[People] fashion gods in [their] own image, and familism was, and has remained until quite recently, a most important factor, if not the central one, in the socio-psychological image of the Jew. The Jew could not imagine a Jewish life without the family, nor nor one not centered around the family. The lone, aloof God, adored by the Jews ... could not satisfy the emotional craving which sought reflection of earthly lifer in the heavenly realm. The lone, aloof God, even if cast in the image of the father, even if surrounded by all his heavenly hosts, the angels and the archangels, functioning as the heavenly patrons of the elements of which nature and [humanity] were composed, could not be recognized as a reflection in God of the human condition. And vice versa, human existence, always appearing to Jewish consciousness in the multiple form of [husband], wife and children, could not be recognized as the true reflection of God, in whose image man was said to have beem created, as long as that God was alone. [p 131]
From a story told in the Book of Judges about Gideon, who lived in the 12th centurt B.C.E., we learn that the Asherah worship in those early days was a communal or public affair. [...] The cult of the Goddess Asherah continued among the Hebrews throughout the period of the judges and the kings.[...] While the worship of Asherah was thus a central feature of popular Hebrew religion in the premonarchic period, and her statues stood in many a local sanctuary, it remained for King Solomon to introduce her worship into his capital city of Jerusalem. [pp 38-40]
The people's interpretation of the downfall of Judea was diametrically opposite to that of Jeremiah. They too recognized that the calamity that had overtaken them was a divine punishment for a religious sin, but a sin which they felt they had committed against the Queen of Heaven [Anath, aka Astarte, daughter of Ashterah and El] and not against Yahweh. The answer given to Jeremiah by "all the people that dwelt in the Land of Egypt, in Pathros" therefore was:
| As for the word that you have spoken to us in the name of Yahweh -- we shall not listen to you. But we shall without fail do everything we said: we shall burn incense to the Queen of Heaven, and shall pour her libations as we used to do, we, our fathers, our kings and our princes, in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. |
The question is: We tend to feel connected, if not to monotheism, then to the intellectual impulse that gave rise to it. We also struggle with this odd male god with multiple personalities, most of them generally unpleasant. What then do we make of the knowledge that the biblical Jews were in fact bi- (if not poly- (theistic), and that the god that has been hidded from us by the prophets and the rabbis is in fact a goddess.
A part of the service at Congregation Kahal B'raira October 27, 1996.