Author’s note: This blog was originally published on October 16, 2022. As we have just entered the month of Elul, I urge us to consider how the way we understand the divine influences the High Holy Days as well as our approaches to self-reflection, self-doubt, self-blame, wrong-doing and our behaviour in general.
I know it’s a little early, but l’shanah tovah.
I attended a number of High Holy Days services (online) over the past couple of weeks. In one of them, one of the rabbis said that the divine is the unknowable unknown. I cannot remember what the Rabbi said to contextualize or explain their train of thought; I think I was too intrigued by the idea that I got lost in my own thoughts. In fact, I have been thinking about the unknowable unknown ever since.
As I write this, I’ve come to this conclusion: if the divine is present among us and the world around us, then there is much we can intuit. In addition, there is much that we can experience the more we interact with other humans and nature. On the other hand, if the divine is understood as a detached, distant being of a completely different essence than humanity, of course, what can we really know about such a divinity? How would we even know if that divinity even existed? We probably wouldn’t. Here is the difference between a feminist understanding of the divine as this-worldly and empowering and a patriarchal conception of a distant divinity wielding power-over. Yet, interestingly, even the most patriarchal image of the divine has insisted on being relatable to human beings. Nonetheless, how we imagine the divine does matter.
In her book, Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age, Sallie McFague argues that the words and ideas we use to describe the divine are important. She advocates for the use of metaphors to describe the divine, stating that we can only describe what the divine is like, not what divinity actually is. In fact, she warns the reader of long-lasting models for the divine as these can lead to idolatry, an understanding that limits divinity and, because of this, is essentially untrue. She writes on page 99 that, “[i]f we use only the male pronoun [for the divine], we fall into idolatry, forgetting that God is beyond male and female…” In other words, we are limiting the divine and furthermore speaking an untruth.
This talk makes we wonder if she too is of the camp that we cannot understand divinity; that the divine is quite different from us. I mean if we cannot and should not have any long-standing model for the divine but only use shaky fleeting metaphors, our understanding of the divinity is genuinely limited and amorphous. Yet, there is a difference between some knowledge and experience of the divine and the idea of the divine as the unknowable unknown, isn’t there?
That being said, I find much of what she has to say extremely helpful when it comes to traditional understandings of divinity. In her book, she implicates as problematic the long-standing models of divinity as Father and King, among others. These out-dated models move us further and further away from the divine because they are thought to definitively explain who the divine is in relation to us.
Let us look at Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, as an example of this in Judaism. Here, we have a day in which we are highly vulnerable as we reflect on the ways in which we have not always treated ourselves, others, the world around us, and the divine as we should (had hoped to). Yet, we enter the synagogue and repeatedly address the divine as Avinu Malkeinu (Our Father, Our King). Why is the understanding of divinity that we approach one of judge, strict parent, and ruler over us? Does that not drive a wedge of sorts between divinity and humanity? Does that not make being inscribed in the book of life seemingly impossible unless we are non-human-like?
Contrary to what we often hear in shul, Judaism recognizes some 70 diverse understandings, or names for the divine. These names range from Hashem (the Name) and Shalom (Peace) to Shechinah (the in-dwelling) and Kadosh Israel (the Holy One of Israel). And there are many, many more.
Returning to our example again, instead of the umpteen rounds of Avinu Malkeinu, what would it be like on Yom Kippur if we approached the divine as Shaddai (Comforter), Hamakon (the Present One, literally the Place), or YHWH-Rapha (The One Who Heals)? These understandings seem to offer the compassion we need on a most vulnerable day. How much easier would it be to connect to divinity that understands us? Perhaps we could learn a little more about divinity in that case, and we could in the process become much closer to the holy? And, isn’t that the point of Judaism? To be holy like the divine is holy? I think so.
From a feminist perspective, how we understand the divine has real-life consequences which can shape how we understand ourselves and the world around us. Just imagine what Yom Kippur would feel like, if we called on the divine that day as the comforter, the present one, and the one who heals. It would feel totally different, and for very good reasons.
Who would have thought that some three weeks ago or so, I would have heard a phrase about the divine that still has me in a quandary? I mean, in the end, I suppose there are ways in which the divine is unknowable. Importantly, though, that does not make the divine wholly unknown. Rather, it is often the language we use about the divine that puts distance between us and divinity, that makes divinity less and less known.
Discover more from Feminism and Religion
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Feminism and Religion 
Thank you for your blog. It has given me a great deal of food for thought. I occasionally attend a welcoming church that inlcudes people of all faiths. When one gets up to pray, they often start with a string of names as opposed to one. Most often it is Mother, Father, Creator, Source, Spirit. This is to both address what we don’t know and to meet the needs of the entire congregation.
LikeLike
So many “if’s”….
LikeLike
I Agee that personal experience is important since all beings are a manifested from the creative power we call the Divine. Making God into a single being is restricting not only to humanity but to the Divinity we are trying to understand. I once attended a talk on emptiness given by a Tibetan Buddhist High Lama who described his own experience in terms of peeling away the layers of an onion and each time there is a different perspective, a different understanding until all the layers are removed and the truth is understood. There are multiple manifestations of Deities in all religions, each with different qualities, humans have used to describe the Divine and all are valid as part of the whole, which in itself is likely more simple than we realise. For myself, I like to think of the first aspect as the love from which every thing is born and blossoms. Life itself can sometimes seem holy, like a pilgrimage to the source. I think that maybe the Divine is knowable in terms of how much individual consciousness is able to perceive it. As we evolve we find more ways to describe it in terms of our own evolution.
LikeLike
I”ve thought of the divine in this way for many years , though the word I use most often is mystery. I couldn’t agree more with the dangers inherent in attempting to divine divinity – especially in the masculine model.
Even years ago when I read Merlin’s Stone’s When God Was a Women and literally felt the weight of patriarchy roll off my back, even when that epiphany changed my life – I knew the Goddess to be a kind of veil charged with divinity but not the unknowable unknown. Words fail of course as they always do at this point.
Nevertheless, in spite of knowing this I still need some language to speak of the divine, to belong to a spiritually oriented community, to give me a mode of worship that included the immense power of the idea of a Feminine Divine. So, eventually I became a priestess, adept at creating and leading powerful rituals through which a number of people could sync mind, heart, and soul and access that feeling we all had of longing for the unknowable unknown.
Being a poet, I understand very well the power of words and the way the keep and maintain boundaries. It’s become more and more important to me as grow into my craft, to us exactly the right word, that gets as close to conveying my meaning as it’s possible for me to get. But that larger context is always there, and I never forget the scale at which I’m working – the poem small and personal – the meaning much larger and encompassing humanity (I hope) – the universe and beyond embracing us/it all.
The power of naming has always been recognized – names are powerful magic in every religious and esoteric tradition. Knowing someone’s or something’s real name gave you power over them/it- so why so many names for the divine – Isis had ten thousand of them. The reason, I think is exactly because the unknowable unknown cannot be known, named, given a final definition or any definition at all.
I can’t thank you enough dear Ivy Helman for sharing your words and thoughts. L’shanah tovah tikatev v’taihatem and Blessed Be.
LikeLike