Lecha Dodi is a Jewish liturgical song sung at dusk on Shabbat. The words Lecha Dodi mean "come my beloved." The beloved in the text is mysterious and multitudinous - we are welcoming friend, lover, shabbat, and/or G-d. I am in love with devotional liturgy -- poems and prayers full of profound desire for connection, that help us see that while our subject/objects of desire are various and abundant, our yearning for love, connection and belonging is kind of singular; our desire for a beloved is an expression of a longing for life itself. Shabbat is conceived of as a bride and a queen, and as a Jewish femme, I have always cherished and identified with this moment of lacy femme glory. I have long had the tradition of calling upon ancestors of spirit to be with us at our Shabbat table, and since their passing in the past few years, this has included inviting radical beloved queer ancestors Melanie Kaye Kantrowitz and Leslie Feinberg, z”l. It has been a really intimate and moving experience for me and inspired me to wonder what it would be like to pray with a liturgy of longing and praise for the divine transmasculine, the sabbath butch. I came out in the early 1990s and cut my teeth on Stone Butch Blues, Gender Outlaw, Dykes to Watch Out For, Zami, The Persistent Desire, and This Bridge Called My Back (mostly given to me by my older brother, who also brought me to my first ACT UP action in NYC when I was 18.) I remember going to see Leslie Feinberg speak when I was 19 and feeling like someone had just opened a door to a room I didn't even know was there. After the talk, I just sat there, tears rolling down my face. Leslie saw our little group of baby queers and came up to us to say hi. Zie took in that I was crying and reached for my hand and squeezed it with a knowing smile. I think I said something like, "I love you so much. Thank you for changing my life." Before zie died, Leslie Feinberg's last words were, "Remember me as a revolutionary communist." You can download Stone Butch Blues for free here. Recently I was talking with a young queer friend who said, "I don't get the butch/femme thing- isn't it just kind of heteronormative?" and it just broke my middle aged dyke heart. The explosion and expansion and liberation of gender is honestly one of my favorite things about being alive on earth right now, and I also want us to love and honor the splendor of self-determination and the legacies of people who have been blessing the way for us for thousands of years. My little tiny human understanding of the Divine is that They are all genders and no gender. G-d, or whatever word you use for the creative life force that flows through everything, is infinite, and like us, They have many aspects and all aspects can be, must be praised. LECHA DODI FOR A SABBATH BUTCH dedicated to Leslie Feinberg, z”l observe and remember were uttered as one. you always knock when you come to my door. you always wait for me to open, i rise on tiptoes to kiss you in the doorframe, a blessing affixed on my lips. let us go out and greet the sabbath butch! sacred wellspring of blessing! as you lean down to unlace your boots, i catch your scent: hot salt, river mikveh, cloves, leather. i have loved you my whole life, trying to find ways to be nearer to you. i’ve called you lover, my mountain, a thorn among roses, honey from the rock. come in, drink deep, feast at my table, rock me to sleep, pull me towards you, tell me, where do you pasture? . shake it off, from the ashes get up! put on the clothes of your glory! blessed is your holy button down! blessed are you in your soft cotton splendor! all I can do is utter songs of praise, be enfolded by you, let you be known in my gaze. like those who came before, eternally lit by persistent desire, i set the kitchen table as my altar and place my offerings upon it: bread, wine, flame. i will open to you, my beloved, and here, will you open this jar? oh my people! trust this: when i draw lace over my head at dusk, when i invoke the light of my ancestors, i sing: come my beloved, my beautiful friend, oh how the maidens love you! *italicized words are translations from Shir haShirim/Song of Songs and Lecha Dodi
