[HANASHIR:8300] Re: Gender-balanced prayers

[Jonathan Gordon <jbgordon...>]

        So Michael, when you say that most of the references to God in the Bible
are male "for good reason," I wonder what you mean. Do you think that it is
more than the quirk of language to include both sexes in the male?
        I wonder what it means to take out the male pronoun.  I think it 
reflects
the feminization of culture that is a long recent process in America. It is
long overdue, but still warrants some analysis.
        Some sexual stereotypes may not be repressive, but only conventional. 
The
idea of God being commanding and authoritarian, which seems to want a male
pronoun.  Or God being sustaining and enticing, which wants perhaps the
female. There is a difference between the Mother and the Father image, and I
think the richness of poetry is best brought out when the language can be
used fully.
        It is difficult to discuss this without appearing callous to the primary
need to empower women in their struggle against oppression. Still, I do
think about the pale and unbeautiful poetry of most egalitarian translations
and many of those unctuous songs that populate our modern Jewish religious
material. There should be passion and beauty in religious texts, as there is
in religious experience.  Maybe we still wait for a generation of
translators and poets who can create powerful texts with a sexually neutral
vocabulary.
        Despite all its obvious flaws, the old Union Prayer book had gorgeous
language, imitative of the King James Bible in scope and vision. We need a
modern Jewish religious poetry equal to it for our own religious needs.
Jonathan Gordon

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