live in the world's wealthy countries are implicated in... Like, we're all implicated. there's no way for you and I to get out of extraction economies to fully and totally divest from fossil fuel burning.

There are things we can do to limit the impact, and I am all in on doing those, right? But there's a way in which the sort of, the whole structure of wealth is a part of this architecture. But let's also be clear, there are people and corporations who are actively orchestrating environmental harm, right?

Who are deliberately, willfully endangering all of us. Who are fouling our water, who are polluting our air, who are perfectly willing to sacrifice your body and mine in order to rake in more profits and protect their own bottom line. So if we just tell the story, the Noah story, as a story about universal human sin, "Oh, the whole earth was filled with violence."

If we just let that verse slide with no comment we blunt the most crucial power dynamics of contemporary climate change. Rich corporations profit from environmental pillage, and the rest of us pay the price.

Wealthy industrial countries are so much more responsible for carbon emissions,

Right

we're not the first ones to take the hit.

It's poor countries and poor people who suffer first and most acutely.

So that, for me, is a crucial piece that I want us to see, and it changes, I think, the way we read and talk about the Noah story.

I I love the noticing when it says the whole earth was filled with violence. Who f- I mean cause 'cause that's

Who built it?

Exactly. Who would you say filled the earth with all of the violence? And the, the image is that everyone was responsible, but I now see a whole earth filled with violence, and I know that every person on it isn't

Yeah. Yeah, that's right. That's right

a piece around, around climate catastrophe and my own climate grief that I have come to a bit of a truce with, which is the feeling of being out of control.

I think all of the climate justice organizing we do, and all of the climate denial, and all of the climate numbing that those of us who have the luxury of doing that do, at least for me, it comes from a realization that I am on a ride I can't get off.

Yeah. Yeah

desire to say, "Okay, those people in Noah's time died in a flood, but it was their fault." This is not to say that the theology that says that people who die in mass extinction events should have done something and they deserved it, and all the ways that we blame the victim. But I don't wanna read it the way you're reading it, because then it really means we're actually always out of control. That the people in Noah's time were drowned because old-timey Jeff Bezos was out there filling the world with violence. And so too

And just sitting with that loss of control It just like I drop the fight a little and I can just sit with the fear of it

Yeah. It's hard. You know, I really, really resonate with what you're saying about that fear of... The fear and frustration and grief of being on a ride that you can't get off,

Yeah

I know so many people who want, really want a way to opt out of all of this violence and cruelty, right? it is so hard to figure out concretely how, because the world in so many ways is built to keep on chugging, right? So I, for me, one of the, one of the antidotes to that feeling is to find a small piece of work and do it, right? I think this is a moment where any way that any of us can throw a wrench in those gears, right?

Like, none of us can stop the ride individually, but collectively there is so much that we can do. And for me, one of the things that has been really, really powerful actually is to tap into that sense of resolve that there are always choices that we have. There are always ways that we can make a bad situation more survivable, right? That's what I'm committed to

Thank you for pulling me from the brink of nihilism once again. It's easy to get to here though in this Parsha

easy to get to in this Parsha. The Parsha really plays into our hand. So let's talk about disability, right? Let's talk about... Can we talk about disability? Because this is a real, yeah, this is a big part of my commitment, and it feels connected in some ways to what you were just naming, right? Because one of the things that is devastating to me is seeing in real time the way disabled people are so often not on board

Right?

Denied access to safety. Right? I think so much, right? My, my work is really focused around questions of disability and climate justice. I think a lot about the way that disabled people get left behind. And so I wanna talk a little bit here about how that works, because I think it's really an important dimension to bring into thinking about the, the Parsha, So one of the things that I think is really crucial to remember is that when we have a disaster situation disaster intensifies social inequality. People who are on the margins, people who are in vulnerable positions, people

Feeling the worst effects of racism, ableism, classism, all of this violence People who were, contending with that before disaster are also the ones who are hit hardest

A flood or a fire comes. So the structural barriers that disabled people face every day become a matter of life and death during disaster. We see this in so many ways. Inaccessible infrastructure, lousy public transportation, the defunding of Medicaid, the dismantling of all sorts of already meager social supports.

These are everyday experiences for disabled people, but they become even more dangerous. They become even more deadly when we're dealing with a crisis. So Right? like most cities, most counties don't think about disability when they're doing disaster planning. So shelters the closest equivalent that we have to a contemporary ark, right?

Shelters are inaccessible. Evacuation plans assume everybody's gonna drive out of town in their own private car, right? Who has the money for that? Who has--

Mmhmm

Who can do that driving, right? That you see the way in which these assumptions and exclusions are already written into the plan. So it's this-- it's a case of, it's a case of profound civic and social abandonment.

In so many floods, disabled people literally get left behind to drown. So when I read the Torah when I read this Parsha, I cannot get those stories off my heart, right? This is a question of who gets access to safety. who gets a ticket to board the ark?

Who has a place that will literally shelter their body? Who finds refuge? How do we build a world that makes it more likely for all of us to survive So then can I tell you about a midrash that I've been thinking about?

first of all what's a midrash

Oh, what's a midrash? A midrash is a, a classical Jewish mode of thinking with Torah that fills in the gaps, right?

That asks "Wait, what happened here? Tell us more. What are the motivations? What's the backstory? What else?" What didn't make it onto the s- sort of Torah's main stage center, right? The center of the screen.

There's actually something there's

about broadening our lens as we read Torah to read about the characters who are supposed to be in the background

right that's a Midrashic act. And that Midrash is central to Jewish imagination and to Jewish interacting with text.

And so as we are trying to say, "Okay, what about everyone who didn't make it onto the boat?" Midrash is solving a problem.

Yeah. There's a way in which that move that Midrash is making to say, "What about this minor character who gets pushed past?"

Can

get them onto the screen?"

Okay. Well, literally here, this midrash is all about getting a complicated creature onto the boat. Okay, I love this I love this story so much.

It's, It's a story in the Talmud, and it comes from the Babylonian Talmud, Zevachim 113B. Okay, so the rabbis look at the Noah story, and they ask a very specific and also amazing question. They ask, "How does the unicorn survive the flood?"

I love this question so much. Okay, now, to think with this question, first of all, we have to challenge... There's a famous folk song, you may have heard it where the unicorn gets left behind when the flood comes because the unicorn is playing games and splashing in the rain.

Again

Okay? I know, totally.

Totally. Totally. But in good news, Jewish tradition actually tells a very different story about the unicorn, 'kay? So the Talmud says, okay, there is this, the ancient mythical creature known as the re'em, the unicorn lived in the days of Noah and and survives the flood. But there's a problem. The rabbis cannot figure out how did the, they have, the, a data point they have about the re'em, the unicorn, is that it is huge.

Okay? It is vast. Rabbi, Rava Bar Barzana, one of the rabbis in the Talmud, says he once saw a day-old child of the re'em a newborn little baby unicorn, a- and it was as large as a mountain. It was 40 parsangs long. Now, you may be wondering, what's a parsang? Okay.

Yeah no, I am

Modern commentators are there's a lot of disagreement on the precise measure but the going rate is, suggests that a parsang is about two and a half miles.

So suffice it to say, at 40 parsangs long, the unicorn is gonna be a logistical challenge to fit on the ark. Okay. So the rabbis f- lay out all sorts of possibilities how they get this huge creature on board. Maybe they tied her horn to the ark. Okay? So it's what an amazing image, right? The ark becomes like this giant piece of driftwood that she floats beside.

Maybe she re- rested just the very tip-top of her nose on the deck of the ark just enough to let her breathe. And then the Talmud is like wait, that's not good. The flood waters, don't you know, were boiling hot, so that's not gonna work. What gives? How would the re'em have survived?" So then the Talmud says no, a miracle got performed for her."

So there's this little bubble of cool, still water that surrounds the ark to let the unicorn survive

I know, right? I love this tradition as a way for thinking about disability and the flood because it is so clear, first of all, that the rabbis are absolutely 100% committed to the re'em's survival.

They're like, "This unicorn has got to make it." It's just a question of how, right? How are we gonna get it done? Which is, by the way, the question I want us to ask, right? I am committed to our collective survival, so the question is how are we going to get it done It's also a tradition that paints really plainly the problem of access, right?

I love the unicorn so much, right? She is this big, fat, queer, crip body who will not fit neatly into the conventional space, right? She busts out of the boundaries that have been allotted for creatures to fit nice and neat, tidy on the ark, right? So the rabbis are like okay. I guess we have to figure out an accommodation."

Which, hello, disability politics in action. That, again, is exactly what we should be doing when we confront a situation of structural exclusion and screw-ups, right? We gotta make room for the actual bodies and minds of the people who are in our midst, not be like, "Oh, I wish you were more convenient."

But okay. All right, so those are two things I love about the story. Let me tell you something that I think is problematic about it a couple things I think is problematic. First of all, the rabbis haven't actually, with this story, dismantled the basic problem of the ark, right? We are still living in a universe where only a few survive,

We still have the elite group of survivors who make it onto the boat. It's just they're like, "Oh, but we gotta make sure we get the unicorn on board. Everybody loves the unicorn, right? Who wants to live in a world without the unicorn?" So that's obviously a limit to this story, and one that I am politically not willing to accept, right?

We don't just bring the beloved ones on the boat, right? The whole idea of the boat is basically the problem. The boat always assumes that only a few get their spot and get to survive. The other problem is, what the heck is going on? The boat is already built, right? And now Noah or the rabbis or whoever is like, "Oh, whoops, we didn't leave enough room for the unicorn?"

When I read this story, when I tell the story, I think of all of the ways that our world makes access into an afterthought,

Right

right? We end up with these awkward last-minute fixes, sort of fixes, quasi fixes, right? Because, I saw your face, I heard the sound you made when I said, "Oh, the unicorn just rests her little nose up on the ark."

This is not a good way to move through the world,

This is a classic example of a, a crummy disability retrofit that doesn't actually challenge inequality or the structural dimensions of exclusion,

Right? The core question here is why was the ark built too small in the first place?

God not think about the unicorn when making the design?

Why is it that Noah is left to figure something out, right? This is not an ideal solution.

Here he is right, trying to cobble something together at the last second, even as the r- the waters rise. relatable, right? But not actually the political course that I want us to take.

That's right

Still though, I tell this story because I think there is something here that really matters, right?

There is an empathy with those of us who don't fit neatly on the ark, with those who don't have easy access to safety. The tellers of this Midrash want the unicorn to survive

There's a piece of the, the creativity of Midrash the creativity of access, of okay, there are limited parameters and how do we hack it, right? And disability genius to say,

me by the horn?"

that would work?

Right And and so there's something about the creativity of disability

I wanna lift up, but

Yeah

the, the exceptionalism. So

Yeah. Yeah

the re'em is the the neurodivergent person who doesn't make it a lipstick people's problem that

Yeah.

loud right?

Yeah

the acceptable to the dominant decision-makers. The, the re'em is the one who can get listened to, because how many other

do we not hear about getting room made for them on the ark?

And I know that

there's a Midrash about the phoenix, and the, the ark was built with the phoenix in mind. The, the phoenix can chill out on the ark and go through its entire boom and bust cycle. and there, there's not room for the the people who needs that are deemed impossible to accommodate by a larger group.

There isn't

for the actual full spectrum of living beings that need to be accommodated. It's just the, the sparkly shiny unicorn

Exactly. Exactly. There's actually an amazing story in the Talmud about the unicorn. It's in Bavli Sanhedrin where Noah is ... Noah and his sons are working themselves to the bone trying to figure out what every creature needs and provide for their needs, and the, the phoenix is famished, but says, "Oh, don't worry about me, Noah.

I don't need anything." That's the move that in a lousy ableist world gets you the ticket

if you're lucky. And so that's a dynamic we wanna break up,

Yes

That's a dynamic we wanna push back on, okay? We wanna to actually think about what does it mean to build from the outset, from the ground up, structures that are robust and flexible, that recognize our bodies and minds unfold in different ways, right?

Need different things, yearn for different stuff, are triggered by different thing- Right? Like, We build that in from the ground level, okay? Noah had quite a while to build that ark, okay? But didn't end up designing with that in mind, okay? And so that's a really powerful question. I also, though, wanna say 100% to what you said about disability wisdom and The incredible capacity that so many disabled people have, and have often been forced to hone,

Which is to figure out how to like, take the dregs and make something out of it, okay? How to hack the situation. But when I think about a world that is increasingly climate affected, where we're starting to really think about oh, climate adaptation is something we're all gonna need, this is a place where disability is a masterclass

Yeah

art of adaptation, okay?

We know something about what it means to figure out a way to try and make it work

yeah I mean I think that the piece about adaptation, we even see how different species themselves interact with the flood and with the changing planet, and maybe this could be a segue to talk about some work that

so at the end of the, the Noah story he needs to send out an emissary to find out if the waters have receded. And so first he sends a raven that doesn't come back, and we're meant to understand that maybe the raven couldn't find perch and I guess dies. I- it's not really spoken to much, but that's what I've always inferred. And then the second bird he sends out later, the dove, returns with an olive branch representing that the waters have receded enough, that enough time has passed that life is now sustainable on the planet such that an olive tree can grow and is safe to come out. So Dr. Julia Watts Belser, you are a deep lover of birds and in deep relation with the birds near your home.

Your current work is music, photography, and your forthcoming writing is about the Torah of birds. So what do you make of the corvid of Parshat Noah?

Oh my gosh, I love talking about corvids. I love this question so much. Okay, so corvids, this whole family of birds that incr- includes crows and ravens and more. Corvids are extraordinary birds. They are fiercely clever. They are profoundly social. They form really deep kin bonds with each other, and they are also incredibly adaptive and adaptable.

Okay, so there's so much I love about crows. I'm reining myself in right now from telling you all of the great things about them. Thank you. But there's something I... So there's something I think makes crows really important for thinking about our present moment Crows know how to make a home in a world that wasn't built for them.

Crows have figured out how to hack human cities and suburbs, how to feast on our trash, how to make use of our dumpsters and our discards, how to make a playground out of strip mall parking lots. So for me, there is this incredible re- resonance here, this really powerful resonance with disability and disability wisdom because as we were just talking about, Ableism forces so many disabled people to hone these kinds of skills for adaptation, right? We also have to figure out how to navigate an often inhospitable world. Okay, not to mention all of the stories that get scripted onto crow bodies, right? People tell me these stories all the time.

People say, "Oh, they're eerie birds. Oh, spooky. a murder of crows," right? We make them into omens of death and danger when really they are just living their own lives. Not that this resonates for me with disability experience in any way,

Oh,

right? But that's this other really powerful, this, this role of projection.

Okay, so let's take it back to the Parsha. When Noah is first thinking about leaving the ark, the first bird he releases to scout the situation is the orev. Okay? The orev, that Hebrew word, is usually translated as raven, but bear in mind, the Torah isn't really thinking about species in the way that we do today, right?

An orev is basically any big, black corvid. Crows, ravens. There are many different types. There's four different types that are found in contemporary Israel-Palestine. Okay, so Noah sends out the orev, the raven or the crow. There is actually another wild moment in the Talmud where the raven talks back to Noah.

The raven protests his assignment. The raven says to Noah, "Look, you only have one pair of ravens," right? There are certain species that are brought on in there's seven pairs, and then there's some species that are brought only one pair. So th- the raven says, "Look, I am one of a kind. You are gonna send me out there?

What if I'm struck down? What if I die? What if the flood takes me? Then the world will be lacking a creature-

Oh, it's this incredible moment, right? I mean of that, then the world will be lacking a creature. We actually get to hear the rabbis grappling in this moment with the reality of extinction, with the immensity of that loss, with the real risk- Okay, but Noah isn't swayed, right? Noah is like, "Go, ah go, go, go raven," right?

In some ways the raven is like fashioned here as the expendable body. Noah sends out the raven, and the raven does not return. The raven is gone from the story, and we do not hear their voice again. But I do not believe the raven dies. Okay? The Torah actually- Not just because I can't stand that, that thought, right?

But actually, there's a verse. There's a verse.

The Torah says, "The orev went out to and fro until the waters dried up from the earth," which I take to mean the raven flies out to make her own way, to build her own home, and to find her own place. She flies free of the ark, never to return. The raven refuses to be bound by this whole wretched project.

She's out. She's off. The raven gets free We don't know what happens to her because the Torah that we have is so relentlessly focused on the human story and the Noah story, right? The Torah is so focused on getting Noah off the boat. But the raven's story, the oref's story, the crow's story, this is a story that we need, especially in this moment We need to listen to and learn from those who know something about adaptation, those who know something about survival in less than ideal conditions.

And we need the wisdom of everyone who refuses to get boxed in to bad stories and cruel systems. We need the fierce brilliance of those who know how to make life even in the midst of death. That's what we need. So learning that learning that wisdom asks us to pay attention to voices that we have been taught not to notice, right?

We're going back again to that idea of shifting the frame, of widening the story. Who do we attend to? Whose voices do we notice? For me, that's a really crucial part of, it's a crucial political question, but it's also been a really important part of my own spiritual practice these days

I would love to talk more about your spiritual practice as it relates to your minyan, your morning

Yeah. My minion of birds. Yeah. So, Okay Oh, so the first thing I'll say here is that birds, and not birds in general, but birds quite in specific, the birds who make their homes near mine, the birds in whose territory I live, these birds are one of the real anchor points for my spiritual practice these days.

They are really a part of what is holding my heart alive in this world. Most mornings I'm up before dawn. I sit with them. I listen with and to them. I daven alongside them. They really are my morning minyan and their presence is a deep part of what grounds me these days. Over the past few years, I've built this practice of singing with the birds, of I say singing, but I think what I actually really mean is listening, really listening to their voices and learning something about how to braid my own voice softly alongside theirs. I started making what I call asynchronous duets.

I work with field recordings, so I record the birds who are in my own backyard, actual bird voices as they call, as they sing, and then I take those recordings back into my little home studio, and I record myself singing alongside them it's such a contemplative practice.

I like, cut this tiny little snippet of bird song, 30 seconds, a minute long, and I play it over, and over, and over on a loop until I start to hear where my own voice might land. It's such a different question than like, "I've got a song I wanna sing and use a few birds," as background decoration.

It's actually about flipping the script for me. It's a- about letting the birds be foreground, and my own voice weaving alongside them, right? How can I find my way into their world? So maybe we can play one. You wanna hear one now. Let's hear what I-

That's so beautiful and there is a um, there's a humility in it how I experience you interacting with them

I think, I think that is for me one of the deepest things about that practice. I think it's

a practice of learning something about how to not center myself. Okay?

You're so used to being the center of every story and claiming the stage and like for me, this work is about, like, how small can my voice be?

And then we talk sometimes about this, right? Like, how do we right-size ourselves?

Mm-hmm.

Not to take ourselves out of the frame, not to say, "Oh," you know? Because, because because that's also wrong, right? We are also a part of this ecosystem. We are also a part of the, the brilliant braid of all life.

But- Like somewhere between I'm so big I claim every ounce of air in the room and I'm nothing, right? Is this other space And that's, I think, what it feels like for me when these duets land. It feels like, oh, my own voice is just one small, intricate, beautiful part of a chorus that is full of life.

Full of life

That's what I want for us, right? I want for us all to live in a world that is abundantly supportive of all life, the conditions that we all need to live well and to live yeah, really attentive to each other. And so that this practice of like- Just, you know, being out with the birds regularly, but then also really learning their rhythms

And

learning their voices, hearing their particulars,

There's something about that connection that it's really part of what is making me feel alive these days

You know, the, one of the projects that we are gonna be doing this year on Left at Sinai is building a Haftarah Beyond Conquest, because our teacher, Judith Plaskow, asked us to do so, and whatever she says we do. So, in hearing you talk about de-centering oneself to make room for what is wild, I think that there is such a beautiful connection there to Torah that is beyond what we can control and dominate and ours.

Yeah. Yeah.

I wanna know the Torah of the raven, right? I wanna know the Torah of the raven.

We don't get that in our version of the book. Um,

It's true

but we need it, I think

If you were to bring a new Haftarah Beyond Conquest for Parshat Noah, what would it be?

Ah. It would be Aurora Levins Morales' incredible prose poem, Will We. So this poem is from her collection, Silt, which I recommend highly to all of you. And this, this poem, Will We, is all about imagining a future where we learn to live well in a precarious world.

A world where, the waters are high, floods are commonplace, and also people know how to make a life.

Know how to make a life that is abundant, that is joyful, that is possible. A life where we support each other, a life where we don't drown, but learn to float. So the whole piece is gorgeous. You should totally read it in full. But I'll share just a couple of lines. So it starts with Aurora Levins Morales asking us, "What if we all become apprentice islanders and learn the things that island people know?

What if we learn to be flotsam, to be buoyant?" And then a few lines later, "What if to save ourselves, we float on baskets woven from the leftovers of extraction? Plastic drums, polyester shirts, styrofoam coolers, nylon ropes piled high with compost and heavy with green growing corn, tomatoes, melons, morning glories."

That's where I wanna close. That's the haftarah I want for us, with that promise, with that sense of possibility. You know, These are hard times. Storms are here more intensely for some of us than others.

Are here. Water is rising. But we can still, we can always make choices for life, for joy, and for beauty, and for solidarity, and creativity.

We can always make choices to compost what no longer serves us, to build differently, to listen to the raven, to learn a new way of being with each other and with the world

Oh, thank you so Such a gift, Julia, thank you.

Oh, it was so good to talk with you. Thank you

an early Shabbat Shalom to everyone who is listening.

shalom

If people want to read more of your work and follow what you're teaching, where can they find more?

Okay. well, The first address is um, my website probably is the, the, your one-stop shop for finding various things. But let me just lay out a couple of different possibilities. So my book, Loving Our Own Bones, is a place to go for thinking more about disability and the sacred, as well as disability in Jewish text and tradition.

I have a piece out in Harvard Theological Review about the Noah story, so if you want more depth on Parshat Noah, including a number of Jewish texts that we didn't get to talk about on the podcast and a full version of the unicorn story, We'll have the link in the show notes.

I will also in the notes, will include some links to Truthout pieces I wrote about disability and climate change to think... No Jewish connections there except the broad Jewish commitment to protecting life and wellbeing. But that's a great way to go if you're interested more in the disability and climate angle.

And then if your heart is yearning for some more asynchronous duets or some 📍 bird Torah the, the book is a little ways away but I do have a piece on my website called To Trace the Wilds of Home, which is an audio work that includes a couple of asynchronous duets, as well as some reflections about yeah, coming to love the small spaces of the sacred in our midst.

Left at Sinai was edited by Ev Bowen, music by Molly Bajgot, art by Liora Ostroff.

The name of this show, Left at Sinai, comes from Rosh Yeshiva Binya Koatz.

I'm your host, Ariana Katz.

Follow the show and me on Instagram at leftatsinaipod or rabbiariana.

Transcripts, source sheets, and show notes can be found at arianakatz.com/leftatsinai.

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Ariana Katz

Parshat Noach: Rabbi Julia Watts Belser

Parshat Beresheet: Rabbi Maggid Jhos Singer