Let My People Know

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz: “The relations between man and woman.”

The relations between man and woman are part of the inner dynamics of the world.

And perhaps, at least for the sake of the literary imagination of humanity, it’s just as well that this is so.

For besides the need for novels and stories, there is the need for separation, and not only of the sexes, in order for creative tension to be generated.

In the Kabbalah it is known as the secret of the cleavage, “Sod HaNisirah,” which has its origin in the very first stages of Creation when the firmament was made, to separate the waters, forming the upper waters and the lower waters, with the eternal tension between them.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz