Scheme - Re: Judaism and the Gender of G-d

Author

Re: Judaism and the Gender of G-d

Anton van Straaten

2004-06-04, 3:58 am

taltman@noshpam.lbl.government wrote:

> "Anton van Straaten" <antonvs@acm.org> writes:
>
>[> ...obvious conclusion that if Scheme has a gender bias,]

I should have written that Scheme could provide clues about God's gender
biases, since that's what leads to arbitrary gender discrimination in the
name of religion.
[color=darkred]
[2].[color=darkred]
>
> The mainstream Jewish belief is that G-d is above and beyond
> homocentric description. The gender issue only arises when various
> groups of Jews throughout history have attempted to address/describe
> G-d, with respect, using human language. This always seems to fall
> short of acceptable. That is why, in new times, the language used in
> Jewish liturgy is being revisited.

It's true that Judaism has been relatively progressive in this area -
relative to, say, the Catholic Church. But the broader issue of God's
presumed gender bias has historically been a pervasive one, and still hasn't
been completely eradicated. It was only in the 1970s that female rabbis
began to be ordained, and they're still not exactly common.

Perhaps it's like computer science, and female rabbinical students just need
to be fostered with different teaching techniques.

Anton

taltman@noshpam.lbl.government

2004-06-04, 8:57 pm

"Anton van Straaten" <antonvs@acm.org> writes:

> taltman@noshpam.lbl.government wrote:
>
>
> I should have written that Scheme could provide clues about God's gender
> biases, since that's what leads to arbitrary gender discrimination in the
> name of religion.
>
> [2].
>
> It's true that Judaism has been relatively progressive in this area -
> relative to, say, the Catholic Church. But the broader issue of God's
> presumed gender bias has historically been a pervasive one, and still hasn't
> been completely eradicated. It was only in the 1970s that female rabbis
> began to be ordained, and they're still not exactly common.

Just FYI, the first female rabbi in known history was Regina Jonas;
ordained in 1935 in Nazi Germany:

http://herstory.freehomepage.com/bios/jonas.html

Other than that, I think that I want to restrict my comments to the
Jewish concept of the 'Nature of G-d'.

My main point is that in Judaism you cannot assign a gender to
G-d. It's preposterous in our belief system. It's like assigning G-d a
hair color.

It was just through the inadequacies of human culture and language
that created situations where G-d needed to be addressed in a tense,
and then the customs of that culture of that time came into play.

If you look in the Torah, in the original Hebrew, there are places
where G-d is referred to in masculine terms/verbs, and others where
G-d is referred to in feminine terms/verbs. And these differences have
meaning for us.

~Tomer

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