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306  sixty Trance and Trans at Har Sinai Shavu’ot Rachel Biale Shavu’ot is consecrated in the Torah as a pilgrimage festival, the offering of the first fruit of the wheat harvest at the Temple: “And a Festival of Weeks you shall make for yourself, first fruits of the harvest of wheat. . . . Three times in the year all your males shall appear in the presence of the Master, the Lord God of Israel” (Ex. 34:22–23).1 The first reference to Shavu’ot as Hag Matan Torah—the Holiday of the Giving of the Torah—appears in the book of Jubilees (2nd century BCE). The association is based on the rather vague timing that opens the chapter, describing the giving of the Torah: “On the third moon of the Israelites’ going out from Egypt, on this day did they come to the Wilderness of Sinai” (Ex. 19:1). The celebration of Shavu’ot as Matan Torah became the predominant feature of the holiday after the destruction of the Temple and with the evolution of Jewish life in the Diaspora. It is this aspect of Shavu’ot that is my focus in this commentary, and thus I turn to the description of the giving of the Torah in Exodus 19 for a gender-lensed reading. Three major gender-related issues come to the fore: 1. What is the meaning and function of the only specific reference to gender differences in the chapter, namely, Moses’s admonition to the people, “Do not come near a woman”? 2. Is there a way to read the imagery of the revelation with a “queer eye”? 3. Does the scene of the giving of the Torah and the subsequent conceptualization of the Torah in feminine terms shed light on categories of gender and sex? The description of Matan Torah begins with two sets of instructions to the people on how to prepare for the encounter with God, including directions for purification and separation. God’s instructions make no gender distinction, as He calls on the people to “wash their cloaks,” “ready themselves for the third day,” and “watch yourselves not to go up on the mountain or to touch its edge” (19:9–12). But Moses, when relaying God’s instructions to the Israelites, introduces a new idea: “Do not go near a woman” (al tigshu el ishah; 19:15). Why the innovation, and what are its implications? God’s prescription of consecration through washing of the garments has no gender bias, no presumption that doing the laundry is “women’s work.” Likewise, the following days of preparations emphasize setting a boundary and separating the people Shavu’ot 307 from the mountain, not men from women. The people may not approach the mountain or touch its side, on pain of death (ha’noge’a bahar mot yumat). This separation from the mountain appears to apply equally to men and women, with no distinction drawn between them in receiving the revelation. The word prohibiting approaching the mountain surprisingly does not come from the root karev, the typical term used in Biblical references to trespassing on the territory of the divine presence (“And the stranger who draws near [hakarev] [the Tabernacle ] shall be put to death” [Num. 1:51 et al.]). Nor does the text use another likely option, “to come” (lavo), a term that would carry a double entendre, as it is also used for approaching a woman sexually (both coming physically near and having intercourse ). Thus, we might say that Moses’s introduction of the injunction not to go near a woman and the implied gender distinction is man-made, not divinely mandated. How are we to understand Moses’s addition of the separation of men and women and the placement of men as subject, women as the object to be shunned for three days? On the simplest narrative level, Moses decrees a moratorium on sex during the preparation period. This is easily understood as a reflection of the same notions as those that underlie the laws in Leviticus 15, which rule all genital fluids, including semen, as agents causing a state of impurity that bars one from entering the Temple grounds. And the Lord spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying, “Speak to the Israelites, and you shall say to them, ‘Should any man have a flux from his member, he is unclean. . . . And a woman who a man had bedded with emission of seed—they shall wash in water and be unclean...

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