Is G-d a He?

Over the past few decades, a new and distinctive movement has emerged among Jews who are attempting to reclaim some kind of spiritual meaning for their lives. The question has been: If we are recovering our connection to the Divine, can we find that connection in traditional Judaism?

The question has been particularly difficult for many Jewish women because of the picture of G-d we inherited. The G-d we learned about as youngsters, that distant, kingly figure who watched over us seemed, for women discovering their feminine consciousness, too blatantly male. In popular feminism, the G-d of the Hebrew Bible, of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim tradition, has gotten a bad reputation as the patriarchal G-d of Western culture. Some turned to other religions in search of a G-d beyond gender or a philosophy that did not require a belief in G-d at all.

Is it true that G-d in Jewish teachings is patriarchal, that is, thoroughly imbued with male characteristics and values? On first glance, it would seem so. After all, G-d appears to be male. The siddur (prayer book) and the Bible refer to G-d only as He. Traditional Jewish teachings point out that G-d is really beyond all attributes, including those of gender. But, feminist writers have argued, while that is a nice theory, we as human beings need to use symbols and words to express our experience of the Divine. Can we not call G-d She? Further, the words we have inherited for G-d, Father, judge, Creator, Lord, seem to spring from male experience, not female. Can a woman have an authentic relation to a G-d named only by male titles? Feminists have suggested that the titles reflect deeper levels of experience and perception that are also thoroughly male. The feminine experience of the Divine, whatever that might be, is simply not available in the tradition.

This longing for something authentically feminine is deep and significant. From it has come the desire to create new women's rituals and new feminine interpretations of the Bible. But how can these be also authentically Jewish? As serious Jewish feminists have recognized, we cannot create a new Judaism out of whole cloth. It might be possible in some other religion to create something new and still call it by the name of that religion, but not in Judaism: we are connected, intimately and deeply, to Torah itself, the Torah that was given at Sinai and has been passed down faithfully among our people through the ages. New creations lack depth unless they are connected to the tradition we have received, to our history, even if that history seems thoroughly male.

Two responses to this issue have emerged. One is a radical rereading of the Torah from a modernist historical perspective, suggesting that Jewish women in ancient times had religious resources which were not acknowledged by the men who handed down the Torah. Some feminists argue that we can resurrect the goddess-symbols of the ancient Near East. They suggest that the matriarchs themselves may have worshipped goddesses, and that Israelite women are known certainly to have done so. (We know of these practices from the criticisms heaped on goddess-worship by the prophets, but feminists dismiss those criticisms as mere propaganda of the zealous male followers of the patriarchal G-d.) Therefore, they say, we can borrow from goddess worship its rich feminine imagery; we can speak of the Queen of Heaven rather than just the King; we can use images of birth and fertility as well as of creation and conquest.

A second, more moderate view suggests that we do not need to return to goddesses. But, since G-d is neither male nor female, we can use feminine language and symbols to express uniquely feminine aspects of G-d. We can creatively retranslate Hebrew words, giving them a different nuance that is either beyond gender or has a feminine flavor. We can say Ruler of the universe rather than King, for example, to give a more neutral description. We can speak of G-d as our Father and Mother; we can mention the matriarchs as well as the patriarchs in our prayers and stories. Thus, the remembering and retelling of the tradition can come to have a less masculine cast, while remaining true to the words of the tradition as we have received it, and without passing over into idolatry.

Imaginative as these might seem, there are certain problems with such proposals. First, on ancient goddesses: these figures are not beneficent as they might seem. We might like to fantasize a goddess as an all-beneficent mother in contrast to a harsh, legalistic father figure. But this is not true to what we know of ancient religions. Goddesses were not always sweet and beneficent. Some of the ritual practices connected to the goddesses were violent and, by modern standards, inhumane. In some cases the rituals involved sexual practices unacceptable to Jewish sensibilities.

Moreover, goddesses were not forbidden merely because they were feminine. Male gods were forbidden also, the Baals as well as the Asherahs. The prophets, from Moses onward, were struggling to unify the worship of G-d in order to ensure that the Jewish people remained connected to their unique historical experience of G-d, the G-d who brought them out of Egypt. We cannot forget that, no sooner had the newly freed slaves received the Torah than they began worshipping the golden calf, a favorite image of a Canaanite male god, even though they said, "This is the god that brought us out of Egypt." It would have been easy to extend the confusion, to become involved in the worship practiced by the Canaanite inhabitants of the land of Israel, and ultimately to forget our own history. In fact, that is exactly what we did: that is why the prophets repeatedly had to call the people to stop worshipping idols. They were reminding us that the Jewish perception of the Divine was connected with history, with purpose and direction that transcended any given place. The G-d who brought us out of Egypt had something bigger in mind, something more than sustaining our life, bringing us success and prosperity, or even life after death.

That sense of larger vision, of greater purpose, has sustained the Jewish people through the ages; and that larger vision assures us also that our G-d is ultimately beyond gender. To borrow from other religious experiences just because they are female can, and in our history almost always did, dilute the reality of our unique Jewish experience.

Women are attracted to goddess figures because it is possible to see in them characteristics women can imitate: strength, creativity, compassion. But this has been for centuries a major emphasis of Jewish thought about G-d: Recognizing that we cannot know G-d's essence, we focus on the Divine attributes or characteristics in order to learn the derech Hashem, the way of G-d, the things we can imitate and bring into our own lives. When we ask whether G-d is patriarchal or matriarchal, male or female, we are asking about these characteristics. How indeed has G-d revealed Himself/Herself, that aspect of the Divine that we can understand, to our people?

One would think, from feminist criticisms, that the Jewish view of G-d's attributes would list predominantly negative male characteristics: strength, warlikeness, imperialistic control, jealousy. But what in fact are the attributes which our sages have found in G-d? We can take them from the Kabbalah of Isaac Luria: wisdom, knowledge, lovingkindness, strength, harmony, perseverance, beauty, generativity, presence in earthly life. We can take them from the thirteen attributes: merciful, compassionate, slow to anger, abundant in kindness and truth, preserving kindness for thousands of generations, ever-forgiving. Indeed, our tradition finds a multitude of ways more than we can easily translate into English to describe the love and compassion of G-d for human beings. In any case, there is clearly no justification for criticizing the Jewish view of G-d as full of undesirable male characteristics.

Yet the gender-specific language remains. If G-ds characteristics really transcend gender, why do we speak of G-d only as He?

Actually, there is nothing wrong with an individuals using feminine words for G-d to address her as mother or imagine oneself talking to an intimate female friend. For some individuals, this helps to develop a richer and more intimate relationship to G-d. We can also write and share our own interpretations of G-d's compassion, G-d's judgment, G-d's creative work in the world in feminine terms. This may help us to come to experience the fullness of G-d in our lives.

But this is not a full answer, for there is still the arena of public prayer, which tradition insists that we should adhere to the established text of the siddur. Here many feminists are eager for changes in language and substance. Some Jewish organizations have rushed ahead to revise translations of the prayer book, eliminating gender references, sometimes eliminating portions of the prayers themselves.

We must say, first of all, that this does injustice to the Hebrew language itself, not to mention the centuries of prayer of the Jewish people, who cherished these words as the channels by which we might address G-d. The issue is not merely introducing some feminine language for our personal enrichment, but our relation to the whole of Jewish tradition and the whole Jewish people.

Nor is it only a matter of dutifully respecting the communal tradition. We are easily led astray here because of our cultural disposition to value individual self-expression. We tend to honor the tradition only so long as it feels authentic to us. But what this really means is that we do not well understand communal expression, so we tend to brush it aside.

We must ask: are there not some powerful reasons why our sages have, through the centuries, kept a certain kind of language for our address to G-d, and have been very careful about what comes to be included in our siddur? Indeed there are.

The mystics tell us, following images used by the prophets, that our relation to G-d, as a people, can be conceived in sexual terms. G-d is male, the Jewish people is female. The Shir HaShirim, Song of Songs, which accompanies the celebration of Pesach and which, in some communities, is sung every Friday night, represents G-d and Israel as two lovers. The holidays can be mystically conceived as representing seasons in the relationship between Israel and G-d: Pesach is the first commitment of the two lovers, the engagement, so to speak, Shavuot is G-ds giving us his ketubah or wedding contract, and Sukkot is the consummation of the marriage. In a related set of images, all souls of Israel together is the Shabbat Queen, who is also the Shechinah (feminine aspect of the Divine), who unites with her husband, G-d, on Shabbat.

These images are a way to convey to us that the relation between G-d and human beings is a dynamic model, of which our best understanding is the relation between male and female. If our imagination fails at this point, it is partly a failure of our society, particularly of the widespread weakening of marriage and family in our times. Our grasp of the true meaning of the marriage relationship is dim and vague. We tend either to idealize it as romance (the teenagers Romeo and Juliet), or we criticize it as an instrument of patriarchal oppression, where the husband owns and dominates the wife.

Thus, some feminist writers have severely criticized the Jewish image of the Divine/human marriage. For example, Rosemary Reuther attacks the images found in some of the prophetic writings which accuse Israel of being the harlot while G-d acts like a petty, jealous husband.

This criticism totally fails to understand the depth and richness of the husband/wife experience in Judaism and, in particular, the, notion of fidelity as part of marriage. Most of us today can barely grasp this, so we miss how the symbol of G-d as the husband and the Jewish people as the wife is the deepest imaginable relationship. Yet this image, this metaphor for G-d and the Jewish people, holds the secret of the apparently patriarchal language of Bible and siddur, the masculine terms we use for G-d.

In our days of new feminine consciousness, when we are asking what it means to be female or male, this language turns us back to our fundamental relationship to G-d. A woman discovering herself as woman first questions G-d: Why do you appear as male? Or she questions the rabbis: Why did you write about Him as like you and not like us? But we must push the question to a deeper level: what do masculine and feminine, male and female, really mean? How are they unique and how do they come together?

We must certainly reject the interpretation that the male (G-d) has all the power and the female (Israel) is his instrument. That would be thoroughly un-Jewish. We need only recall the famous Talmudic story of Rabbi Eliezer, who was intent on having G-d put his personal seal on a certain Halachic decision. The sages, however, decided the matter another way. G-d's response was, "Thus my children have decided." G-d might well have said, in the above anecdote, "Thus my wife has decided." For, in another context, G-d tells Abraham, "In all that Sarah tells you, listen to her voice." The feminine has power, influence, and impact on the world just as does the masculine. They are in continuous interaction, an ongoing dance, in which each elevates and enriches the other.

This metaphor of G-d and Israel as husband and wife helps us understand that when we address G-d as a community, we address Him as male. When we pray in the traditional ways, we are not merely doing our duty by honoring what has been passed down. We are entering into a relationship with G-d by our speech, helping to create a relationship that has its own dynamic, the dynamic of the people Israel speaking, in love and intimacy, to her Divine partner. And, as with a marriage, it is only with years of practice that the full richness of this communication becomes a reality for us.

The so-called patriarchal G-d thus turns out to be only one face of G-d. The question once was asked why, in our prayers, we address G-d as G-d of Abraham, G-d of Isaac, and G-d of Jacob rather than more simply as G-d of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The sages answered: Because G-d showed a different face to each one. So also with us. We live in a time when many are speaking of the feminine faces of G-d; this brings to our awareness dimensions of G-d that we might have forgotten. We may also see Him in more traditional terms as Creator, Ruler, Redeemer, Giver of the Torah. We need not reject any of these, male or female, but only use them to deepen our understanding of ourselves as individuals, of our people, and of G-d. Learning to live with and think deeply into our words for G-d is part of our spiritual growth, part of the deepening of consciousness we see in our times.