What is a Woman?

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I was a tomboy as a kid, playing football at recess, building mud castles, and generally not caring much about what anyone thought of me. That all shifted around the beginning of middle school when I grew my short hair long and became interested in more “girly” things like painting my nails, shopping at the mall, and being obsessed with boys.

But even when externally I became more “feminine,” whatever that means, internally I always felt kind of ambivalent about being a girl. When I got to college I dove into feminist theory and gender studies because I was looking to understand myself as a gendered being in the world.

Turns out feminism these days has an emphatic answer to the question, “What is a woman?”: Nothing, everything, and anything in between.

I played around with that freedom for a while, but it was deeply unsatisfying as an answer to the confusion in my inner world. I saw in society and in myself that as much as men and women are the same in so many ways, just as human beings, we also gravitate towards different interests, emotional responses to events, types of relationships, etc. This is compounded by our physical sexual dimorphism, which allows for women to conceive and birth a child and for men to have greater physical strength on average.

But the question that plagued me was whether there was a strong relationship between our dimorphous bodies (a clear, tangible evidence of difference) and the gendered, intangible, social and cultural roles of men and women.

Lately, I have been encountering a biblical verse about womanhood that I am thinking about as a pathway to address this question. In general, Hasidic thought sees male/masculine as correlated to external, thus revealed, expression and female/feminine as correlated to internal, but essential, expression. This is because the essence of something cannot be revealed, by definition essence must be concealed. So the verse in question states: “Kol Kevuda Bas Melech Penima” (All of the honor of the daughter of the king is within).

The Lubavitcher Rebbe draws upon this verse over and over again in his talks about womanhood. Yet, interestingly, he uses the same verse to mean many different things. While there is the traditional connotation of a woman’s domestic role, the overarching theme is that the way a woman reveals her honor is by operating on a level of “inwardness.” Wow, what a terrible English word for the Hebrew term, “penimius.” Penimius connotes authenticity, honesty, simplicity, humility and always digging beneath the surface. We don’t have good words for it because that is the point- inwardness resists being revealed.

It turns out there is no static definition of womanhood in Hasidic thought. That is because Judaism cares less about who you are and more about what you are here for. And ultimately, that is what I was really looking for as a young woman. We get so caught up in identity and forget that identity is a way to make sense of our place in the world. It is not an end, but a means towards framing and enacting our impact on the world.

Being a woman has become, for me, a meditation on inwardness, seeking out the depth within other people, my children, events in my daily life, and within myself. Just like my body could create a new life, hidden within me for 9 months, I have a deep, endless capacity to experience the G-dly divinity hiding within the world. And like birth, I can then bring it out into the light.

p.s. If you are thinking that men can also do this, or should, then you are tapping into the messianic consciousness that Hasidic thought teaches will actually be characterized by feminine energy. Geula- redemption- happens when we all- men and women- seek out G-d in every part of our lives, when we can all live with penimius.