The most obvious facts are often the most wondrous. One such fact is that we come in two sexes, male and female. Humanity is divided into nations, states, classes, political factions, interest groups, schools of thought, and virtual communities online. But the division into men and women cuts across all others, splitting all other human groups in half. In fact, it doesn’t just split us into two groups, but almost all life on earth, from plants to animals, is divided the same way.
What does male-female divide tell us about ourselves?
Back to Eden
The obvious way to start this topic is to look at the story of the creation of man and woman. What concerns us now is not the literal meaning of this story—what actually happened in the Garden of Eden—but the story’s inner dimension. We want to look at the creation of man and woman as a mashal, a parable about the spiritual foundations of masculinity and femininity.
Everyone seems to be familiar with the basic story as it appears in Genesis: God created man from the dust of the earth, infused him with life, and placed him in the Garden of Eden; afterward, He decided that, “it is not good for man to be alone; I will make him a helper against him,” presented all the animals before man one by one, but man did not find among them a mate; finally, God caused a deep sleep to fall upon man, took one of his ribs and built a woman from it.
When a Rib is Not a Rib
Or at least, that’s what everyone thinks. In truth, a greater mystery is hidden here. It lies in the original Hebrew word used here for “rib” (צלע, pronounced tzela). Translating this Hebrew word that designates Eve’s origin as one of Adam’s “ribs” is found in the King James Bible version and from there has disseminated worldwide, but it isn’t the only possible translation. In fact, if we look at all other appearances of this word in the Bible, it never means rib. Rather, it means a geometrical side, as in “the side of the tabernacle” or “the side of the altar.”
Back and Front You Created Me
Indeed, there is a lengthy discussion in the Talmud in which all the discussants agree that the expression, “one of his sides” means one of Adam’s sides, not one of his ribs. The idea discussed there is that the creature called “Adam” was neither male nor female but “double-faced”—a figure composed of a male side and a female side that were joined back-to-back. The sages learn this idea from the verse, “back and front You formed me,” which implies that Adam had a “form,” i.e., a face, on both sides—both in front and from behind. In other words, Adam did not have a “back-side” as we would recognize it—one that is devoid of facial features, which for our purposes would be considered a formless side of Adam’s body.
In light of this, the verse “it is not good for man to be alone” means that Adam’s solitude was an alienation from himself, a disconnect between his male side and his female side. When God took the “side” from “Adam” (which was popularly understood as taking a “rib” from him), it suggests that he was sawed in half into two entities, one male and one feminine, a man and a woman, so that they could meet again face to face, thus allowing them to move from alienation to acquaintance.
Now the question arises: if the original creature “Adam” was half male and half female, why is it that only his male half, Adam the man, is described as his direct continuation, while the Eve is presented as a new person? In other words, between Adam the male and the original two-sided “Adam,” there is continuity of name and self-awareness, while the woman is perceived as the “other,” who at least initially does not even have a name (she receives the name “Eve” only later, after the sin of the Tree of Knowledge). What does this mean?
The Masculine Conscious and the Feminine Unconscious
The answer is folded in the verse we mentioned above, on which the entire idea of the double-faced being is based—”back and front You formed me.” From this verse, it is implied that even though the first “Adam,” the androgynous, had faces on both sides, he still had a “back” and a “front”. But how can this be? A creature that has a face on both sides is seemingly a creature with two front sides, with no back side at all. Can there be a frontal face and a rear face? What does a “rear face” even mean? Would that not be a contradiction in terms?
If a certain idea cannot be understood literally, then it must be interpreted on a spiritual level, as a psychological metaphor. How can we interpret the words “back” and “front” at the level of the soul? Simply put, “front” means the conscious part of the soul, while “back” means the unconscious part of the soul. We experience our “self,” we identify our awareness, our thinking, and our active self, as residing in the front side of our head, behind the forehead and eyes. At the same time, we perceive our unconscious as located in the dark recesses of our mind (as in the expression “the back of my mind”).
Among the two faces of the double-faced “Adam,” then, one face symbolizes his conscious aspect, while the other symbolizes his unconscious aspect. But which is the conscious and which is the unconscious? Which is the “front” of Adam, and which is the “back”?
The answer is provided by the biblical story itself, to which we can now return. From the fact that out of the two halves of the double-faced “Adam” only the male recognized himself as a direct continuation of him, while the female was perceived as someone new, it follows that Adam was the conscious part of “Adam” while Eve was his unconscious part. This answers the question we posed above, why only Adam maintains continuity of name and self-awareness with the double-faced “Adam,” while Eve is perceived as the “other.” Because Adam the man was the conscious “front” of “Adam,” only he could recognize himself as his continuation—only the “male” could “remember” himself in his previous state. Similarly, because Eve was his unconscious “back,” she is experienced by him as a new being—the “back,” back, is perceived by the “front” as an “other,” someone else (as reflected by our typical reaction to moments when our unconscious reveals itself like in a dream or a Freudian slips: “I thought that?!” “I said that?!”).
Being Human
What do we learn from all this? First, it reveals to us a new, psychological interpretation of the story of the creation of Adam and Eve. We can now understand it as expressing, among other things, a psychological process that occurs within each person. Since we are all descendants of that double-faced “Adam,” each of us contains these two faces, the masculine and the feminine. At the beginning of our spiritual development, these two faces are stuck back-to-back, i.e. they are disconnected from each other. Therefore, our task is to carefully separate them, distinguish between our conscious and unconscious, and then turn them toward each other until they meet and reunite. Only then can the conscious aspect begin to clarify and refine the unconscious. At the same time, the duty of the unconscious aspect is to soften and expand the boundaries of our conscious aspect.
Second, it follows from this interpretation that when we talk about masculinity and femininity, we are not only talking about men and women but also about masculine and feminine parts within each and every one of us: both in men and in women, the experience of our conscious and proactive self is relatively masculine, while the experience of our unconscious emotions is relatively feminine. What, then, distinguishes men from women? Well, because men are embodied in a male body, they have a stronger affinity with their conscious and proactive part, and because women are embodied in female bodies they tend more easily identify with their unconscious part. In a certain sense, this is also reflected in the physical level in the relationship between the reproductive organs: the man’s masculinity is outward facing and revealed, while the woman’s femininity is inward facing and hidden.
A Face or a Tail?
Now it’s time for the plot to thicken further. The entire description above about the double-faced being is only half the story because it is just one of two opinions offered by the sages regarding the nature of the pre-divided “Adam.” The second opinion agrees that “Adam” had two sides but disagrees about the nature of the feminine side. According to this view, the feminine side was not a “face” (a partzuf, meaning a complete figure of a woman), but rather a figurative “tail.” The first human, according to this opinion, was not a double-faced creature but a man with a tail, a kind of fur-less ape. The taking of his “side,” therefore, means in this case the removal of the tail and its transformation into a woman.
What does this concept mean? In case you find it puzzling or disturbing, let us remember that a dispute among the sages is no trivial matter. None of the sides is playing around, and every opinion must be examined seriously. In fact, the approach of the inner dimension of Torah is to adopt a unifying approach to all disputes in Judaism, following the dictum that, “These and those are the words of the living God.” Here too, there is an element of truth in the opinion that the feminine side was a fully developed figure and an element of truth in the opinion that it was a tail that gradually developed. We must understand this story in depth.
Faces, Tails, and the Unconscious
There are many interpretations of this issue in Kabbalah, and we will examine one central interpretation. We will go with what was said earlier, that the masculine “front” side is the conscious part of the soul and the feminine “back” side is the unconscious part of the soul. The fact that there is no dispute about the masculine side indicates that the conscious part is relatively simple—it is rational, consistent, and stable. On the other hand, the fact that there are two opinions about the feminine side indicates that the unconscious is more complex—it is itself double-faced, layered, and multifaceted.
More precisely, the existence of two interpretations regarding the “back” side means there are two types of unconscious, one symbolized by a tail and the other by a face. And indeed, in our generation, we have terms to address these parts.
The “tail” part of the unconscious is what Freud called the subconscious. This is the animalistic part of a person, simply connected to the body and nature and driven by survival instincts. The fact that, for example, a dog’s tail reveals its mood greatly helps to imagine our subconscious as a kind of mental “tail.” We like to repress this animalistic side, to hide the tail behind our back. Indeed, our tail-less anatomy itself helps us convince ourselves that we don’t have such a side. But it is there, always wagging behind our consciousness, an inseparable part of who we are.
On the other hand, the “face” part of the unconscious is what can be called the superconscious. For Freud, this term did not exist because he did not believe in the existence of a higher spiritual aspect in a person; but according to Chasidut, there are also superconscious layers in the soul that have content and a face. These layers are higher than our conscious self and contain the root of our personality and will, our higher and true self. Like the tail, the higher faces are also unconscious, but not because we repress them but simply because they are too high to be revealed in us. Only through much spiritual work can they begin to illuminate into our conscious soul.
The dispute about whether the feminine side was a “face” or a “tail,” therefore, outlines a new and wonderful picture of the structure of the soul. It reveals to us that our feminine unconscious is divided into two parts, somewhat like two feminine figures: one natural, earthly, and more connected to the body (subconscious), and the other spiritual, high, and more connected to the soul (superconscious).
The conscious part standing between them is revealed as a man standing between these two women: the one below him grounds him, and the one above him entices him to ascend spiritually.
As mentioned, this structure applies to everyone, with a difference in emphasis between men and women: in men, the conscious part is stronger, so they tend to be relatively disconnected from the unconscious in both its aspects. In women, the unconscious is stronger but, on the other hand, there is a tendency to mix its aspects: to identify earthly layers as spiritual and vice versa. From this, we can learn how men and women complement each other: men can help women strengthen the distinction between the subconscious and the superconscious, thereby aiding the ascent from the emotional layer to the truly higher, spiritual layer; and women can provide men with a connection to both parts of the unconscious—a grounding in emotions and a connection to the higher, super-rational layers of the soul.
