{"id":73213,"date":"2020-04-12T11:19:21","date_gmt":"2020-04-12T08:19:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=73213"},"modified":"2020-04-12T11:19:21","modified_gmt":"2020-04-12T08:19:21","slug":"beyond-masculine-and-feminine-good-and-evil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/beyond-masculine-and-feminine-good-and-evil\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyond Masculine And Feminine, Good And Evil"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[],"acf":{"old_id":"73213","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":38928,"related_cahpter":"456","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"Non-kabbalistic symbolism of right and left in Ezekiel\u2019s bizarre tasks\u00a0\r\n\r\n","content":"

In Ezekiel 4:4, God asks Ezekiel to lie on his left side for 390 days to atone for the House of Israel, and then asks him to turn over and lay on his right side for another 40 days to atone for the House of Judah. The only explanation for the bizarre request is that the 390 days correspond to the 390 years of punishment that would have been enacted on Israel, and the 40 days to the 40 years of punishment for Judah. The midrash explains that God is being merciful by punishing one person instead of an entire nation, which is true, and yet the sheer oddity of the passage stands.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Since the medieval period, when Kabbalistic interpretations became more common, there developed accepted symbolic connotations of the left and right sides. The left correlates with the quality of judgement and is the side from which all evil comes, while the right side is associated with love and a potential overabundance of goodness. Furthermore, the left side is associated with the feminine, and the right with the masculine. This association of feminine, evil, and left side, and the parallel association of masculine, goodness, and right side is not original to Kabbalah and dates back to the ancient Greek conception of the body where it was theorized that males were birthed from semen that issued from the right testicle, and females from the left testicle. The entirety of the Greek conception of the body including the 5 humors is obviously outdated, and yet still remaining in the Jewish imagination is the problematic association between the left side, the \u201cfeminine,\u201d and evil.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Here, in Ezekiel 4, as well as later in chapter 16, we see that the left and right are associated with north and south; the left being associated with north and Jerusalem, the right being associated with south and Judah. This left and right formation predates Greek ideas of the body, as well as Kabbalah, and here, there are no assumptions or associations regarding good and evil, or feminine and masculine. Perhaps these lines, and Ezekiel\u2019s odd prescribed means to atone, can open our imagination beyond the strictures of ancient Greek and medieval theories of good, evil, masculine, and feminine.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Image: Ardon Windows (detail) at the Natrional Library in Jerusalem, Mordechai Ardon, 1984 \/ wikipedia<\/span><\/p>\n","image":{"ID":73214,"id":73214,"title":"ez4-sephirot","filename":"ez4-sephirot.jpg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/ez4-sephirot.jpg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/beyond-masculine-and-feminine-good-and-evil\/ez4-sephirot\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"ez4-sephirot","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":73213,"date":"2020-04-12 08:19:08","modified":"2020-04-12 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