Sophia and Prudence

I produced this year's TIkkun Leil Shavuot (late-night study in celebration of the Jewish festival of Shavuot) at my synagogue. I put together and co-led the festival evening service, recruited seven teachers and prepared and taught my own class on meditation, and dealt with logistics and publicity. As a reward, I arranged to have my favorite synagogian, Andrew Ramer, teach a class on writing gay midrash - which he has done on several prior occasions that I somehow couldn't manage to attend. He gave us a few pages of Biblical texts that could easily be read to have queer implications, and invited those of us who wished to write on them to do so.

I picked the following two quotes from the book of Proverbs: I, Wisdom, live with Prudence. Chochmah/Sophia/Wisdom cries aloud in the streets, raises her voice in the squares. At the head of busy streets she calls, at the entrance of the gates, in the city, she speaks out. Say to Sophia, "You are my sister."

While continuing to listen to Andrew, I wrote the following:

Sophia speaks out at the entrance of the gates in the city. She lives with Prudence, who is a therapist. Sophie participates in "Take Back the Night" marches, and corners politicians in their offices, while Prudence writes letters to the editor. They met in a consciousness-raising group in the 70s and have been together ever since.