Shekhinah and the Revival of Feminine God Language

I

Prayer itself has the power to establish the space of the address—to create, to open it. And in a way it does not only create an “I” who has the power to address, but also the addressee

(Jacques Derrida, Body of Prayer, p. 35)

In recent years, the image of Shekhinah has been revived in both academic research and in practical Judaism, in theological discourse as well as in contemporary prayers, liturgics, and rituals. There is a growing interest in Jewish culture in the image of Shekhinah as a feminine complementary or substitute for the more widespread images of God.¹ This quest for the image of Shekhinah grew as theological sensitivity to gender aspects of the images of God brought many feminists to feel uncomfortable with more traditional and patriarchal images of God as king, father, and Lord. These movements have created a feminist Jewish theology that engages in the debate about the proper approach to a feminine deity, traditional masculine attributes, and the option of reconstructing a Deity with no gender.

As well as the theological doctrines, these movements have created several poetic prayers that could be viewed as modern Jewish feminist liturgy. This realm of poetic prayers reveals and reconstructs new types of relations between wo/man subjects and God in the realm of Jewish communities. I would like to suggest viewing this poetry as speech acts or performative language, which reconstructs a feminine mystical God-Language, borrowing terms from kabbalistic tradition and altering them dramatically to accommodate the sensitivities of modern women and their spiritual quests.

Shekhinah is a Hebrew term, grammatically feminine, originally used in the rabbinic literature to refer to God’s presence in the world. In the medieval Kabbalah, Shekhinah became a central aspect of religious practice.² Shekhinah, as a feminine deity and the last emanation closest to humanity, became a central figure in kabbalistic exegeses. The male kabbalists viewed themselves sometimes as bridesmaids, preparing Shekhinah as a bride for her copulation with her divine groom, Kudsha-Brich-Hu, the sixth emanation. Historic exile was marked as a fissure or divorce between the divine parents, and redemption was understood as rectification of this condition.³ In other instances, the kabbalists saw themselves as Shekhinah lovers, uniting with her through their passionate Torah studying, sexual intercourse with their wives, and performing the commandments properly. Explaining the reasons for the medieval rise in Shekhinah centrality is a cause of dispute between scholars, some accentuating external influences like Mary’s cult in Christianity,⁴ and some accentuating internal developments and Judaism’s own cultural logic.⁵ Further, the extent of the independence of Shekhinah as an object of worship and the evaluation of Her ambivalent character are a source of disputation between scholars.⁶ Here I note that in the medieval literature Shekhinah served the male oriented kabbalistic literature, and since this literature was not accessible to women, it was not a figure for identification or special worship by women.

Similarly, in Hasidism during the eighteenth and nineteenth century, the image of Shekhinah functioned in a male-oriented religious system. The male righteous were expected to unite Shekhinah with her husband, to rectify her deficiencies, to become a chariot to the Shekinah, and to unite their souls with Her.⁷ As Ada Rapoport-Albert has argued, Hasidic literature, written by men and for men, never addressed women directly as Hasidic subjects.⁸ Even when attentive to women’s needs, Hasidism excluded women from proper membership in the Hasidic community; they did not assign women an active role in leading it institutionally or formally.⁹ Some scholars, writing after Rapoport-Albert, have postulated that one can read some Hasidic texts as supporting a radical transformation of gender roles and concepts,¹⁰ and highlighted their power in creating a new imaginaire which sowed the seeds for later changes. Nevertheless, the marginality of women in spiritual leadership was left essentially unchanged. Though these texts might be important steps in the gradual process of reconfiguring women’s God Language, these are rare examples written by male writers that do not suggest a...