Replacing the word "King" with the word "Queen" may aid us in changing the way we envision the "gender" of the Infinite, but this change does nothing to break down our underlying perceptions of the Eternal as ruler and of ourselves as subjects. What's more, God-language should not be exclusive of either gender: both female and male were created in the image of the divine. Our language is insufficient to describe the divine, but we do the best we can, bearing in mind that while our words only approach the Infinite, all language spoken from the heart has God in it.

Jewish tradition teaches that our Creator is beyond language: our words can only approach the Infinite. May our use of different names remind us that our names are only substitutes; that God is beyond any words we can speak.

-Adapted from the Williams College Feminist Seder, 1995 and the Velveteen Rabbi's Haggadah


haggadah Section: Introduction