Welcome to the month of Tevet! Tevet is often called “the month of contradictions” because while the word “Tevet” shares a root with “tov”, meaning goodness, this month is also known in the Sefer Yetzirah as the month of anger. As we, the people who wrestle, continue to dismantle “light supremacy” and lift up and fall in love with the darkness of this season, we also hold that anger is sacred and indeed, good too.
There is a midrash (Jewish story) that says that on the Winter Solstice (though some say it is on the First of Tevet) the majestic and terrifying sea creature, Leviathan, rises from the deep and roars:
G!d created in the sea big fish and little fish. The size of the biggest fish was one hundred parsangs, two hundred, three hundred, even four hundred. If it was not for G!d’s merciful repair [tikkun], the big ones would have eaten the smaller ones. What repair did G!d make? G!d created the Leviathan. On every winter solstice, Leviathan would rear their head and make themself great and snort in the water and stir it up, and the fear/awe of them would fall on all the fishes in the sea. If this were not so, the small could not stand before the great.
~Otzar haMidrashim, Hashem Bechachmah Yasad Aretz 6
In this legend, it is the roar of the monster from the deep on Winter Solstice that restores the power imbalance, humbles the bigger fish, and protects the little guys, which is all part of Tiqqun, the Divine Work of Repair. Leviathan, this beast from below, is the repair. Leviathan is kin/descended from Sumerian deities like Tiamat, a sea Goddexx whose name is also thought to be the root of the word, Tehom – the primordial deep, saltwater, chaos, depth, the place creation is birthed from. So I am thinking of this month, Tevet, not as a month of contradictions, but as a month of Depth and Uprising. Kislev and Hanuka light the path into these depths, where we meet Leviathan and our own creatures of the deep – our anger and rage, our beloved patterns forged by trauma, the parts of ourselves we have submerged. And perhaps here we also find ancient and collective rage for all those who have been labeled monsters or called scary, those who roar at injustice.
I love the possibility that the Leviathan is a beast of collective resistance and fury who magically brings about balance in the salty deep. I also love imagining/feeling in my own body this luminous monstrosity swimming from the darkest, deepest place in the bottom of the sea towards the light, breaking through the surface of the water with a thunderous roar. When I was in 10th grade, I was sent to the school counselor after I pushed a fellow student up against a locker (he was sexually harassing younger femme presenting people at school) and then sort of vaguely threatened him with amateur witchy curses I had learned from reading books at the Psychic Eye Bookstore in North Hollywood, where my weirdo friends and I hung out after school (and maybe during school.) This therapist (who I am now friends with on Facebook) gave me a tennis racket and the prescription of hitting a pillow 30 times a day while screaming as loud as I wanted. I know this story would be very different if I was a Black or brown teenager. I feel grateful for this intervention and to this adult, who gave me language and tools and literally something to hit things with and space and love and spoke the word “trauma” to me for the first time. Leviathan and anger – both have a divine purpose, both are holy and good. In fact, we learn that G!d created Leviathan to be G!d’s playmate! Who wouldn’t want to play with a fire breathing sea monster? Leviathan is a divine creation, made from love, made as a mechanism for repair. And, like the Leviathan, our anger has the power to make noise and make ripples that heal.
On the Rosh Chodesh Tevet, the first of the month, we also celebrate Chag haBanot/Eid Al-Banat, the North African festival of Daughters. On this day, womxn and femmes gather to make cakes, dance, sing, exchange gifts, ask forgiveness from each other and study fierce queens of liberation, like Esther, Hannah, and Yehudit. The tale of Yehudit, aka Judith, is one of my favorite Hanuka stories, and a powerful story for moving into Tevet, as she wielded her cleverness, charm, beauty, and a sword (she cut off the head of a heinous general who was attacking the Jews) to help liberate her people. You can read more about Judith here and enjoy lifting up her tale of sacred rage and her gifts of using the right tool at the right time.
This month we spiral deeper inward, making a flipturn on the winter solstice towards the growing light, and hopefully bringing with us something that has been waiting underground, a wildness, truth, a roar from the deep. There is much to roar about – our anger is needed now more than ever to shift and transform, to yell at the big fish to stop eating all the little fish, to bring righteous repair and healing and breathe fire for collective freedom. In my work with elder Joanna Macy, she spoke of anger as the flip side of love; our rage at oppression and transphobia and ableism and sexual harassers and oil companies and prisons and poisoned waters and ICE and all injustice is just the other side of our deep love for justice, our love for trans people, our love for sick and chronically ill and disabled people, our love for each other and freedom and this beautiful earth. So as we move into Tevet, this month of depth, we move with so much love, with growing compassion for ourselves and all of us who struggle, and we pray to learn from the wisdom of Leviathan, one of G!d’s playmates, the great monster of the deep. May our anger have the power to transform and move us towards liberation.
INSPIRATIONS FOR THE MONTH
LOVE AND RAGE : I’ve been slowly, gratefully making my way through Lama Rod Owens’ book, Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation through Anger , a beautiful companion for the month of Tevet, as he asks how can we metabolize our anger into a force of liberation in the face of systemic racism and state-sanctioned violence.
KATE BUSH DANCE PARTY : nothing like getting wild and sweaty to one of my favorite high school rage songs: Love and Anger by Kate Bush.
SILENT SCREAM : My five year old and I will often do a practice where we scream with our whole entire bodies but completely silently and it is amazing. Honestly, I think you should go do this right now. Clench your fists, bare your teeth, breathe fire, channel Leviathan energy.
RAGE, BUT MAKE IT FASHION : My friend, artist Naima Lowe, is making these incredible Fuck the Police cashmere scarves and other gorgeous screenprinted accessories that embody the power and beauty of sacred anger. Support queer Black artists and get one for your favorite fashion forward abolitionist!
TEHOM/DEPTH WORK: If you want to trip out/read brilliant, dense, feminist, hermeneutical, liberatory, postmodern theology, spend some Tevet time with Face of the Deep by tehomic theologian Catherine Keller.
TZEDAKAH/JUST GIVING : Black Healers Fund: In recognition of the mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual toll that liberatory struggle can take on Black communities always, and especially amidst the current international uprising against anti-Black police violence, the NYC POC Healing circle has launched the Black Healers Fund.
Wishing you a deep, wondrous Tevet full of magnificent monsters and rageful roars that bring repair and healing.
With love from the depths,
Dori
