Parshat Bereshit: God's feminine side
God must join gender equality revolution of our time
And so, we start again: Parshat Bereshit is full of so many issues; it is hard to know what to single out this year: The true standing of women. God's fury. The eternal question, not 'where is God hiding' or 'where has he gone,' but rather: Where is man? The question of man's relationship with God; a dialogue of questions and answers rather than a monologue.
There are so many issues; I will limit myself to some general comments that will serve as material for this column in the coming weeks.
This week's reading features two main descriptions of the creation of Adam and Eve. One, the more deeply rooted one, is the chauvinistic, describing the creation of Eve from Adam's rib.
The other is egalitarian, and therefore has been discussed much less.
The egalitarian version says "male and female he (God) created them." (Gen. 1: 27). If this is true, then the divine spark found in every person is both masculine and feminine. And if this is true, then it follows that God himself is not only masculine, not only a father. He is also feminine, a mother.
God must reveal himself from within
And we, who have sanctified the male-ness of God for so many generations, have missed the secret of God's feminine, maternal side. We have forgone the soft, gentle nature of the original God.
So what does this have to do with us, the latest point in the developing spiral?
God created us all. God was there at the moment of conception. The God of those first moments of creation was both father and mother. But later, we men came along and hid the "mother" side of our creator. In doing so, for thousands of years, we lost half of our humanity, which became imprisoned behind pots and pans.
God of this generation must reveal himself from within. God must join the greatest human revolution of our time, that of gender equality.
The original rebel
A God unembarrassed by his motherly side can give the world a lot more than the God of men can, because men naturally create by ejaculating. Women, mothers, create by absorbing.
Our world needs absorbers and accepters. Long, nurturing months of pregnancy rather than one-second ejaculation. And about God, we bear witness on Rosh Hashana that that day is the "birthday of the world"; that is to say, the day God became pregnant with the world.
It seems that the 21st century will see the war of the worlds - the great war between God and his creation, mankind; between this world and the next.
This century will allow us to reach the best of our physical, spiritual and actual abilities as children of Eve, the original rebel in the Garden of Eden, against the actual translation of divine fury by his priests, who exploit their believers, children of Adam, limited, easily seduced and with no self will.
Human priests against Eve's humanity. God's endless silence will continue, and every step will be interpreted as passive acceptance of him and his positions.
Terrific revolution
The West, essentially Christian and secular, has started the long journey towards adopting Eve's legacy and her principles in two ways. One, the eternal, unending inquisitiveness of the mother of all life: Perhaps it's wrong? Maybe there is another way to look at the apple? Maybe everything we were told up to now was wrong? And in any event, I, the individual, have a responsibility to find alternate paths and other answers to that which seems right and just until the moment I asked the question. It is no coincidence that both Eve and Isaac Newton recreated human culture with use of a fruit!
The second understanding is much deeper and more important. The West, after years of religious oppression and pagan witch hunts, has accepted the most crucial revolution of them all: Full equality for women. In one fell swoop, humankind doubled itself, without bloodshed.
A society of men and women, walking together towards the human skies and towards worldly sociability.
Not the whole West. Men still beat women. Churches and synagogues continue to accept official discrimination against women.
But the wall has been breached. In another few generations, the legions of equality will topple the male fortress. In several hundred years from now, men won't remember the days in which women carried eternally the cradle of the snake in a man's world.
And Israeli Judaism must choose whether it is part of this terrific revolution, or not.
