Reverberations of the Kabbalah in Modern French Thought

The Tabernacle as a Sacred Feminine Space: The Development of Mythical Images from Biblical Literature to Medieval Kabbalah

“…The gender distinction is not essential; rather, it is the result of the primal sawing; therefore, the manifestation of an individual as a man or woman is a constant testimony to the androgynous source from which human beings are created. 38 Another Zoharic teaching draws a connection between the creation of Man and the entire genealogical chain from Genesis up until the Book of Exodus. It is only with the establishment of the Tabernacle, which resembles the form of the human body, that the work of unification, which began with the sawing apart of Adam and Eve, is complete.…”

“…9 It is interesting to note that at the time of the temple, Josiah got rid of nahushtan-the serpent on a bronze pole from the Tabernacle years. 10 See Kings I, 7, especially verses [38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26], we find reference to a "molten sea" that had the appearance of "the petals of a lily", with golden pomegranates and flowers accentuating its beauty, paralleling the colorful splendor and intimate connections between the curtains and rings in the Tabernacle.…”

“…In this paper, I analyze the biblical sources through the lens of their later appearance in midrashic and Zoharic interpretations, emphasizing the parallels between the construction of the Tabernacle (Ex. [25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40] and the myth of Eve's creation (Gen. 2). This intentional mixture of corpuses and epochs allows me to follow the path of mythical thought that blends different times and chronologies into symbolic presence.…”