On Zoom with Shoshana Fershtman, JD, PhD
We have all been heartsick at the suffering of the Israeli and Palestinian people in the past two years, the ongoing war in Ukraine, and the terrifying rise of fascism in our own country. How do we begin to move beyond patriarchal consciousness into a new paradigm? Can reclaiming the Great Mother Goddesses of Ancient Israel/Palestine help us to find common ground?
Erich Neumann, a Jewish Jungian psychoanalyst and refugee from Nazi Germany, fled with his family to Palestine in 1934, where he immersed himself in the study of the Great Mother Goddesses of the ancient world. Neumann also spoke of the evolution of consciousness—that we emerged from a period of matriarchal consciousness and have reached the breaking point of the patriarchal era, where ego dominance led to great technological discoveries, but is now threatening our very survival.
Drawing on the motif of the kabbalistic wedding between the Sacred Masculine and Divine Feminine Shekhinah, Neumann saw that we are also on the cusp of a new era—an awareness that we are all part of something larger—what Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (z’l )called Gaia consciousness, the awareness of the interconnectedness of all Being.
In reconnecting with the larger story of our collective past, we see deeper layers of truth. Rather than our shared history being one of endless division and conflict, archeological evidence reveals that Israelite, Philistine and Canaanite cultures were deeply interconnected in the centuries that preceded the written Bible in the sixth century BCE. These cultures, in which the Goddess was worshipped and women participated in sacred rituals, may have been organized collaboratively and non-hierarchically.
The class will explore the mythological meaning of various Biblical stories, including the erotic love story of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, the death of Miriam, and Moses’s encounter with the Rock.
This Sacred Retelling of our Her-story infuses Judaism in hidden and mysterious ways. We can begin to see Torah through new eyes and can question the root assumptions that underlie the seemingly intractable suffering in the land of Israel and Palestine.
Class will include lectures, PowerPoint images, and time for journaling, artmaking, discussion and reflection. Please have a journal and/or artmaking materials.
Shoshana Fershtman, JD, PhD is a clinical psychologist and Jungian analyst, Adjunct Professor of Mythological Studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute, and author of The Mystical Exodus in Jungian Perspective: Transforming Trauma and the Wellsprings of Renewal (Routledge, 2021), and co-editor of Politics in a Traumatized World: Papers from the 2024 Presidency Conference at the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco and Post-Election Reflections (available online for free at https://aras.org/online-books). Shoshana also serves on the Beit Midrash Steering Committee and Spiritual Leadership Team at Congregation Ner Shalom.