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The Holy One
Judaism holds a tension between the transcendent—the unknowable,
the infinite, the separate, the “container” of the
world—and the immanent—the tangible, the indwelling,
the world itself. In Jewish thought, though physical images are
discouraged, images of God may be drawn from human forms. The
transcendent God is generally depicted as male (though God may
have feminine qualities such as rachmanut, compassion,
literally wombfulness). In later mystical tradition, the immanent
qualities of God become feminized, but in the Bible these qualities
too belong to God. The transcendent God is creator, father, judge,
and warrior, but also healer and gardener. In later rabbinic thought,
God is rabbi, scribe, and scholar. Other biblical images of the
transcendent God are non-gendered and drawn from nature—the
rock, the spring of water, the soaring eagle. In the Talmud God
is sometimes simply called “makom” (the Place).
In kabbalah, the highest form of transcendence is literally formless—the
ein sof or “without end.” We can know virtually nothing
about this aspect of God. We can only imagine God through more
finite metaphors–the wise creator, the good father, the
tree of life, the Lady Wisdom, and so forth. The scholar Tikvah
Frymer-Kensky and others have reminded us that we need multiple
metaphors to fully describe our experience with God.
The “Holy One blessed be He” (Kadosh baruch hu)
is a common rabbinic name for the transcendent God that humans
can pray to and attempt to imitate. The Holy One is a wise teacher,
an artist, a fighter, and sometimes a mysterious absence. The
kabbalists identified the Holy One with the sefirah (Divine aspect)
of tiferet, a masculine aspect of God that symbolizes the heart
or sacred center, and also represents compassion and balance.
Tiferet is the prince, the lover of Shekhinah,
the tree of life, the sun, and the place where all opposites come
together.
It would be a mistake to identify the masculine with the transcendent
and the feminine with the immanent, just as it would be a mistake
to associate the masculine divinity with light and the feminine
divinity with darkness. It will require just as much work to reclaim
and expand the male image of God—the Holy One, the father
in heaven, the flowing spring, the sage of Torah—as it requires
to reimagine the Divine feminine. Yet we may continue to find
the diverse male images of Jewish tradition moving and edifying
as we explore what the divine masculine can mean to us in a spiritual
universe where neither gender dominates. Some of us may retain
the Holy One as a masculine being with varied traits (not only
traditional traits of power and strength), and some of us may
view the Holy One as a non-gendered expression of the transcendent
creativity of the Divine.
I am amazed by the giraffe, the Amazon river, the quasar, the
human eye. It is at these moments of amazement that I experience
the transcendent Holy One most deeply, whether as nourisher of
the birds or kindler of the stars, whether as aged or ageless,
as wild mother or soft, cloud-like father. Maimonides said that
God “is the knower and also what is known, and also the
knowledge itself.” Sometimes, for me, the Holy One is simply
God as knower, and I feel the warmth of God’s knowing when
I observe a lunar eclipse, a candle flame, or a cat leaping in
the air.
And sometimes, the Holy One is a masculine being: a friend with
curly black locks who walks beside me in the garden, a kind and
generous father who backs off enough to let me make my own decisions,
or a seed of light planted by the Shekhinah in the universe. He
is not a definitive list of male traits, but an image that comes
to me and comforts me. Then, too, I am drawing on the Jewish tradition
of the Holy One to find God in the world, and in myself.
—Jill Hammer
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