There are several levels of answering this question, but only one will be brought here. The יהי רצון (May it be Your will) that appears in the Jewish prayer book[8] as part of the prayers said for the monthly sanctifying of the moon [קידוש לבנה] includes a reference to this idea. It brings a verse from Isaiah 30:26 which prophesies that the light of the moon will become like the light of the sun, and so the prayer reads:
ויהי רצון…למלואת פגימת הלבנה, ולא יהיה בה שום מעוט, ויהי אור הלבנה כאור החמה, וכאור שבעת ימי בראשית כמו שהיתה קודם מעוטה שנאמר: את שני המאורות הגדולים.
May it be Your will, G-d…that You fill the flaw of the moon that there be no diminution in it. May the light of the moon be like the light of the sun and like the light of the seven days of creation, as it was before it was diminished, as the Torah says: “The two great luminaries…”
This prayer, said every month, provides a normative basis for the Ari’s interpretation of Rabbi Shimon ben Pazzi’s agaddah. It expresses the prayer and the vision that the moon (and all things feminine) will move out of her diminishment into fullness of stature with the sun.
This absolute equality that the Ari presents as the final stage of feminine development is a welcomed transformation. It’s a win-win state of affairs. Man seeks union with woman and will not be fully satisfied until that union is consummated on every level, which can only happen when they meet from the crown of their heads to the soles of their feet, and that can only happen when their statures are equal. Short of that, there are always parts of each that remain unmet, and their union stays incomplete.
Only when woman regains her fullness of stature do they finally meet in full and joyous union. Only as equals do man and woman truly match. This perfect marriage has been the universal (though perhaps unconscious) yearning of humanity for six thousand years, and from its consummation flow all the promised blessings of the World to Come.
And so, according to the Ari, this shifting of gender relations is not supposed to be a war, but a mutually welcomed and shared project. Man’s role is to build woman up by generously providing her with the resources of lights and strengths that she needs to develop herself (and particularly in this generation, her intellect). The whole point, again according to the Ari, is for her to become independent from man in this regard. Now, in her unperfected state, their relationship is mediated by need. This is one of the major glues that binds them together. While this is appropriate and essential at certain phases of their relationship, in the seventh stage, woman no longer needs man to pull down her lights for her. She has her own independent access to the flow of consciousness and bounty. The fear is that she will go on her own separate way, leaving him behind if she doesn’t need him anymore. The, truth (or vision) according to the Ari, is the opposite. Only without need are they finally free to unite from a place of pure love and mutual desire, love that is not contaminated by the ulterior motives of need. This is the Jewish vision of how man and woman will relate when they have healed themselves and fixed the world. Its perfected ideal has never been in the history of the universe. From their holy and newly consummated marriage will flow all the promised sweetness of Messianic times.
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ברכת הלבנה
(Blessing of the Moon)
ויהי רצון…למלואת פגימת הלבנה, ולא יהיה בה שום מעוט, ויהי אור הלבנה כאור החמה, וכאור שבעת ימי בראשית כמו שהיתה קודם מעוטה שנאמר: את שני המאורות הגדולים.
May it be Your will, G-d…that You fill the flaw of the moon that there be no diminution in it. May the light of the moon be like the light of the sun and like the light of the seven days of creation, as it was before it was diminished, as the Torah says: “The two great luminaries…”
[1] R. Isaac Luria, Aytz Chaim (Tree of Life), heichal nukva, shaar miut hayareach, Chapter 1. For the exact Hebrew text as well as the author’s annotated translation, please see Kabbalistic Writings on the Nature of Masculine and Feminine, p. 53-98.
[2] Kabbala uses the terms “masculine” and “feminine” as well as man and woman in ways that are by no means meant to be understood as equivalent with literal men and women. Man and woman are kabbalistic archetypes of male and female; man and “masculine” refer to the persona that gives, whereas woman and “feminine” to the persona that receives. In this paper when the words man and woman are used as kabbalistic archetypes they will appear in italics. See Chapter 1, “Preliminaries” in Kabbalistic Writings on the Nature of Masculine and Feminine by Sarah Schneider, especially p. 17-35, for a more-in-depth discussion. . (This book can be purchased from the author’s website: http://www.asmallvoice.org/).
[3] R. Isaac Luria, Aytz Chaim (Tree of Life), Shar HaClalim, 1:1.
[4] A holographic system is one where every sub-part contains information about the whole and every other sub-part within itself. Consequently, in a holographic system, it is possible to reconstruct the entire structure from any insolated component.
[5] The composite sum total of women is a kind of archetype unto itself (called Eve), and on this scale, meaningful parallels do hold.
[6] A New York Times article from July 9, 2006 states: “… the college landscape is changing. Women now make up fifty-eight percent of those enrolled in two- and four-year colleges and are, over all, the majority in graduate schools and professional schools too.
Most institutions of higher learning, except engineering schools, now have a female edge, with many small liberal arts colleges and huge public universities alike hovering near the 60-40 ratio. Even Harvard, long a male bastion, has begun to tilt toward women. ‘The class we just admitted will be 52 percent female,’ said William Fitzsimmons, Harvard’s dean of admissions.”
[7] See Chapter 9 of Kabbalistic Writings on the Nature of Masculine and Feminine for an in-depth explanation.
[8] This nusach, wording, is found in both Ashkenaz and Sefard prayer books, and appears as a supplementary prayer in some Sephardi prayer books.
This article was published in B’Or HaTorah: Science, the Arts and Problems of Modern life in the Light of Torah: #18, 2008 (Shamir: Jerusalem, Israel).
p. 135-146.
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