The Weight of the World is Love (Queer Love Chant)

September 5, 2012 Irwin Keller

This is a three-part chant I wrote over a decade ago for a ritual designed by my friend Scott Himmelsbach. It was for an event called "Love, Valor & Compassion" and I was tasked with creating some music for the "love" section. It was a queer event, so I culled from Allen Ginsberg, Langston Hughes and Walt Whitman. Their text snippets bring to mind, respectively, the earthiness, the juiciness and the heavenliness of love. I've sinced used this periodically to replace the "Ahavat Olam" or "Ahavah Rabah" in Jewish ritual. And the other night I tried it for the first time at a (non-queer) partnership ritual (see video).

I offer this in case you wish to try it in your community or your work. (Start with Ginsberg and hold it till it's steady. Add Langston Hughes. Once those are stable, reach for Whitman! Lather, rinse, repeat.) If you do this, let me know how it flies!

And thanks to Johanna Adorjan for surreptitiously capturing a bit of video that gives a sense of how it sounds. Find it here.

Ki Tetze: Confessions of a Cross-Dressing Rabbi*

August 31, 2012 Irwin Keller

The deep preoccupation people feel when they encounter someone and are uncertain how to read their gender is very revealing about how central - unnecessarily central, stupidly central - gender is to our culture. It seems someone’s gender is the most important thing we can know about them. When a baby is born, their sex is the first thing we ask, before we even ask about their health. We don’t know how to begin thinking about a baby without a proper pronoun, and an appropriate set of colors, toys and aspirations to go with it. (Even if the aspiration is that the baby should defy the limitations placed on their gender.)

No Reason, but Meaning Nonetheless: Losing Steve Norwick

August 13, 2012 Irwin Keller

There is an important kernel of truth in the idea that everything happens for a reason. Down the road many or all of us will look back at how this man influenced us and at how his loss affected us; we will one day see the sharp or subtle turns our lives made as a result; the new work we undertook; the ways his memory subtly touched on our decisions both big and small, our hobbies, our pastimes, our beliefs, our political actions, even how we get around. We will notice how loving him and losing him helped form who we are in the world, how we live and how we guide others. We will see that we are different people, better people, because of him. We will look back at the landscape of our lives and we will think aha.

Fly it Forward

July 21, 2012 Irwin Keller

The third child of course answers differently than the first two. It says, “Dear mother, what you say about having troubles and worries on my behalf is emes, it is truth. And I am bound to pay you back in equal measure if I am able, but I cannot promise it with certainly. Only one thing will I promise: that when I have children of my own, I will do for my own little chicks what you have done for me.”

Parashat Pinchas: The Naked Truth About Identity

July 13, 2012 Irwin Keller

I'm finding myself more squeamish than I'd like to admit. I confess I've struggled most at meal times, seeing the naked men lined up to take food in the dining hall. I try not think it, but the thoughts come unbidden: too many genitalia at the buffet; too much pubic hair at chafing dish level. Yes, I talk a good game against body shame, but when it boils down to it I am deeply grateful for the layer of denim that typically separates me from dinner.