How to Jump Off the Deep End, in Thirteen Easy Steps

Abstract

How to Jump Off the Deep End, in Thirteen Easy Steps Jill Hammer (bio) 1. Read the text. 2. Chew the text into bits.Begin looking for God.Look in places no one told you to look. 3. If someone tells you a story,turn it upside downand look at it that way. 4. Notice where mothers are absent.Write them in. Make other peopleread what you wrote. 5. Find poems women have written.Hide them in your Bible.If someone asks what they are,say they are holy. 6. Pretend not to be invisible.Point out when an immutable lawputs a crick in your neck.Repeat until you get tired. 7. Notice the slow pace of change. Start talking to trees [End Page 83] 8. Read myths of the goddesses until you don't understand what is supposed to be wrong with them. Notice where mothers are present. 9. Tell the rabbis in your headto take a long walk. Get to know yourself. 10. Go back to the text.Look for signs of God's absence. 11. Notice that the stonesare not oppressing you.Observe they are round and smoothlike God.Say hello to them. 12. A goddess will walk up to you and ask you to dance.Say yes. 13. Jump off the deep end. Jill Hammer Jill Hammer is the director of Tel Shemesh (http://www.telshemesh.org/), a Web site and community celebrating and creating Jewish earth-based traditions, and also the codirector of Kohenet: The Hebrew Priestess Institute (http://www.telshemesh.org/). She is a poet, author, and essayist, whose work has been published in journals such as Lilith, Bridges, Response, Jewish Spectator, and Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women's Studies and Gender Issues, and in anthologies such as Biblical Women in the Midrash (1997) and The Women's Torah Commentary (2000). She conducts workshops around the country on contemporary midrashic writing, bibliodrama, creative ritual, and archetypes of the Divine feminine. Her first book is titled Sisters at Sinai: New Tales of Biblical Women (2001), and her forthcoming book is titled The Jewish Book of Days: Legends for Every Day and Season of the Jewish Year. Copyright © 2006 The Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Inc.