A new myth of Judaism emerged in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, hiding behind the word "Kabbalah", which means "tradition itself". Here is presented a Judaism of mythic complexity that had been previously unknown, one in which the single, static, monotheism is an essentially masculine God replaced by a dynamic, multifaceted, overflowing, separating and uniting, new kind of Deity. In that paradigm of the inner life of God, described through so many rich and varied images in the Kabbalistic literature, the Shekhinah took a major role.
 
 

Using an ancient term for the indwelling or presence of God, the Kabbalists employed Shekhinah to symbolize a particular realm within the divine world. Described as Daughter, Bride, Mother, Moon, Sea, Faith, Wisdom, Speech, and a myriad of other figures - usually but not always feminine - the Shekhinah is the chief object of both the Divine and human search for wholeness and perfection. She is the Bride of God within God, Mother of the world and feminine side of the Divine Self, in no way fully separable from the male [masculine] Self of God. Indeed, the root of all evil, both Cosmic and human, is the attempt to bring about such a separation.
 
 

The picture of that feminine aspect of Divinity is a complicated one. As the tenth of the sefirot, or manifestations of Divine selfhood, She is, when facing those above, passive and receptive. She takes all the upper Powers into Herself; "All the rivers flow into the sea," as the Kabbalists love to quote from the Book of Ecclesiastes (1:7). But as the sea transforms all the rivers, gives them new life as a dynamic power all her own, and reaches her destined shores as a new being, so is the Shekhinah - when facing the lower worlds - described as Giver, Provider, Ruler, and Judge.
 
 

Perhaps most interestingly, Shekhinah is the only aspect of Divinity that most Kabbalists ever claim really to experience. The Shekhinah, the outermost gate to the divine mysteries, is all the Kabbalist dares to say that he has attained. It is through the union of Shekhinah with God above that the Kabbalist, too, is bound to those higher forces. He serves as "attendant of the bride", knowing secretly at the same time that his soul is born of this union that he has helped to bring about.
 
 

We read now of the Shekhinah from the earliest text we have in all of Cabalistic literature, the Sefer HaBahir, that appeared in southern France in the latter decades of the twelfth century. The Bahir is written in an intentionally mystifying and yet defiantly simple tone, one that does much to set the stage for the later symbolic development within Kabbalah. Here the Bahir is commenting on the biblical verse "Blessed be the Glory of God from His place" (Ezek. 3:12). "Glory", in Hebrew, "kavod", is the Biblical term which the Kabbalists (following the Targum) usually took as a code word for the Shekhinah.
 
 

This may be compared to a king who had a matron in his chamber. All his hosts took pleasure in her. She had children, and those children came each day to see the king and greet him. They would say to him, "Where is our mother?" And he would answer, "You cannot see her now." To this they would reply, "Blessed be she, in whatever place she is."
 

Immediately the Bahir adds a second parable:
 

This may be compared to a princess who came from a faraway place. Nobody knew where she came from. Then they saw that she was an upstanding woman, good and proper in all her deeds. They said of her, "This one surely is taken from the place of light, for by her deeds the world is enlightened." They asked her, " Where are you from?" She said, "From my place." They said, "In that case, great are the People of your place. Blessed are you; blessed is she and blessed is her place."
 
 

The Shekhinah, the mysterious Woman, Queen or Princess, hidden or coming from a place beyond, is the only one we see, the only one we greet. What is her place, what is Her origin? These are hidden somewhere in the mysteries of God beyond. All we can say of the God we know, of that feminine God we encounter is "Blessed is She and blessed is Her place." The glory of God is apparent to us, the glory of God lies within the realm of human experience.
 
 

The Shekhinah is the God we know. Surely, that Shekhinah stands in relation to a transcendent deity, whether described in male terms or in terms of more pure abstraction, but our knowledge of that is only through Her. Blessed is She and blessed is Her place. While the Shekhinah plays a central role in all of Kabbalistic literature, it is especially in the Zohar that its feminine character is highlighted. The author of the Zohar was possessed of a seemingly boundless mythic imagination, a great deal of it centering on female figures, both sacred and demonic, as well as on deeply ambivalent fantasies concerning human women in this world."
 
 

In what is surely one of its most strikingly impassioned passages, the Zohar speaks of the love of God through the symbol of the kisses that Jacob gives to Rachel. From the passage it becomes clear that the experience of the mystic is that of being aroused, drawn into, and kissed by God. As the passage develops, Rachel, the recipient of the kisses, is really related to an entirely hidden and abstract God beyond, a God so abstract and hidden, however, that He cannot be described as one who kisses. How, indeed, can one be loved by a God who is hidden beyond all being? Jacob is the personified manifestation of this Hidden God, personified only in order that the Great Mystery be enabled to kiss the Bride. The passage reads as follows:

 

This is the arousal of all the sublime secrets, yet It remains hidden. Sometimes hidden, sometimes revealed. But even when It is not revealed at all, It remains the Source of arousal for those ascending Kisses. And since It is hidden, the Canticle begins its praises in a hidden (i.e., third-person) way.'

"My Beloved is fairer than ten thousand."