Reflection by Yael Kanarek
WORD WATCH: Trust
I’m thinking about the word “trust.” Growing up in Israel, I remember how excited I was, at eight years old, to study the book of the Jews in school—that’s how my mother described the Bible. However, as we studied the story of Adam and Eve, a feeling of betrayal and a collapse of trust directed at women found a home in my little self. This message was reinforced, subliminally and overtly, as I grew up. I wanted nothing to do with Judaism.
That changed years later when I encountered Kabbalah. Yet after a decade of study, I couldn’t ignore the simple fact that all our foundational texts are written from the perspective of men and teach me little about what our spiritual world looks like from the perspective of women. So I started rewriting the Bible, swapping the genders, to build a body of language and stories that center women. I called the project Toratah (Her Torah). By almost all measures, it’s a crazy act, but it opened unexpected pathways into spiritual imagination and corrected spiritual dysphoria. It also gave me a tool to see through and navigate patriarchal structures and institutions.
I’m putting my trust in the ability of Judaism, especially American Judaism, to invent and reinvent itself. Here I find religion in creation, not dogma. Along with my partner, Gili Getz, I’m honored to be an artist-in-residence at Lab/Shul this High Holidays season and to share some of this work with you. Lab/Shul was the first to bring Toratah into ritual, back in 2019, when during SoulSpa we had the first aliyah to Toratah. That day, my trust in Judaism was restored. I saw a Judaism of the future taking shape in the present.
As an artist, I learned to navigate life through creative acts. Trust, for me, is restored through making and experiencing together. But perhaps trust isn’t only something we restore. Perhaps it is something we make.
How do you navigate the erosion of trust? How do you restore it in your life?
Here’s my invitation for a shift: Move from asking, “What can I still trust?” to “What can I do to make trust possible?”
Ahhh... a face/ person behind Toratah. I only quite recently became aware of it and am so grateful!
Trust just showed up as part of a meditation practice for me, coordinated with breathing: "Opening, offering (or vice versa, especially after the mind has wandered), listening, trusting, loving, co-creating or resting." The "trusting" has a lot to do with trusting my capacity to discern what I've listened to, heard within, to from there move into loving and co-creating or, as needed, resting.
Thank you and shavua tov!