Episode 52: Imagining a Feminist Midrash – with writers Gloria & Bob Rees

The Discussion

Amy Allebest: One thing I’ve spoken about often is my religious upbringing and how I felt throughout my whole life as I would read scripture—written by men, about men, for men, and interpreted by men—in the Bible, women’s voices comprise less than 1% of the total spoken words, so women’s exclusion is not subtle.

It’s not just women being overly sensitive, making something out of nothing. Women are left out and when they are spoken about by men, they’re often denigrated or monitored or bossed around by men. The harm that was done to my self-concept as a girl and woman in that in environment is inestimable. Interestingly though, I’ve been going through somewhat of a spiritual journey this year, and I’ve gained important insights from other religions. However, I have been deeply disappointed to find the gender ratio in other faiths is not much better than the one I come from.

I’ve been reading Buddhist and Taoist works, for example—all men—and even the book Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life by Richard Rohr is a wonderful book. And Richard Rohr is a wise, beautiful soul but he’s also a man, and the pages are filled with biblical passages—again, all men—and Franciscan monks—from Francisco, a ma— and monks, all men. And I had to set the book down in frustration that women are still so utterly absent.

In the meantime, one other example, my husband has been sending me links to YouTube videos about Carl Jung. These videos have been extremely helpful, but Carl Jung was also—surprise!—a man, and the scripts of these videos are written by men and read by an A.I. that’s a man’s voice. Even our robots are men.

So today I am very excited not just to highlight what a male-centric world we live in, but to talk about a practical solution, something we can actually do to change the spiritual landscape for ourselves. It’s creating a ‘midrash’, and to guide us in this practice are the incredible Bob and Gloria Reese. Hi Bob and Gloria.

Gloria Rees: Hello.

Bob Rees: Hi.

AA: I’m so excited to have this conversation with you. And before we do, we’re gonna jump in in a minute, but I’ll first read your professional bios and then I’ll have you introduce yourself a little more personally.

Gloria Gardner Reese is an English as Foreign Language educator, world traveler and nutritionist. She’s also trained in adult development and gerontology. Loving to meld with new cultures, she recently signed on as a mentor for Bountiful Children’s Foundation work in Madagascar. Gloria is also the vice chair of the Marin Interfaith Council and co-editor of a collection of Sunstone’s Pillars of My Faith: Essays to be published next year.

She and Bob are co-authoring scriptural mid rash for a collection that they hope to publish and to which they invite submissions. And I’ll just say you’ve provided email addresses, so as this conversation moves along, listeners, if you find yourself moved to contribute your own midrash, you can email bobrees 2@gmail.org or giorlagard@gmail.org.

Now Bob’s introduction until his retirement in 2012. Bob Reese was visiting professor and director of Mormon Studies at Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. He’s taught at UCLA, UC Santa Cruz, UC Berkeley, the University of Wisconsin, and Vitas Magnus University in Lithuania where he was a Fulbright Professor of American Studies.

He’s the co-founder and vice president of the Bountiful Children’s Foundation and co-founder and president of FastForward for the Planet, which is a nonprofit initiative addressing climate change and earth stewardship. And Bob has published widely on the arts, humanities, politics, and religion.

So both of you are just such impressive human beings, and I am so honored, really, and so grateful that you are here today to talk about a feminist midrash. But before we get into the concept of the midrash, I’d love it if you could each share just a little bit about your personal backgrounds, kind of where you’re from, and what brings you to do the work that you do.

GR: I was born in Utah, lived five years in Alaska, and bore two of my children there, and four more children after…well, one before that and then…anyway, I have managed a lighting fixture business—restoration of antiques and manufacturing of lampshades—that my mother began. And as a child I felt full of confidence…my father died when I was 11, and I even took on more confidence, but I couldn’t connect with God in the same way that I felt my brothers were doing.

And I remember reading scripture from a female—just changing the gender, the males with the female—and getting so excited about how that really connected me to this royal birth that I had. And I told my brother of it, but he said, “you know, I tried that. It does nothing for me.” So it was a way for me to cue into that. And I married a man who was very respectful of these things.

BR: I was born during the middle of the Great Depression; spent my first 10 years in a godless world and—at age 10 when my father came back from the Second World War—found Christianity and Mormonism, and my life has been deeply enriched ever since.

I am very interested in the imagination. I’ve just finished a book called Imagining and Reimagining the Restoration and it is a kind of completion in some sense or maybe a beginning of my interest in midrash, which began a number of years ago.

Teaching at a graduate theological university I became really interested in other traditions and discovered midrash, and it appeals to my imagine-based semester that I began studying it and began writing it.

Then fortunately Gloria and I met eight years ago, and we have found this interest in midrash very compelling. So we have been working on composing midrash, and one of the wonderful things about midrash is that it’s such an open, inviting genre that it’s just an exciting thing to be a part of. And so we’re hoping to eventually collect a group of midrash by Mormons.

GR: And particularly woman.

BR: Particularly women. Yes. The invitation has been out there for some time for women to write midrash, for Latter-Day Saint women to, so we’re excited about the possibility of other people discovering that genre and becoming as excited about it as we are.

AA: Oh, that’s very exciting. Well, before we get any farther in, let’s define the word ‘midrash’. Because there may be some listeners who have heard this word now being said a few times and don’t know what it is. Can you tell us where this term originated?

BR: Yes. The Jewish word drash, which is for interpreting in a sense, is an open form that has become really expanded. It really began with the loss of the first temple during the Babylonian captivity. With the loss of the temple, the Jewish fathers turned their attention to creating what they call the ‘synagogue in exile’ and began looking at scripture as an invitation to imagine and to extrapolate and to dive deep into it and to look at what they talk about, meaning that’s maybe not apparent to everyone.

And this began a tradition that ended in…there was a second Midrashic Revolution that started with loss of the second temple, 67 in the Common Period. So there’s been midrash being gathered into some 20 volumes of Jewish midrash. And the 20th century has been expanding it; Muslims and Christians have been writing it as well.

In a sense, it is kind of all possible interpretations and imaginations and the explorations that are embedded in the text. So they even look at punctuation. They look at the spaces that are silent. And so every jot, tiddle, every symbol, metaphor they believe is part of God’s design to invite us into it.

And as I sometimes teach my class, even a comma can make a difference. You can say, “Let’s eat, grandma.” I can say “Let’s eat grandma.” And it’s a big difference to grandma which one you choose.

But anyway, the midrash and the plurality of that, has become a treasure house of rabbinical exegesis, extrapolations, interpretation, expansions on the text. And so it’s both exacting meaning from the text, but also reading meaning into the text. So it’s a process that illuminates the hidden holy meaning of scripture. Emerson said there is such a thing as ‘creative reading’, as well as creative writing, and midrash is a very good example of that, that it is an invitation to investigate, examine, search, interpret, imagine, and invent.

One midrash of Moses is when Moses was just a shepherd, God had watched him as he went out to look for a lost sheep, and when he found it, he said he was so sorry it was lost, put it on his shoulders and carried it back to the sheep pen. And God looking down said, I know I can trust Moses to be a shepherd to my people by how he takes care of sheep. So the midrash says that God often will look to see what we’re doing. To see whether or not we can be entrusted.

So the midrash is full of stories and for example, one of the things I love is that when God decides, I think it’s time to marry Adam and Eve, he takes time to braid Eve’s hair. He speaks to Moses from the burning bush, using the voice of Moses’ father, because he thinks Moses would be frightened to hear God’s rules. So just this very tender, caring, loving God. Even it shows God sometimes…in the beth midrash—which is the place where you go to discuss the meaning of scripture—God is kind of arguing with himself. What did I mean when I told the people this? When they said that, what did it mean? So even God is involved in the creation of new scripture and new understanding.

So I think one of the things that it invites is that we look at the scripture with new eyes, new minds, and new hearts. So that is the idea of the text is always open. It’s never exhausted. What God delivered to Moses on Sinai was not a final product, but the beginning of a conversation between God and Israel.

So scripture is not an ending, but a beginning and it’s wonderful for us. The rabbis talk about it as ‘continuing revelation’, which means something special to Latter Day Saints and it’s a very good example of that.

Gloria, do you want to talk about this?

GR: Hmm. I want to look at what is happening in our lives at this moment as women, and listen to the echoes and the resonance that comes from our own lives. And I wonder, does scripture offer light into our own stories?

One empowering thing that happened to me is we were driving and Bob was reading to me that about this idea of midrash in the early beginning and he said, “well, the woman at the well, I think her grandmother probably took her there because she had fond memories.” And I just was overcome. I said, “no, she never knew love. She had no understanding of it from her upbringing, and she didn’t have it with the five husbands before, and the fifth one who she was living with…she kept looking for it and couldn’t find it, and that’s why she expressed it so beautifully after Christ recognized her and could really hear and see her.”

I think what happens with midrash for me is that we turn it. I think this is a Buddhist way of looking at it too. You turn it round and round and we think of a sauce that you’ve got in the refrigerator emulsifying, I mean it’s settled to the bottom. So you turn it and you turn it until it reconnects, emulsifies. And it’s also like a kaleidoscope that you turn and you turn and you see patterns, and you can make sense sometimes out of what you’re questioning.

It lets us get into conversation with God, even if it’s an intimate argument we have with him and her, and such a position opens up our sanctified imagination, our intuition, innovation, and it guides us into personal revelation. That’s what it’s like for me. It illuminates the hidden holy meanings of scripture and helps us to make sense of our own questions through the intimacy of spirit, Getting to the True is not possible without deeply encountering the Real, the what is right now, and accepting it. And it brings us into that burning bush within ourselves, and it helps us to interact with and expand upon our own circumstances that way, and we have to really kind of let go. It’s like jumping over the edge. It’s a time when you let go of everything and take that leap of faith. And you can truly see in the same way, I think, as the woman of the well when she was given the living waters, came alive.

AA: Something that strikes me right now is just the conversation that you two had in the car it sounds like, where Bob—this is one of the beauties of midrash, that Bob is able to imagine and say, “this is what I imagine with the woman at the well,” and it’s based on something that’s meaningful to you. And then Gloria is saying, “no, I think this” and that it brings up emotion, and that’s who I can relate to in that figure. And I know that this is something that is very much alive in the Jewish tradition of having conversations with God, wrestling with the text, finding meaning in the text, and that’s something that I think a lot of LDS people and also a lot of Protestant Christians are not used to. That if you’re quite bound by just what’s there…sola scriptura, whatever is in the Bible that’s the capital-T Truth…this might feel a little uncomfortable to kind of go into this realm of saying like, “well, I’m gonna think about what might be meaningful to me. I’m gonna create my own fan fiction of this scripture and say like, well, I’m gonna create, like you said, a little story about this part of Moses’ life that was left out.” And we know that it’s not maybe capital-T True, but it’s deeply meaningful and true to us and allows…and especially this is why this is so powerful to me as a concept as a woman, because we’re just so, as I said in the introduction, just so left out that if we are to have scriptural story, that’s gonna have to come from us cause it’s just not there in the original text.

BR: Yeah, I really appreciate that, Amy, because teaching at a theological university, there were more women rabbis, imams, ministers, the priests that I met, and it was just wonderful to have conversations with them. And that is, I think that just as God says, ‘come let us read together,’ I feel that the Gods, our Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother are saying, ‘come let us imagine together.’ And in a sense, all of the scripture is an invitation to imagine.

This wonderful thing with Nephi and the angel where Nephi is shown a vision and the angel says, “what does this mean? What do you think of this?” There’s a conversation, and so when I wrote my first midrash before Gloria and I met and it was called ‘The Prodigal Daughter’, and I wanted to see what that story was like told of the point of year old woman and two girls, and it was really very enlightening to me to see it told in that way. So when I’m telling the story of what I think about the woman with the well, Gloria comes in with something that I wouldn’t have thought of, which is this woman, she has had five husbands and she’s a woman who doesn’t know what unconditional love is. And so when she meets Jesus, she feels that for the first time: what it feels like to be loved unconditionally. And she runs in to tell the people in the village who have thought of her as just a loose woman they probably haven’t paid attention to, but now she’s showing them the Messiah.

So I think this is such a wonderful thing about scripture is that it asks us to imagine— not just to think or reason—and that all of this…the rabbis saw this and Jesus does this: Jesus is doing midrash, this is in the scripture, he is telling stories and inviting us to come into a new way of looking at them. And this is why I think midrash is such an exciting genre.

AA: I’m going to share one more quote and then what I would love is to share some of the midrash, some specifically Mormon midrash, but maybe we’ll keep it to biblical midrash for today just because we have lots of listeners who don’t have context to understand the Mormon story, so we’ll keep it to biblical, but here’s the quote. This is from Gerda Lerner, who herself was Jewish so was probably acquainted with this way of thinking, and she’s not speaking here about scripture, but she’s talking about historical records. She says “perhaps the greatest challenge to thinking women is the challenge to move from the desire for safety and approval to the most “unfeminine” quality of all—that of intellectual arrogance, the supreme hubris which asserts to itself the right to reorder the world. The Hubris of the god makers, the hubris of the male-system builders.”

That’s the end of the quote. I would probably replace the word ‘hubris’ with just confidence. Kind of like a healthy audacity that she says like, men have been doing this the whole time. Men have been having spiritual experiences and then writing them down and saying, “Thus sayeth the Lord!” and she said, “you know, women can assert that healthy audacity too, to say I can be a system builder. I can be in conversation with God. I can stand at Sinai, too, and have my own experience and write it down.” And I think that’s just so healthy for the female psyche and for our spirits too, to assert that confidence that men have had all through the millennia to write down their experience and call it scripture. So. I wanted to just share that quote from Lerner before we get into the midrash.

BR: I would just say one thing, I would add it takes courage. Like one of the Christian writers of midrash says, “it’s like your Peter stepping out of the boat on the sea. It is risky, but it’s also terribly rewarding.”

AA: Wonderful. Well, let’s hear some of yours. I would love it if you could share some of the stories that you have written.

GR: If you’re willing. I’m going to share one, ‘The Second Annunciation: a Midrashic Interlude’.

In the hush of Nazareth’s olive-laden hills, the veil between heaven and earth thins as light spills into the room of a young girl.

She was called Mary. Miriam in her mother’s tongue, a name carried by prophets and song-weavers. Through her young life, she had been quietly confident, yet open to wonder and mystery. Although she’s familiar with the imaginal realm, this night she’s not prepared for what is about to happen.

All of a sudden the angel Gabriel, radiant with a light beyond the sun enters her presence, echoing words from ancient scrolls.

BR: “Greetings to you who are highly favored. The Lord is with you.”

GR: Overwhelmed with fear. She wonders. Is this a dream, a vision? With gentle assurance, Gabriel’s voice comes forward.

BR: “Don’t be afraid, Mary. In favor with God you will conceive and give birth to his son and shall call his name Yeshua or Deliverance. He is the inheritor of David’s throne, and his kingdom shall flow outward forever.”

GR: As the message grows within her heart and mind, Mary trembles. “How can this be? I have never known a man.”

Beaming as one beholding the secrets to creation, Gabriel meets her astonished eyes with reverence and replies.

BR: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, Mary. The power of the Most High will overshadow you as the cloud once overshadowed Sinai and thus the holy child born to you will be called God’s son.

As a sign to you, your cousin Elizabeth, she who was long barren, now carries a child in her womb, one with courage who will be a harbinger of your son, as we’re told by the prophets. I bless your understanding to be magnified in God’s light and love.”

Then Mary, daughter of Eve and the promise of prophets, bows the ark of her will to the Almighty and utters with humble acceptance.

GR: “I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be to me as you have said.”

BR: And the angel departs, but heaven was not yet done.

GR: As Gabriel’s light fades from her bedroom, Mary trembles. Not from fear, but from the stirrings of divine possibility. The awe of what has just transpired and what is to be almost unaware to her.

The air shifts once more, but this time the feminine presence filling the room bears a warmth deeper than fire and more ancient than stars.

BR: The messenger announced, with neither trumpet nor thunder, is clothed in glory and enters as wind through almond blossoms at the hush before dawn, her voice flows as water over smooth stones.

Mary sees and knows in her soul this is the Mother, the Heavenly Mother of all souls.

GR:  “Mary.”

BR: Speaks the goddess with timeless tenderness.

GR: “Beloved daughter, chosen vessel. You knew me before the veil of birth. I come to embrace you in an eternal bond of love, awakening in you, a remembrance that flows between our hearts.”

BR: Mary collapses into her tender embrace.

GR: “You were chosen,” says the Mother “from the great council before the world was, you were chosen to bear a son, not only in body, but also in heart. To shape his compassion, teach him kindness and sow in him the seeds of mercy and a love of forgiveness and grace, which will bless the entire world. Your strength sufficient for this calling, but be prepared, Dear one, for sorrow shall come as well.”

BR: Mary weeps for in this divine mother’s presence, her soul knows neither time nor space.

GR: “You and I,” continues the goddess “share this sun. I will whisper through your dreams and I will be at your side. When our son speaks his first words, takes his first steps and seeks your comfort, know also that this child is destined to bear the sins and griefs of the world. He will be misunderstood, betrayed, and pierced. You will see him mocked, beaten, bound and hung upon a tree. It’ll wring your heart as it will mine.”

BR: Mary weeps again, as it does not turn away.

GR: “At the end, there will be an open tomb from which he shall rise, and through him death will lose its sting. It’ll bring everlasting life and you will see him again as he walks with you after the world thinks him gone. And I, your Mother, will walk with you both until the veil is lifted once more.”

BR: Laying her hands upon Mary’s head, and then upon her belly, she blesses her.

GR: “You are not alone. Not now, not ever.”

BR: Then as gently as she came, she was gone.

GR: The girl who only moments before was pondering how such things could be now rises with clarity and strength. The fullness of which she had never known she would carry within her womb and within her heart. The wonder the world would someday know: the promise of salvation.

BR: She touches her heart and then her belly as the light of the moon swims around her while the world, with promise, spins toward redemption. We imagine that the angels Heavenly Mother sends to strengthen and comfort Mary as the baby grows within her womb, and we imagine our Divine Mother’s heart overflowing with joy. When her chosen daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, meet and embrace, she also visits the little town of Bethlehem before the miraculous birth. She softens the manger’s hay for Mary to lie upon and places cooing doves in the rafters to soothe the baby.

GR: Later, she hovers over the Holy Family on its journey into Egypt at night when Mary and Joseph fall into exhausted sleep. She kisses the baby’s cheek exclaiming, “my dear, dear precious son.”

You are not alone. Not now, not ever.

AA: That was beautiful and something I had never, ever considered before. Can you tell us a little bit what that meant to you?

BR: Well, I think that Gloria and I have written an article that’s published in Dialogue and has now been a chapter in my book on Imagining and Re-imagining. It was really opening our vistas to the possibilities of who Heavenly Mother is. Accepting the invitation that we feel to explore her, know her, think about her, bring her more into our lives. And so we thought she had to be there. And the first vision we imagined, that she appears and is present in our lives as we open to the possibility of that. And so it calls for us to expand our imagination

GR: For me it took three years before I was able to conceive a child in my first marriage, and I was three months pregnant at Christmas time. And I tried to think of it from Mary’s point of view because it’s…you know, a first pregnancy is so much is happening in your body and it’s remarkable and, and I couldn’t imagine quite what it would be like to be carrying a Christ-child. I mean…I could imagine. And that’s what came out of this for me.

AA: Hmm. Well it was really beautiful. I noticed what I felt as you were reading it when I suddenly it was, I thought, I wonder where this is going. ’cause it was kind of a standard annunciation story. And then to have a divine mother enter the story.

Highlighted for me something that I hadn’t realized I had felt all my life, which is Mary’s profound loneliness. Having had again, I mean, and I don’t wanna hit the nail too hard with the hammer, but my introduction…just like as much as I love men, I love men, but when it’s just only men around you, you just feel so lonely and having the angel Gabriel and your fiancé Joseph, and a male God, and you’re even carrying a male child. What I felt when there’s a mom there. I just felt like she’s not so, so alone. Just with all these men and the innkeeper and just like everybody in the story, Caesar Augustus, everybody’s going to the land of their father, and it just meant a lot to me to feel like, “oh, what if she did have somebody? What if she had a mom and it just made her feel supported and not feel profoundly alone.” So thank you for that. That was just beautiful.

Shall we move on to the next? I’m just watching the clock and wanting to make sure. Do you have another Midrash story that you’d like to share?

BR: There are several. One is the woman who touches the hem of Jesus’ garment…

GR: Ah, yes. And then right after that, or in the middle of that, that’s when Jairus’s daughter…

BR: Yeah. So is tells the story of the daughter of Jairus who is raised by Jesus from the dead. And what happens to her afterwards.

GR: She loses all concept of the present because she’s been in this marvelous, timeless spaceless place and she comes into it. And so we look at what happens to her.

BR: We imagined Heavenly Mother at the cross and that story, which is so powerful, it would be unthinkable not for his mother to be there.

GR: Yeah. Yeah.

BR: So we think that there’s just amazing possibilities in traditional scripture, in the Talmud, in any of the scriptures, holy writing by any tradition—there’s opportunities for women to begin imagining and men to begin helping and being helped in their imagination by women. Which has clearly happened with the midrash that Gloria and I are writing. I just have prized her perspective and her words in her framing of it has really expanded possibilities greatly for me.

AA: Hmm. I have a question for you. So as you’re encouraging people to embark on this exercise themselves, you mentioned that it can feel shaky and scary and a little bit almost. It can feel almost heretical depending on kind of the family and the denomination you’re raised in. It can feel a little bit like, “is this okay that I’m doing this?” And so I’m wondering if you have advice, spiritually or emotionally or just advice as writers: what would you tell people who think, “oh, I think this might be a really good exercise for me, but I’m nervous to start.” Whether it’s again, a spiritual or emotional reason or just they’re not used to writing at all—what advice would you give?

BR: I would say that everyone who reads scripture uses their imagination. When Jesus talks about the parable of the lost coin, or one of those…people begin to imagine. I mean, even biblical literalists are not biblical literalists because the imagination compels us to see what is Jesus walking on the water, the Sea of Galilee and Peter stepping out of the boat. We don’t just read and think, “oh, that’s an interesting story.” We imagine Peter doing that and we have a midrash of what happens when Peter steps out of the boat and then he begins to sink and Jesus saves him. So even if you think you’re writing a short story about something that happened in the Bible, use your imagination.

GR: It’s really a meditative process for me, a practice. It’s not the product so much as the process, and it’s a personal journey that brings me into my own voice. It offers layers upon layers of understanding, and those layers depend on my own level of adult development too, in these stages that…you see things in different ways. It might be that you feel confidence and expertise and then you say, “oh wait, there’s this paradox that’s coming in, and the contradictions” and maybe then you start saying, “ah, but they come together, they get well, one can’t be there without the other, and they’re both at the service of my soul.” And you transcend into a place of oneness or this spaceless timelessness, this non-duality that I think happened with the girl being raised from the dead and with Mary.

I also want to just read some words  that talk about what, from what I’ve gleaned from the women writers about midrash, that a sanctified imagination—that is a tapestry that’s telling stories. It’s textually-informed imagination and is a fertile, creative space to be in. You think about the story behind the story and as you mentioned, it’s wrestling with God into finding your own place in Word. You come to know yourself and I think that’s why Christ says “I am,” and the Mother is saying, “Hear me. See me. Know me, and we can say “I am.”

BR: It’s interesting, Amy, that most people are comfortable with poetry, which is also a poetry on the scripture. People are interested in seeing movies about the chosen. So it was wonderful to see somebody using their imaginations to help us understand what it was like to be Jesus and his disciples and all of that. So I think that the opportunity is inviting. That is, I think again, it seemed that God is inviting us to use our imagination.

GR: Through parables particularly because…you know, here was a man and those things probably didn’t happen like he’s telling them, and we don’t have to read the scripture as fundamental and absolute. In fact, God is encouraging us to have that conversation with him through our opening up with wonder to possibilities.

AA: Hmm. I love that. That’s so great. Okay, pivoting to another application of this exercise, I’m wondering if you can see this being valuable even for non-religious listeners. And I’m thinking particularly about the authors like Madeline Miller, Natalie Haynes, who are writing…there’s just like this proliferation of re-imaginings of Greek myth from these women authors who are imagining these, I mean, millennia-old male-centered stories from a different perspective. And it, again, it’s kind of fan fiction, but writing from a female point of view or just with different characters. And so you could look at that as like, almost like a secular midrash, right? Like it’s re-imagining these kind of iconic pillar foundational pieces of literature from a different point of view. So can you see a value in any listeners who are thinking, this is cool, but what’s the application for me if I’m not religious?

BR: Well, at the, at the university, people often say “I’m not spiritual, but I’m  religious,” or “I’m not religious, but I’m spiritual.” Everyone has that spirit or that sense of wonder. But think about, you could take any story. Imagine Huckleberry Finn told by ‘Samantha Finn’ instead of ‘Huckleberry Finn’. In fact, there are a number of novels that kind of take that and switch it into a different voice or a different time retelling it.

We are storytelling people and we love stories, and so we invent stories we tell and retell them. And I think one of the most wonderful things about women is that they have this opportunity from the very beginning to talk to that baby and sing to that baby and tell stories, and as we grow up and hear those stories, it fills our minds and our hearts with imagination.

So I would just say to anybody, your imagination is one of the greatest unused gifts that we have, and we can use it to good or ill. It can be very selfish or it can be expansive. So whatever you do, just recognize that as it’s a marvelous gift. We are the only creatures in the whole universe that we know that have imaginations. So I’m glad that we do.

AA: Yeah. I love it. What are your thoughts, Gloria? Can you see a secular application for this and how it might be valuable, especially for women?

AA: Yep. “In any books at all,” I think. And so she started writing her own stories.

Wonderful. Well, another question that I have…I’m just thinking about like the effect of creating specifically a feminist midrash, and it seems very personally meaningful and therapeutic. I’m wondering if you see any ways that these personal exercises might impact culture more broadly? Like what would be the effect of lots of women started writing midrash in their lives? Can you see a broader effect?

BR: Not just broader, but wonderful and beautiful and exciting. Absolutely.

GR: Opening up so many possibilities, so minds and methods. They write differently than a man writes.

BR: And if people can just, for example, kind of be curious, I wonder what happened to Mary Magdalene afterward? There’s a whole literature about her, much of it false and distorting that paints her in a very negative way. So there’s a lot of opportunity for that. And just to be curious. The kid who is delivering the bread, we have a midrash on him. It was just published. Just tell us what kind of a kid he was, this young boy that Jesus says, “take this bread and give it to others and collect it in the baskets.” So we just wonder what happened to him afterwards. What was this life like? And that could happen to so many people…what about the blind man that Jesus heals? What happens to him after he’s healed?

GR: What about women writing, how does that change?

BR: It’s so exciting as possibility in a genre. We would welcome any of your listeners to want to try this and have a thing in midrash, perhaps…we’d be happy to read them and to share perspectives or whatever.

AA: It strikes me as I’m thinking about that too, just if women started to write their own midrash, the way that it would affect them then ripples out to their families, to their communities. And I’m just thinking like in any denomination that I’m imagining, but let’s say like Evangelical Baptist women, if they’re started to be like a trend where Baptist women just started writing extra canonical women-centered, women-focused stories. And then what if they started publishing them? It just feels like this groundswell, like a grassroots movement of women’s empowerment and women. Women taking that space in the vacuum that has always been…and it just feels like so powerful.

Instead of waiting for, you know, the Southern Baptist Convention to make a proclamation that women are important or that women really are in the scriptures cause there’s always Esther or whatever, you know what I mean?

It’s just, what if women just started claiming it for themselves within each different denomination? That feels really powerful and inspiring. Again, instead of waiting for male leadership to give them permission. And what if women just started doing it?

GR: They’re not doing it for the public. They’re doing it because they are really finding their own public self, how they’ve been able to affect children and colleagues and others, and we don’t hear those stories or see that art or poetry.

BR: And there’s starting to be a scholarly study of feminist midrash. There are wonderful collections of Jewish and Christian feminist midrash that I just find so rich and rewarding. So I encourage people, you could just google ‘feminist midrash’ and find some from real treasure.

AA: Wonderful. Yeah, I was gonna say that would be something that I would really recommend. I’ve read a little bit, I mean, I know even just like WomanSpirit Rising is an anthology, and I know that Standing Again at Sinai is an essay that I read that could be classified as a midrashic text. So yeah, I encourage listeners to do that.

Is there anything else that you’d like to share with listeners before we close today? I’ve just been really inspired by this concept with you, but what else would you like to share as takeaways?

GR: I want to share gratitude for your understanding of this and the way you’ve developed the ideas, bringing us into the conversation.

AA: Well, this has been a wonderful conversation. Maybe we’ll just close quickly with you telling us where we can find your work, and then if you’ll repeat again, if you are wanting to recruit writers or kind of a call for articles, if you’d like people to contact you with their midrashic stories, you could share your emails again?

BR: So well people want to send midrash. We’re happy to look at it and we’re thinking of assembling a collection of it, but we haven’t decided yet. So bobrees2@gmail.com

GR: And mine is giorlagard@gmail.com, because that’s what my nephews called me. And I thought it was like Hildegard, Gardner with the middle name, so G-I-O-R-L-A-G-A-R-D@gmail.com

AA: Wonderful, wonderful. Well, thank you again so much, Bob and Gloria. This has just been a delight.

BR: Thank you, Amy, and so grateful for your good work.

Listen to the Episode

here

&

Share your Comments with us below!