Goddesses in Myth and Cultural Memory by Emilie Kutash;

Author:Emilie Kutash;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK

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Asherah, Sophia, Shekhinah: Are They Hebrew Goddesses?

Rabbi Leah Novick’s book On the Wings of the Shekhinah: Judaism’s Divine Feminine is an example of the fact that the female presence that appeared in Kabbalist literature, the Shekhinah, has been appropriated by some contemporary devotional practices and imagination. The living nature of this experience is encapsulated in her opening statement:

Wandering along the California coastline six years ago, I began to experience the Divine Feminine in the hills, the ocean and the landscape. A gigantic goddess was calling to me. (p. 1)1

Apparently Rabbi Novick has reactivated, perhaps metaphorically, a feminine principle and renders it as an active presence in her spiritual life. For many of those who follow this approach, the so-called divine feminine is associated with the Shekhinah. The beauty of nature prompts Novick to characterize the common aesthetic/spiritual experience of the awe one can experience in nature as an instance of gender-specific divinized presence. While Artemis is the Greek ancestress of the contemporary divine feminine that is experienced in nature, in this book, written by a rabbi, what is conflated with nature and her internal epiphany is primarily the Hebrew precursor to her divinization of nature: the Shekhinah. The age-old association of the female divinized or not, with nature, never seems to go away, either in Jerusalem or in Athens. From the possibilities suggested by female goddess figurines and inscriptions discovered in ancient Israel to allusions to female goddesses in the Prophets, to the Shekhinah imagery in the medieval Kabbalah, although female deity is not part of mainstream Hebrew doctrine, these instances encourage speculation about this issue. In addition to amending gender biases in traditional liturgy, modern scholars have taken renewed interest in the question of whether there was ever a Hebrew goddess. Furthermore, the “Shekinah” construed as a female presence within divinity has taken on new significance in some contemporary settings.

Rafael Patai, a cultural anthropologist, has taken a studied interest in this question. As he puts it: “No subsequent teaching about the aphysical , incomprehensible, or transcendental nature of the deity could eradicate the early mental image of the masculine god.”2 The very nature of most languages accounts for much of the genderizing of words and names. The descriptions, “King,” “Master of the Universe,” “father,” expressions common in Talmudic literature, persist in contemporary liturgy. While none of these expressions are indicative of any doctrine concerning the masculinity of God, metaphorically, the dependence on God on the part of the Jewish people is generally stated as that of a child on a father. Is there any historical precedent for amending this practice? There is plausible evidence that in certain isolated instances, such as that of the Elephantine Jews (c. fifth century BCE), some sort of female consort of Yahweh (the Hebrew God) was worshipped. In biblical literature, particularly in the books of the Prophets, the worship of a female “goddess” is railed against and considered idolatrous. This is both proof that such a figure was worshiped in some ancient practices and an indication that it was not condoned.

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