A Garland of Feminist Reflections: Forty Years of Religious Exploration

10. Steps toward Feminine Imagery in Jewish Theology

Steps toward Feminine Imagery in Jewish Theology The most profound, intriguing, and inviting of all Jewish theologies— the Kabbalah—teaches us that galut—exile—is the fundamental reality and pain of present existence. It teaches that one of the causes of galut is the alienation of the masculine from the feminine in God, the alienation of God and the Shekhinah. But it also teaches, especially in its Lurianic phases, that each of us can effect the turning of galut by dedicating all our efforts to the reunification of God and the Shekhinah. Now that the masculine and feminine have been torn asunder and the feminine dismembered and banished, both from the discourse about divinity and from the human community, such a tikkun (reparation) is obligatory, is a mitzvah. When the masculine and feminine aspects of God have been reunited and the female half of humanity has been returned from exile, we will begin to have our tikkun. The world will be repaired. I can no longer remember the first time I imagined a berakhah in the female grammatical form. I do remember the first time I heard it voiced aloud communally, years after having first experienced participation in my own right in the Jewish ritual covenant community. It was as appropriate and natural as any Jewish expression—and less problematic and alienating than many. In fact, the potential for meaning and identification experienced by saying “God-She” convinced me that it must be so. Since then, I have been using female pronouns for God relatively frequently in various contexts—teaching, reflection, private religious 177 chapter 10 Gross_Ch10 10/17/08 15:10 Page 177 expression. As the linguistic forms and the sound of the words become less exotic, it no longer seems daring or unconventional to speak of God in such a manner. Instead, it seems appropriate, natural, what one would expect, the way things would be except for a massive skewing and programming of religious consciousness. It also frees us from alienation, anger, pain, and sorrow over the exclusion of women from the religious and spiritual dimensions of being Jewish in a way that is unsurpassed. It is time, therefore, to move beyond the image of God the Father to a more complete set of images of God. T o do so requires some clarity about what is at stake in the use of the image of “God the Father.” The most crucial points, I believe, are thorough awareness of the inherent limitations of any theological or religious language, combined with some awareness of the inevitability of anthropomorphic images in the Jewish religious enterprise. Before anything else can be properly discussed, one must understand the inevitable limitations of all religious language. All expressions used in the religious enterprise are, in the long run, analogous and metaphorical . Every statement contains a bracketed “as if” or “as it were.” Statements about God should not be taken literally. They do not exhaust the possibilities at all. Rather, they are the most adequate expressions available within current idioms—linguistic conventions that function as tools, used to point to that which transcends language. Therefore they contain no inherent finality or unalterable relevance and convey no ultimate truth. T o ignore this limitation by fixating on one set of ideas and thinking that a real correspondence exists between these images of God and God is to be unrealistic, self-aggrandizing, and fundamentally idolatrous. Nevertheless, because expression and communication are inevitable, images and concepts of the Ultimate are also inevitable. Therefore, the limitations of language present no problem—if one is willing to remember those limits whenever one is tempted to literalize and absolutize one’s language.1 The only problem is that temptation. It is clear that the tendency to absolutize some manners of speaking about God has been very strong throughout the history of the Jewish tradition. Specifically, masculine pronouns are always used for God by traditionalists and even by atheists and philosophical critics of anthropomorphism. Closely linked to the masculine pronouns, especially in the imagination of traditionalists , is a whole array of masculine images—father, king, judge, warrior. At the same time, an automatic and very strong prejudice against using feminine pronouns and images exists, not only in the minds of 178 Feminine Imagery in Jewish Theology Gross_Ch10 10/17/08 15:10 Page 178 traditionalists, but also in the minds of atheists and philosophical critics of anthropomorphism, who usually justify...