An Interview with Rabbi Tirzah Firestone
author of THE RECEIVING: Reclaiming Jewish Women’s Wisdom

by Andrew Young
November 11, 2002


Andrew Young: How does The Receiving depart from your first book, With Roots in Heaven?

Tirzah Firestone: With Roots in Heaven was a personal memoir. The Receiving brings what I’ve learned in my return to Judaism – its deep root truths – out into the public domain so that women and men who have been disaffected or disenfranchised from the Jewish tradition can hear and apply these truths.

The book also serves another intention of mine. Jewish history and scholarship for thousands of years has been pronouncedly absent of women. The holy women, the female sages and miracle workers…they’re almost completely absent from our history. I wanted to correct this terrible omission.

AY: Why is this subject so important today?

TF: We’re in an unprecedented time in history when women are going to rabbinic seminaries, cantorial schools, and adult education in large numbers. For the first time, all the doors are now opening for women to learn everything from the Talmud to Kabbalah to Jewish history and the arts. And because women have become leaders of communities – rabbis, cantors, Jewish educators – there is no stopping our urge to correct this long history of being unheard.

But the work has only begun. It’s critical that there be a tikkun, a “repair,” to make known to the public that, yes, indeed, there were remarkable women spiritual leaders, scholars, and mystics in the past, too. In this way, we'll have something to share with our daughters and the upcoming generations who would otherwise find an enormous absence in the history books.

AY: These stories are by no means idyllic accounts; in fact, many are poignant and even heartbreaking. How are the struggles and even failures of these women sages of value to us?

TF: It might sound sentimental, but I believe that we have a sacred obligation to these women, to bring their stories forward into the light of day, to teach our daughters and women friends about them so they are not lost to history. Many of these women’s struggles happened because they were so disempowered within their communities.

The Virgin of the Green Hut for example, was literally excommunicated and banished from the Jewish community of Ukraine. There are other examples here too of women who struggled within the male-dominant society that they lived in and succeeded in maintaining their spiritual connection to the Divine. To me these are very powerful teaching stories about persevering amidst the outer forces in the world.
These stories also teach us that women had their own way of doing things. They did not let anger deter their lives – because they had too much to accomplish! That is an important lesson for us.

AY: Tell us more about the spiritual teachings in The Receiving.

TF: My deeper purpose for writing The Receiving was to begin to put forth the Jewish mystical legacy for women – the woman’s Kabbalah. I wanted to convey the beauty and innately balanced principles of Kabbalah in a way that could be applied in a practical, down to earth way.

AY: What is the Kabbalah?

TF: The Kabbalah is the large and evolving body of Jewish mystical work, not just a single book. It was originally an oral tradition that comes to us through several different volumes that were written beginning in the 1100s with the Bahir and then in the 1200s with the Zohar. The Kabbalah has been transmitted largely from men to men for hundreds of years. Now, this is beginning to change.

AY: What does the Kabbalah offer to women?

TF: The essential principles of the Kabbalah are deeply balanced and are all about healing. They teach the necessity and responsibility of healing the opposites in life, particularly between the masculine and feminine approaches to life. But because these teachings have been transmitted exclusively by men and for men for so long, they have taken on a very masculine garb. That's to say, the language and terminology of the Kabbalah is often layered in stiff, formal, abstract, and often masculine clothing. This is not the Kabbalah's intrinsic nature, though! Its true wisdom is very much about the masculine-feminine balance.

AY: Today, Jewish women can choose from many spiritual lineages that embrace the feminine dimensions of spirituality. Why would someone want to return to a tradition that has been largely preserved and practiced by men for 3,000 years?

TF: I hope that this book will be a homecoming for so many of us who have turned away from our tradition to seek wisdom elsewhere, who have thought that Judaism is intrinsically out of balance. The book comes to teach that Judaism’s most powerful teachings are about what is universal. Ultimately, they are about achieving wholeness, and opening ourselves to receive a direct spiritual experience.

AY: Before you wrote this book, what resources were available for someone looking for teachings on the Kabbalah taught by women and for women?

TF: For women and by women? Well, that's just it; there really has been nothing available. Until now, if a woman wanted to study Kabbalah in a serious way, she would go to a teacher or author such as Gershom Sholom, Moshe Idel, Eliot Wolfson. These are wonderful male scholars, but the writing can be impenetrable even to a dedicated student. And rarely is there any allusion to how the teachings relate to a woman's perspective, her daily life, her feminine rhythms.

In The Receiving, I have attempted to present the clear essence of the Jewish mystical vision, stripping each teaching of its masculine and hierarchical outer garments, to reveal its innately balanced perspective. The seven stories I tell each serve as a springboard into a particular aspect of Judaism’s mystical wisdom, such as the ten centers on the Tree of Life, the journey of the soul, reincarnation, and the Kabbalah’s mystical practices.

AY: This emerging face of the feminine in Jewish spirituality: how do you see it influencing the course of events in our world today?

TF: That’s an important question. I don’t want to be grandiose, but I will say that the imbalances that we are suffering from now in the world have so much to do with this ripping, this tear, between opposites. And the power of mending and healing these rifts has everything to do with how we might heal the conflicts we are witnessing today. Clearly, the feminine principle, which has everything to do with relating to those around us heart to heart – is very much what we need right now.

back to biography

 

Schedule Home