One Flesh: The Divine Masculine and Feminine Within Us

A close reading of Adam and Eve’s creation story teaches us about the differences between men and women, and between the masculine and feminine within each one of us.

Jul 05, 2024

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 on the Internet; 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 of the animal and plant worlds.

What does male-female divide tell us about ourselves?

“Back and Front You Formed Me”

One 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 inner dimension of the story. We want to look at the creation of man and woman as a mashal, a parable about the spiritual foundations of masculinity and femininity.

We all know the basic plot of the story: 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,”1 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.

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, tzela. The translation of tzela as “rib” has been used in the King James Bible version and 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.”

Indeed, there is a lengthy discussion in the Talmud2 in which all the discussants agree that the expression אחת מצלעתיו, “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 in Psalms “back and front You formed me,”3 which implies that Adam had a “form,” i.e., faces, both from behind and in front (the back, devoid of facial features, is for this purpose considered formless).4

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. Taking the side from “Adam” thus means sawing him in half into two entities, man and woman, so that they could meet again face to face—moving from alienation to acquaintance.5

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 a direct continuation of him, while the Eve is presented as a new person? Between Adam the man and the original “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 rear face even mean, isn’t that 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” on the level of the soul? Simply put, “front” means the conscious part of the soul, while “back” means the unconscious part of the soul. The experience of self-awareness, our thinking and active self, is felt by us as residing at the front side of our head, behind the forehead and eyes; whereas our unconscious is perceived as being 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 zachar (זכר), male, could lizkor (לזכור), remember himself in his previous incarnation. Similarly, because Eve was his unconscious “back,” she is experienced by him as a new being—the achor (אחור), back, is perceived as an acher (אחר), someone else (as reflected in our typical reactions to our own dreams and Freudian slips: I thought that?! I said that?!).

What do we learn from all this? First of all, 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. 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. The conscious aspect must clarify and refine the unconscious, and the unconscious aspect must soften and expand the boundaries of the conscious.

Secondly, 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 the conscious and proactive self is relatively masculine, while the experience of 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 to their conscious and active part, and because women are embodied in female bodies they tend to be more connected to 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.

Face or 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, one opinion in a dispute among the sages. 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 “tail” (a zanav). 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 dimensions of the Torah is to adopt a unifying approach to all disputes in Judaism of “These and those are the words of the living God.”6 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.

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, wagging at all times 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;7 but according to Chassidut, 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 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 helping to climb from the emotional layer to the soul layer; and women can provide men with a connection to both parts of the unconscious—a grounding in emotions and a connection to the high, super-rational layers of the soul.

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