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Setting A Place for God

A Woman's Guide to Creating Sacred Space and Inviting the Divine to Dwell Within It

Chapter 1: The Jewish Woman as Kohenet

All over the world, before the last orange, pink and yellow rays of sun disappear behind the horizon on Friday evening Jewish women stand silently before two Sabbath candles set on a beautifully prepared table. Just before darkness fills the home, they carefully touch match to wick, watching as the flames rise and stretch like golden fingers. The women circle their hands around the candles three times, urging the light into the room and around their bodies. Solemnly, they cover their eyes. With reverent voices, they slowly chant an age-old blessing. The words swirl around the candles, the table and all those seated there, spiraling up, up, up like an invitation to the Divine Feminine Presence asking Her to join them.

The Sabbath candle-lighting ceremony epitomizes the spiritual depth of Judaism’s ritual practices. Not only does it possess an inherent beauty, it is replete with all the meaningful, spiritual, mystical, traditional, and contemplative elements of this ancient religion. Yet, too many Jewish women – who historically have been the ones to perform this ritual – light the candles on Friday evening with little understanding of the awe-inspiring position they hold when doing so or of the powerful spiritual technology the ritual itself offers them. They simply go through the motions of ritual observance, which leaves them content with the knowledge that they have fulfilled the commandment to light the Shabbat (Sabbath) candles but sadly devoid of any meaningful or spiritual experience from doing so.

In fact, at the moment a Jewish woman puts match to wick, she becomes a powerful ritual leader reminiscent of those who served in the Temple in Jerusalem so long ago. More specifically, she becomes a priestess – a kohenet –invoking the Shechinah, or feminine Indwelling Presence of God, into the sacred space she has built with her words and actions. If the woman performs her duties with knowledge, understanding, intention, faith, and courage, the simple act of lighting two candles not only becomes a meaningful one for her but also an invitation sent to the Divine Feminine asking Her to dwell within that sanctuary for the next 25 Sabbatical hours.

Any Jewish woman can become a kohenet and can transform her empty Shabbat candle-lighting ritual into a meaningful and spiritual experience. However, to do so she must understand in what way Jewish women serve as priestesses each Friday evening. While little information exists about kohanot (priestesses), a multitude of sources speak of the kohenim (priests). Interestingly, the descriptions of priestly duties reveal a number of parallels between the role of the kohenim and that of Jewish women preparing for and observing Shabbat. During the Temple Period (1006 BCE-70CE) in Jerusalem, the priests not only officiated over the sacrifices performed in the Temple, they also created and maintained sacred space through their Shabbat and yom tov (festival) preparations, served as clergy or ritual leaders, lit the Shabbat lamps, officiated over ceremonies, and acted generally as conduits for the Divine.

When Jewish women fulfill the commandment to light the Shabbat candles, the ritual they perform symbolically mimics the duties of the kohenim in the ancient Temple. They prepare the Temple – their homes, create and beautify the altar – the dinner table, light the Temple lights – the candles, and invoke God’s presence – the blessing. In addition, each time Jewish women bake the traditional loaves of challah, or braided egg bread served on Shabbat and thought to be like the “showbread” displayed in the Temple, they symbolically perform a sacrifice. The rabbinic commandment to separate a portion of the dough – the “challah” – and burn it represents a way to remember the portion of dough given to the kohenim for sacrificial use.
Even if a Jewish woman makes no other effort but to place two candles on the table, to light a match and touch it to the two wicks and then to recite the prescribed blessing, she consciously or unconsciously creates sacred space. Knowingly or unknowingly, she also draws the Shechinah into that sanctuary. No matter what kind of sacred space she creates – simple or elaborate, if she then lights the candles and says the blessing in her mikdash (sanctuary), and if she does so with the kavanah (intention) to ask the Shechinah to dwell there with her, at least she will feel the spiritual power of this ritual and at most will experience the Divine Presence.

Yet, in the Temple itself, women were not allowed to perform priestly duties. This explains the lack of information on Jewish women as kohanot. Experts say that if they were involved in Temple activities at all, women would have been responsible for singing chants, prophesy, divination, communion with the spirits of the dead, divine litanies, and attendance at births and deaths. They might have sung psalms, provided musical accompaniment for rituals, performed priestly blessings, and examined priestly offerings. They might have made the incense for the Temple and eaten of the Temple sacrifices.
While many scholars have argued that Judaism contains no priestess tradition, others disagree, claiming that kohanot existed during Biblical times even if they weren’t known as such. It seems the strong female leaders of this religious tradition often are discovered in what has not been said about them. For example, kohanot can be found in midrashim, stories that fill in the gaps left in the Torah (Old Testament). A close study of the Torah finds mention of Biblical women who held positions of respect and authority. All of the Biblical Jewish patriarchs married pagan – not Jewish – priestesses. Miriam, the sister of Moses and Aaron, is considered one of the liberators of the Israelites, and she and Sarah, Abraham’s wife, have been called priestesses by some scholars. Tzipoprah, the daughter of a Midianite priest, acted as an intermediary between God and her husband when she circumcised their son to calm God’s anger at Moses. Deborah served as a judge, and seven of the 55 prophets were women. Unfortunately, we have little or no information about these women, their lives or how they earned or used this title, if it even was bestowed upon them. We do know the title itself would have given them little power in the Temple itself.
Many centuries later, a few Jewish women in Europe established themselves as spiritual leaders. Gravestones found in Jewish cemeteries display engraved titles, such as “priestess” or “synagogue leader,” telling of other Jewish women who achieved a level of leadership in their communities. More recently, many strong-minded and determined Jewish feminists fought long and hard to convince several Jewish denominations to ordain female cantors and rabbis, thus paving the way for Jewish women to take on religious leadership roles.

Yet, even these “official” female religious leaders may not see themselves as priestesses, and Jewish women need not hold such public offices to consider themselves kohanot. Observant or Orthodox Jewish women, who to their non-practicing, career-minded counterparts seem just simple homemakers, may not see themselves as religious leaders or kohanot either, but they serve as the high priestesses over the most sacred place of worship and practice – their homes every day. While other Jewish women continue to complain that Judaism offers them too few leadership roles, these women know the truth: The job of priestess always has been there for the taking.
These women may not participate in communal religious services on a daily or even on a weekly basis, but they lead lives filled with prayer, ritual and meaningful connection with God. In their focus on the family and the home, in their preparations for weekly, monthly and yearly holy days, in the caretaking of their children, in the cooking of their foods, these practicing Jewish women create sacred space, observe commandments and conduct meaningful and spiritual rituals and prayers for themselves and for their families every day. For many of these women, daily life serves as one long meditation, one endless ritual, one continuous prayer, one constant creation of sanctuaries.
Within the four walls of their houses, all Jewish women – observant or not –always have possessed the ability and permission to preside over home-based Shabbat, life-cycle and holiday rituals. It is important to note that the Shabbat candle-lighting ritual serves as one of only three commandments pertaining specifically to Jewish women, and it has become one of the most important in Jewish tradition.  The Shabbat candle-lighting ritual marks the start of the most important Jewish holiday, and the same ritual is used with slight variation by women to mark the beginning of every holy Jewish day. Thus, by lighting the candles and saying the prescribed blessing each Shabbat Jewish women carry forth the Temple tradition into their homes.
In the personal sanctuaries they create, Jewish women past and present have blessed food preparation and childbirth, petitioned for sick family members and barren women, honored the new moon and the end of menses, and helped daughters come of age and the dead pass on. In their mikdash they have accessed their intuition and spiritual nature to creatively use prayer and ritual in new ways and to make their religious and spiritual practice part of their every-day lives rather than something isolated or only done in a synagogue.

In addition, on a daily basis they have made space for God. In Exodus 25:8-9, God says, “Build for me a sanctuary (mikdash), and I will dwell among you.”  Much like the Israelites in the desert, Jewish women build a mikdash – also referred to by God in the Torah as a mishkan (dwelling place) – for the Divine every time they prepare carefully and elaborately for a holy day like Shabbat. In this sanctuary, they then light candles and say prayers and draw the Divine Feminine into their midst, for, according to the Jewish mystics, the Indwelling Feminine Presence comes close each time a sacred space is created.

Without needing to become Orthodox or observant Jews, all Jewish women can become kohanot by seeing their homes as sanctuaries and creating sacred space within them on a weekly basis. Every Friday they can prepare their dinner tables for Shabbat with white table cloths, the best silver and china, beautiful candles and flowers so they becomes mishbachot (altars). Then they can preside over the candle lighting and use this ritual as a spiritual practice so they, too, can learn to live constantly with God in their mikdash.

By creating and using this sacred space frequently, the home becomes a permanent sanctuary for each individual Jewish woman, her family and her friends that can be used for any special celebration, every Shabbat and all the yearly holy days, which always include lighting the yom tov candles. While the sanctuary of the community synagogue consistently provides sacred space by virtue of the fact that it was built for that reason and has been used for that purpose on a regular basis, Jewish homes also take on this characteristic if used in a similar fashion. In so doing, Jewish women create the same sort of energy vortex in their homes as found in such holy places as churches, Native American ritual sites, stone circles, and ancient synagogues. Each time they use their home for religious rituals, the spiritual energy vortex there becomes larger and stronger, and the Divine Feminine becomes more-easily accessed.

In Judaism, rabbis and cantors do not serve as intermediaries between humans and God or between the upper and lower worlds. Therefore, they cannot create a spiritual experience for anyone. Each individual must accomplish that conscious Divine connection for herself. The priestess role allows Jewish women to take back the power they might have given to clergymen and clergywomen, and, instead, to create their own sacred spaces in which they can worship God any time and in any way they like. It affords them the power to create their own meaningful and spiritual rituals, prayers and experiences and the opportunity to stop relying on someone else or some other place for spiritual practices and experiences.

Even if lighting the Shabbat candles remains a Jewish woman’s only religious observance, performing this weekly ritual as a spiritual practice assists her in realizing the spiritual depth Judaism’s rituals and practices offer. Each time she builds a sanctuary for God, as promised, God will dwell within it. As she uses her house more and more often as a sanctuary, then by merely lighting candles, saying a blessing or offering up a prayer, she once again draws the Shechinah into that space. By regularly lighting Shabbat candles, each week it becomes easier for her to become a kohanot, to build a mikdash, to invite the Shechinah, and to feel God’s presence. And if a Jewish woman continues this spiritual practice, before long, she will find the Shechinah a frequent guest – if not a permanent resident – in her home and in her life.

All of that with the simple lighting of two candles.

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