Come, my friend, to meet the bride; let us welcome the Sabbath.
Come in peace, O crown of her husband; Come with joy/gladness and jubilation Among the faithful of the treasured people Enter, O bride! Enter, O bride!
Come, O bride, the Sabbath Queen. 1
לכה דודי לקראת כלה, פני שבת נקבלה
בואי בשלום עטרת בעלה
גם בשמחה/ברנה ובצלה
תוך אמוני עם סגולה
בואי כלה בואי כלה
בואי כלה שבת מלכתא
Seeking to expand the range of religious expression available to women and to develop models of spirituality that speak to women’s experiences, Jewish feminists have plumbed tradition for feminine imagery and associations that could be adopted for contemporary purposes. The sources are actually richer in this regard than one might suppose: in traditional texts, Shabbat, Torah, Jerusalem, prayer, the Temple, the moon, and the Shekhina herself are all gendered female. 2 Yet in light of the fact that classic religious imagery is exclusively the product of men’s imaginations, it is necessary to question whether the paradigms of femininity that these images and associations promote are actually useful for encouraging women’s religious agency and increased ritual participation. This article considers the feminine imagery associated with Shabbat in traditional sources and the particular models of gender that those images reflect.
Talmudic Foundations
Thanks to the inclusion of Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz’s piyyut “Lekha Dodi” in the Friday night liturgy of nearly all religious communities, the personification of Shabbat as bride and as queen is familiar to most traditional Jews. But despite the piyyut’s provenance in 16th-century Safed, the strikingly feminine imagery that informs the poem is significantly more ancient.
The earliest gendering of Shabbat dates to the talmudic period. In describing various activities in which the rabbis would engage so as to demonstrate their love for the Day of Rest, the Babylonian Talmud reports that some scholars related to Shabbat as a “bride” or a “queen,” preparing for her arrival as they would prepare for a wedding or a royal visit:
Rabbi Hanina would wrap himself [in finery] and stand towards evening on Friday, and say: “Come, let us go out to greet Sabbath the queen.” Rabbi Yanai would put on his [Sabbath] clothes on Friday and say: “Come O bride, come O bride” (BT Shabbat 119a, Schottenstein translation). 3
If the female persona that Shabbat assumes in these descriptions seems coincidental (deriving, perhaps, from the gender of the noun itself), the following passage from Bereishit Rabbah leaves less room for ambiguity:
R. Simeon b.Yohai taught: The Sabbath pleaded to the Holy One, blessed be He: “All have a partner, while I have no partner!” “The Community of Israel is your partner,” God answered. And when they stood before the mountain of Sinai, He said to them, “Remember what I said to the Sabbath, that the Community of Israel is your partner, [hence,] ‘Remember the Sabbath day, le-kodsho [to keep it holy, here read as: to betroth it]’ (Exodus 20, 8)” (Genesis Rabbah 11:8, Soncino translation).
In this passage, gender is not incidental to the depiction of Shabbat, but is rather its primary thrust. The marriage metaphor used by the midrash’s author – a metaphor in which Shabbat is betrothed by God to the people of Israel – serves to convey the intimacy of the relationship between them, an intimacy best depicted as the bond between wife and husband. 4
In another midrash that uses the marriage metaphor, Shabbat is referred to as God’s spouse – more precisely, as God’s queen – in even more explicitly gendered terms:
“Then it shall be seven days under the mother” (Leviticus 22: 27). R. Joshua of Siknin in the name of R. Levi said: It is like the case of a king who entered a province and issued a decree, saying: “Let no visitors that are here see my face until they have first seen the face of my lady.” In the same way the Holy One, blessed be He, said: “You shall not bring an offering unto Me until a Sabbath day has passed over it”; for there can be no seven continuous days without a Sabbath… (Leviticus Rabbah 27:10, Soncino translation). 5
Whether God’s queen or Israel’s bride, Shabbat is always the female partner in the marriage. This rendering leaves God, or Israel – the male partners – to betroth Shabbat, to welcome her, i.e., to play the active role in the metaphorical wedding between them. The value of this particular characterization on a religious plane is clear: the Jewish people, human beings in imitation of God, are thus called upon to take an active role in their performance of that most basic of commandments, the observance of Shabbat. 6 But the effect is a reinforced association between Shabbat’s femininity and her passivity, or lack of agency.
Rabbinic Reversals
Although there are several more talmudic passages of relevance to this discussion, the feminization of Shabbat is not actually a widespread or programmatic motif in rabbinic writings. 7 Furthermore, most of the Rishonim (medieval authorities) rejected the feminine imagery of the talmudic sources and replaced the allusions to “the Sabbath bride” or “Queen Shabbat” with masculine metaphors. A striking example is Rashi’s commentary on BT Bava Kama 32a-b, a passage parallel to the one cited previously, in which R. Hanina’s pre-Shabbat summons is adjusted in a small, but critical way: “‘Come, let us go out’ – like a person who receives the presence of a king.”8 Similarly, the Rif’s version of the passage in BT Shabbat 119a reads, “Rabbi Hanina would wrap himself [in finery] and stand towards evening on Friday, and say: ‘Come, let us go out to greet Sabbath, the king.’” And in his Hilkhot Shabbat, the Rambam too modified the aforementioned talmudic passage:
What is honor [of the Sabbath]? . . . He wraps himself in tzizit and sits in serious consideration looking forward to receiving the presence of the Sabbath, as he goes forth to greet the king. And the early sages would gather their students on the eve of Sabbath and wrap themselves and say: Come, let us go forth to greet Sabbath, the king (Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Shabbat 30:2).
This interpretive approach persisted through the 15th century and beyond, when R. Yaakov b. Asher, the Ba’al ha-Turim, wrote in his legal code that one should “rejoice in the arrival of Shabbat, as one going out to greet the king, and as one going out to greet the groom and bride.”9
It is not clear why so many medieval halakhists regendered the talmudic imagery in their depictions of Shabbat ritual, which effectively signaled an abandonment of the marriage metaphor. 10 It is likely that in their own attempts to conceptualize the splendor of Shabbat and to describe the reverence that the Talmud’s symbolism was meant to elicit, they identified more strongly with masculine icons and terminology. However, it is also possible that the recasting of Shabbat in masculine terms was an attempt to neutralize the marriage metaphor itself, whose intimate and even sexual overtones were a source of discomfort. 11
Kabbalistic Developments
Nonetheless, the marriage motif was embraced and enhanced by the Kabbalists, in whose theological treatises the feminization of Shabbat found its strongest expression. First in Sefer haBahir, then in the writings of the Nahmanidean school, and finally in the Zohar and post-Zoharic works, marriage was a metaphor used regularly and extensively to depict the union between different sefirot, or elements of the divine, whose singular natures were expressed, in part, via their distinct female or male identities. In kabbalistic theology, religious acts performed by human beings on earth were understood to trigger parallel responses in the divine realms; thus, Shabbat rituals, which were conceived of as the symbolic performance of marriage rites, were believed to inspire a wedding of the feminine and masculine attributes of God. Shabbat was not only the occasion of this mythic wedding, which was alternatively depicted as a royal coronation, but an actor in the multilayered drama as well.
In the symbolic system of Kabbalah, Shabbat was typically feminine, but was occasionally represented in masculine terms; the androgyny of Shabbat was akin to the androgyny of the divine. 12 Thus we read in Sefer ha-Bahir:
Why is it said: Remember [the Sabbath] (Exodus 20:8) and Keep [it] (Deuteronomy 5:12)? Remember [Zakhor] refers to the male [zakhar] and Keep refers to the female (Sefer ha-Bahir 182). 13
Shabbat was associated with both the masculine sefirot, Tiferet (Beauty) and Yesod (Cosmic Foundation), as well as the feminine Shekhina (Immanence). As Shekhina, Shabbat assumed the persona of bride or queen, who was betrothed or crowned by either Israel or one of the masculine elements of God, as in the earlier midrashic sources. Conversely, as Tiferet/Yesod, Shabbat actively betrothed the community of Israel, whose members themselves were associated with the feminine Shekhina! Indeed, in reflecting on the Talmud’s suggestion that Friday night is the appropriate time for Torah scholars to engage in marital relations (BT Ketubot 62b and Bava Kama 82a), Yehudah ben Yakar, teacher of the Ramban, posited:
Our mitzvah of marital coupling is [symbolically] derived from that which the Holy One said to the Sabbath: “The Community of Israel [Shekhina] will be your mate.” And [the Sabbath] is Zaddik Yesod Olam (Perush ha-Tefillot ve-ha-Berakhot 2:42). 14
Common to most of the depictions of Shabbat as feminine in kabbalistic texts is the image of Shabbat as recipient or receptacle, and indeed, even when associated with Yesod, the usually masculine sefirah, Shabbat is gendered feminine so long as this particular characteristic is being evoked. Thus, the following passage alludes to the earlier midrash regarding the coupling of Shabbat with the people of Israel:
“Through the seventh day” (Genesis 2:2) . . . [Yesod] served as a reservoir (mikveh) for divine blessing, the gathering place enjoined by God. This was alluded to in the verse “Let the waters under heaven be gathered unto one place” (Genesis 1:9). For [Yesod] received all the shefa (overflow). But [Yesod] lacked a partner, and so She…(Be’ur Sodot ha-Ramban to Genesis 2:3). 15
The feminine gendering in these texts reflects Shabbat as the object of human or divine attention – Shabbat that is filled up, taken in marriage, crowned, or otherwise acted upon. Moreover, the divine union that is the fundamental goal of wedding Shabbat to God/Israel is ultimately perceived as masculine. 16
Though not nearly as prevalent as the images of bride or queen, Shabbat does assume two additional female personas in kabbalistic writings: that of mother and of daughter. The neshama yeteira, the additional Sabbath soul that fuses with and transforms every Jew’s being for the duration of Shabbat, is associated with the Shekhina and described as an encircling, embracing, maternal presence. 17 In other texts, Shabbat is deemed God’s beloved daughter, who is exiled during the week but allowed to reunite with her family on the seventh day: “An only daughter is the Shabbat Queen.”18 These depictions, which draw upon women’s roles and relationships, suggest that the Kabbalists occasionally used feminine imagery to communicate aspects of religious experience that could not be sufficiently conveyed in more usual, masculine terms.
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Although a close reading of these texts demonstrates that the traditional gendering of Shabbat’s persona serves primarily to reinforce a passive model of femaleness, which may be disappointing to those seeking paradigms of agency, the concurrent association of femininity with reverence, majesty, and adulation is surely of some value to contemporary feminists. The fact that male thinkers and writers expressed their love for Shabbat in ways that idealized the feminine – and, perhaps more importantly, that in the process of identifying with the object of their adoration, they occasionally perceived of themselves and their relationship to the divine in feminine terms – suggests that feminine modes of being were indispensable to their own religious experiences. 19
At the very least, the celebration of femininity as an attribute of God and its positive association with passion, intimacy, and connection, might encourage new avenues of spiritual expression for women and men alike. Passivity and acceptance are not in and of themselves negative traits; indeed, the feminine gendering of Shabbat was undoubtedly an attempt to convey the serenity of the seventh day, in contrast to the turmoil of the work week. Gender roles are problematic when they are binding, but the availability of alternate paradigms of being may prove liberating for all.
And as gender roles themselves undergo change, the significance of traditional images and allegories may also shift, in spite of their former implications. Much in the way that marriage as a social institution has adjusted and adapted to meet the realities and the needs of new generations of women and men, so too might the metaphor of marriage come to represent a new, connected-yet-distinctive way of being. Rereading old texts in a new light should not delude us as to their original intent, but as it has in the past, tradition may yet prove rich enough and resilient enough to sustain inventive and contemporary interpretations.