Abaddon

My Story

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.

Jeremiah 29:11-13

Now that I have told you about the Binah, I should tell you about myself, and my immediate world, and what we are like.

I am Rachel bat Samuel. My surname means “Daughter of Samuel”. We always use our father’s name as our surname, preceded by “ben” for a son and “bat” for a daughter. I am fifteen. My father is Samuel ben Abraham. My mother is Sarah bat Yeshua. I have a brother, Nathan. He just turned eighteen and he is to marry Ruth bat Zedekiah.

My father is a jeweler. He makes jewelry and sells it. He is extremely talented, skilled, and in demand from Binah, Abaddon, Chamad, and even the Europeans from outside of our area. He learned his trade from his father at the age of twelve, and he taught Nathan when he turned twelve. He even taught me because he said that jewelry-making was an appropriate skill for a woman to learn. My mother is a homemaker and she is also teaching me how to keep a proper home. I go to school and then work with my mother afterward. I work with my father on the weekends. I love learning homemaking and learning a trade because of the time I can spend with my parents. It became more enjoyable after I turned fourteen which is a special age for my people.  It is the Age of Questions and Doubts, and the age where parents teach their children to become adults and we become closer to our parents as we leave childhood and enter adulthood, and we tend to enter adulthood earlier than most people.

The people of Binah are betrothed at age seventeen and marry at age eighteen. Soon, my parents will find an ideal man to be a husband for me. They will start looking in earnest once I am sixteen and will involve me in their search to find me an ideal match, if there is one. I may not be as lucky as my brother. He has known Ruth all of his life. He has always loved her. It was a fine match, Nathan and Ruth. Her family was proud to join my family through the betrothal of the two young people. I have no one like that in my life. Well, I have plenty of girl friends, but no male friends who would make an ideal spouse.

I had teased my parents that I should marry one of my female friends if there is no man ideal for me. My mother just rolled her eyes at me and said, “Rachel, you are a boy-crazy young lady, I doubt you will find a woman attractive as a spouse!”

“But you said a spouse is to get, not to look at,” I had teased. “That a good marriage depends on how well you get along!”

My father couldn’t help but laugh, “We have time to find you someone ideal. If worse comes to worse…”

My mother was scandalized, “We will find her an ideal man to marry!”

She wasn’t upset at the suggestion I marry a woman, she was upset at the suggestion no one would want to be betrothed to me by the time I turned seventeen.

They were not bothered by the idea of me marrying someone who manifested a ­Ruach Kaful, or Two-Spirits. They were men who carried female spirits, women who carried male spirits, or they could manifest both male and female spirits in one body. ­Ruach Kaful people were highly regarded among the indigenous people to the region when the Hebrews arrived and continued to maintain important roles in our present community. They were respected, not ostracized, in the Binah community. They were healers, Shidduchs- or matchmakers; they blessed our ceremonial items, and held a variety of key roles in our community. Some even became Rabbis. They even helped raise children from outside communities when the children’s’ parents neglected them and the children were taken away. Their families were often created by caring for children without parents; they seldom birthed their own children. It was always remarked how there was never an unplanned Ruach Kaful family, and every child of a Ruach Kaful parent was wanted and loved.