Gender Fluidity, the Cherubim, and the Divine Presence
(In Liberating Gender for Jews and Allies: The Wisdom of Transkeit, edited by Rachel Jane Litman, from Cambridge Scholars Publishing in 2022)
Traditional Jewish sacred texts are brimming with gender non-conforming, gender fluid, trans* and intersex images, awareness of a multiplicity of bodily forms and shifting roles.[1] In this article, the primary focus will be on the variety of gender in the sacred figure of the cherubim, the angels on the cover of the Ark of the Covenant, which was the central object in the holy of holies within the Mishkan (travelling sanctuary) and later the Temple, the most sacred place in ancient Judaism.
But first, a teaching from Genesis Rabbah[2]:
Rabbi Jeremiah ben Elazar said: At the time that the Holy Blessed One created the primordial human/Adam, God created him androgynous, as it is said, ‘Male and female He created them’(Gen. 5:2). Rabbi Samuel ben Nahman said: At the time that the Holy Blessed One created the primordial human/Adam, He created him with two faces (du partzufim), then split him and made him two backs, a back for here and a back for here. [3]
That is, the primordial human was created intersex. And, since it is also written in Genesis that God created the human in the divine image, we might imagine that God’s own self is, so to speak, also intersex. We will return to this image, and the term “du partzufim”, (Aramaic for “two faces” or “two interfaces”), later.
The two faces, or two bodies, of the single primordial human, the one that is both male and female, gives us a glimpse of an image of a whole that contains multitudes, perhaps a hint of the divine multigendered Being. A related theme is that of the interconnectedness of that which appears separate. A common metaphor for this in Jewish tradition is the breasts. Fascinating in many ways, it gives a clear image of the female as giver of flow (whether of milk or of sacred teaching, depending on the text), as opposed to the dualist stereotype of female as essential receiver. In a lovely queering of gender, Midrash often attributes lactating breasts to the male ancestors and sages as well.
And the matriarch sisters Rachel and Leah are often imagined as a pair of breasts,[4] flowing nourishment and blessing into the world. They are associated with the upper and lower divine Mother partzufim/interfaces of the kabbalistic Tree of Life, and the indeterminacy of their identities, and their mystical unification, is a major theme in Jewish sacred thought. The two breasts may appear separate to the suckling infant, but it is clear to one who has a wider perspective that they are part of the same body. The pair of breasts, like the two faced primordial human, are a meditation on the interconnectedness of being. [5]
The cherubim on the ark cover provide a related image. The Torah describes them like this:
Make two cherubim of gold—make them of hammered work—at the two ends of the cover. Make one cherub at one end and the other cherub at the other end; of one piece with the cover shall you make the cherubim at its two ends. The cherubim shall be spreading wings above, sheltering the cover with their wings. They shall confront each other, the faces of the cherubim being turned toward the cover. Place the cover on top of the Ark, after depositing inside the Ark the Pact that I will give you. There I will meet with you, and I will impart to you—from above the cover, from between the two cherubim that are on top of the Ark of the Pact—all that I will command you concerning the Israelite people.[6]
Here, the Torah states “of one piece with the cover shall you make the cherubim at its two ends.” That is, the two cherubim are made of one piece of gold, together with the ark cover on which they stand. Like the breasts, from one perspective they appear to be separate beings, but with a step back it is clear they are parts of one larger entity, (in this case, the ark cover). The word used for angel here, cherub, (along with the word for blessed, baruch, and the root of the mystical divine chariot, merchavah), all are permutations of the same three root letters[7]—chaf, resh and bet. In Hebrew, numbers are expressed with letters, and these three particular root letters are all the letters that contain the number 2 (chaf equals 20, resh equals 200 and bet equals 2). So the cherubim are related to the concept of two-ness[8]. Not that there are only two, but that there are more than one, and these more-than-one also are unified as one. The cherubim point to the meaning of relationality, the paradox that existence is all part of one interconnected entity, while also allowing for differentiation, giving and receiving.
French Jewish kabbalist and deconstructionist theorist, Marc-Alain Ouaknin, asks in his Haggadah[9] why does Yachatz (the portion of the Passover seder in which a matzah is broken in two) come right before the telling of the story of the Exodus? He answers: “The words of the telling emerge from that break; from the empty place left between the two pieces of matzah. That breaking is an invitation to the reader to enter the text to say his own word there…there must be two in order for the text to exist—the author and the reader.”[10] That is, two-ness allows for relationality. The telling of the story emerges from the place between the two pieces. In Jewish tradition, the whole sanctuary is sacred, but the most sacred of all, at the center of the Holy of Holies, is the ark, and the most holy part of the ark is the space between the cherubim, where our passage from Exodus tells us, divine speech comes forth. That is, the apparent two-ness of the cherubim allows for an opening to exist, and through this opening, communication comes through.
The Slonimer rebbe, R. Shalom Noach Barzofsky, uses an interesting expression when discussing this phenomenon. In explaining how in current times, when the cherubim, ark, Holy of Holies and Temple no longer exist on the material plane, holiness can be drawn from the day of Shabbat (the Sabbath), he writes: “Israel suckles from the Holy Shabbat like they suckled from the ark and the two cherubim at the time of the Holy Temple”.[11] Again, there is a hint that the cherubim are also breasts. (And lest we think the cherubim’s association with breasts means they are female, please note that although they are conjugated as grammatically feminine in the book of Ezekiel, here in the book of Exodus, they are conjugated as masculine.)
The Talmud gives over a number of interesting teachings on the cherubim. In one section[12], it states: “the cherubim stood by a miracle”. This passage discusses an odd discrepancy in the book of I Kings, which gives measurements for the size of the holy of holies. The measurements leave no room for the ark or the cherubim, which the Talmud explains by concluding they took up no space whatsoever.[13] But the Zohar interprets the miraculous nature of the cherubim differently. Commenting on the same statement in the Talmud, the Zohar explains:
It has been taught: Three times daily a miracle occurred with their wings. When the holiness of the King[14] was manifested upon them, they raised their wings on their own, spreading them and shielding the cover. Afterward, they folded their wings, resting them on their bodies, as is written: The cherubim shall be spreading wings above (Exodus 25:20)–spreading, not [with wings] spread. Sheltering the cover with their wings (ibid)–not with sheltering wings. For they stood miraculously, rejoicing in Shekhinah. [15]
Daniel Abrams in his extraordinary book, Guf HaNashi HaElohi baKabballah, The Divine Female Body in Kabballah, reads the Zohar passage above through feminist theory, particularly that of Luce Irigaray [16] Based on a passage in Tikkunei Zohar, which teaches that the cherubim’s wings were lips, he writes:
The Zohar emphasizes here the will/desire of the female as a subjective expression of the female experience; the wings spreading and sheltering the cover on their own. The wings appear here as a metaphor for the lips of the vulva that flutter/arouse and spread, that is, separate into two, and not by means of the male enacting his power or his will to spread them, in entering into the holy of holies. The Zohar emphasizes how the sexual arousal of the female body is the fruit of her own will and not victory at the hands of the male, as it is written “spreading, and not ‘were spread’, sheltering, and not ‘were sheltered.’” The joy here exists with the Shechinah, which seals[17] the passage, and this is the recognition of the fullness of female lifeforce; the wings of the cherubim articulate the entirety of female arousal, which is the Shechinah dwelling, and identified with, the holy of holies at the time of desire/favor.[18]
That is, for Abrams, the cherubim evoke independent female arousal, without a male being the cause of it. Similar in some ways to the image of the cherubim as breasts, separate but part of a bigger whole, the image of the cherubim as mouth lips and vulva lips– which are both/all associated with the angelic wings that move on their own initiative on the ark in the holy of holies– evokes the independent arousal and desire of the Shechinah, the Divine Female presence.
Yet, Abrams takes this further. To understand what he has to say, we need to look at a couple of layers of related text. First, a passage from Talmud, which (right after comparing the staves of the ark to a pair of breasts), teaches:
Whenever Israel came up to the Festival, the curtain would be removed for them and the Cherubim were shown to them, whose bodies were intertwisted/arousing (m’orin)[19] with one another, and they would be thus addressed: Look! You are beloved before God as the love between man and woman. [20]
The Tikkunei Zohar tries to imagine what that intertwisting/arousal was like:
At that time of their unification [of the cherubim] it was like the verse from Song of Songs: “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth”. What are the kisses of his mouth (neshikot pihu)? [21] –Two lips of his and two lips of hers. This is the four wings of the chayot about which it is said ‘there were four wings for each one of them.’ When his two faces and her two faces are encompassed together, there are four arms for the two of them, about which it is says ‘each one has four faces, and each has four wings’. This is the four faces of the YHVH and the four wings of the name ADNY, joined together as one, YA HD VN HY[22]
The Tikkunei Zohar here understands the mutual arousal of the cherubim through two other texts, Song of Songs and Ezekiel. In the book of Ezekiel[23], the prophet has visions of angels called chayot [24], which the Tikkunei Zohar reads as the same sort of angel as the cherubim. The chayot have four faces and four wings. So when the two-winged cherubim join together, they become a four-winged creature, one chaya (singular of chayot).[25] This being then is associated with two names of God—YHVH, which is the most essential and sacred name of God in Judaism, which cannot be pronounced aloud, and ADNY, which is another sacred name for God, and is the one that usually is said when speaking aloud the written name YHVH. [26] It’s not that one cherub is associated with the name YHVH and the other with ADNY, but rather each has half of each God name, and then they come together, unifying the names of God. That is, God’s name, which is a way of expressing God’s presence, is made through the act of mutual arousal of seemingly separate beings, whose unification makes the name of God, the divine presence.
Abrams comments on this passage:
The author of Tikkunei Zohar characterizes the relation between the lips as a kiss, apparently between the two sides of the nekeivot orifices/females[27]. In an additional interpretive move, he doubles their ratio from two to four, in order to maintain the image of the kiss as a description of the joining of the name YHVH and the name Elohim (God), in order to relate to the more widespread tradition of joining together the quality of compassion [associated with YHVH], with the quality of judgment, [associated with the name Elohim], the male and the female. So it comes out that the two pairs of orifices, [or two pairs of females], the kissing lips, are understood anew as the two-faces (du partzufim) of the male and female and they complete the body of the four-armed Chaya, which stand for the four letters of the Tetragrammaton, two pairs of letters, male and female, male and female.[28]
The image of a kiss between the two sides of the nekeivot has so many layers of meaning: since the Hebrew word nekeivot itself is ambiguous–it could mean between the two mouth orifices, or the two females – it sets off another set of meanings. The kiss is between the two lips of one mouth, or between two mouths, with two lips each, or between the two sets of vulva lips of two females. Or the inner and outer lips from each side of a singular vulva fluttering, sheltering, spreading, like the divine female erotic autonomy described in the Zohar text on which Abrams is commenting. Abrams makes a very interesting point, in connecting the image of the Chaya angel, (which is the unification of the two cherubim), to the du partzufim, the two faces, the same phrase used in Genesis Rabbah to describe the primordial Adam who was created androgynous. The unification of the cherubim, then, is a rejoining of the primordial male/female human, and at the same time a unification of the divine name/presence.
Abrams says these cherubim, these kissing lips, that are the two-faces, “complete the body of the four-armed Chaya, which stand for the four letters of the Tetragrammaton [YHVH], two pairs of letters, male and female, male and female.” Generally, in kabbalah, a unification of the letters of the name YHVH means connecting the YH to the VH. The letters Y and V (yod and vav) are associated as male, and the two letters H (heh) are associated as female. In other words, the unification of the cherubim is not a unification of a male cherub and a female cherub, but rather of two cherubim each of which has a “male lip” and a “female lip”. That is, two gender queer cherubim, in an act of mutual arousal and desire, unify to create the primordial human, the name of God, and the most sacred space in the Jewish religion.
The Slonimer rebbe [29], in discussing the same Talmudic passages we examined above, cites a tradition that says the first letter heh of the YHVH (yod heh vav heh) corresponds to the Holy Blessed One, the second heh corresponds to Israel, and the letter vav in the middle is the Torah, which joins the Holy Blessed One and Israel into one. The Slonimer explains that this unification between the Holy Blessed One and Israel by means of Torah (which is also a unification of the letters of the divine name) happens between the cherubim because the two cherubim correspond to God and Israel (who are respectively, associated with the two letters heh of the Tetragrammaton), while the ark of the covenant over which they stood corresponds to the Torah, and the vav of the divine name. That is, once again we have an image of the unification of the cherubim as a unficiation of the name, or presence, of God. But the associations of which letter goes with which aspect of the process has changed. Later in this same essay, the Slonimer talks about suckling from the cherubim, so it makes sense that he associates them with the two letters heh of the Tetragrammaton, the letters that are associated with breasts.
This multilayered interetextual set of associations with the cherubim could be referred to by what Marc-Alain Ouaknin calls “the dynamism of meaning”. In discussing the passage from Talmud[30] that explains how it was that the staves of the ark were both seen and not seen (it compares them to breasts protruding through the curtain), he writes:
The Nirin veeyn Nirin [seen and not seen] is the continuous creation of reading, of successive readings. No reading should be identical to the preceding one. Each reading, each study, gives birth to “new faces”.
…The journey of the Ark is never over; it is an infinite journey of meaning that we call the “dynamism of meaning”. The “dynamism of meaning” is the impossibility of exhausting the meaning of an idea, of a law, of a Mitzvah. It is, above all, a supreme refusal of thematization.[31]
“A supreme refusal of thematization”, yes! Each glimpse we get of the cherubim, is a different reading, a different meaning: the letters heh; the letters YH and VH and the letters AD and NY in unification; God, Israel, and Torah; a chaya angel with four faces and four wings; two pairs of lips kissing; two sets of labia kissing; two pairs of genitals with one male and one female lip each; one set of inner and outer labia self arousing the divine into presence.
And so it is with each human, perhaps each bit of reality. Each glimpse a new reading, a new configuration of gender, of meaning, of differentiation within unification, a new aspect of divine presence a new opportunity for the divine voice to come through.
The Slonimer rebbe wrote that, in seeing the miracle of the cherubim spreading their wings, everyone saw “how silent matter has life force in it”[32] The cherubim, metal that has come to life—the Slonimer understands this revelation of divine presence as happening there in particular, but the cherubim are a palpable expression of something bigger—the living vibrance of all that is, the interconnectedness of being, the fluidity of gender, the dynamism of meaning. No wonder it was the holiest of holy places.
Acknowledgments:
My endless gratitude goes to Mir Yarfitz, Karen Barad, Ben Baader, and Nathaniel Berman, all of whom have engaged with, inspired, and informed my understandings of gender and kabbalah.
Works Cited
Abrams, Daniel. Ha-Guf Ha-Elohi Ha-Nashi Be-ḳabalah: ʻiyun Ba-Tsurot Shel Ahavah Gufanit u-Miniyut Nashit Shel Ha-Elohut. Yerushalayim, Hotsaʼat Sefarim ʻa. Sh. Y.L Magnes, Ha-Universiṭah Ha-ʻIvrit, 2004.
Barzovsky, Shalom Noach. Sefer Netivot Shalom. Yerushalayim, Yeshivat Bet Avraham Slonim, 1982.
Biale, David. “The God with Breasts: El Shaddai in the Bible.” History of Religions, vol. 21, no. 3, 1982, pp. 240–256.
Frish, Daniyel. Sefer Tiḳkunei Zohar. Yerushalayim, Mekhon Daʻat Yosef, 1991.
Gikatilla, Joseph ben Abraham. Gates of Light = Shaʼare Orah. San Francisco, HarperCollins, 1994.
Haskell, Ellen Davina. Suckling at My Mother’s Breasts: the Image of a Nursing God in Jewish Mysticism. Albany, SUNY Press, 2012.
Hellner-Eshed, Melila, and Nathan Wolski. A River Flows from Eden: the Language of Mystical Experience in the Zohar. Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 2009.
Irigaray, Luce. This Sex Which Is Not One. Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1985.
Matt, Daniel C. The Zohar. Pritzker, Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 2009.
Ouaknin, Marc. The Burnt Book: Reading the Talmud. Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1995.
Ouaknin, Marc-Alain, and Gérard Garouste. Haggadah: the Passover Story. New York, NY, Assouline, 2001.
Shaharabani, Yehudah ben G’org’i Eliyah. ʻOz Ha-Tefilah: Sidur Tefilat Shaḥarit: ʻim leḳeṭ ḳitsur Ḳaṿanot Ha-Ari … Y. Shaharabani, 1998.
Stenmark, Lisa, and Whitney Bauman. Unsettling Science and Religion: Contributions and Questions from Queer Studies. Lexington Books, 2018.
Yohai, Simon. Sefer HaZohar Im Payrush HaSulam. Jerusalem, Yeshivat Kol Yehuda, 1991.
Modern Language Association 8th edition formatting by BibMe.org.
[1] I have written about a range of gender indeterminacy in Jewish text elsewhere in my chapter “Gender and Indeterminacy in Jewish Mystical Imagery” in Stenmark and Bauman, Unsettling Science and Religion: Contributions and Questions from Queer Studies
[2] a collection of oral teachings on the book of Genesis, written down in about 500 CE
[3] Genesis Rabbah parsha 8:1. English translation by this author
[4] See Joseph Gikatilla, Sha’arei Orah, English in Gates of Light, The Eight Gate, the Third Sphere, pg 303, Avi Weinstein translator; Zohar II 22a and Daniel Matt fns, Siddur Oz HaTefillah, R. Yehudah Shaharabani on b’Malchut Shaddai in Aleinu
[5] See Haskell, Suckling at my Mother’s Breasts: The Image of a Nursing God in Jewish Mysticism; David Biale, “The God with Breasts: El Shaddai in the Bible,” History of Religions, 21, no. 3 (1982), as well as my article, ‘Gender and Indeterminacy in Jewish Mystical Imagery’ for more on the topic of sacred and divine breasts in Judaism.
[6] Exodus 25:18-22, Jewish Publication Society 1985 translation, except v. 20, which is Daniel Matt’s translation
[7] With very few exceptions, every Hebrew word is based on a three letter root. Words that share a root have related meanings, and words that share different permutations of the same three letters are sometimes understood as having something in common as well.
[8] which I want to differentiate from binary
[9] The text that is read during the ritual meal of Passover, which is called a seder
[10] Marc-Alain Ouaknin, Haggadah, p. 86
[11] R. Shalom Noach Barzofsky, Netivot Shalom, Vol. 2 p. 212
[12] Bava Batra 98b-99a, translation mine
[13] This raises an additional issue that there is no room to address in this paper: how the life force expressed by the cherubim evoke the never-ending arising of being out of nothingness.
[14] Note that in the Zohar, King (melech) is generally associated with the female Divine Presence, or Shechinah.
[15] Zohar III 59a (Daniel Matt, tr)
[16] Here, his comments are informed by the chapter, “When Our Lips Speak Together” in Irigaray’s book, This Sex Which Is Not One
[17] ‘Seals’—here, meaning ‘closes’
[18] Abrams, 54. Translation a combination of mine and that of Israeli writer, translator and poet, Dana Peleg, with whom I consulted on this.
[19] The root of this Aramaic word, ayin resh yod, means both interweave, entangle and arouse, thus implying a variety of meanings.
[20] Yoma 54a
[21] The text questions this phrase because there is an additional, unnecessary heh in pihu—peh yod heh vav. The word would normally be written piv—peh yod vav. The additional letter, heh, is the letter generally associated with the female aspects of divinity within the Tetragrammaton.
[22] Tikkunei Zohar, 25b, cited in Abrams, translation mine
[23] Ezekiel 1:5-25 and elsewhere
[24] Chayot literally means “alive ones”; JPS translates it as “creatures”
[25] Interestingly, the text seems to imply then that each cherub had two faces. The word for face in Hebrew only exists in the plural, so this may be related to the idea that every face is more than one.
[26] The following chart can clarify this complex set of associations:
Two Cherubim
Two Wings Two Wings
Two Faces Two Faces
(Wings= “Lips” =Arms)
Two Cherubim = One Chaya/Angel (the unification of the two cherubim)
(2 wings + 2 wings = 4 wings; 2 faces + 2 faces = 4 faces)
Four Wings of YHVH + Four Faces of ADNY = YA HD VN HY
[27] The Hebrew word nekeivot can mean cavities or females
[28] Abrams, 54 fn 68, translation a combination of mine and that of Israeli writer, translator and poet, Dana Peleg, with whom I consulted on this. A caveat: the associations mentioned in this quote are complex beyond the scope of this article, so our discussion will not be complete.
[29] R. Shalom Noach Barzofsky, Netivot Shalom, Vol. 2 p. 210-11
[30] Yoma 54a
[31] Marc-Alain Ouaknin, The Burnt Book, 204. His book, written in French, uses the word “thématisation”, which, more than the English cognate, implies restriction or limitation.
[32] R. Shalom Noach Barzofsky, Netivot Shalom, Vol. 2 p. 210
