Balance, and the Feminine Spirit.

[Danustouch]

This is a wonderful article I found, today. It highlights verses which praise the feminine spirit, from many differen't sacred texts. I couldn't think of WHERE to put this..but...figured this might be the best place. I found it very uplifting.

http://www.cheraglibrary.org/archive/rcm-003.htm

[Illuminatus]

Heh,

The clause from Proverbs "From the Jewish Religion" is a real reach... Judaisim is almost exclusively about MEN... the only place you might see an exception is in the Mishna, from which the holiday of Purim is derived (actually coming around this April)... the only jewish story/tale/holy text where a female actually DOES something.. in this case, help foil an evil king's mass-murder plot.

There's almost nothing in the old testament about women, or the talmud either.. the mishna is a 3rd tier holy text, barely making the cut! :) Rightly so since it's dated just around the birth of christ, and most jewish history goes back well past 3000 BC.

That "Wisdom" clause from Proverbs is a commonly used closing prayer for torah services.

[amberlaine]

ACtually, it's not much of a reach at all. The passage is clearly talking about Matronit/Shekinah. While Matronit is not "the JEwish Goddess" as lots of pagans like to think it is, it doesn't mean that she doesn't have a pivotal role to play in Jewish theology, but many people haven't heard of this aspect. (At least, amongst people who aren't Jewish scholars. THere doesn't seem to be a lot of readily available material aimed at non-Jews about the JEwish faith. And you may very well be ethnically Jewish, I don't know, but I"m just going to direct my points to a non-Jewish audience.)

As someone who has considered actually converting to Judaism, and as someone who is female, I'd like to offer some other thoughts.

1. The story of Purim is from the Book of Esther in the Tanakh proper--it's not from the Mishna (though I won't say it isn't commented about in the Mishna But the story itself is in the actual Bible). Furthermore, for the record, the Mishna is NOT a third tier text!! The Mishna is part of Talmud--the rabbinical interpretation of the Tanakh, and most conservative and Orthodox Jews would take offense to your trivializing the importance of the oral law. The oral law is, in fact, what makes Judaism so much more greatly different from Christianity than many non-Jews realize. The Oral Law is *extremely* important to the Jewish faith. In fact, I and most Jews I know, would argue that if you haven't read the Talmud, you cna't know much about JEwish theology. The Oral Law is as intrinsic to the religion as the Tanakh itself. ( The fact that it doesn't date as far back as the oldeer texts in the Tanakh has a lot to do with the fact that it is/was the *oral* law. It doesn't surprise me that it wasn't codified until much later. )

2. There are stories in the Tanakh that deal with women in powerful roles, aside from the story of Esther. Don't leave out Ruth, Leah, and Deborah (who was actually a Judge herself! No small potatoes there), etc... You're right in the Judaism was born of a culture where men had more clout in society than women, but to chalk up the entire religion as biased towards men, I'd have to disagree (with some qualification)

3. Judaism is a matrilinear religion. That's not exactly belittling to women! In fact, I consider that quite empowering. When the ethnicity/race/culture of a people is passed down strictly through the Mother, that's putting quite a bit of importance on the role of motherhood, and thus, the female.

4. Traditionally, women *do* have rights that men don't have. For instance, halachically, a woman may divorce a man for not pleasing her sexually, whereas a man does not have that same right. Women also have obligations that men do not have. For example, the lighting of the SHabbat candles at sundown of Shabbat is strictly a female obligation, as the ceremony deals with the recognition of the Shekinah, the feminine aspect of G!D manifest among us.

5. Kabbalistic mythical literature makes out the divine feminine to be more readily accessible in an external-to-G!D form--you'll oftetn see references to Mother and FAther locked in an embrace, for example. This should not be interpreted to mean that Shekinah is exgernal to G!D--but for mythical and poetic purposes, such a depiction lends itself well to storytelling, to art, to personifying and understanding the complex nature of the Divine.

These are just some things I've thought up off the top of my head. I could go on and on but this thread isn't exactly about Judaism anyway :p

(Oh, and Purim is actually this coming Monday, Feb. 25)

[Danustouch]

Wow...and here I thought it was just a simple nice little pick me for women, that I just posted ;) :)

[Illuminatus]

Originally posted by amberlaine
ACtually, it's not much of a reach at all. The passage is clearly talking about Matronit/Shekinah. While Matronit is not "the JEwish Goddess" as lots of pagans like to think it is, it doesn't mean that she doesn't have a pivotal role to play in Jewish theology, but many people haven't heard of this aspect.


Really... tell us more of this Matronit/Shekinah... it's news to me, but I abandoned my faith at the tender age of 16.


[i]
1. The story of Purim is from the Book of Esther in the Tanakh proper--it's not from the Mishna (though I won't say it isn't commented about in the Mishna But the story itself is in the actual Bible). Furthermore, for the record, the Mishna is NOT a third tier text!! [/B]

This really depends on who you ask. Different sects of orthodox and hassidim don't even recognise others as jews, not to even mention the conservative or god forbid the reform movement.


2. There are stories in the Tanakh that deal with women in powerful roles, aside from the story of Esther. Don't leave out Ruth, Leah, and Deborah (who was actually a Judge herself! No small potatoes there), etc... You're right in the Judaism was born of a culture where men had more clout in society than women, but to chalk up the entire religion as biased towards men, I'd have to disagree (with some qualification)


The reform movement agrees with you, to such a point that most of the prayers have been amended... when the names of the patriarchs are listed (Abraham Isacc etc..) .. the names of their wives and the matriarchs were sort of tagged in (And Sarah, And Leah, etc..). It led to some confusing moments at conclaves where groups from all the temples in NJ would gather together, and we'd sing the same song, but the reform temples would have a little echo-sound coming from them, whenever Abraham was mentioned they had an extra beat written in for (And Sarah)!

This sort of behavior, in my opinion, officially "Jumped The Shark" when our temple's cantor began referring to god as "She" in some prayers. No joke.



3. Judaism is a matrilinear religion. That's not exactly belittling to women! In fact, I consider that quite empowering. When the ethnicity/race/culture of a people is passed down strictly through the Mother, that's putting quite a bit of importance on the role of motherhood, and thus, the female.


I was always under the impression that the matrilinear thing was a recent occurance, a result of the many rapes that occured during the holocaust. Hasn't the whole tribal system always been centered around the Patriarch? We hear a whole lot about the House of David and the House of Solomon but I don't recall the House of Ruth ever being referred to.



4. Traditionally, women *do* have rights that men don't have. For instance, halachically, a woman may divorce a man for not pleasing her sexually, whereas a man does not have that same right. Women also have obligations that men do not have. For example, the lighting of the SHabbat candles at sundown of Shabbat is strictly a female obligation, as the ceremony deals with the recognition of the Shekinah, the feminine aspect of G!D manifest among us.


True dat... also the women have all those clensing rituals in the mikva which are theirs and theirs alone. I wasn't aware about that divorce clause though, interesting.

[amberlaine]

Really... tell us more of this Matronit/Shekinah... it's news to me, but I abandoned my faith at the tender age of 16.

My pleasure. I"ll do a thread on the idea. Let me get some texts together so I can make it a well researched post, ok? I have some off the top of my head stuff to say about Shekinah, but if I"m going to do a whole post, Id rather be able to provide y'all with some resources.


This really depends on who you ask. Different sects of orthodox and hassidim don't even recognise others as jews, not to even mention the conservative or god forbid the reform movement.

You're right, and that's the main reason I decided not to convert. Too much politics does not make me happy--and as beautiful a religion as Judaism is, there's a lot of this kind of name-calling BS that I'd rather not deal with.


I was always under the impression that the matrilinear thing was a recent occurance, a result of the many rapes that occured during the holocaust. Hasn't the whole tribal system always been centered around the Patriarch? We hear a whole lot about the House of David and the House of Solomon but I don't recall the House of Ruth ever being referred to.

You make an interesting point. The names of the tribes and whatnot are named for the males--but Jewish-ness being passed through the mother isn't a recent development. I"ll have to ask a friend of mine to come up with a soure you could have a look at. I don't know a lot of early Hebrew culture--that's not where my intereest lay, so I can't tell you much about the patriarchy of their tribes--but I do know the mother thing is true. (Although, some reform temples are starting to accept ptrinlinear decent too, much to the annoyance of Orthodox and conservative JEws eerywhere)

[lucidfire]

great link, especially the Lao Tsu one and the "prayer to gaia"