Circle in the Square: Studies in the Use of Gender in Kabbalistic Symbolism

280 Pages·1995·33.212 MB·English

by  Elliot R. Wolfson

CIRCLE IN THE SQUARE
For
Elijah Gabriel and Josiah Abraham
STUDIES IN THE USE OF
GENDER IN KABBALISTIC SYMBOLISM
Elliot R. Wolfson
State University of New York Press
Published by
State University of Ne'N York Press, Albany
© 1995 State University of New York
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wolfson, Elliot R.
Circle in the square; studies in th,~ use of gender in Kabbalistic
symbolism / Elliot R. Wolfson.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-7914-2405-7 (alk. paper) ..- ISl3N 0-7914-2406-5 (pbk. ;
alk. paper)
1. Cabala-History. 2. God (Jud ~ism) 3. Masculinity of God.
4. Femininity of God. 5. Zohar. r Title.
BM526W64 1995
296.1 '6-dc20 94·18316
CIP
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
it will become you; and if you are glad
whatever's living will yourself become.
Cirlboys may nothing more than boyg irls need
--e. e. cummings
• CONTENTS •
Preface xi
1
Female Imaging of the Torah:
From Literary Metaphor to Religious Symbol 1
2
Circumcision, Vision of God, and Textual Interpretation:
From Midrashic Trope to Mystical Symbol 29
3
Erasing the Erasure/Gender and the Writing of God's Body
in Kabbalistic Symbolism 49
4
Crossing Gender Boundaries
in Kabbalistic Ritual and Myth 79
Notes 123
Bibliography of Secondary Sources 233
Index 253
ix
• PREFACE •
One of the most engaging issues in the rich body of Jewish mystical
literature, especially medieval kabbalistic texts, is the use of gender
images to characterize the divine-human encounter as well as the nature
of the Godhead itself. To be sure, gender imagery, particularly the erotic
interplay of the lover and the beloved, is central to the texture of religious
experience as it has been expressed both in the Occident and in the Orient.
In this respect, therefore, the kabbalistic tradition is not unique in the
history of religions. Moreover, even within the more circumscribed
religious history of Judaism, the kabbalistic orientation is not distinctive.
That is to say, the use of gender images to depict either the nature of God
or the relationship between God and humanity is a phenomenon well
attested in other forms of religious expression within Judaism, beginning
as far back as certain documents contained in Scripture. However, what
is singular about the kabbalistic use of gender to characterize the divine
is the explicitness of expression and the extensiveness of application.
Elsewhere I have argued that one could chart the history of mystical
speculation in Judaism as a transition from an implicit to an explicit
phallocentrism connected especially to the visualization of God. The
esoteric dimension so central to the various currents of Jewish mysticism
is inseparably tied to the question of eroticism. The issue of gender,
therefore, goes to the very heart of Jewish mysticism in its different
historical and literary configurations. Indeed, to attain the ground whence
the way of kabbalistic thinking proceeds one must heed the complex
phenomenon of imaging the deity in explicitly gendered terms.
While much of my scholarly work touches upon the problem of
gender and the symbolic mythicization of God in kabhalistic sources, the
four chapters I have selected for this volume deal with aspects of this
xi
xii l'REf/\CE
problem in essential ways. The firs!: chapter, "Female Imaging of the
Torah: From Literary Metaphor to l{eligiolls Symbol," deals at length
with the evolution of one of the central symbols of the feminine in
Judaism. With the exception of only slight revisions from the original
essay, I have left the piece as it waf originally published in 1989. The
significance of the topic, the feminization of the Torah, arguably the
central artifact in all forms of religiou;; worship inJudaism, alone justifies
the decision to include this chapter in this collection. In terms of my own
intellectual development, the reader will sense that at the early stage of
my research I was mostly concerned with delineating the exegetical
transformations in the midrashic ard kabbalistic texts clustered about
this fundamental motif that has infDrmed the religious mentality and
practice of Jews through the ages.
The second chapter, "Circumcision, Vision of Cod, and Textual
Interpretation: From Midrashic Trope to Religious Mystical Symbol,"
published in essay form in 1987, deals with the correlation of three
seemingly disparate phenomena tl1(lt are nevertheless intrinsically con
nected in the Jewish hermeneutical imagination, especially as it is ex
pressed in the classical work of medieval theosophic kabbalah, the
Zohar. The detailed study of this cmreiation seeks to bring to light the
ecstatic underpinning of the midrashic form of the zoharic life experi
ence. Beyond this concern I have ,I\so sought to highlight the deeply
erotic nature of esoteric hermeneutics in the Zohar, as well as to expose
the phallocentric ocularcentrism of this work that informed subsequent
developments in Jewish mysticism. Although I had not yet formulated
the analytic category that has informed my more recent work on gender
symbolism in tlwosophic kabbalah, namely, the conception of the male
androgyne or the androgynous phallus, it will be evident to the circum
spect reader that some of the texts that r cited in this piece point in that
direction.
The third chapter, "Erasing the Erasure/Gender and the Writing
of God's Body in Kabbalistic Symbolism," is a much elaborated version
of a study to be published in French in 1995. rn this chapter I suggest that
the depiction of God as writer as it evolves in thcosophic kabbalah is
related to the attribution of gender characteristics to the divine. In
particular, the activity of writing is valorized in distinctively sexual
terms: the instrument of writing is the pha Ilus; the letters that are written
are the semen; and the tablet upon which the writing is inscribed is the
feminine. As a consequence of the sustained reflection on the conver
gence of these two cen tral aspects of ka bba Iistic specula tion Jh a ve shown
that the role of gender is assigned to the upper limits of the divine, to the
Ein-Sof itself. The phallocentric interpretation of the act of God writing
himself underscores the androccnlric core of the engendering myth of
PREFACE xiii
theosophic kabbalah. This nexus of ideas attains its fullest expression in
some of the Lurianic texts, which depict the initial activity of the Infinite,
prior to any creation, as the play of God delighting with himself, a play
that I have understood in explicit sexual terms. To be sure, this self-play
of God is a way of depicting the mental processes of God, but the point
of these texts is to underscore that thought itself is to be understood as
erotic play. In a profound transvaluation of sexual mores, the basic act of
God is portrayed as precisely that activity that in the human sphere
is viewed as the cardinal sin for which the unfolding of history is the
gradual rectification.
The final chapter of this volume, "Crossing Gender Boundaries in
Kabbalistic Ritual and Myth," is a preliminary essay of an essential motif
in the kabbalistic sources that has not been adequately addressed in
scholarly literature. I examine the phenomenon of gender transforma
tion in terms ofthe female becoming male and the male becoming female.
Both types of transformation are predicated on the ontological assump
tion that the female is part of the male and hence the ultimate purpose of
unification is to restore the female to the male, to contain the left in the
right, to turn the feminine back around so that she stands face-to-face
with the masculine front. Although kabbalists clearly describe the divine
in terms of male and female, in the final analysis the dualistic posture
gives way to a metaphysical monism that can be expressed mythically as
the male androgyne; that is, the gender polarity of God is transcended in
the singular male form that comprises both masculine and feminine. I
argue, moreover, that the ontological status of the female as being part of
the male is most vividly articulated in kabbalistic sources in the mythic
complex of the androgynous phallus. That is, the locus of gender dimor
phism is in the male organ itself. More specifically, the feminine aspect
of God in its ontological root is portrayed as the corona of the penis. For
the kabbalist, therefore, redemption consists of the restoration of the
female to the male, a process that is fundamentally the reconstitution of
the male androgyne rather than the unification of two autonomous
entities. The secret of unity ultimately involves the merging of the female
into the male and not the preservation of their antic distinctiveness. The
point is poignantly expressed by the adaptation in Lurianic kabbalah of
the eschatological motif of the righteous sitting in the world-to-come
with their crowns on their heads. This image conveys the idea that in the
eschaton there is a reconstitution of the androgynous phallus symbol
ized by the restitution of the female crown to the male organ.