Who is the Jewish Shekinah?

Who is the Jewish Shekinah? Prophets and patriarchy

Since the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. the Jewish religion has been celebrated in local synagogues. Until the 20th Century prayer in synagogues was led by males; rabbis, cantors, or prayer leaders from the congregation. Women were segregated behind a curtain and took a more passive role.

But few non-Jews are aware that an essential part of this religion is celebrated in the home every Friday evening – the Sabbath seder – with a ritual meal with red wine, prayers, and songs. The sabbath starts at the moment evening begins. This is where The Shekinah comes in.

The principal female of the family goes to the window and lights a candle moving her hands to draw The Shekinah-spirit into its light and bless the home with the healing spirit of peace.

The Shekinah in today’s Jewish belief is described as ‘the female emanation or presence of the Deity’. And the prayer that goes with the drawing-in, the welcoming of the Shekinah, is about observing the supreme male God Yahweh’s laws, rules, and commandments. But the Shekinah today is the result of a long process of reducing the importance of the Jewish Mother Goddess, reducing her to just an aspect of the male Deity. (Previously she was seen as a separate deity and later as Yahweh’s consort.) The process  was led by the Biblical prophets. Their mission was the purification of the religion from ‘a foreign’ element, the Goddess – and in fact she was shared with neighbouring nations and tribes under different names as a female deity associated with important processes including fertility and warfare. But the prophets’ vision was of a masculine deity and a male-led and culturally ‘pure’ nation. There are many references to the worship of the Mother Goddess in the bible but usually in a negative way, tagged as idol-worship or an ‘abomination’. Various prophets – Gideon [Judges 6-8] was one – launched campaigns to destroy the village statues of the Goddess, sometimes encountering fierce resistance.

Animated painting by Matthew Conrady, depicting the Shekinah’s story:

 

The Prophets’ anger, misogyny, and fundamentalism recalls fundamentalists today in the Abrahamic religions: like the Wahabi in Saudi Arabia who have destroyed most buildings from the long history of Islam in the Arabian peninsula. Or the Protestant fundamentalists in England in the 17th Century who destroyed stained glass windows and frescoes as ‘pagan’. Or the ultra-Orthodox Jews of today who reject modern culture and ideas.

There seems to be a drive to backward-looking ‘purity’ and ‘simplification’ that appeals to many. And that happens again and again through history. Like Hitler wanting a Germany without Jews, Romanis, homosexuals, or political dissent.

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