Sunday Study - 2.4.24 - Mishpatim

Dan Nichols, B'tzelem Elohim (1999):

B’reishit bara Elohim, all our hopes, all our dreams,
B’reishit bara E-lo-him, each one of us, b’tzelem Elohim.
B’reishit bara Elohim, all our hopes, all our dreams,
B’reishit bara Elohim, each one of us, b’tzelem Elohim.

B’tzelem Elohim: In God’s image
B’reishit bara Elohim: In the beginning God created

SOURCE: https://open.spotify.com/track/55faTp6uJuNG04690dVg47?si=0e385bfa17484cca

ADDITIONAL SOURCE: https://velveteenrabbi.blogs.com/blog/2013/02/every-body-is-a-reflection-of-god.html

ALTERNATIVE ASHER YATZAR: https://opensiddur.org/prayers/solilunar/everyday/daytime/birkhot-hashahar/asher-yatzar-by-emily-aviva-kapor/

Repro Shabbat is an annual Shabbat celebration that honors the Jewish value of reproductive freedom. It takes place annually on Parshat Mishpatim, the reading of which contains the verses commonly referenced as the foundation of Judaism’s approach to reproductive health, rights, and justice. Individuals and communities across the world gather to celebrate Repro Shabbat and the Jewish traditions it honors. Participation can take many forms.

SOURCE: https://www.jewsforabortionaccess.org/all-resources/the-torah-of-reproductive-freedom

Rabbi Becky Silverstein (2022):

At first glance, it might appear that those directly impacted by these legislative attacks — people who can get pregnant and trans people — are two distinct, unrelated groups. Yet transgender and non-binary people need access to reproductive healthcare and abortion. For many of us, the potential gender dysphoria related to carrying an unwanted pregnancy to full term could be devastating. And the connection between these attacks runs even deeper: The root of anti-trans discrimination is the same misogyny and desire to control people’s bodies that is at the source of the efforts to limit access to abortion.

Judaism can help us resist these efforts to force us back into a state of legal subjugation that seeks to undermine, or even erase, our very existence. The discussion of who is permitted to eat on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, has much relevant wisdom to offer. Most Jewish people observe Yom Kippur by incorporating prayer into a set of rituals that includes a 25-hour fast. But what happens if someone is ill and cannot fast on Yom Kippur? The Talmud invokes a verse from the biblical Book of Proverbs, “Lev yodea marat nafsho,” or “The heart knows the bitterness of its soul,” to teach that the sick person is actually the expert who should make this decision. The text of the Talmud even says that nobody can possess more expertise on such a question than the sick person themself.

Two later commentators moved to strengthen this perspective. In the 11th century, Rashi states that the expertise of those who might contradict the individual is tantamount to nothing when compared to an individual’s self-knowledge. Rabbeinu Tam, a 12th-century commentator, clarifies that Jewish tradition trusts an individual’s knowledge of their own body even when they are not in life-threatening danger.

In this way, Judaism’s principle of “Lev yodea marat nafsho” authorizes as experts both pregnant people who want to end a pregnancy and trans people seeking gender-affirming care or the right to live as their true selves. It demands that we honor the self-knowledge of those individuals. Their decisions to express their gender, or have an abortion, are as transgressive, as permissible, and — if those decisions will improve their lives, a standard only they can determine — as necessary as the decision not to fast on Yom Kippur.

SOURCE: https://www.heyalma.com/the-jewish-teaching-that-supports-abortion-trans-rights/