Kinky Torah: Parashat Va'eira

7:1 God said to Moses, 'Observe! I will be making you like a god to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron will be your prophet. 7:2 You must announce all that I order you to, and your brother Aaron will relate it to Pharaoh. He will then let the Israelites leave his land. 7:3 'I will make Pharaoh stubborn, and will thus have the opportunity to display many miraculous signs and wonders in Egypt. 7:4 This is why Pharaoh will not pay attention to you. But then I will display My power against Egypt, and with great acts of judgment, I will bring forth from Egypt My armies - My people, the Israelites. 7:5 When I display My power and bring the Israelites out from among them, Egypt will know that I am God.'

When studying a parashah, sometimes a single word propels me--other times it is a phrase or verse, perhaps a pericope. Once in a blue moon, however, it is the entirety of the parashah that moves me. Va'eira is such a portion.

Va'eira, meaning "I will reveal," reveals the dark side, not just of the oppressed mind of the rejecting Israelites, not just of the absolutely powered therefore absolutely corruptible Pharaoh, not just of the whimpering, no confidence Moses. Va’eira reveals the dark side of God. In this portion, God begins the terrible game with Pharaoh—making his heart stubborn so that God can display awesome and awful plagues. So many people will die, painfully and horrifically, but God will “have the opportunity to display many miraculous signs and wonders” so, who cares?

Va’eira is at the heart of the most oft told and well known story we have—the Exodus from Egypt—and yet Va’eira begins the darkest concept of God we have ever considered throughout our history. The God of Va’eira is bitter and bloodthirsty, opportunistic and sadistic. The God of Va’eira is as dark as the human soul can imagine.

I have always hated this imagining of God. Every time I read about God hardening Pharaoh’s heart, I get so angry; why is it alright to bring ten plagues that will massacre hundreds, if not thousands of people when Pharaoh would have relented after the first five less horrifically destructive plagues? Why would we write a vengeful, sadistic God at all? What inside of the human soul requires the divine to mirror the darkness embedded in each of our souls?

Because that is the base truth of Va’eira: the human soul is filled with darkness as well as light. We are bitter and bloodthirsty, opportunistic and sadistic. Like the Israelites we reject. Like Pharaoh we are corruptible. Like Moses we have no confidence. So, we assume, like God we are cruel and fame seeking and vengeful and horrific in every way. We are dark and we have within us the spark of God therefore God must be as dark as we.

Va’eira is not about God. It is about the human psyche—the darkness within us all. Va’eira elevates our darkness to a fantastical, appalling, miraculous saga.

Do not get me wrong, I truly believe that we are amazing. The human experience is inherently good and beautiful and filled with wonder. Nevertheless, part of what makes us so outstanding is the fact that the darkness is always trying to engulf us. We live a life straddled between the yetzer hatov and the yetzer hara. Va’eira is yet another reminder that the ra is just as integral to the human experience as the tov. So integral, in fact, we even project our yetzer hara onto God.

God is not actually cruel and hardening and sadistic. We are.

Kinky Torah: Parashat Vay'chi

Parashat Vay'chi, the last Torah portion in Sefer B'reishit (the book of Genesis), is most famous for Jacob's deathbed "blessing" of his twelve sons in chapter 49. Let's be honest here, whether or not this is really a "blessing" is up for discussion--Jacob is not kind to all of his sons. I was prepared to write a serious discourse about the nature of conferring such dark messages on one's deathbed when I realized: whatever, let's have some fun!

And so I offer you, my faithful reader, each son's fetish as revealed by their blessing. If you are not certain as to how, exactly, I have exhumed each fetish from the text, ask me. Please, please, please feel free to vociferously disagree with me and tell me all about it! For a full text of each blessing, look it up!

Reuben ~ Mommy/son

49:4 …This is because you violated your father's beds, committing a profane act. He slept with my wife!

Simeon & Levi ~ Sadists

49:7 Cursed be their rage, for it is fierce, and their fury, for it is cruel. I will disperse them in Jacob, scatter them in Israel.

Judah ~ Dominant

49:8 'Judah, your brothers shall submit to you… 49:10 …Nations will submit to him until the final tranquility comes.

Zebulun ~ Prostituting

49:13 'Zebulun shall settle the seashores; he will be a harbor for ships; his border shall reach Sidon.

Issachar ~ Slave

49:15 But he sees that the resting place is good, and that the land is pleasant, so he will bend his back to the load, working like a slave.

Dan ~ Foot Fetish

49:17 Let Dan be a snake on the road, a viper on the path, biting the horse's heel, so the rider falls backward.

Gad ~ Smart Ass Sub

49:19 'Raiders shall raid Gad, but he will raid at [their] heel.

Asher ~ Whipped Cream, Ginger, Chocolate Sauce, Champagne, Cucumbers, so on and so on…

49:20 'From Asher shall come the richest foods; he shall provide the king's delights.

Naphtali ~ Queer

49:21 Naphtali is a hind prancing free; he delivers words of beauty.

Joseph ~ Adult Nursing Relationship/Pregnancy Fetish/Etc.

49:25 '[This was] from your father's God, who will [still] help you, and from the Eternal, who will bless you. [Yours will be] the blessings of heaven above, the blessing of the water lying beneath, the blessing of breast and womb.

Benjamin ~Blood Sports

49:27 'Benjamin is a vicious wolf. He eats a portion in the morning, and divides his prey in the evening.'

Kinky Torah: Parashat Mikeitz

Joseph: The Paradigmatic Switch

42:6 And Joseph was the governor over the land; he it was that sold to all the people of the land. And Joseph's brethren came, and bowed down to him with their faces to the earth. 42:7 And Joseph saw his brethren, and he knew them, but made himself strange unto them, and spoke roughly with them...

No character has as much narrative in Genesis as Joseph, not even Abraham; so it should not come as too much of a surprise that we get to see this man in many roles. Nevertheless, it has always amazed me just how easily Joseph transitions from being in shackles to being second in command of all Egypt.

When Joseph is thrown into the pit by his brothers, he is silent. When he is sold into slavery, he is silent. As he wallows in prison, he is silent. There is a classic Jewish tradition that suggests that it is out of Joseph's extreme piety that he is able to silently submit in each of these occasions. He believes so strongly in the divine plan for him, that he can and will endure anything in order to be the instrument that God has ordained him to be. Now I ask you, is this or is this not the way of the true submissive? For the sake of the Masters will/plan/enjoyment, the submissive endures--or even welcomes--all that befalls him or her.

Yet, as we can see from this weeks parasha, as soon as Joseph is given the opportunity to play Dom, he jumps at it. He takes on a domineering Egyptian name, Zaphenet Panei-ach: the one appointed by the god to provide life. He dons the clothing of wealth and power. He marries the daughter of a priestess. He reduces the entire Egyptian populace to a serfdom beholden to Pharaoh, the only man greater than he. And when his brothers arrive, he plays out his ultimate D/s scene; he makes them grovel before him.

Before anyone gets soft on me and brings up how he cries at their reunion; his tears do not fall until after Benjamin comes with the rest of the brothers on their second trip and, even then, not until he sets them all up to see if they will discard little Benny as easily as they discarded him, so many years ago.

On the contrary, as our text clearly states, Joseph has the brothers prostrate themselves before him as he spoke "roughly" to them. At this moment, he steps completely into the roll of the Dominant, eager to bend those before him to submit fully to His will.

Perhaps this is merely Joseph's evolution of power and control: from the depths to the heights, from subjugation to authority, from submissive to Dominant. On the other hand, for any individual to be able to truly embody from one end of the spectrum to the other within a single lifetime, maybe, just maybe this is the ultimate switch.

Finally, what is Joseph's secret to switching? How is it that he can both submit and Dominate fully with absolute surety in his role? 1. Joseph lives in the moment (well, in the moment that was 3500 years ago.) When not confronted by dreams, whether they be his own or others, Joseph accepts the moment before him ordained by God and he rolls with it. 2. Joseph doesn't merely like power and control, he truly understands it. Therefore when it wielded against him, either by God or by his brothers or by Potiphar, he is aware enough to submit to it; yet when power and control are placed squarely in his hands, He is perfectly capable and comfortable wielding it Himself.

And here I had thought switches were merely folks who could not make up their minds!

Kinky Torah

This shabbat we will be reading from Ki Tavo.

So, I was studying the parashah earlier today and could not help but notice the following verses:

Deuteronomy 28:47 you did not serve the LORD your God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, by reason of the abundance of all things; 48 therefore you will serve your enemy whom the LORD will send against you, in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things; and he will put a yoke of iron upon your neck, until he has destroyed you.

It got me thinking about the idea of servitude. According to Jewish tradition, people are meant to serve. When we were freed from Egyptian slavery it was not to be completely free; rather, Adonai brought us out of Egyptian bondage so that we could serve Adonai. We cannot truly worship God if we are being forced to worship a human master.

But...

What if we choose servitude to another human as well as to God? Can we adequately serve two masters? Do I have to choose between my Dom and Adonai?

First of all, let me say that, being the sub that I am, I love the idea that the human psyche was divinely built for servitude! I am sure that many of you Doms and Dommes out there may disagree, nevertheless, it resonates for me!

More importantly, I do believe that I can serve God with true respect and devotion while serving a Dom if for no other reason than this:

Genesis 1:27 And God created human in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them.

I truly believe that each and every one of us is created in the image of God; in the worship of another human being, I can serve God. My intention in submission, in worship, is to be as true to the image of God within myself as I am capable. Through serving, submitting, worshiping another, I am able to support the image of God in him. Through this voluntary, intentional act of submission, I serve God as I serve my Dom.

*ssr & I are thinking about starting a weekly kinky parashat hashavua. Would any one out there be interested in something like that? Let me know.
Just for the record, we would not start it until after Simchat Torah :)