Tikkun Magazine, March/April 2010
CULTURE/BOOKS
Kabbalah for Feminists
ON THE WINGS OF SHEKHINAH: REDISCOVERING JUDAISM’S DIVINE FEMININE
by Rabbi Leah Novick
Quest Books, 2008
Review by Alicia Ostriker
Jews in pursuit of the Shekhinah, the feminine aspect of God found in kabbalistic tradition, have needed for many years to rely on scholarly works such as Gershom Scholem's massive Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism and On the Mystical Shape of the Godhead, Raphael Patai's readable but quirky The Hebrew Goddess, and Daniel Matt's translations from The Zohar, which are beautiful and provocative but, of course, do not take us past the thirteenth century. More recently, we have Howard Schwartz's excellent Tree of Souls: the Mythology of Judaism, with extensive sections on the Shekhinah supplemented by reading lists. But what of those who want to bring the Shekhinah beyond theory into practice? May we actually, as Debbie Friedman's song promises, "be blessed beneath the wings of Shekhinah"?
On the Wings of Shekhinah is a book for seekers. Ordained by Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, a founder of Jewish Renewal, Rabbi Leah Novick writes from the perspective of one who has herself experienced "the Divine Presence" and strives to "bring Shekhinah back to this earth, in our time." Her book is explicitly aimed at individuals and communities seeking a personal connection with the Shekhinah in their spiritual lives, and more largely in the hope of restoring the balance of a world dangerously racked by chaos and violence. It traces the metamorphoses of the Shekhinah in Jewish lore and life, from possible sources in the pagan past through the Torah and Talmud, then through the phases of Early and Lurianic Kabbalah, and on into our own time. The final chapters survey the ways in which feminists have been recovering the image of the sacred feminine as a source of guidance in our sexual lives, in the creation of new life-cycle rituals, and in our needs for bodily healing and the healing of the planet.
Throughout, Novick speculates about how men's views of women, as well as women's own daily lives, may have been inflected over the centuries by changing visions of the Shekhinah. Did medieval women call on the Shekhinah in childbirth? Was the Shabbos Queen of the Hasids for men only? Did women connect Rosh Chodesh celebrations with their bodies? Novick speculates that "women baking challah took the place of the temple showbread." Did these women see themselves as priestesses of the home? The author quotes a candle-lighting prayer: "Ribono Shel Olam [Master of the World], may my mitzvah of lighting candles be accepted in the way the mitzvah of the high Priest was accepted when he lit the Menorah in the beloved Holy Temple." She notes the lives of numerous foremothers and present-day teachers who are expanding our spiritual possibilities.
Novick's prose is both personal and learned. Unfortunately it lacks footnotes (except for the epigraphs, which are profuse and wonderful, ranging from talmudic and zoharic sayings to quotes from famous Hasids and their rebbetzin wives), and although there is an extended bibliography, I'm not sure how a reader wanting to track her sources for more precise information would do so. But that is really beside the point. The point is that "Shekhinah energy" is available to us today, by a multiplicity of paths, if we seek it.
Alicia Ostriker is a poet and critic, and author of For the Love of God: the Bible as an Open Book. Her poetry collection The Book of Seventy received the 2009 National Jewish Book Award for Poetry.
Ostriker, Alicia. 2010. Kabbalah for Feminists. Tikkun 25(2):69 http://www.tikkun.org/article.php/mar2010ostriker
