Today’s post is from Education Fellow Amanda Winer.
“Kids, let me tell you the story of how I met your Rabbi.”
Okay, so that’s NOT how the latest episode of “How I Met Your Mother” began this week- but there has been some buzz around the interwebs this week regarding one of the Jewish stars of the popular sitcom.
Earlier this week, Reform Judaism featured this post by Josh Radnor, who stars as Ted Mosby on “How I Met Your Mother.” The post is a prayer written by Radnor, which is excerpted from the upcoming book
Unscrolled
, which describes itself “the new book in which 54 leading Jewish writers, artists, photographers, screenwriters, and more grapple with the first five books of the Bible, giving new meaning to the 54 Torah portions.”
Radnor’s prayer offers a very interesting interpretation of the first book of the Torah, B’reishit (Genesis). I definitely suggest you read the piece; one part that really stood out to me was the dual genders when he refers to God’s role as our creator/parent: “When the Father said, ‘Let there be light,’ the Mother answered, ‘And there was light.’”
This instantly reminded me of
Avinu Mal’keinu
, the poem that many communities recite aloud during the high holidays. Avinu Mal’keinu itself means “our father, our king” and that, many progressive communities have grabbled with. In favor of gender neutrality, communities yielded to a couple different strategies. For example, Machzor Ruach Chadashah from the UK Liberal Judaism omovement uses the feminine attribute of God,
Shechinah
, in their interpretation of this prayer.
The only thing that I know for sure is that there is no clear way that everyone relates to or refers to God, but I can definitely understand God’s role as a parent.
Wait! IS THAT who the mother is?! That would have saved me years of wondering and days of Netflix binge watching!
Just kidding. You’ll have to watch the show to find out who “the mother” is – and you’ll have to wrestle with the prayers to figure out if you think of God as father, mother, or both.
What do you think? Does God feel like a parent to you? If you communicate with God, do you have a gender in mind?
Torah
Pronunced: TORE-uh, Origin: Hebrew, the Five Books of Moses.
