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Before...
This "before-word" is a theological abstract. Here, the entire premise of this work is unfolded from, and then spun around a few verses from, the beginning of Genesis. In this
way, we uncover a basic rabbinic vision of male and female who exist with a fundamental and necessary interdependence. This "duality" that stands consistently in need of unification, will be constantly restated
throughout this work. Each successive iteration will build the understanding and expand the contextual applications of these simple truths. In other words, this is ground zero...
[1] Here is what I know:
Rabbinic Judaism sees God as having to constantly balance two sides of God's personality: the Midat ha-Din—the rule-making, boundry-etching, Divine aspect of Judgment—and the Midat ha-Rahamin—the
empathic, "womblike," Divine aspect of Mercy.
[2] Here is what I think I know:
The rabbis were telling us that some experiences of God in the world are those of a Patriarchal, Rule-making, Universal King. Other experiences of God in the world are those of a caring,
intimate, nurturing Mother. The rabbis tend to be more able to be honest in their male God language than in their female—not an unreasonable weakness given their time frame.
[3] I also know what my friend and teacher, Yosi Gordon, has taught me about creation:
In the beginning there is one only person, ADAM (The Earthling). ADONAI, the God, said: "It is not good that ADAM be alone."
(We'll talk about it later, but I really believe that loneliness is an underrated spiritual issue. It, too, will form a major aspect of this work.) To solve the problem, God has a plan. God says: "I will make a
companion strength who fits with ADAM." Now watch the action closely. Adonai, the God, formed from the soil all the wild beasts and all the birds. And brought each to The Earthling to see what The
Earthling would call it. Whatever The Earthling called the animal, that became its name... So God, with Adam's help, paired the Kelev (dog) with the Kalbah (female dog), the Hatul (cat) with the Hatulah (female cat). Male was matched with female.
But for ADAM, no helper who fit could be found. Adam (person) should have been matched with Adamah—but that word already had been used up; it was already the name for Mother Earth.
For the first person, God needed a different solution. So here is what happened: ADONAI, the God, made ADAM sleep a deep sleep and took one side and then closed in the flesh. We'll talk
about it more later, but the Hebrew makes it clear that God took a side, an aspect of the first person, not just a bone. ADONAI, the God, built that side into an Ishah (woman
), and brought her to ADAM. ADAM said: "This is the one, Bone from my bone, Flesh from my flesh. She shall be called Ishah (Wo-MAN). because she was taken from Ish (MAN)." If
you listen closely, first there was an Earthling, one lonely person, whom God splits into two. By creating woman out of Earthling, Ishah out of Adam, Ish (man), also out of Adam, comes into being. And then the Torah continues:
So an Ish will leave his father and his mother, he will cling to his Ishah—and they will become one flesh. People become whole finding their other half (Genesis 2.18ff).
[4] What I think I also know is this:
What seems obvious to me, but not clearly stated outside of kabalistic sources (perhaps), is that the male echoes the Midat ha-Din; the female, the Midat ha-Rahamin.
When God tore Adam into Ish and Ishah, the split between male and female was intentionally incomplete. The game in life, the search for meaning, is in finding the other half that fits with us to make one flesh. It is the same balance that God constantly seeks, too. This duality plays out in the following verse:
To the woman God said:
Your man's closeness you shall seek and he shall fix your limits (Genesis 3.16).
In this verse, gender difference is first defined in the Torah. It echoes all of the "pop" gender psychology: Women seek intimacy—men establish and enforce boundaries. The verse had been
there a long time—perhaps since before creation. I had read by it, as we do with so many things in life, over and over. It took me years to notice it. Then it became self-evidently clear—the dichotomy between
"closeness" and "limits"—shouted. Two truths came together—Carol Gilligan meets Rashi, Robert Bly does midrash—and all of a sudden, in my eyes, they came together, explaining and expanding each other.
In the larger world we debate the meaning of gender difference, we ask the question—heredity or environment? We ask whom to blame, whom to thank. In the universe of the Torah, the question
is the same and different. We ask, like the snake losing his legs after eating the fruit-thing, if our present state is punishment or consequence. Is God dooming us to crawl in the dust, trapped in our gender
roles—or does the apparent difference in our gender responses to the world stem from the way the fruit of knowledge messes with our differing biologies? Are we the architects or the victims of our "closeness" and
"limits" —or both?
In a lot of ways, my new relationship with that verse is a microcosm of this work. Over the past five years writings about gender and Jewish sources have been meeting in my mind, soul, and
life. They have spun and twirled together.
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