A Female Messiah - Cristina Ciucu

A female Messiah?
Jewish mysticism and messianism in the

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
Cristina Ciucu, Translated by Regan Kramer
In Clio. Women, Gender, History Volume 44, Issue 2, 2016, pages 63 to 94
The English version of this issue is published thanks to the support of the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la
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A female Messiah? Jewish mysticism and messianism
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
Cristina CIUCU
“My paternal uncle Jacob told me [that] when I was 2 years old he, having
taken me to bed, I slept with him. I didn't let him sleep until he said with me
Good night to every creature from the biggest to the smallest, even to big
and little mice, to all the snakes, all the animals of the forest, the birds etc.,
until he said with me, Good night daughter of God! Good night God’s wife!
Good night God! and thereafter I let him sleep.” 1
Jacob Frank, The Words of the Lord, § 479.
The “masculine” nature of most monotheisms and monolatries is


self-evident, and it constitutes a leitmotiv in the history, sociology and
psychology of religions. Monotheism(s), women’s exclusion from
religious worship, and inequality between the sexes would seem to be
intimately related. 2 Nevertheless, in many instances, the relationship
turns out to be too complex to be comprehended through mono-
causal or linear explanatory models. Most of the numerous feminist
studies on this topic point to Judaism as the source and archetype of
patriarchal order. 3
In this generally monolithic landscape, a comparative study of the
mystical, ascetic, pietist, Messianic and “heretical” movements within
the great monotheistic traditions – which often granted a more
central role both to the feminine element and to women themselves –
1 Frank 2001 (English translation by Harris Lenowitz).

2 For more on this topic, see the article by Christine Hope and Ronald Stover,
which offers a comparative statistical analysis of 312 societies [Stover & Hope
1984: 335-348]. Their position is nuanced by Gray [1987: 1121-1131].
3 See Von Kellenbach 1994.
64 Cristina Ciucu
could shed a more nuanced light on the subject. To my knowledge,

no large-scale comparative study has yet been carried out on this
topic. The concrete impact of a symbolic and religious valorization of
either the female element or of equality between the sexes on a
religious level has, to a limited extent, been studied for a range of
both Christian 4 and Muslim 5 monotheistic ascetic traditions. Aside
from the presence, in certain cases, of feminine elements in the
theological or theosophical imaginary, the negation of the body and
the doctrine of the transmigration of souls constitute additional
factors predisposing those traditions to a relativization of the
ontological hierarchy, to women’s greater involvement in the
congregations’ religious life and, consequently, to their having better
access to literacy and education. This might or might not translate
into a higher social position or status than that experienced by
women in nearby monotheistic communities.
Nevertheless, the presence of a female element in representations of
the divinity is not sufficient – nor even necessary – for women’s
increased participation in religious and social life.6 By the same token,
the affirmation of ontological and spiritual equality between the sexes,

as can be found in Catharism 7 and other Gnostic or mystic traditions, is
also present amongst the Great Doctors of the Church, particularly
Thomas Aquinas,8 without it having any effect on the perception or
status of women.9 In the case of the Kabbalah, it seems immediately
obvious that, for centuries, the presence of a female element, and even,
4 Like the primitive Christianities, and some Gnostic or Cathar groups; See: Smith
1973: 34-46; Clark 1986; McNamara 1976: 145-158; Kraemer 1980: 298-307;
King 2000: 175-176 and 329-344; King 2009: 21; King 2011: 519-538; Koch
1962; Abels & Harrison 1979: 215-251.
5 Essentially the Sufi and Batenite Isma’ili (“Interiorist”) movements, such as
Alevism, Bektashism and Druzism. See: Shaikh 2009: 781-822; Shaikh 2012: 35-60,
95-112 and 203-228; Hakim 2002: 28-30; Daftary 2012: 47-49 and 174-176; Betts
1990: 43-47, 51-52 and 97; Silvestre de Sacy 2013: Vol. II, 14, 56-60 and 235;
Massicard 2013: 15-16 and 102; Dressler 2013: 48.
6 Shahar 1974: 29-77.
7 Koch 1962: 103; Duvernoy 1982: 216.
8 Cappelle 1982: 63-68 et passim.
9 McLaughlin 1974: 213-266.
A female Messiah? Jewish mysticism and messianism… 65
in certain cases, of an egalitarian discourse, had no repercussion on

woman’s status. However, over time, those elements may have
composed a reservoir of ideas, sometimes subversive ones, able to
nurture religious movements and intellectual developments that, in
some cases, went beyond the limits of Judaism. That is the case for the
two major Messianic movements of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, formed around the singular figures of Sabbatai Zevi (1626-
1676) and Jacob Frank (1726-1791), movements for which the
Kabbalistic tradition provided both a theoretical-speculative setting and
instruments for a veritable religious revolution.
The feminine principle(s)

and divine manifestation in the Jewish mystical tradition
The question of gender and of the relationship between the masculine
and feminine principles is indisputably central to the Kabbalah, to the
extent that it sometimes structures the system’s theosophy, psychology
and ethics, making this a particularly fertile field for feminist and
psychoanalytic approaches. 10 The configuration of the divine

manifestation is represented by the ten famous sefirot. Two apparently
divergent conceptions of these metaphysical entities have coexisted
since the first Kabbalistic texts (early thirteenth century): an essentialist
or substantialist conception – the sefirot are the very essence of
manifest divinity; and an instrumental conception – they are the
instruments or receptacles of the divine essence. In this hierarchy of
emanation, the masculine/feminine differentiation structures the
sefirotic configuration, and therefore the three levels of divine
“individuality”: the intelligible (or mental), which generally includes the
first three sefirot, Crown, Wisdom and Understanding; the psychological or
emotional, including the sefirot Love, Judgment and Splendor; the physical,
represented by the sefirot Eternity, Magnificence and Foundation.
Considered as the quintessence of femininity, the tenth sefirah Divine
presence/Royalty (Shekinah/Malkuth) represents the passive foil to the
10 Tirosh-Samuelson 2011: 193 and 199-205.

66 Cristina Ciucu
whole sefirotic construction, its purpose being essentially receptive. 11

Thus the Kabbalistic tradition performs a synthesis between an active
and creative conception of the feminine aspect of the divine, 12 and the
Pythagorean feminine dyad. 13
Thus the divine worship is accessed through a feminine “door”.
As in certain Gnostic traditions, this prevents possible homoerotic
implications of the relationship between the male-subject and a
divinity that is clearly identified as masculine. Indeed, both Freud and,
much more recently, Howard Eilberg-Schwartz 14 have suggested that
the connection between a “son of Israel” and his masculinized God
implies a homoerotic relationship in which the believer is feminized,
the classic model of the “congregation of Israel”. 15 Both “God” and
creature at once, the sefirah Shekinah/Malkhuth feminizes the divinity
and defeminizes the subject. Thus the latter can confirm his
masculinity before a divinity that is both feminine in its most
manifest aspect and masculine in its emanation or flow (shefa‘), i.e. in
the very process of manifestation. Yet although the individual agent
of worship is most often a man, the idea of women participating in
the essential religious experience is not completely absent from

Kabbalistic literature. 16 Nevertheless, that participation is generally
conditioned upon a union or alliance with the masculine. 17 Thus, to a
certain extent, the Kabbalistic schema does bolster the traditional
11 Translator’s note: the names of the sefirot appear in different forms in various
languages. Here the terms closest to the French version in this article have been
used.
12 A similar conception of the relationship between divinities’ masculine and
feminine aspects can be found in Hinduism. See Scholem 1973b: 188-191.
13 Reformulated in the fourth hypothesis of Plato’s Parmenides, and fully developed
by both Proclus [Proclus, Platonic Theology, Book IV, § 30, p. 89 (7-13) and p. 90
(14)] and Damascius [Damascius, Commentary on Plato’s Parmenides, vol. 2, 42], the
dyad was presented there as the quintessence of alterity in all its forms. [Page
references relate to the French translations of these works, see bibliography].
14 Eilberg-Schwartz 1995.
15 See Scholem 1973b: 140-142, 155-156.
16 See, for instance, Zohar, I, 71a-b; III, 22b; Bahya ben Asher, Commentary on the
Torah, Va-yqahel, 35, 20; cf. Rapoport-Albert 2011: 119-134.
17 See, for instance, Zohar I, 70a.
symbolic representations that are deplored by feminist critiques of the

history of western philosophy 18 (the feminine principle as inferior,
materialistic, etc.). However, as in other mystic developments, 19 some
Kabbalistic texts do perform a reversal by asserting the equality of the
two principles, or even the superiority of the feminine as the principle
of reception – the foundation and goal of divine manifestation – or
even as the quintessence of the active principle.
Within the framework of the illustration of the complex
relationship between the masculine and feminine aspects of the
divinity that characterizes this tradition’s key texts, (at least) three
distinct paradigms that also compose schemas of redemption or
metaphysical “repairing” (tiqqun) can be identified. According to the
first one, the state of harmony or reparation of the human and divine
worlds is equivalent to an incorporation of the feminine into the
masculine, and, consequently, to the creation of a “male
androgyne”. 20 This is an example of the idea that the fulfillment or
“purification” of the feminine is equivalent to a masculinization. 21
The generalization of that model led the Kabbalah specialist Elliot
R. Wolfson to conclude that “ontologically, there is only one gender

in kabbalistic theosophy, because the female is part of the male,” and
the locus of femininity is in the phallus. 22 The success of that
interpretation, which was greatly influenced by Luce Irigaray’s work,
has contributed to eclipsing the other two paradigms, which are more
significant in terms of the phenomena under discussion here.
In the second paradigm, divine and cosmic harmony can be
reached through equality and ontological equilibrium of the
masculine and feminine attributes, in accordance with a
complementarity corresponding to the classic representation of
18 Lloyd 2004: in part. 2-38; Frankenberry 2004: 9-10; Tirosh-Samuelson 2004: 5-11.
19 In Ibn Arabi, for instance. See Hakim 2002: 1-29.
20 Wolfson 1980.
21 This idea can also be found in primitive Christianity and among certain Gnostics.
See McNamara 1976: 152-153; “The Gospel According to Thomas,” Logion 114,
tran. Pléiade 2007: 328 (Nag Hammadi Codex II, 2-7, vol. I: 93).
22 Wolfson 1994: 187-188 and 1995: 85. Deliberately monolithic, Wolfson’s
approach runs counter to the more historically contextualized ones, such as
Moshe Idel’s (Wolfson 2005: 58).
68 Cristina Ciucu
androgyny. 23 The union of the last two, inferior sefirot, which is

essential to the continuity of Creation, 24 can only be achieved in a
state of equality in which “the end joins and becomes one with its
beginning,” 25 in other words, when the original equilibrium of these
sefirot is reestablished. The notion of an equality sub specie absoluti of
the metaphysical principles and, implicitly or even explicitly, an
egalitarian anthropological conception (equality of souls and of
bodies) are present from the very first Kabbalistic developments, in
the early thirteenth century, for instance in the work of Azriel of
Gerona. They are founded on the mystical conception of an ultimate
non-distinction of opposites within the divine absolute:
The only difference [between men and women] resides in the opposition
of their reproductive organs; but in their union they become a single
body once again, and, in their generative power, the masculine is
engendered by the power of the feminine and the feminine by the power
of the masculine. 26
And finally, according to the third model, the future of the sefirotic
structure (and thus, of humanity) consists of three stages: an original
stage characterized by ontological equality between the masculine and

feminine principles; an intermediary stage – the current state of
Creation – consisting in a weakening of the feminine principle, and,
finally, the leap into a new (Messianic) hierarchy that translates into the
ascension of the feminine, within the sefirotic structure, towards a
place equal to, or even more elevated than that of the masculine (“the
light of the moon becomes equal to that of the sun”). 27 The inferior,
feminine sefirah, Shekinah/Malkuth thus supplants the masculine sefirah
Yesod (“Foundation”), whose status is sometimes perceived as
precarious. 28 The idea of an original, superior status of the feminine
principle can be found in certain texts: Sarah (associated with the
Malkuth sefira) was originally “above” Abraham (who is associated with
23 Idel 2005: 53-103.

24 Hayyim Vital, Sha‘ar ha-miṣwot: Introd., § 1.
25 Abraham Cohen de Herrera, Gate of Heaven: V, 12.
26 Azriel of Gerona, The Path of Faith… 212 [translated here from the author’s
French translation of the Hebrew text].
27 Weiss 2015: 74-87.
28 Idel 2005: 267, n. 137.
Hessed, “Compassion”); that situation, unsuitable for “birthing” or

“bringing forth” (i.e. the process of emanation), needed to be corrected
to allow for the complete divine manifestation. 29
Thus, the weakening or “humbling” of the last sefirah and the
subordinate status of the feminine principle represent only a
temporary situation, stemming from an imperfect order. Its “repair”
constitutes a central Kabbalistic theme and one of the main stakes in
the redemptive process. It requires, most notably, establishing a
(sexualized) relationship with the just ones or the mystics, who
thereby incarnate the masculine sefirah Yesod (“Foundation”). 30 Some
texts expounding on this idea even reassert and reinforce the concept
of women necessarily being submissive to men in the current order of
things.31 It is not a purely theosophical schema, as Malkhuth is
generally associated with actual women, while the sefirah Yesod is
associated with men. 32 Thus relations between the sexes reflect those
between the sefirot and are reflected in them. In a commentary on a
fragment of the Zohar, Salomon Alkabetz (a sixteenth-century
Kabbalist from Safed), gives expression to this idea:
The Just down below becomes the image of the one on high, and it is

through the former that the divine influx is transmitted to the Shekinah.
He is called “Shekinah’s husband,” for just as a husband feeds and
supports his wife, so a Just transmits the great influx to the Shekinah. 33
Thus the Just or mystic (the “Just down below”) is called upon,
through his communication or union with the divine feminine, to
reinforce and elevate a feminine aspect whose inferior status would
seem to correspond to the state of imperfection of existence in general.
This idea of a repairing of the feminine explains, at least in part,
some of the more liberating aspects of the Messianic movements that
29 MS BnF (French National Library) Hebrew 859, f. 8r.

30 See, for example, Scholem 1973b: 177-180; Liebes 1992: 49-51; Scholem 1973a: 277-
278; Idel 2005: 155-165; Abrams 2004: 29-45 et 161-178; Weiss 2015: 60-90.
31 That is the case of the Treatise of the Divine configuration (Sefer Ma‘arekhet ha-
Elokhut [late thirteenth/early fourteenth century], p. 132a-133a, respectively 111b
and 114a-b.
32 Zohar I, 81b-82a. Cf. Idel 2005: 124; Hellner-Eshed 2009: 135-136 and 165-166.
33 Ms BnF (French National Library) Hebrew 797, f. 7r.
70 Cristina Ciucu
upset the Jewish world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and
contributed to transforming it: Sabbateanism and its avatar, Frankism.
In this perspective, a certain sense of “equality” is not just a vague
hope, it is actually at the core of the “messianic agenda.”
Sabbateanism:
elevation of the Divine Feminine and emancipation of women
An important rabbinical figure in the Izmir congregation, Sabbatai Zevi
displayed from a very young age a certain eccentricity, by performing
“strange acts” such as pronouncing the tetragrammaton in public, or
proclaiming himself the Messiah, which would eventually lead to his
being expelled from his community (at some point between 1651 and
1654). 34 In 1665, after a period of wandering between the major Jewish
centers of the Ottoman Empire, including Jerusalem, he was
proclaimed to be the Messiah and son of David by the young
Kabbalistic rabbi Nathan of Gaza (1643-1680), who assumed the role
of prophet of the new movement thus created. In the short time
between this founding event and the new Messiah’s conversion to

Islam (in 1666), the movement spread throughout the Jewish
communities of the Ottoman Empire, Europe and North Africa,
without encountering much resistance from the rabbinical authorities.
After the conversion, the movement did not immediately die out, even
though a majority of the faithful left the fold. Nathan of Gaza
continued his work and his activities as a prophet until his own death,
in 1680. Some of the many members of the movement followed the
Messiah even into the paradoxical implications of his act, by also
converting to Islam while continuing to secretly practice their own,
idiosyncratic brand of Judaism: they are the famous Dönmeh.
According to Gershom Scholem, the Sabbatean movement’s
considerable success was largely due to the speculative genius of
Nathan of Gaza, who kept up a close correspondence with Jewish
diaspora communities. However, it does seem that many of the key
themes in his writing can be attributed to Sabbatai Zevi himself
– among them the redemption of the feminine aspect of the divine,
34 Scholem 1973a: 151-152.

which was essential to the discourses of the Messiah, his prophet and
many other disciples. The Kabbalistic motif of the Just who unites with
the Shekinah, 35 by elevating and purifying her, constitutes the
quintessence of the mystery of redemption. Such union aims to
establish a state of cosmic equilibrium in which “the light of the moon
becomes equal to that of the sun.” 36 In this soteriological logic, the
feminine element of the divine, Royalty or the “inferior Messiah, 37
constitutes the essential (or even exclusive) object of the Messianic
effort, since the masculine aspect is already “almost repaired,” as
Nathan of Gaza put it. 38 The feminine aspect is not, however, passive
within that process, because the initiative or “awakening” must come
from it, from Malkuth/Shekinah. 39 Thus the last sefirah must climb or
rise above its partner, Yesod, in order to become (anew) “a crown to her
husband,” 40 which corresponds to the third model described above.
Femininity of the Messiah

This conception is intimately tied to Sabbatai’s own Messianic self-
perception and self-definition, as his soul is seen alternately as essentially
feminine or as hermaphroditic.41 The Messiah of Izmir self-identifies

and is identified with both the sefirah Malkuth and the third superior
feminine sefirah, Bynah (“Understanding”), 42 the latter, insofar as it is
both “Mother” and “Son”, having both masculine and feminine
attributes. 43 He thus incarnates both partners of his “Personal God,”
which is the mediating masculine sefirah (“Splendor”), 44 represented by
the biblical figure of Jacob. Bynah (Leah) and Malkuth (Rachel), united
35 Nathan of Gaza, Derush ha-Taninim, in Scholem (ed.) 1944: 16-17.

36 Nathan of Gaza, Derush ha-Taninim, in Scholem (ed.) 1944: 33.
37 Idel 1998: 110-118.
38 Derush ha-taninim: 46
39 Scholem 1991: 131 and 133-134. Here Nathan of Gaza is echoing a Zoharic
precept [see Abrams 2004: 45-68; Idel 2005: 84] that is developed in the Lurianic
Kabbalah [see Galya Raza, 3v, p. 11].
40 Scholem 1973a: 277-278.
41 Scholem 1991: 17; Elior 2001: 534; Elqayam 1993: 32.
42 Idel 1997: 147-160; Idel 1998: 187.
43 Idel 2008: 454-460.
44 Elqayam 1993: 28ff.
72 Cristina Ciucu
in the soul of the Messiah, are represented in the Kabbalah inspired by

Isaac Luria (sixteenth century), as being respectively the mother and
wife of “God”. 45 The union with the mother, which takes place at
night, is occult, unconscious and original; the union with the spouse is
revealed, conscious and takes place in the morning. 46 The revealed
diurnal aspects, and the shadowy saturnine ones, the concealed world
of unity and the revealed world of plurality, 47 are thus united in that
immense field of tension and metaphysical conflicts that is the
Messianic soul.
Two other poles of the Kabbalistic feminine principle were also
used to justify a paradoxical redemption, particularly in the texts of
Nathan of Gaza. The first is represented by the feminine attribute
“Judgment” or “Rigor” (Dyn or Gevurah), 48 which plays a fundamental
role in his cosmology, representing the quintessence of metaphysical
alterity: “everything that teaches anything about an alterity is said to be
feminine (nuqba).” 49 The second pole is the passive feminine: what is
caused is passive in relationship to the Supreme Cause; therefore
everything that is manifest is “feminine” in relationship to its Source. 50
The place where these two poles of the feminine are made most fully

manifest being the sefirah Malkuth, which concentrates “all the shards
of the vases [i.e. the forces of evil] and the sparks of holiness,” 51 the
Messiah incarnates it and delivers it at the same time. In Sabbatai’s
“soul” – both a concentration of metaphysical evil and a force of
salvation – the feminine is at once saved and Savior. Among the
sources for this doctrine of Nathan’s is the idea of Hayyim Vital, a
disciple of Isaac Luria, that a great soul – and a fortiori the Messianic
soul – must be torn from the realm of evil (Sitra Aḥra) by cunning. 52
45 Idel 2005: 143.

46 Israel Saruq, Sefer Limude aṣilut: 9-10.
47 Moses de León, Sefer ha- Rimmon: 97.
48 Sefer ha-Beriah, MS Paris BnF 868, f. 38v.
49 Sefer ha-Beriah, MS Paris BnF 868, f. 40v.
50 Idel 2005: 198.
51 Scholem 1991: 120.
52 Scholem 1973a: 64. This motif is associated with a Katabatic Messianic
conception presented in a number of Kabbalistic texts from the late thirteenth
Therefore, the feminine aspect of Holiness can only be redeemed

from within and through the completion of all the potentialities of
the “forces of alterity.” According to an idea developed, among
others, by the sixteenth-century Kabbalist Moshe Cordovero, the
Shekinah must descend into the “shards” [the realm of evil]; and
therefore ascension and redemption cannot begin until it has reached
the lowest point of that descent. 53 From Adam to Abraham and the
great figures of the Kabbalistic tradition, the “Just” have all tried to
accompany the Divine Presence into this descent in order to save it,
but they all failed in one way or another. According to his prophet,
Nathan of Gaza, it was only the Messiah Sabbatai Zevi who was able
to descend while remaining pure, and thus to begin the process of
redemption. 54 It is a slow process indeed, because, as one of Nathan
of Gaza’s disciples stated, redemption could not appear suddenly: the
world would not have withstood it and would have returned to
chaos. 55 This was the reason why Sabbatai Zevi could not accomplish
redemption in his own lifetime, but only began a process that would
carry on over an indefinite period. This “rationalization of failure”
undoubtedly contributed to the survival of the Sabbatean movement

after its Messiah’s conversion to Islam, in 1666.
Redemption of the Divine Presence and Women’s Liberation

Once that redemptive process has been accomplished, women too will
be able to be freed from bondage. This liberation will include even the
most “impure” aspect of femininity, embodied by the “foreign
women,” 56 a motif present throughout the Kabbalistic tradition from
the late thirteenth century onwards. 57 According to Nathan of Gaza,
this liberating effort is where the significance of King Solomon’s love
of foreign women resides; yet, since the circumstances were not yet
conducive, nor the dispositions of his soul equal to the mission, his
century onwards. On this issue, see Idel 1998: 118-119; Wolfson 1988: 73-95;
Scholem 1973a: 63.
53 Zak 1984: 201.
54 Derush ha-Taninim: 40.
55 Ms New York JTS 2124, f. 30v.
56 Galya Raza, 13a, p. 51; Rapoport-Albert 2011: 61-63.
57 Voir Zohar, I, 130b et I, 150a; cf. Idel 2005: 144-145 and 2011: 77.
74 Cristina Ciucu
actions introduced a surfeit of disequilibrium into the divine

configurations, as well as into history. 58 Still according to Nathan of
Gaza, the authenticity and success of Sabbatai Zevi’s Messianic actions
would necessarily lead to the redemption of those elements that had
been demonized by the earlier tradition, as well as to the relativization
of the idea of impurity. The Messianic age whose path he had opened
was therefore an age of conciliation with all differences, beginning with
the most intimate one: women.
Inspired almost exclusively by Kabbalistic sources, the soteriology
of Sabbatai Zevi and Nathan of Gaza is indisputably one of the
explanations for the egalitarian tendencies and the liberating
orientation 59 that characterized the Sabbatean movement from the very
beginning. The Messiah of Izmir does indeed seem to have been
animated by a surprising – to say the least – desire to involve and
emancipate women. The most peremptory historical account along
those lines comes from the Minister of the Reformed Church of Izmir,
Thomas Coenen, according to whom the Messiah had promised the
daughters of Israel freedom from the yoke of their bondage:
But give thanks to God that I have come into the world to redeem you

from all your torments (schwarigheden) and to liberate you and make you as
happy as your husbands; for I have come to annul the sin of primeval
Adam. 60
In his monumental monograph devoted to the Sabbatean
movement, Gershom Scholem expresses the belief that the “feminine
principle” in the Kabbalah sufficed to explain the movement’s
“feminist” leanings; thus there was no need to invoke any other
historical factors. In his opinion, since the ideal of women’s
58 Derush ha-menorah, in Scholem (ed.) 1944: 97. The anti-Sabbatean author Jacob
Emden associates the motif of King Solomon’s wives to an example of the
Kabbalistic hubris of Sabbatai and the Sabbateans, which consist in unleashing
the rigors (dynim). See Zot Torat ha-qenaot: 44a-b.
59 See Ehrlich 2001: 293.
60 Coenen, Ydele verwachtinge der Joden…: 33 (English translation by Joel Linsider,
from Dybbuks and Jewish Women in Social History… by Rachel Elior, 2008 Lambda
Publisher Inc. NY). About this account, see Scholem 1973a: 403; Rapoport-
Albert 2011: 16-17 and 107-108; Elior 2014: 39.
emancipation remained “vague and ephemeral,” 61 it was not decisive

in the movement’s blossoming, development or posterity.
In what constitutes the most important piece of research on the
female presence within Sabbateanism and Frankism 62 – and in all
likelihood, the most in-depth study to date on the issue of women in
the historiography of Judaism –, Ada Rapoport-Albert advocates for a
different approach. She minimizes the role of the Kabbalistic tradition,
searching instead for explanatory elements in the immediate social-
historical context, while granting a central place to the women in the
Messiah’s entourage, whose role had been minimized by Scholem.
Standing out among these women is the Messiah’s spouse, Sarah, who
– according to contemporary accounts, such as that by the anti-
Sabbatean poet and rabbi Emmanuel Frances – contributed to Sabbatai
Zevi’s assertion of his own Messiahship. 63 While taking the Kabbalistic
roots of those movements into consideration, Ada Rapoport-Albert
concludes that since the Kabbalah, by establishing a sexual disparity
between the two aspects of the divinity, offers neither the framework
nor the “conceptual tools” needed to represent or consecrate women’s
spiritual affirmation, Sabbateanism and its avatars stand out as

anomalies in the history of Judaism. 64 Based essentially on the
conclusions of Elliot Wolfson and other feminist approaches,
Rapoport-Albert insists, in fact, on the conservative nature of the
Kabbalistic tradition, which, she believes, contributes to perpetuating
and even reinforcing halakhic structures and practices. 65 One key to her
reasoning comes from a re-reading of the main texts in Sabbatai Zevi’s
intellectual education, particularly the Book of the Marvel (Sefer ha-Peliah).
Usually considered to be subversive, this text, which was probably
composed in the Byzantine Empire during the latter half of the
sixteenth century (and takes the form of a disciple asking questions of
his master), points out and denounces – in very bold terms for the
time – the inconsistencies of the halakhic system. Among these
61 Scholem 1973a: 405.

62 Rapoport-Albert 2001: 143-327; Rapoport-Albert 2011.
63 Scholem 1973a: 192; Rapoport-Albert 2011: 31 and 176-177.
64 Rapoport-Albert 2011: 8-10.
65 On this point, see also Tirosh-Samuelson 2011: 210.
76 Cristina Ciucu
inconsistencies, or even absurdities – is the problem of Jewish women’s

inferior status, and particularly their exclusion from worship and from
the obligation of accomplishing the positive commandments, which
condemns them to exclusion from the world to come. The master
replies to the disciple’s criticism by invoking esoteric explanations,
while often going even further than his interlocutor in terms of
exposing the contradictions in the latter’s legal reasoning. Agreeing
with Thalya Fishman’s analysis, 66 Ada Rapoport-Albert concludes that
the text is subversive in appearance only, and that it in fact presents a
hypernomian vision, even though the (anonymous) author adopts – in
a way that is surely deliberate – ambiguous and contradictory
arguments, including those that concern women. 67 It is impossible to
go into greater detail here about the interpretation of the Book of the
Marvel, yet, even if one acknowledges it as being well founded, it seems
to me that, in its conclusions, Fishman and Rapoport-Albert’s analysis
minimizes the importance of one of the principal sources of Sabbatai’s
Messianic theology and one of the rare medieval Jewish texts that
explicitly states that “the principle and the strength of the [legal]
foundations” of rabbinic literature are unsuitable for leading to

wisdom. 68 I consider such an approach counter-productive in terms of
a global comprehension of these phenomena.
Women’s massive participation in the Sabbatean movement is
documented by numerous Jewish sources (Jacob Sasportas, Jacob
Emden, Baruch of Arezzo and Leib ben Ozer, to name but a few),
and confirmed by a great number of Christian sources. 69 Women’s
prophetic ecstasies were scandalous to conservative opponents of the
movement, such as Sasportas, who used them as his main argument
for de-legitimizing the movement, insofar as women, in his opinion,
lacked the necessary qualities for prophecy. 70 Rather than winning
over the traditional authorities, those prophetic-mystic phenomena
66 Fishman 1992: 199-245.

67 Ibid.: 205-245.
68 Sefer ha-Peliah 1784: 3b. On the importance of that text to Zevi, see Scholem
1973a: 116-117.
69 Koutzakiotis 2014: 75-76; Goldish 2009: 119-123.
70 Sasportas, Ṣiṣat novel Ṣevi: 96, 148, 162, 190, 193, 210; Qiṣur ṣiṣat novel Ṣevi: 5b, 8b,
16b, 20a, 26a, 33a; Rapoport-Albert 2011: 17-19; Goldish 2009: 140.
dating back to the Lurianic movement 71 were more likely to arouse

their suspicion. Due to their vulnerable position, women were indeed
often the “victims” of “possession” phenomena (dybbuk), the
negative counterpart of prophetic-angelic inspiration (maggid), which,
on the other hand, was an almost exclusively male phenomenon. 72
Those episodes of female prophecy, in the most effervescent
moments of the Sabbatean and Frankist movements, are also similar
to the dybbuk because of their inarticulate, ecstatic and often
uncontrollable nature. Since they also affected children, 73 Gentiles 74
and non-Jewish women, 75 some of these phenomena leaned towards
the dissolution of distinctions and determinations (gender, age and
even religion) rather than towards a greater visibility for women per se.
Certain authors, such as Leib ben Ozer, highlight the spontaneous
and collective participation (of men, women and children) in these
trance states rather than on that of women in particular. 76 The
authenticity of Sabbatean Messianism was therefore supposed to be
confirmed by this universal recognition, which surpassed and even
erased categories and determination.
The most remarkable aspect about women’s participation in the

Sabbatean movement is probably their access to study and reading:
both of the Torah and – in an even more revolutionary way – of the
Kabbalah, and particularly of the Zohar, 77 the cornerstone of the
whole movement. The early part of the modern period having been
marked by the transition from fairly elitist cultural practices towards a
more generalized dissemination, culture was also starting to become
– as Zeev Gries’s studies show – a more domestic affair. The
Sabbateans took full advantage of the increasing availability of printed
71 Faierstein 2003.
72 Bilu 1996.
73 Goldish 2009: 119-120.
74 Scholem 1973a: 830-832.
75 Scholem 1973a: 413; Goldish 2009: 159-161; Koutzakiotis 2014: 119; Rapoport-
Albert 2011: 17 and 155.
76 Leib Ben Ozer 1978: 53-55.
77 Scholem 1973a: 403; Rapoport-Albert 2011: 137-141 and 156; Maciejko 2011:
250-251.
78 Cristina Ciucu
text. 78 Thus the distribution of Kabbalistic books was part of a

program of “democratization” that included women. And, as in the
case of the prophetic phenomenon, the access to study (including of
the Kabbalah) concerned not only women, but also non-Jews, who
were initiated into the mysteries of the Book of Zohar by the prophet in
person. According to Ada Rapoport-Albert, this inclusion of Gentiles
is in contradiction with the Lurianic conception of redemption, which
consists essentially in destroying all the “shards” (i.e. the place of evil
engendered by original cosmic accidents). That is partially true, but
Sabbateanism went well beyond the Lurianic Kabbalah in terms of
the problematizing of the relationship to metaphysical and religious
alterity, by drawing closer to a apocatastatic vision that is not without
precedent in the Jewish mystical tradition. Women’s and Gentiles’
access to the great “mysteries” of the divinity is the supreme proof of
the ushering in of a new cosmic era, in which various forms of alterity
would no longer be seen simply as figures of “evil”.
Socio-historical factors and cultural exchanges

The main socio-historical factor that has been proposed to explain

the movement’s revolutionary aspects – based essentially on Joseph
Hacker’s studies of the Iberian communities of the Ottoman
Empire – is the social and cultural diversity within those
communities, which is supposed to have contributed to destabilizing
and sometimes even overturning established standards and values.
The influx of exiled Spanish and Portugese Jews is supposed not only
to have brought about social pluralization, but also to have
engendered halakhic divergences about family norms and the status
of women. 79 It would also have led to certain changes in social mores
(especially with the arrival of former conversos) – in addition, of course,
to an increased distribution of the Spanish Kabbalah 80 within the
Jewish community, which nevertheless remained very committed to
studying philosophy and science. 81 The structure of the Iberian family
78 Gries 1994: 204-211.

80 Elqayam 1996: 637-670.
81 Hacker 1974: 569-603.
itself would even have been destabilized, in some cases, because of

social change, which would have led to a sense of crisis, and,
implicitly, to new Messianic expectations. 82 In fact, the resurgence of
Messianisms and Chiliasms in the “generalized crisis” period of the
seventeenth century is a well-documented pandemic phenomenon, 83
whose extremely complex causality ranges from economic, 84 political,
social and religious 85 data to rare astronomical phenomena 86 and
climate or ecological change. 87
It is acknowledged that, in the Muslim setting, one non-negligible
factor consists of the proximity and possible relationship of the
Messiah of Izmir with the Bektashi dervish order, 88 within which
women enjoyed a more active participation in both religious and social
life. These two esoteric doctrines do in fact have a few similarities, and,
over the course of their history, they would interact on numerous
occasions. The Sabbateans (and especially their most radical branch,
the Karakashes) displayed a particular interest in Bektashi Sufi
practices. 89 Like the Batenite congregations, the Sabbateans who
followed their Messiah’s example by converting to Islam (the Dönmeh)
would generally be less subject to moral prescriptions and formal

constraints than the majority of the Muslim population. 90 Dönmeh
women participated actively – although undoubtedly less than in the
Bektashi congregations – in various aspects of religious life, and, in the
early twentieth century, the Dönmeh would be involved in the
secularist and women’s liberation movements. 91 Both communities
would be accused of immorality by traditionalist Muslims.92
82 Rapoport-Albert 2001: 111.

83 Voir, par exemple, Popkin 1992: 90-119 et passim; Fanlo & Tournon (dir.) 2001;
Goldish & Popkin (dir.) 2001; Toon (dir.) 1970.
84 Hobsbawm 1954: 33-53; Parker 2013: 55-76.
85 Trevor Roper 1959: 31-64; Parker 2008: 1053-1061; Parker 2013: 26-54, 185-210.
86 Parker 2008: 1061-1062; Parker 2013: 11-14; Koutzakiotis 2014: 19-31.
87 Parker 2008: 1062-1079; Parker 2013: xv-xx, 3-25.
88 Scholem 1973a: 436-437; Fenton 1988: 81-88.
89 Sisman 2015: 239-241.
90 Baer 2010: 130-132; Rapoport-Albert 2001: 101.
91 Sisman 2015: 189; Baer 2010: 103-104.
92 Sisman 2004: 224 and 2015: 270.
80 Cristina Ciucu
Finally, comparable phenomena of relative emancipation and

transgression of norms are not rare in times of transition or when a
new religion or sect is emerging. The best-known example is primitive
Christianity, in which women were not only extremely active, but also
sometimes had power vested in them. 93 Times of crisis or of popular
enthusiasm equally engender generalized participatory phenomena in
which marginal categories predominate. Matt Goldish compares, for
example, the collective Sabbatean manifestations with those of the
[French Protestant] Camisards, the [heretical French Catholic]
Jansenists of Saint Médard and the seventeenth- and eighteenth-
century Spanish beatas, explaining their similarities through Jean-Michel
Oughourlian’s theory of universal mimesis. 94 Yet amongst the
Sabbateans, the phenomenon of female prophecy is not limited to the
period when the sect was emerging, but instead extends well beyond
the Messiah’s conversion and death.
In the entourage of and influenced by Jacob Frank (1726-1791)
– another Messianic figure whose self-proclaimed mission was the
perpetuation and accomplishment of the process of redemption that
had been initiated by Sabbatai Zevi –, the scenario of universal salvation

would place women in new roles ranging from a cult of virginity with
shades of Mariology to the most uninhibited Bacchanalia. As heir to the
Sabbatean myth, Frankism took the preoccupation with the feminine
element of the divine even further, in a more concrete expression in
which the libertine dimension prevailed over the liberating aspect.
Frankism: libertinage and/or liberation

One of the most disconcerting figures in Jewish history, Jacob Frank
prolonged the Sabbatean logic by turning towards the religion that he
saw as being the closest to Judaism, i.e. Christianity. Both his actions
and his writings take advantage of all the ambiguity of the love-hate
relationship between the twin brothers (Jacob and Esau), torn
between the desire to reunite and the rivalry between those who
shared the same womb, and were, originally, almost
93 Smith 1973: 35.

94 Goldish 2009: 113-118; Oughourlian 2000: 17-18.
indistinguishable. 95 For Frank, the symbiotic-integrative relationship

to Christianity expresses itself through an implicit or explicit
identification 96 with the figure of Jesus. The main reason invoked to
justify the need to turn towards (or even convert to) Christianity in
order to be saved is the place of the feminine principle and of
women. Unlike Islam, which oppressed and veiled them, 97
Christianity was seen as a feminine religion, one in which women
were treated with courtesy and even glorified through the cult of the
Virgin, the latter being undeniably the keystone of Frankist
theology. 98 And since redemption of the feminine was indeed the
only path to salvation, Sabbatai Zevi could certainly not accomplish
his Messianic mission in Muslim land. Thus the process of
redemption could only be achieved in a Catholic country, through the
cult of the Virgin.
In addition, despite his sexual ambiguity, the Messiah of Izmir
suffered from a fundamental deficiency: he was not actually and fully
a woman. Thus he was unable to assume his Messianic role. Sabbatai
was only secretly and spiritually female; 99 Frank’s soteriology searched
for – and would find – an actual woman capable of becoming the

new Messiah, the simultaneous incarnation of both the Shekinah and
the Virgin. 100 By rejecting the elements of redemption that are
spiritualized in Sabbateanism, Frank drew the sefirotic world into the
flesh, as a concrete reality pertaining to the domain of the feminine,
in a materialist vision of salvation. 101 Corresponding to the “higher
family” of the Kabbalists, Frank posited an actual worldly family with
an apparently egalitarian structure, at the center of which presides the
new, dual, male-and-female Messiah, incarnated in a man and a
woman. 102 As for the redemption of the Shekinah, it is concretely
95 The Collection of the Words of the Lord: § 700. Cf. Maciejko 2011: 185.
96 The Collection of the Words of the Lord: § 50 and § 1290.
97 The Collection of the Words of the Lord: § 1194.
98 Rapoport-Albert 2011: 200-201 and 209.
99 The Words of the Lord: § 813.
100 The Words of the Lord: § 552 and § 609; Maciejko 2011: 171-172; Rapoport-Albert
2011: 184 and 234-235.
102 The Words of the Lord: § 143; Rapoport-Albert 2011: 157-174 and 233.
82 Cristina Ciucu
performed by a flesh-and-blood woman. Although Frankist

Messianism started out as a personality cult of its leader, the “Big
Brother”, this male Messiah gradually steered attention and worship
towards the female incarnation, his daughter Eva Frank, though this
left many of his followers unconvinced. 103
Equality, sexuality, sexism

The participation of women in the Sabbatean and Frankist movements
is also indissociable from a libertine antinomian tendency, a desire to
transgress the limits of tradition in its most essential aspects concerning
both family structures and fundamental religious categories, such as the
pure and the impure, the sacred and the profane, etc. 104 The violation
of sexual taboos, such as adulterous sexual relations, or relations during
menstruation, 105 is a constant in the history of Sabbateanism, and it
would pervade the collective imagination (on the theme of the
dybbuk, 106 for instance). Above and beyond the movement’s
antinomian or “meta-halakhic” tendencies, 107 these deviant sexual
practices are not entirely disconnected from Sabbatai Zevi’s saturnine
nature, 108 or the Kabbalistic representations of relationships between

the sefirot. Indeed, since the Shekinah herself is subject to feminine
cycles, and union in that state of impurity is forbidden (Leviticus 18:
19), this inferior sefirah is periodically reduced to a state of
“diminishment” (qatnut) 109, or weakness, since it is then separated from
the superior configurations and no longer receives the divine influx.
However, during the Messianic times, the sefirotic union is raised to a
higher level, one that transcends the forbidden or the very notion of
impurity. Thus inseparable from the rest of the divine, the Shekinah is
no longer either source of or prey to the forces of evil. 110

104 Maciejko 2011: 26-27; Rapoport-Albert 2001: 132-136.
105 Maciejko 2011: 33 and 38; Feiner 2011: 73-74; Koutzakiotis 2014: 90; Rapoport-
Albert 2011: 132-136.
106 Bilu 2003: 49-50.
108 Idel 2011: 69-72; Idel 1997: 147-160.
109 Zohar III, 249a-b.
110 See Faye Koren 2011: 75-97.
Rapoport-Albert’s remarkable analysis highlights the egalitarian

tendencies that are noticeable both in the Frankist discourse and in
the organization of the “lower” family, which is perfectly symmetrical
in terms of gender, and whose members, distinguished only by sex,
are all equally subject to the Big Brother. She sees in the court of
Jacob Frank, inspired by monastic organization, the concretization of
a carefully considered project aiming to establish equality between the
sexes, before replacing the Messiah with a woman. Thus the
antinomian sexual practices would have an emancipating function.
Rather than being anarchic, they are seen as following a well-defined
calendar in which periods of chastity alternated with periods of
ritualized licentiousness: a vast, staged performance in which men
and women, in absolute parity, would together bring about
“redemption through transgression.” 111
Nevertheless, despite the perfect parity within the family and in
participation in this ritual, these practices were, most often,
profoundly humiliating and traumatic for the women involved (sexual
acts, often forced ones, in public; incest, sexual submission,
humiliations and physical punishment, etc.). Although it is true that

orgiastic rites like dancing around a naked woman and partner-
swapping were attested from Sabbatean times and had been imported
into Poland before Frank’s arrival, 112 Frankist ceremonies were far
more abusive and tyrannical. The women in the Family were entirely
submissive to the Big Brother, and reified; they were not allowed to
take a spouse, because they all belonged to the leader, and the men
who served him could “use” them all. 113 Where Sabbatai’s actions
were fairly symbolic and provocative, Frank’s – including those
performed on women – were very often violent and despotic. 114 The
egalitarian structure as well as the discretionary power of the “Lord”
are not unlike some sects, and the same was true of Frank’s deviant
behavior, in which Shmuel Feiner rightly sees a Jewish version of the
111 Rapoport-Albert 2011: 99-100, 160-162, 164-165, 166-167, 170 and 232.
112 Maciejko 2011: 200; Feiner 2011: 73-74.
113 Frank, The Collection of the Words of the Lord: § 418.
84 Cristina Ciucu
Marquis de Sade. 115 Frankist doctrine, however, is far less coherent or

articulate than the Marquis’s. His Words of the Lord, filled with
contradictions, focus on the parity within the Family and on the
centrality and eminence of the Messianic figure of Eva Frank, but
also on the uselessness of women, with whom “you can’t do a thing,
for they introduced death into the world,” and even on the idea that
the feminine domain is death. 116 And while the vision he conveys of
his daughter, the Messianic Shekinah, is very feminized, the Big
Brother frequently masculinized his women disciples, turning them
into cross-dressing armed soldiers. 117 Thus his funeral procession was
accompanied by an army of amazons garbed in silver shields.
Echoes and posterity

Thanks to its role in the process of secularization and the
dissemination of certain Sabbatean ideas, Frankism undoubtedly, if
indirectly, contributed to women’s liberation. Even though its spirit
was not an Enlightenment one, due to its libertine components it
went further than Sabbatianism in questioning or even annulling the
foundations of the Jewish religion. Indeed, the ritual established by

Frank preserved very few elements in common with traditional
Judaism. According to Feiner, its functionalist understanding of the
commandments, seen as superfluous, contains a Deist “or even
Spinozist” element. 118 The outlines defining religious affiliation blur,
as those that demarcate the Frankist family become more precise.
Thus, the Big Brother permits the inclusion of Christian children in
the minyan [quorum of adult Jewish males required for prayers and
religious duties] and allows Catholic children to recite the prayers for
women in labor. 119 He urges abandoning all studies, and giving up on
115 Feiner 2011: 78-80.

117 The Collection of the Words of the Lord: § 821.
118 Feiner 2011: 77. On the Enlightenment connection, see p. 73-75.
all written texts (even of the Kabbalah) except the Bible, an

injunction in contradiction with the spirit of Sabbateanism. 120
The other important Jewish religious movement that emerged in
the eighteenth century, Hassidism, turned back to far more
conservative positions, which eventually led to women losing any role
in religious life or the process of redemption, even though the drama
of the redemption of the Shekinah retains a central role. Hassidism was
in fact – at least partially – a reaction to the Sabbateans’ unbridled
sexuality, and to their scandalizing actions. While Sabbateanism’s
contradictory role in the birth of Hassidism is generally acknowledged,
some overlapping may have occurred later between Hassidism and
Frankism. Thus the Ukrainian woman rabbi known as the “Virgin of
Ludmir” (1805-1888), a nearly phantasmagorical figure of Hassidism,
identified with the Messianic aspect of the Shekinah by some of her
followers, would be superimposed onto the figure of Eva Frank by
some descendants of the Frankists. 121
The connections and the interfusion between Sabbateanism/
Frankism and the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah) have been both
studied and debated much more intensely. For the purposes of this

article, the text “Something for the Female Sex”, written in the early
nineteenth century by the Frankist maskil of Prague, Arieh Löw Enoch
Hönig Edler von Hönigsberg, is particularly precious. The semi-
Kabbalistic, semi-rationalist ideas it defends are highly revealing of the
innovative and emancipative power of encounters between apparently
antagonistic schools of thought. Thus, his campaigning for women’s
social and sexual liberation was spurred by the same idea that
motivated the Sabbateans and the Frankists: the Shekinah, identified as
the Virgin Eva Frank, must rise (once more) to “the top of the
world,” 122 through the liberation of female desire. The “repairing” and
perfecting of the world will not be possible until, like Ruth, women
120 This aspect has been explained by Rapoport-Albert, with sufficient

documentation to be convincing, as an influence on the reformed orthodox
Christian sects. (Rapoport-Albert 2011: 248).
121 Deutsch 2003: 155-160.
122 Text translated and discussed by Rapoport-Albert in the appendices of her book
(Rapoport-Albert 2011: 327-338).
86 Cristina Ciucu
take their destiny into their own hands. The Frankist from Prague does
not posit some homology between men and women, but insists instead
on honoring femininity as such, with its specificity, particularly its
charm/sensuality (Reizbarkeit), which has redemptive power. Like
Frank, von Hönigsberg deplores the fact that Muslim women are
compelled to hide their beauty, as this means that their very nature (and
thus their liberating power for all of humanity) is negated by male
domination. In this way, some Kabbalistic-Frankist ideas were able to
find, among certain enlightened Jews, who straddled both traditional
worlds and the advances of the Enlightenment, fertile ground for
innovation and for overcoming prejudice.
*
* *
Although in this case the phenomenon appears almost exclusively
within male discourse, women do find themselves invested – at least
at a representational level – with a yearning for equality, free speech
and knowledge. Granted, one must not confuse “the feminine” with
actual women, but in most of the texts referred to here this

distinction is often far from precise. The redemption of the divine
feminine is often intertwined with a problematization of actual
women’s religious – and sometimes even social – roles. The presence
of these elements within the Jewish tradition was not, in and of itself,
sufficient for their emancipation, but it did – and still does – offer a
potential for innovation and a place of relative freedom. It may not
be entirely fortuitous that contemporary movements like Jewish
Renewal 123 are now turning towards these same sources in order to
propose a relevant definition of women’s role in Judaism.
Translated by Regan KRAMER
123 School of thought dating from the late 1960s, which aims to reinvigorate Judaism
by drawing essentially on the Kabbalistic and Hassidic traditions, and by
introducing certain principles from feminism and the Civil Rights movement, as
well as elements of Sufism, Buddhism, yoga, etc. See Weissler 2010: 224-232.
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A female Messiah?

Jewish mysticism and messianism in the

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The “masculine” nature of most monotheisms and monolatries is

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1 Frank 2001 (English translation by Harris Lenowitz).

could shed a more nuanced light on the subject. To my knowledge,

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in certain cases, of an egalitarian discourse, had no repercussion on

The feminine principle(s)

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10 Tirosh-Samuelson 2011: 193 and 199-205.

whole sefirotic construction, its purpose being essentially receptive. 11

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symbolic representations that are deplored by feminist critiques of the

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androgyny. 23 The union of the last two, inferior sefirot, which is

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23 Idel 2005: 53-103.

Hessed, “Compassion”); that situation, unsuitable for “birthing” or

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29 MS BnF (French National Library) Hebrew 859, f. 8r.

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34 Scholem 1973a: 151-152.

Femininity of the Messiah

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35 Nathan of Gaza, Derush ha-Taninim, in Scholem (ed.) 1944: 16-17.

in the soul of the Messiah, are represented in the Kabbalah inspired by

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45 Idel 2005: 143.

Therefore, the feminine aspect of Holiness can only be redeemed

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Redemption of the Divine Presence and Women’s Liberation

actions introduced a surfeit of disequilibrium into the divine

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emancipation remained “vague and ephemeral,” 61 it was not decisive

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61 Scholem 1973a: 405.

inconsistencies, or even absurdities – is the problem of Jewish women’s

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66 Fishman 1992: 199-245.

dating back to the Lurianic movement 71 were more likely to arouse

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text. 78 Thus the distribution of Kabbalistic books was part of a

Socio-historical factors and cultural exchanges

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78 Gries 1994: 204-211.

itself would even have been destabilized, in some cases, because of

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82 Rapoport-Albert 2001: 111.

Finally, comparable phenomena of relative emancipation and

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Frankism: libertinage and/or liberation

93 Smith 1973: 35.

indistinguishable. 95 For Frank, the symbiotic-integrative relationship

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performed by a flesh-and-blood woman. Although Frankist

Equality, sexuality, sexism

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103 Rapoport-Albert 2011: 204.