when great souls die

This past week, Jewish, trans and queer communities buried two beloved leaders, Ms. Major Griffin-Gracy and Reb Arthur Waskow, both of tremendously blessed memory. To borrow a page from the non-binary Hebrew project, Ms. Major and Reb Arthur are two gedolimot, two giants of our generation, who have been gathered to the ancestors and returned to the earth. 

For me personally, they were role models and comrades. As I have been mourning each loss and reflecting on their impacts on my life, I am realizing that my entire path has been possible because each of them walked theirs with integrity, courage, dignity and joy. I am so very grateful to have lived alongside them, to count myself among their generations.

While one cannot expect Torah to aptly honor the legacy of every person the week they pass, it is possible to read each of these luminary souls into this week’s Torah portion. 

Parashat Noah begins:
​
אֵ֚לֶּה תּוֹלְדֹ֣ת נֹ֔חַ נֹ֗חַ אִ֥ישׁ צַדִּ֛יק תָּמִ֥ים הָיָ֖ה בְּדֹֽרֹתָ֑יו אֶת־הָֽאֱלֹהִ֖ים הִֽתְהַלֶּךְ־נֹֽחַ׃

“This is the line of Noah.—Noah was a righteous person; he was wholehearted in his generations; Noah walked with God.—”

Reading these words, my heart played spiritual madlibs. As if is said, Ms. Major, a righteous person who was wholehearted in her generations. She certainly walked with God. Reb Arthur, righteous among his generations, he too walked with Yah. 

The sages zoom in on this verse more closely and notice that it’s not just that Noah was righteous - but he was righteous in his generation. What does it mean to be righteous b’dorotav - in one's generation? Is this coming to qualify or amplify Noah’s nature? 

In Masechet Sanhedrin, we learn, “Rabbi Yoḥanan says: Relative to the other people of his generation he was righteous and wholehearted, but not relative to those of other generations.” As if to say, the bar was low when Noah lived. He was great, but not that great. 

On the other hand Reish Lakish says: In his generation he was righteous and wholehearted despite being surrounded by bad influences; all the more so would he have been considered righteous and wholehearted in other generations. As if to say, given better circumstances, one can only imagine how righteous he might have been. 


Are we today living through a relatively righteous or a relatively selfless generation? 
It's hard to imagine anyone looking back and saying, The Trump years, that was a righteous time. But as my history buff tween keeps reminding me, when was there really a righteous time? I can’t hardly pick a decade in the 20th century that looks rosy from this vantage point. 

I think in this case, I may always side with Reish Lakish - that the challenge is to be righteous regardless of, at times in spite of, others’ choices. 

I am thinking of Ms. Major, who was among the righteous souls at Stonewall, defending trans visibility before it was even possible to walk the streets as a visibly trans person. At a time when transwomen, as she describes it, were legally required to wear at least three articles of men’s clothing in public. What a disgraceful law so shaped by its time, and undone by the work of Ms. Major’s lifetime. 

I am thinking of Reb Arthur, who in 1976, nearly 50 years ago, wrote, “When we occupy another people, we risk losing the very soul of what makes us Israel-the people who wrestle with God and ourselves. Our security cannot be built on another’s dispossession.” His commitment to writing and advocating for justice in Israel/Palestine would later cost him his job and lead him to break with the very Jewish institutions he founded.

As I reflect on the legacy of my mentors, I realize they were righteous precisely because they were ahead of their times. Because they had the courage to imagine the world transformed, to speak it into existence against all odds, to insist it was possible, to confront the limitations of the law and lean into the power of community. It is from them that I have learned what it means to be tzadik v’tamim b’dorotav. 

At Reb Arthur’s funeral, Bobbi Brietman, beloved chosen family, shared the poem
“When Great Trees Fall”
by Maya Angelou:

“When great trees fall,

rocks on distant hills shudder,

lions hunker down

in tall grasses,

and even elephants

lumber after safety.


…
And when great souls die,

after a period peace blooms,

slowly and always

irregularly. Spaces fill

with a kind of

soothing electric vibration.

Our senses, restored, never

to be the same, whisper to us.

They existed. They existed.

We can be. Be and be

better. For they existed.”

Great trees have fallen. 
May peace blossom.
And may we remember that because they existed, 
we can be better, b’doroteinu, in our generations. 

On Shabbat morning I will be sharing personal stories about Ms. Major and Reb Arthur, and we will together be asking what it means to be righteous in our generation. ​