Cantor's Corner by Eric Miller

“This God is the Supreme Mother who rides and rises with a triumphant shout.” Tikkune haZohar 47a (a Jewish mystical kabbalah text from the Middle Ages)

In honor of each of our “Supreme Mothers” whom we celebrate one Sunday each May, I thought I’d take a brief look at the varied feminine aspects of Judaism’s views of God throughout the ages. Much of this material comes from the scholarly work of Raphael Patai, whose book, The Hebrew Goddess, is an excellent summary of the history of Judaism through the lens of Jewish feminine God imagery. Firstly, what allows there to be space for “alternative” notions of God in Jewish tradition is the fact that, unlike, say, Catholicism, there is no one “right” dogmatic set of beliefs concerning theological matters. That’s why it is a perfectly authentic expression of Jewish community for a Reconstructionist congregation to believe in the “old man in the sky,” while others believe in God as a transcendent Force, or a Power Within, or perhaps have no set of beliefs at all. There’s room for all of us, or as Rabbi Lee likes to say, “we’re not an ‘Orthodox’ Reconstructionist synagogue.” So here are a few strands of Jewish tradition that, while outside the mainstream, certainly constitute an import ant facet of our ongoing evolving religious civilization.

The two primary femine diety-images worshipped by the ancient Israelites up until the destruction of the first temple and Babylonian exile in 586 BCE were Asherah and Astarte (also known as Anath). These Hebrew images of the divine surely evolved from local Mesopotamian goddesses, much like the male god-image “El” of our “Eloheinu” was a dramatic monotheistic transformation of a powerful ancient near-eastern god. Even our own Yahweh had pre-Hebraic antecedents. Asherah was based on the ancient Mother Godess, who, in concert with El, produced the entire pantheon of gods in the ancient near east. She was worshipped by the Hebrews either as a carved wooden figure stationed adjacent to cultic sites of the various cities that she 'sponsored', or as small clay figurines similar to those found in the households of the surrounding cultures. The many biblical accounts of prophetic chastisement of Asherah worship represent a strongly masculine/monotheistic reaction to the worship of an aspect of God who was extremely popular with the local Hebrews. As an especially revered source of fertility, and, as Patai suggests, a fulfillment of a psychological need amongst the laity for a godess figure in the ancient Hebrew cult, it is interesting to note how much milder the historic battles against Asherah were compared to the biblical purges of the masculine cult of Ba’al. Anath/Astarte was known in Ugaritic myth as the daughter of Asherah and El; the brother of Ba’al and the goddess of love and war. There may also be a connection between Astarte and Athena, Ishtar, and even the similarly-named Esther!

In the middle ages, the flourishing Jewish community who lived under Muslim rule in Spain, and then under the guidance of charismatic spiritual leaders in northern Palestine developed a complex mystical system of beliefs and practices based on volumes of biblical interpretation, legends and writings known collectively as kabbalah. In these works, especially the most influential ones such as the Zohar (13th century spain) and the writings of Isaac Luria (16th century Safed), the idea developed of a God with ten qualities of divine energy (“sefirot”) that were related to different ways of relating to God (justice, mercy, knowledge, sovereignty, etc). The most accessible of these, and the one that served as a conduit between the upper echelons of divine reality and human existence was called Shechina (Indwelling Presence). Based on a Hebrew meaning, “to reside upon,” in biblical writing it referred only to God’s presence which filled the desert tabernacle and accompanied the Israelites during their wandering, and later the Temple in Jerusalem. The kabbalists reimagined the shechina as the feminine aspect of the divine (shechina being a feminine noun in Hebrew), and radically envisioned the shechina as simultaneously a part of God’s totality and also the metaphorical feminine consort to God’s masculine side. When the Jews went into exile, the kabbalists daringly said, God’s “partner,” the shechina, went into exile with them. Therefore, our role (and our destiny) as a people was to live a life infused with spiritual awareness in order to end our own exile, and thereby end God’s exile from God’s “mate” as well!

To conclude this very brief portrait, we look at today, where we have come full circle, in a way. Like the middle ages, the term shechina has infused liberal Jewish consciousness with its notions of “equal time” for non-masculine God-imagery. And like our earliest ancestors, perhaps this inclusion can help broaden our minds and hearts to the possibilities that there is more to God (and ourselves?) then the limits we try to set for the Eternal, and ultimately Unknowable.