Over the course several summers of women's times on Summer Projects, I've started to realize that I care a lot about women, femininity, and empowering women to step into the fullness of all that God intended femininity to be. But what does this mean?
For most of my life, I've associated femininity with weakness, but the more I learn about the creation account of Eve in Genesis 2, the more I'm starting to see that being feminine doesn't exclude being strong. In fact, over the summer, Mushroom shared an insight from the Talmudic commentator Rashi on Genesis 2:18 argues just the opposite - femininity is strength.
18 The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make [a helper suitable] for him.”
The term translated, "a helper suitable" is ezer kenegdo in Hebrew, a term that is notoriously difficult to translate according to Hebrew scholar Robert Alter (quoted in Captivating). Ezer comes from the same root as "strength" and is used elsewhere in the Old Testament to describe God as Israel's help in times of trouble, as in Deuteronomy 29:33:
29 Blessed are you, Israel!
Who is like you,
a people saved by the LORD?
He is your shield and helper
and your glorious sword.
Your enemies will cower before you,
and you will tread on their heights.”
Kengedgo means something like corresponding to, or opposite. Taking the two words together, Commentator Rashi wrote,
"If he is worthy then [she is] a helpmate, if he is not worthy then [she is] opposite him, to fight him."
In other words, as an ezer, a woman is a source of strength, but that strength can be used for a man or against a man. As I thought what that looked like, I, in my engineering nerdiness, found an "ahah!" moment through waves and phase shifts.
Partial Constructive Interference
If you look at the figure below, the red and the blue waves have the same period and amplitude; they have the same shape, except one is shifted further along the x axis than the other (if you want to be technical, the blue wave is y=sin(x) and the red one is y=sin(x+pi/2). The green wave is the sum of the two; if you were to take the y-values of the red and the blue wave at each x value and add them together and plot, the result would be the green wave).
In this particular case, there is some constructive interference - in other words, the resultant wave (green) has a larger amplitude (height) than either of the addend waves. Depending on how far you shift the red one, you can end up with a few different shapes and heights of resultant (green) waves.
Maximal Destructive Interference - a strength against
The two waves are of equal amplitude (height) and frequency, and they are completely out of phase: where the blue wave (y=sin(x)) reaches a maximum at 1, the red one (y=sin(x+pi)) reaches a minimum at -1. As a result, the sum of the two waves (green) is y=0 all the way through; they totally cancel each other out.
Maximal Constructive Interference - a strength for
Although you can't see it, there are actually two waves here - a red one (y=sin(x) ) and a blue one (y=sin(x)). The red one just happens to be completely on top of the blue one because the two waves are completely in phase, both reaching a maximum of 1 and minimum at -1 at the same time.
As a result, when you add the two waves together (shown in green), you have a new maximum of 2 and new minimum of -2; the amplitude of the new wave is double that of the originals. In the same way, when two partners are totally aligned, their combined strength as a team will be much greater than their individual strength.
Although Genesis 2 is often discussed in reference to marriage, I think that we can broaden this idea of teamwork and building up vs tearing down to other types of relationships between men and women in work, family, romance, etc. With strength comes responsibility, and I pray that I will be a strength for the men in my life and not a strength against them.
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Sources:
Ezer Kenegdo: http://godswordtowomen.org/ezerkenegdo.htm
Eldridge, John and Stasi. Captivating: Unveiling the Mystery of a Woman's Soul. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2007.
Rashi commentary: http://www.tachash.org/metsudah/b01r.html
