Time in the Teachings of Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi

2. Female Imagery in Rashaz’s Teachings. 
Hasidic teachings associate women with materiality, corporeality, incompleteness, 
the evil inclination and irrationality.
25
A similar approach is endorsed by Rashaz, 
though generally flesh-and-blood women are replaced in his teachings by the gender 
category “female.” Nonetheless, in some cases the border between women and the 
abstract category “female” is blurred, as, for example, when kabbalistic ideas are 
employed to provide justification for certain halakhic rulings with regard to women, 
or conversely, when a saying of the Sages or a principle of Jewish law provides 
Rashaz with an insight into the female aspect of the Godhead.
The source of the division between male and female aspects of the Godhead 
lies in the image of 
Adam kadmon
: the upper part of his body is linked with the male, 
and the lower part with the female [
binyan ha-nukba
], mirroring a common 
association of upper body parts with spirituality and lower body parts with sexuality 
and corporeality.
26
Not only does the attribution of gender to the upper and lower 
parts of the divine body suggest the lower status of the female, but the female aspect 
is perceived as more remote from the infinite divine source than the male. In this 
connection, Rashaz offers an interpretation of the verse [Gn 1:26]: “Let us make man 
in our image, after our likeness”: 
It is written in the 
Zohar
:
27
“Image [
tselem
] [refers to] the man, likeness 
[
demut
] – to the woman”; “image” is when it is drawn from an image of the 
face itself, as in the case of the letters of a stamp [impressed] in wax, or 
similarly in the appearance of the face itself in water and in a mirror, whereas 
“likeness” of the female is when it is drawn from a separate object that 
received the essence of the form; and this is the meaning of [1 Sm 2:2]: 
“There is no rock [
tsur
] like our God” who [
b
Berakhot 10a] “forms a form 
within a form [
tsar tsurah be-tokh tsurah
],” for he derives it from the form 
25
See Rosman, “‘Al nashim va-hasidut,” 157; Rapoport-Albert, 
Women and the Heresy
, 271-76. 
26
LT 
Ba-midbar
7d. The distinction between lower and upper parts of the body was enforced in 
Hasidism by the custom of wearing a sash [
gartel
or 
avnet
] during prayer. See Wertheim, 
Law and 
Custom in Hasidism
, 113-14. 
27
Ziii, 35b. 

---

214 
which had been drawn from the essence of the attribute [
‘etsem ha-to’ar
], 
called the primary form [
tsurah ha-rishonah
], etc.
28
Rashaz leans on a zoharic interpretation of this seemingly pleonastic expression in 
the Bible, where it is understood as referring to male and female as close (image) and 
remote (likeness) impressions of the divine. Notably, Rashaz’s discourse draws on a 
philosophical terminology: the male is formed out of the primary form, which makes 
him a direct reflection, or impression, of the divine, whereas the female is only a 
reflection of a reflection, or a divine form mediated through the male form. In a 
sophisticated wordplay based on the multiplicity of meanings associated with the 
root 
tsade vav resh
, God-rock [
tsur
] becomes a demiurge who formed [
tsar
] or drew 
[
tsiyer
] both male and female forms [
tsurot
].
The linking of the male with the upper, loftier and intellectual sphere in 
contrast to the female, who is associated with the lower, material and corporeal one, 
implies the inferiority and dependence of the latter on the former. Already in the 
Talmud [