Today at one of the closing sessions at the Nehirim Conference on Queer Jewish Spirituality there was a guest speaker from outside the Jewish tradition, Michael Kelly, author of Seduced By Grace and The Erotic Contemplative. What great fun. He read from St. John of the Cross, and then a passage from Pseudo-Dionysius the Aeropagite that was beautifully mind-blowing in its Jewish and Buddhist approach to the Divine. Just as in the Kaddish, Jews affirm everyday that the Divine is beyond language and description (which includes the entire idea of a gendered character) and as the Buddhists define Nirvana only by what it is not, so too this passage read today was a radical statement of the experience that cannot be described but can only be experienced. An experience shared by all humans in all traditions.
The dialog that began in this workshop was delicious. So was the performance of the juggler Sara Felder on Friday night. As you would expect in a conference of queer folk, she crossed boundaries in so many ways — and all of them designed to elicit laughter, which erupted in gales. Her introduction to the brilliant lecture by Naomi Seidman explicating Sholem Asch's 1906 Yiddish play God of Vengeance included...well, I shouldn't say because should she do it again the surprise would be ruined.
Didn't get there this year? There will be a Nehirim conference on the west coast — and then back east next spring. So if you're a queer jew, or queer jewish-buddhist, -pagan, -taoist etc don't miss it.
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