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• 1 • FEMALE IMAGING OF THE TORAH: FROM LITERARY METAPHOR TO RELIGIOUS SYMBOL It is widely acknowledged that one of the more overtly innovative features of kabbalistic symbolism is its ready utilization of masculine and feminine images to depict aspects of the divine reality. It is the purpose of this study to trace the trajectory of one of the central motifs , the feminine personification of the Torah, from classical midrashic sources to kabbalistic texts. We are dealing not with one image but rather a cluster of images whose formation spans a wide historical range. While it is undeniably true that literary images in religious texts often reflect the social and cultural milieu that, at least in part, helped foster these images, it is also equally true that the evolution of ideas within "traditional" Jewish sources proceeds along an internal axis, with older texts influencing subsequent formulations and generating significant, though at times subtle, semantic transformations. One may reasonably conjecture that the rabbinic depiction of the Torah in images related to a female personification reflects an older idea found in Jewish sources, both of Palestinian and of Alexandrian provenance, concerning the feminine Sophia or Wisdom.1 Insofar as the identification of Torah as Hokhmab, or Sophia, first made explicitly in literary form in the books of Baruch and Ben Sira,2 became widespread in the classical rabbinic sources/ it seems reasonable to suggest that such a conception may underlie the feminine characterization of the Torah. Yet, it seems to me that there is an essential difference between the older speculation on Sophia in the Wisdom and apocalyptic literature and the feminine characterization of Torah 1 2 CTRCLE IN THE SQUA!{t: in the rabbinic texts. In the latter, unlike the former, it is clear that in most cases the feminine images are meant figuratively and are thus almost always expressed within a parabolic context as literary metaphors . J do not mean to suggest tha t the Torah was not personified by the rabbis; indeed, for the rabbis tre Torah did assume a personality of its own, culminating in the conception of the Torah as the preexistent entity that served as the instrument with which God created the world.4 Moreover, one occasionally discovers in the rabbinic sources vestiges of an obvious mythical conception of Torah as a feminine entity. Thus, for example, in one aggadic statement attributed to R. Joshua ben Levi, Moses is portrayed as describing the Torah as the "hidden treasure" (lJemdal1 gcnllzah) with which God takes delight each day.~ It is reasonable to assume that this expression, mishta (ashe (a ball, "to take delight with her," derived from Proverbs 8:30, suggests a sexual connotation.6 Underlying this remark is a mythic conception of the female Torah that is involved in an erotic relationship with God. Although there is a resonance of such mythical depictions in other sources, particularly in liturgical poems, in the majority of rabbinic writings the female images of the Torah are metaphorical in their nuance. In one striking example in the Palestinian Talmud, the following tradition is recorded: "What b [the practice) regarding standing before the Torah-scroll? R. f:Jilqiah [in the name of) R. Simeon said in the name of R. Eleazar: Before her son you stand, how much more so before the Torah herself!"7 Insofar as the sage is here referred to as "her son,"~ it is reasonable to assume that the Torah is being characterized metaphorically as a female, specifically, a mother figure. In the parallel version of this passage in the Babylonian Talmud the feminine image is removed, although the basic meaning is left intact: "What is [the practice) regarding standing hefore the Torah-scroll? R. f:Jilqiah, R. Simeon, and R. Eleazar said: It is an argument a fortiori, if we stand before those who study it, how much more so lis it required to stand) before it!"" The figurative characterization of the sage as the son of Torah gives way in the second passage to the more straightforward characterization "those who study it." The second passage in no way alters the meaning of the first passage, but simply renders it in a less metaphorical way. The implied image of the Torah as the mother is obviated by the fact that the one who studies the Torah is not described as the son of Torah. Although other examples could be adduced, suffice it here to conclude from the example that I have given that the figurative depiction of...

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