God's Gender Play

This reflection is part of the ongoing Forest Hills Haftorah Series. The rest of the content can be found here: https://www.sefaria.org/groups/FHJC-Haftorah-Series .

If you were to try to picture God - what would come to mind? Would it be:

• A human, as He appeared to Abraham in Genesis 18? After all, Genesis 1 says we are all created "In His image."
• A burning bush as He appeared to Moses, when Moses was given the task of bringing His people out of Egypt in Exodus 3?
• How about a Pillar of Fire, as the Israelites saw, during their 40-years of wandering in the desert (e.g., Exodus 14:24) ?
• A shepherd? (Psalms 23)
• A gardener? (Genesis 2:8)
• A military warrior? (Exodus 15:3)
• None of the above? A little bit of all of the above?

This is just one small sampling - there are metaphors and poetic images for God throughout the entirety of the Tanakh! I like to think that this is because the nature of God is unlike anything else we experience on Earth, and every one of these images and metaphors works at least some of the time.

Throughout the Torah, we see that God takes masculine pronouns, with much of the imagery associated with Him being masculine. How often does traditional liturgy have us turning to אבינו מלכינו, our Father and King! I love this pairing of epithets, for these two words capture, so wholly, God's balancing act between imminence on one hand (Fatherhood), and transcendence on another (Kingship). At one and the same time, God can be Grandiose, Elevated, and Imposing - as well as present, available, personal and intimate.

In this week's Haftorah, in a deeply moving and emotional passage, Isaiah paints for us a picture which - while maybe not widespread - certainly does have its place in the Torah; God embodying feminine imagery:

There is such supreme tenderness throughout this passage. No one comforts like a mother comforting her child. And this is just what God intends to do for Her children during times of need.

This is not the only time that Isaiah draws on such imagery (Cf chapters 42 and 49). Nor is he the only prophet.

During one of those understandable moments when Moses becomes overwhelmed and frustrated with the magnitude of his task, he turns to God and vents:

We see Moses employing his truly masterful rhetorical skills in order to make the case that God - as both the child-bearer and -rearer of Her people Israel - is placing too much responsibility on Moses's shoulders, and not taking enough upon Herself.

Perhaps we see in our Haftorah that by the time we finally get to Isaiah - a prophet living as much as one thousand years later! - God has since begun taking Moses's message to heart.

My personal take-away from this is that any metaphor or image which one can conceive of which helps towards building a relationship with the Almighty is fair-game. God is too grand to fit into any single, or any group of characterizations - as the prophets throughout the Torah demonstrate. Perhaps it can even be suggested that every single interpersonal relationship we experience in life can, in some way, be used to help us further understand and pursue our relationship with God.

With this in mind, thinking back on the initial list above:

• Do you find any of these conceptions of God to be particularly compelling?
• Have you encountered any others throughout your own readings that could be added to the list?
• How else do you, or can you, relate to God which the prophets might not have spoken - or even thought of?