That Saint Offered a Nipple

Christian Gender Concepts Regarding the Holy and the Divine as Background to the Increasing Preoccupation with the Shekhina in Medieval Kabbalistic Literature

Abstract

Major parts of thirteenth-century Sefirotic literature show evident enhancement and development of the female aspect of the Godhead, an earlier Jewish theme known to us from rabbinic literature. Thus, as part of the developing Sefirotic discourse in this period, rabbinic notions such as God’s presence (Shekhina), Wisdom (Hokhma), mother of Israel, and the Torah crystallized as female Sefirot. A question arises, therefore, as to the reasons for this growing Jewish preoccupation with female aspects of the Godhead, in this specific historical context. Some twenty years ago, Arthur Green and Peter Schäfer suggested, based on an earlier remark made by Rafael Patai, that this Jewish phenomenon was a reaction to the surge in Marian devotion in the twelfth century. This suggestion aroused scholarly debates, including two main points of critique: first, that this notion is of Jewish provenance and therefore is in no need of external explications, and second, that the sexual profile of these two figures, Mary and the Shekhina, is clearly opposed in nature. In the current study and elsewhere, I propose regarding these two phenomena – the enhancement of Christian Marian devotion and the Jewish preoccupation with female aspects of the Sefirotic Godhead, as two independent expressions of a wider, much richer, cultural trend. As has been shown by medievalists at length, the High Middle Ages saw a dramatic surge in the extent of women’s actual and symbolic presence in public spheres, religious and secular alike. In this article I focus on Christian religious and devout women, and show how these far-reaching changes in these women’s presence in public spheres was experienced at the time, whether positively or negatively, in particular by Christian religious men. Alongside the well known expansion in Marian devotion in the Christian world, these historical vicissitudes are related to the evolution of flexible gender approaches to sainthood, to holiness and to the figure of Jesus Christ, all increasingly perceived as effeminate or womanish in this period. I propose viewing the growing preoccupation of thirteenth-century Jewish men with earlier Jewish concepts regarding female aspects of the Godhead, the latter now perceived Sefirotically, as part of this cultural and theological discourse.