ARTICLES

JUDITH DEUTSCH KORNBLATT

Solov 'ev's Androgynous Sophia and the Jewish Kabbalah

The revival of Russian Orthodoxy at the turn of the century coincided with a wave of anti-
Semitism, and many Russian intellectuals of the time, following Vladimir Solov'ev, understood
the defense of the Jews as their Christian duty. For Solov'ev, however, interest in the Jews went
beyond ethical considerations and ran deeper through his philosophy than even his Utopian vision
of a theocracy based on Hebrew Scriptures. Indeed, the expression of what may be Solov'ev's
central concept—the Divine Sophia—achieved clarity through his selective reading of the Jew-
ish mystical tradition of Kabbalah. The argument that follows does not seek to prove influence,
for Solov'ev approached the study of Kabbalah with well-formed philosophical convictions.
Rather, Solov'ev's fascination with Jewish mysticism arises from affinity and recognition, as the
Russian theologian sought a vocabulary with which to explain his own mystical intuitions.
Disregarding major discrepancies between Jewish mysticism and Christian Trinitarian
dogma, Solov'ev found in Kabbalah confirmation of his mystical vision of an erotic yet an-
drogynous ideal within the Godhead. He understood Kabbalah's multiple hypostases of the one
living God, who act like humans and are acted upon by mortal men and women, as expressions
of his own connection to the divine world through Sophia. It is this vision of Sophia that origi-
nally appeared in La Russie et I'eglise universelle when it was first published in France in 1889.'
The French version complements an earlier version of Solov'evV sophiology found in Chteniia o
bogochelovechestve (1877 -1881).
In the Chteniia, Solov'ev speaks largely in the Schellingian-Hegelian language popular dur-
ing his university years and tries to explain cosmogony, anthropology, and the history of religion
through a logical tripartite system. He aims at all times to identify a third principle that recon-
ciles the apparent dualism of spirit and matter, transcendent truth and sensual experience. In
Sophia, Solov'ev finds a partner for the abstract Logos, and she becomes the connecting prin-
ciple between God and humanity. She is the paradoxical "body of God, divine matter" (3:115),
both subject and object at once (3:140). As Solov'ev asserts that humanity is the link between
the divine and natural worlds, he calls Sophia ideal'nyi chelovek (3:121). The body of God, she
is also the soul of the world, the incarnated divine idea (3:127, 146). Despite this reference to
incarnation, the Sophia of Chteniia remains an abstract ideal approachable through rational con-
templation. Even the World Soul, which causes evil to enter the prenatural world (3:135, 142),
appears as a rational phenomenon and, thus, is seemingly unrelated to Solov'ev's mystical vision
of the Divine Female.
The Sophia of La Russie et I'eglise universelle seeks her justification within biblical revela-
tion instead of German idealism. On the surface she is also more identifiably female, being
called variously wife, mother, girlfriend, and fiancee, uniting with man and giving birth. The
issue of her gender, however, is a complicated one. The Greeks identified Sophia with Logos,

A shorter version of this article wasfirstpresented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the
Advancement of Slavic Studies, Chicago, 1989.
1. La Russie et I'eglise universelle (Paris: Librairie Nouvelle Parisienne, 1889). Translated in 1911 by
G. A. Rachinskii, this work was included in Sobranie Sochinenii Vladimira Sergeevicha Solov'eva, 12 vols.
(Brussels: Zhizn' s Bogom, 1969) 11:139-348. Unless otherwise stated, all quotationsfromSolov'ev will
be from this edition and will be indicated in the text in parenthesis.
Slavic Review 50, no. 3 (Fall 1991)
488 Slavic Review

Solov'ev tells us, but Russians (who have a particular bent toward mysticism, 3:181) tied her to
both the Mother of God and to Jesus Christ, and ultimately understood her as a separate individ-
ual image of the Divine, a social incarnation of the Divine in the universal church (11:310, 309).
Truly, we have here that same substantial form [designated by the Bible as the seed of
woman, i.e., Sophia], revealing herself in three successive and abiding manifestations, in
reality separate, but in essence indivisible, assuming the name of Mary in its female person-
ification, of Jesus in its male personification—and preserving its own name for its full and
universal manifestation in the perfect Church of the future, in the fiancee and wife of the
Word of God.
This Sophia, identified as both male and female, both individual and communal, recalls a Chris-
tianized, and sexually ambiguous, member of the Kabbalistic family.
Solov'ev's knowledge of Kabbalah is easily documented. In 1896 he wrote a scholarly in-
troduction to "Kabbalah: Mystical Philosophy of the Jews" by David Gintsburg and, later, draw-
ing on Gintsburg as well as German and French sources, contributed the entry on Kabbalah to
the Brokgaus-Efron Encyclopedia.2 By this time Solov'ev had learned the language well enough
to read Hebrew Scripture in the original and had committed himself to the study of Talmud and
Jewish medieval philosophy. Solov'ev's interest in Jewish mysticism had no doubt begun much
earlier, while he studied independently at the Moscow Spiritual Academy during the mid-1870s.
S. M. Luk'ianov cites a report, submitted in 1875 in the name of the young scholar, that re-
quested permission for temporary leave from the post of docent of philosophy at Moscow Uni-
versity. Solov'ev intended to travel to London for research in the British Museum on "Indian,
gnostic, and medieval philosophy."3 Whether this "medieval philosophy" actually meant Kab-
balah at first is still unclear," but that it became Kabbalah is attested to by the memoirs of I.I.
Ianzhul with whom Solov'ev socialized in London. Ianzhul claims to have seen Solov'ev poring
over the bizarre illustrations from a book on Kabbalah and to have heard him declare: "It is very
interesting; in every line of this book there is more life than in all of European scholarship.
I am very happy and content to have found this edition."5
While at the British Museum, Solov'ev alleged that he had his second direct experience of
the Divine Sophia (the first having occurred in childhood) and decided to travel to Egypt to seek
a third meeting. Although an acquaintance who saw the young mystic in Egypt writes that Solo-
v'ev managed to do no more in the desert than lose his watch to Bedouins,6 the poet insisted he
fulfilled his mission, seeing his third and fullest vision of the Sophia: "Today, wrapped in
azure,/My tsaritsa has appeared before me." 7
A notebook used by Solov'ev during his stay in London contains a short prayer to Sophia

2. David Gintsburg, "Kabbala, misticheskaia filosofiia evreev," Voprosyfilosofiii psikhologii 33

(1896): 279-300. The introduction alone is reprinted in the Brussels edition of Solov'ev (12:332-334). The
encyclopedia article is found in 10:339-343.
3. S. M. Luk'ianov, O Vladimire Solov'eve v ego molodye gody: materialy k biografii, 3 vols. (Pet-
rograd: Gosudarstvennaia, 1916-1921) 3:64. Drawing heavily on Luk'ianov, Sergei Solov'ev describes his
uncle's stay abroad in S. M. Solov'ev, Zhizn' i tvorcheskaia evoliutsiia Vladimira Solov'eva (Brussels:
Zhizn' sBogom, 1977), 114-152.
4. Hebrew was taught in the seminary, and the seminary library contained books on Jewish as well as
other medieval mysticisms. Furthermore, Solov'ev probably had read Eliphas Levi, a major source on eso-
tericism in general, including references to Kabbalah. Interest in and translation of Jewish texts was high
during the reign of Alexander II (see Nikolai Rizhskii, Istoriia perevoda Biblii v Rossii [Novosibirsk: Nauka,
1978], 155-170, esp. 158-164) and mystical societies proliferated.
5. 1.1. Ianzhul, "Vospominaniia 1.1. Ianzhula o perezhitom i vidennom," Russkaia starina 141
(1910): 481-482.
6. E. M. de Vogue, "Un docteur russe Vladimir Solovief," Sous I'horizon: Hommes et choses d'hier,
2nd ed. (Paris, 1905), 15-25; this article is reproduced in A. Nikiforaki, "Inostranets o russkom," Russkoe
Obozrenie 1 (1901): 117-123 and also cited in Luk'ianov, "Vospominaniia," 260.
7. Vladimir Solov'ev, Stikhotvoreniia i shutochnye p'esy, Biblioteka poeta series (Leningrad: Sovet-
skiipisatel', 1974), 61. See also the description of his visions of Sophia in "Tri svidaniia," ibid., 125-132.
Solov'ev's Androgynous Sophia and the Jewish Kabbalah 489

that some scholars have called the translation of a Gnostic incantation.8 Although much of the
imagery in this prayer is decidedly Gnostic (including typical allusions to roses and lilies), the
second line, pointing to Kabbalistic influences, uses vocabulary that postdates Gnosticism and
suggests that Solov'ev himself wrote the incantation.
The entry begins "In the name of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit"; and it continues,
using Latin letters "An-Soph, Jah, Soph-Jah."9 "An-Soph" clearly refers to the transcendent,
unknowable Godhead of Kabbalah: Ein-Sof, which is mentioned by Solov'ev in his 1876 French
article "Sophie," and transliterated into Russian as "6n-sof" in "Filosofskie nachala tsel'nogo
znaniia" (1877).'° Jah is one of the many biblical names of the one God, the discussion, arrange-
ment, and interpretation of which form the core of speculative Kabbalah." The name is usually
associated with the sefirah, or divine manifestation of, Hokhmah (wisdom). Solov'ev then, in a
technique reminiscent of the wordplay of Kabbalah, derives "Sophia" from the union of Soph,
meaning end in Hebrew, and Jah. "Soph-Jah" corresponds to the Holy Spirit in the first line of
the prayer's invocation, and Solov'ev thus makes "the end of God" into the third divine hypo-
stasis. In all of Solov'ev, the third principle is a bridge or connector, and in this case the inter-
mediary unites God and man, as the subsequent prayer makes clear: "Descend into the dungeon
of the soul," he pleads, and "fill our darkness with your radiance" (12:149). Soph-Jah thus
moves God from transcendence to immanence, so that the end of God is man. This early manu-
script demonstrates Solov'ev's understanding of Kabbalistic vocabulary, method, and, most im-
portant, theology, for the sefirot, beginning with Hokhmah, are the connecting links between an
eternal Godhead and humanity.
Solov'ev traces the name Sophia—wisdom, or Premudrost' in Russian—back through
Gnosticism and Kabbalah to the Old Testament in Proverbs 8-9 ("Wisdom hath builded her
house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars," Prov. 9:1), as well as to the apocryphal Jewish text,
the Wisdom of Solomon ("I came to know everything, both the hidden and the revealed, for I
was taught by Wisdom, the artist of all," Wis. of Sol. 7:21) (3:115; 11:288).12

8. The prayer was discovered by S. M. Solov'ev and first published by him in "Ideia tserkvi v poezii
Vladimira Solov'eva," Bogoslovskii vestnik (January 1915), 74. Sergei Bulgakov reprinted it in "Vladimir
Solov'ev i Anna Shmidt," Tikhie Dumy (Moscow: Leman i Sakharov, 1918), 74, and argues, I believe incor-
rectly, that the prayer was copied from a Gnostic text, perhaps found by Solov'ev in the British Museum. The
text may be found in the Brussels edition (12:148-149).
9. This second line was not printed in S. M. Solov'ev's first publication of the prayer but was added in
the sixth edition of Solov'ev's poetry. See commentary by Luk'ianov, "Vospominaniia," 146.
10. La Sophia et les autre Merits francais, ed. Francois Rouleau (Lausanne: La Cit^-L'Age d'Homme,
1978), 18,79 (the article "Sophie" is not included in the Brussels edition). The reference to Kabbalah in this
invocation has been recognized by Luk'ianov, "Vospominaniia," 146, and by subsequent scholars, includ-
ing Dmitrii Stremooukhoff, but has never been fully analyzed. For references to Solov'ev's use of Kabbalah,
see Dmitrii Stremooukhoff, Vladimir Soloviev and His Messianic Work, trans. Elizabeth Meyendorff, ed.
Phillip Guilbeau and Heather Elise MacGregor (Belmont, Mass.: Norland, 1980), 50-51, 83, 201-204,
306-307, 343n, 365n; A. F. Losev, VI. Solov'ev (Moscow: Mysl', 1983), 67-77; and Edith Klum, Natur,
Kunst undLiebe in derPhilosophic VladimirSolov'evs: Eine religionsphilosophische Untersuchung (Munich:
Sagner, 1965), 20, 32, 255-257.
11. Gershom G. Scholem is the foremost scholar of Kabbalah: See Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism
(New York: Schocken, 1954); Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism, and Talmudic Tradition (New York:
Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1960); On Kabbalah and its Symbolism (New York: Schocken,
1965); and Kabbalah (New York: Dorset, 1974), among others. Moshe Idel, who has specifically studied
gender and eroticism in Kabbalah, recently challenged some of Scholem's assumptions in Kabbalah: New
Perspectives (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1988). For a very readable introduction to Kab-
balah, see Lawrence Fine, "Kabbalistic Texts," in Back to the Sources: Reading the Classic Jewish Texts,
ed. Barry W. Holtz (New York: Summit, 1984). I would like to express my thanks to Daniel Matt for his
assistance in the study of Kabbalah.
12. This house with seven pillars from Proverbs opens Solov'ev's Sophianic poem that begins: "U
tsaritsy moei est' vysokii dvorets,/ O semi on stolbakh zolotykh" (Stikhotvoreniia, 62). Solov'ev wrote the
poem during his stay in Egypt. Other speculations on Wisdom appear in Job 28:12-28, and a series of
apocryphal books, including the Slavonic book of Enoch. See Gershom Scholem, "Schechina; das passiv-
490 Slavic Review

The Greek Sophia, Solov'ev tells us, is Hokhmah in Hebrew and is personified as female in
the biblical texts (11:288-289). Despite Solov'ev's association of his Divine Sophia with the
Wisdom of these early texts, Hokhmah remains there a creation of God, albeit the primal one.
She becomes a divine hypostasis only in later mysticism.
Jewish mysticism developed the doctrine of Ein-Sof, the "Endless," unknowable Godhead,
and of the ten sefirot, or manifestations of God, that emanate from it, of which Hokhmah is one.
That Solov'ev's Wisdom participates in the Kabbalistic sefirot as much or even more than in the
biblical and Gnostic traditions is obvious from the connection he draws not only between Sophia
and Hokhmah (usually male in Kabbalah), but between Sophia and Shekhinah or Malkhut (fe-
male), the tenth sefirah.13 Deciphering the gender confusion between Hokhmah and Shekhinah
in Solov'ev's allusions to Sophia in La Russie et I'eglise universelle may help explain Divine
Wisdom and its relationship to the World Soul and also give insight into his remarks on gender
and androgyny, for which he may have found support in the eroticism of medieval Kabbalistic
theosophy.
The Zohar is perhaps the best-known Kabbalistic text, and the one that Solov'ev may have
studied in Latin during his stay in London.14 Largely an exegesis on the first five books of the
Hebrew Scripture, Zohar is reputed to have been written in the second century by Rav Shim'oti
ben Yohai but is actually an elaborate thirteenth century forgery by the Spanish Kabbalist, Moses
b. Shem Tov de Leon.-After a lengthy prologue, the Zohar opens with an interpretation of Gene-
sis, frequently verse by verse. The first selection describes the birth of the sefirot in a manner
similar to most Kabbalistic teaching: Ein-Sof or Keter, the first sefirah and here considered co-
eternal with Ein-Sof, allows for the existence of Hokhmah.'5 Hokhmah is father and is paired
with the next sefirah, Binah, who is mother. The two then unite to give birth to the following
seven sefirot. Together, the sefirot are sometimes diagrammed as representing various limbs of
the human body, with the suggestion that the right-hand members are masculine and the left,
feminine. The lower sefirot also form a sexual union; Tiferet (male) unites through Yesod (repre-
sented as the male sexual organ) with Shekhinah (female), which is the closest sefirah to human-
ity and is the first to have direct dealings with mortals.
Therefore, in Kabbalah it is not Hokhmah but Shekhinah who becomes the female partner
to the masculine mystic and to all men.16 Her main appellative in the Zohar is, in fact, Female.
She is the closest stage to the human world, and entrance into the divine realm must be made
through her "gates," an erotic metaphor.17 Kabbalah describes sexual relations between the

weibliche Moment in der Gottheit," Von der mystischen Gestalt der Gottheit: Studien zu Grundbegriffen der
Kabbala (Frankfurt a.R.: Suhrkamp, 1977), 135-140; and Raphael Patai, The Hebrew Goddess (New York:
KTAV, 1967), 139.
13. The sefirot in descending order are Keter (crown), Hokhmah (wisdom), Binah (understanding),
Gedulah or Hesed (kindness), Gevurah or Din (harsh judgment), Tiferet (beauty), Netsah (triumph), Hod
(glory), Yesod (foundation), and Malkhut or Shekhinah (kindgom or indwelling of God).
14. Stremooukhoff, Soloviev and His Messianic Work, 343, convincingly speculates that the book in
question is Christian Knorr von Rosenroth, Kabbala denudata 1 (Sulzbach: Lichtenthaler, 1677) and 2
(Frankfurt: Zunneri, 1684).
15. Later Lurianic Kabbalah refers to this process as a contraction into Itself. Although the Zohar
rarely uses the names of the sefirot, the terms it chooses for the ten manifestations of God correspond to the
traditional ones, and medieval commentators on the Zohar inserted them with no difficulty. For a table of
correspondence, see The Zohar, trans. Harry Sperling and Maurice Simon, 5 vols. (London: Soncino, 1984)
1:385.
16. A similarity might be noted between Solov'ev and Kabbalah, for neither postulate a female mystic.
Scholem writes, "one final observation should be made on the general character of Kabbalism as distinct
from other, non-Jewish, forms of mysticism. Both historically and metaphysically it is a masculine doctrine,
made for men and by men," Scholem, Major Trends, 37.
17. "The emphasis placed on the female principle in the symbolism of the last Sefirah heightens the
mythical language of these descriptions. Appearing from above as 'the end of thought,' the last Sefirah is for
 Solov'ev's Androgynous Sophia and the Jewish Kabbalah 491

sefirot modeled on male-female intercourse on earth (as below, so above) and reinforces a tradi-
tional Jewish concern for marital relations. As opposed to the treatment of sex in other mystical
systems in Kabbalah sex gives life not death, and one way of uniting with Shekhinah is for a
Jewish man to have sexual intercourse with his wife on the Sabbath.18
For both Kabbalah and Solov'ev, the intimate connection between God and man is more
than metaphor. According to Kabbalistic texts, human actions affect the balance of power within
the divine world." Proper fulfillment of the laws of the Torah increases the flow of divine light
from the Godhead, called the shefa, and the makeup of the divine structure is therefore governed
by human beings. For Solov'ev, social action, that is, man's engagement here on earth, inti-
mately affects the Kingdom of God. He condemns philosophers who withdraw from the social
arena (11:240, 318), criticizes his own church for its worldly apathy (11:175), and praises the
Jews precisely for their orientation toward the human world and their activism that brings them
closer to the Kingdom of Heaven.20
Kabbalah perhaps attracted Solov'ev because of its understanding of these very tangible
relations between God and humanity. Although Solov'ev studied eastern philosophy as avidly as
he did Jewish theology, he ultimately rejected Buddhism for its idealization of nothingness, as
opposed to human reality (3:45, 48; 11:320). Gnosticism, despite its influence on him, draws
Solov'ev's wrath for its teaching, as he says, that the world cannot be saved (10:325). Despite
his borrowed ideas from Platonic idealism, Solov'ev also turned from it because of its dualism
and ultimate rejection of the world of man (11:321). Both Buddhism and Platonic philosophy,
Solov'ev claims, are only stages on the path toward true revelation. The early seventeenth cen-
tury mystic Jacob Boehme, whose theosophy strongly recalls Kabbalah, is perhaps closest to
Solov'ev's mystical orientation, although Boehme lacked the erudition that underlies Solov'ev's
vision of Goclmanhood.2'
Neither Kabbalah nor Solov'ev preach sexual asceticism, although Solov'ev seems to
understand sexual relations more abstractly than does Jewish mysticism.22 In order to preserve

man the door or gate through which he can begin the ascent up the ladder of perception of the Divine Mys-
tery," Scholem, Kabbalah, 112.
18. Moshe Idel, "Metaphores et pratiques sexuelles dans la Cabale," in Lettre sur la Saintete: Le
Secret de la relation entre I'homme et lafemme dans la Cabale, trans. Charles Mopsik (Paris: Verdier,
1986), 336-338, 344, 347.
19. "Thus, man is conceived of as an active factor able to interact with the dynamic Divinity. Kab-
balistic anthropology and theosophy, then, are both similar and complementary perceptions," Idel, New Per-
' spectives, 166.
20. See Joseph Dan, Gershom Scholem and the Mystical Dimension of Jewish History (New York:
New York University, 1987), 221. Solov'ev claims: "[The Jews] alone understood true redemption . . . in
the sanctification and renaissance of the entire human essence and all of its being by the way of living moral
and religious activism, in faith and deeds, in prayer, in work and charity" (11:322).
21. For an analysis of Solov'ev's attitude toward eastern mysticism, see Jonathan Sutton, The Reli-
gious Philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov: Towards a Reassessment (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988),
161-178. SamuelD. Cioran argues for the influence of Gnosticism in Vladimir Solov'ev and the Knighthood
of the Divine Sophia (Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1977), 17-21. The late Donald C.
Gillis began a project on "Gnosis and Cabala in the Early Works of Vladimir Solov'ev," and I am thankful
for the use of his short unpublished manuscript. Valentinian Gnosticism includes an "upper" and "lower"
Sophia that probably influenced Solov'ev's own sometimes dual Sophia, but unlike Solov'ev's, the Valenti-
nian Sophia always remained a troublemaker in the created world. See Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion:
The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity, 2nd ed. (Boston: Beacon, 1962),
176-199. On Boehme and Kabbalah, see Scholem, Major Trends, 237-238.
22. Solov'ev never married but might have agreed with the Kabbalist: "The mystery of sex . . . has a
terribly deep significance. This mystery of human existence is for him nothing but a symbol of the love
between the divine T and the divine 'You,' the Holy one, blessed be He and His Shekhinah. . . . In God
there is a union of the active and the passive, procreation and conception, from which all mundane life and
bliss are derived" (Scholem, Major Trends, 227).
492 Slavic Review

the positive roles of humanity and physical matter in general within the divine drama, Solov'ev
places the Fall in the cosmogonic process, releasing people from personal guilt in original sin
(see 11:31 Iff). Kabbalah also portrays the Fall in this way. Redemption then becomes a question
of mending the relations between the parties involved in the divine-human process, with man as
the potential unifier of a divided cosmos (11:312). Rather than the last stage in inherently flawed
creation, humans become the first stage in redemption.
As Solov'ev argues, the union of flesh and spirit takes place along the lines of sexual inter-
course: Wisdom finds man and rejoices in the union (11:306); earth and heaven unite to create
man (11:306); the Soul and the Word unite in gladness (11:307)." The feminine gender in Solo-
v'ev, therefore, does not unambiguously represent evil or corruption of the flesh, as it does in
Gnosticism and in the philosophy of the Jewish Hellenist, Philo, for example, about whom Solo-
v'ev also writes. When not intentionally confusing her gender, as we will see below, Solov'ev
insists on the femininity of his divine Sophia and elevates erotic love to the role of divine medi-
ator.24 For him, the goal of humanity is not "to make the female male"—where "female" sig-
nifies sinful flesh and "male" pure spirit—but it is rather the true and (re)productive unification
of male and female. In fact sexual love leads humanity along "the path toward the image and
likeness of God, to the union of male and female principles in androgyny, the 'whole human
being'," (9:234). Solov'ev may have found confirmation for this intuition in the Zohar, which
explains: "Any image that does not embrace male and female is not a high and true image," and
"a human being is only called Adam when male and female are as one" (Zohar 1:55b).25 For
both Kabbalah and Solov'ev, the ideal is bisexual not asexual.
The real differences between Kabbalah and Solov'ev cannot be disregarded, but they may
explain Solov'ev's misreading of Kabbalistic theogony. While Kabbalists understood their writ-
ings as interpretations of an existing tradition, Solov'ev saw his philosophy as the foundation of
a new ecumenical church. He believed he could choose only those aspects of existing traditions
that supported his vision and could combine them into a true religious and social order. Because
that synthetic order is based on the concept of unity, Solov'ev tended to equate diverse elements
of the systems that he studied, disregarding their unique functions within individual traditions.
Thus, Solov'ev adopted Kabbalah's eroticization of the sefirot to his explanation of the relation
of Sophia to the divine hypostases and to man but never clarified the relation between the persons
of the Trinity and Kabbalistic manifestations of Ein-Sof. He correctly understood the difference
between the sefirot and neo-Platonic emanations of the Divine, since the latter are all to some
degree lesser than the Prime Mover, but he then assumed that he could thus equate Ein-Sof with
God the Father, since all the members of the Trinity are equally divine. This assumption seri-
ously "trinitizes" Kabbalah, as we see in a diagram Solov'ev sketched in the margin of his essay
"Sophie," where a trinity of Ein-Sof, Logos, and Sophia correspond to Spirit, Intellect, and
Soul.26 Given his tendency to read Kabbalah as confirmation of his own synthetic Trinitarian
vision, Solov'ev conflated the male Hokhmah and female Shekhinah, as we shall see.
Solov'ev identifies Shekhinah in various ways, including the "divine power and glory,"
which is revealed to all peoples (11:322), perhaps influenced by Kabbalah's epithet for her:
"Glory of God." In the most Kabbalistic of his writings, however—part 3, chapter 5 of La

23. See also "Smysl liubvi," 7:45.

24. See, for example, Solov'ev's introduction to the third edition of his poetry, reprinted in Stikho-
tvoreniia i shutochnye p'esy (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1968), xii-xiii and "Tvorenie Platona" (12:391):
"Eros is not a god, but something divine, halfway between eternal and mortal nature, a powerful demon who
unites heaven and earth." See also my manuscript, "The Transfiguration of Plato in the Erotic Philosophy of
VI. Solov'ev" (forthcoming). On Philo see Wayne A. Meeks, "The Image of the Androgyne: Some Uses of
a Symbol in Earliest Christianity," History of Religions 13 (1973): 176, and Richard A. Baer, Jr., Philo's
Use of the Categories Male and Female (Leiden: Brill, 1970), 40-44.
25. Zohar: The Book of Enlightenment, trans. Daniel Chanan Matt, preface by Arthur Green (New
York: Paulist Press, 1983), 55-56. Scholem considers the introduction of a female aspect of God, in
Shekhinah, "one of the most important and lasting innovations of Kabbalism" (Scholem, Major Trends, 229).
26. See Scholem, Kabbalah, 98, 101. Solov'ev, "Sophie," 79 n. 2.
Solov'ev's Androgynous Sophia and the Jewish Kabbalah 493

Russie et I'eglise universelle (11.298-302)—Solov'ev refers to Shekhinah by the alternate

name for the tenth sefirah: Malkhut. Malkhut means kingship, and Shekhinah-Malkhut is, there-
fore, the manifestation of the Kingdom of Heaven, the abode of the ideal people of Israel. In
Kabbalah the last stage of divine manifestation is the first stage of human spiritualization, and
Solov'ev develops this very aspect of Malkhut in his writings on theocracy. Thus, man's union
with Shekhinah for Solov'ev has social and political, as well as mystical ramifications.
In this "Kabbalistic" section, Solov'ev both distinguishes between Hokhmah and
Shekhinah-Malkhut and, ultimately, confuses them in his analogy with Sophia. The chapter fol-
lows several in which Solov'ev describes the relation of the divine hypostases to God in Its Ob-
jectivity, who, like Ein-Sof in later Kabbalah, contracts into Itself in order to create an object
with which to interact, called God in Its Subjectivity or the Holy Trinity. From the Trinity then
proceeds God in Its Relativity or Sophia, also called Hokhmah, who is multiplicity-in-unity and
is herself tripartite. In the chapter immediately preceding the one in question here, Solov'ev
further suggests that from Sophia proceeds yet another trinity that he could have called God in Its
Potentiality, or the World Soul, and from her, who represents space, time, and causality, comes
the world of man. (This explanation is only one of several regarding the relation between Sophia
and the World Soul in the following chapters.)
Solov'ev opens chapter 5 with bereshit (in the beginning), the first word of the Hebrew
Scripture and translates it first into Greek and Latin and then into Russian as "v nachale ili,
vernee, vo glave" (11:298). Despite a disclaimer that "it is not necessary to escape into Kab-
balistic fantasies," Solov'ev develops a decidedly Kabbalistic interpretation of this word, which
is actually a contraction of a preposition (b, meaning in or with) and what Solov'ev believes to
be a feminine gender noun (reshit, meaning beginning)."
Solov'ev holds that it would be a misunderstanding of the spirit of ancient Hebrew to sug-
gest that "in the beginning" is a simple adve.rb along the lines of the Russian word snachala:
"When the Jewish people used a noun, it took that form in its direct meaning, that is, it actually
thought of a being or real object signified by that noun" (11:298). Solov'ev is here, of course,
incorrect, for Hebrew, like Russian and English, includes nouns understood as concepts or used
in adverbial phrases. Solov'ev in fact "misreads" the biblical text here through Kabbalistic eyes.
Kabbalah reads b as "with" instead of "in" and personifies reshit, and Solov'ev no doubt
learned from the Zohar its equation with Hokhmah. The Zohar reads the first half of the opening
line of Genesis—"In the beginning, Elohim created" (Bereshit barah Elohim) as "Keter created
Binah by means of (with) Hokhmah." Zohar continues (Zohar 1:15a, Matt translation, 49-50):

With the Beginning [or Reshit-Hokhmah]

The Concealed One who is not known [a typical reference to Keter] created the palace [a
reference to Binah].
This palace is called Elohim [another name for Binah].
The secret is:
"With Beginning, created Elohim"
Hokhmah is called reshit because it is the first sefirah or aspect of God that can be known. Binah
proceeds from Hokhmah, and the two then unite to give birth to the seven lower sefirot.
Solov'ev makes a similarly personified interpretation of the word reshit. He, however, em-
phasizes that the noun is grammatically feminine and contrasts it to a masculine noun from the
same root: rosh. All Hebrew words are based on three-letter roots, and playing with these roots
to form and interpret names of God is central to Kabbalistic speculation. Whence does Solov'ev
draw this specific comparison? Perhaps also from the early pages of the Zohar, which derives
rosh, the Hebrew word for head, from an anagram of Asher, the middle term of the name of
God: Ehyeh asher ehyeh (I am that I am). Rosh is called: "the beginning which issues from

27. Reshit is actually a noun in the possessive form, and has caused biblical scholars difficulty since at
least the Tahnudic period. Perhaps it should be translated "In the beginning of," so that the first line of
Genesis would read "In the beginning of the creation of heaven and earth . . . ," a translation that raises
serious questions about the doctrine of creation ex nihilo.
494 Slavic Review

Reshit. So when the point and the temple were firmly established together, then bereshit com-
bined the supernal Beginning with Wisdom" (Zohar 1:15a-b, Soncino translation, 64). In this
passage the Zohar is not interested in the gender of reshit or rosh, and in fact has no trouble
using a feminine gender noun to designate a masculine person, the father who plants the seed in
Binah.
For Solov'ev, however, gender is a stricter category. Following his training in German phi-
losophy, Solov'ev attempts to evaluate faith from the point of view of reason and must adhere to
logical analysis.28 More significantly, he reads only that aspect of Kabbalah that will further his
definition of Sophia. Thus, he produces a reading of the biblical passage more literal than the
often literalist Zohar. The masculine noun rosh, he informs us, is used in Jewish theology to
designate God. Solov'ev may be fabricating authenticity here, as the Zohar itself does, relying
on spurious allusions to established Jewish theology, for in neither Talmudic nor mystical Juda-
ism does rosh designate God. In Kabbalah, as shown in the quotation from the Zohar cited
above, rosh is not the ultimate Godhead, which would be Ein-Sof, but an "issue" from the
"point" that is Hokhmah, the first knowable aspect of God, or reshit. Reshit, in other words, is
the active principle in this birth, primary to rosh. Despite its grammatical gender, rosh in Kab-
balah is the passive principle.
In a procedure again typical of Kabbalah, Solov'ev brings another biblical text to justify his
etymology. Reshit, Solov'ev continues, is the Hokhmah or Wisdom from Proverbs, who de-
clares: "The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His way" (Adonai qanani reshit darko)
(Prov. 8:22). Thus, says Solov'ev (11:298):
Eternal Wisdom is this reshit, the feminine principle or head of all existence, as Yehova,
Yahwey Elohim, the Triune God, is rosh, its active principle or head. But, according to the
book of Genesis, God created heaven and earth in this beginning, in His essential Wisdom.
This signifies that the above-mentioned Divine Wisdom represents not only the essential
and actual all-unity of the absolute essence or substance of God, but also contains within
herself the uniting power of the divided and fragmented world of being. She, the crowning
unity of everything in God, becomes both the unity of God and of extra-divine existence.
She represents, in this way, the true reason for creation and its goal—the principle in which
God created heaven and earth.

So, Sophia-Hokhmah-Premudrost' is the beginning of all creation, and also its end; she is the
means by which Solov'ev can speak of the ultimate union of everything in God. Wisdom, he
continues, "is reshit in the beginning—the fruitful idea of unconditional unity, unified potential,
that intends to unite everything; she is Malkhut... in the end—the Kingdom of God, the per-
fect and fully actualized unity of the Creator and of Creation" (11:299).
Disregarding the fact that Kabbalah's Hokhmah is an active, masculine principle and Mal-
khut is decidedly feminine, Solov'ev's Sophia now has two Hebrew names: Hokhmah in the
beginning and Malkhut, or Shekhinah, in the end.
Although early Jewish Gnosticism as well as a late development of Kabbalah in Hasidism
tend to associate Hokhmah and Shekhinah, called the lower Hokhmah,29 the strongest tradition in
Kabbalah associates Shekhinah rather with the third sefirah, Binah, and calls them the lower and
upper mothers. Hokhmah nonetheless does have an internal connection with Shekhinah even in
classical Kabbalah, as only one among other aspects of the very rich tenth sefirah. She is as well
Mother Zion and Keneset Yisrael, for example, the latter being the glorified personification of
the ecclesia or community of Israel.30 Perhaps Solov'ev here finds the justification for his own
conflation, for he is quite explicit about the relation of his Wisdom to the ecclesia; in the intro-
duction to Istoriia i budushchnost' teokratii (1885-1887), he calls the universal church the "is-

28. Compare Losev, Solov'ev, 73.

29. The system of sefirot, made even more elaborate in Lurianic Kabbalah, was collapsed in Hasid-
ism, so that Hokhmah was easily equated with Shekhinah. See Arthur Green, trans., Menahem Nahum:
Upright Practices, The Light of the Eyes (New York: Paulist Press, 1982), 13.
30. Scholem, "Schechina," 140-141.
Solov'ev's Androgynous Sophia and the Jewish Kabbalah 495

tinnaia podruga Bozhiia" and "that Sophia, The Wisdom of God, to whom, in an amazing show
of prophetic sensibility, our ancestors built altars and temples, themselves unaware of who she
is" (emphasis in original, 4:261). Sophia is the ecclesia, the ideal congregation of churches that
is God's female partner. From this description Kabbalah's Shekhinah, not Hokhmah, might be
closer to Solov'ev's Sophia.
A few chapters after the interpretation of the opening of Genesis, Solov'ev returns to the
original meaning of Shekhinah: the in-dwelling or presence of God.31 He writes (11:322):
In actuality, we see in the Old Testament a double row of Divine manifestations: phenom-
ena of a subjective consciousness in which God speaks to the soul of His righteous men, to
the patriarchs and prophets; and objective phenomena in which Divine strength and glory
(shekina [sic]) reveal themselves before the entire people, residing on material objects such
as the sacrificial altar or the ark of the covenant.
Shekhina here is the physical manifestation of the Divine and, therefore, a manifestation of
Wisdom, for Solov'ev has just written that "Divine Wisdom not only entered into the under-
standing of the Israelites, but she possessed their hearts and souls as well, and at the same time
appeared to them in sensual form." This sensual form must be the Shekhinah of which he goes
on to speak, and Solov'ev implies that Shekhinah in his system is the "body" of Hokhmah.
In Chteniia o bogochelovechestve Solov'ev called Sophia the "body of God" (3:115), but
in La Russie et Veglise universelle, Sophia herself has a body, which Solov'ev explains by re-
introducing another female actor in the cosmogonic drama: the capricious cause of evil from
Chteniia, the World Soul. Here she is called the "corporeality of Wisdom" (11:310). Where
Sophia had been the intermediary above, the World Soul becomes it below. Can we say then that
in Solov'ev's "reading" of Kabbalah, Sophia is Hokhmah and the World Soul is Shekhinah? Not
exactly, for while Solov'ev's World Soul is in some sense, as her name implies, part of creation,
neither Hokhmah or Shekhinah are created beings, even though the latter has an intimate relation
with humanity. Furthermore, all the sefirot are equally significant; although lower, Shekhinah is
not lesser than Hokhmah.32 If anything, Shekhinah includes Hokhmah, and not vice versa, for
the tenth sefirah incorporates all those above her.
Sophia still seems closest to Shekhinah, in whom Solov'ev simply distinguishes an aspect
that moves toward humanity, calling her the World Soul. Like Kabbalah, Solov'ev's system is
one of dialectic and process; all players can be defined only in relation to the others. As for the
World Soul, she might turn either to chaos (our world) or to God, the latter choice resulting in
cleaving to, and identity with, Sophia (11:299). So the World Soul in La Russie et Veglise uni-
verselle is potentially a synonym for Sophia but at the same time an issue from her.
How does the World Soul fulfill her potential and become Sophia? In fact, Solov'ev identi-
fies two souls: a soul of the upper world, synonymous with Sophia, and a soul of the lower
world, synonymous with the earth (11:305, 306). By splitting the World Soul, but retaining her
potential for unity, Solov'ev then need not differentiate Sophia from her, and Sophia need not
lose her role as intermediary between matter and spirit. Rather, the World Soul is the means by
which Sophia bridges the two realms; she connects reshit and malkhut. The World Soul becomes
Divine Wisdom, eliminating her own lower self, when, through her actions, the earth (feminine)
and the heavens (masculine) unite, when the lower (feminine) and upper (masculine) become one
(11:306).

31. Shekhinah is formed from the Hebrew root ShKhN, meaning to dwell, as in the Mishkan, the
sanctuary in which God dwells when among men. Only in the Targum Onkelos, an Aramaic paraphrase of
the Bible, did Shekhinah begin to suggest a separate being. Where Exod. 25:8 states: "Let them make Me a
Sanctuary that I may dwell [v'shakhanti] among them," Targum Onkelos interpolates: "Let them make be-
fore Me a Sanctuary mat I may let My Shekhinah dwell among them" (see Patai, Hebrew Goddess,
140-141).
32. This idea differs from neo-Platonism: "Although there is a specific hierarchy in the order of the
Sefirot, it is not ontologically determined: all are equally close to their source in the Emanator" (Scholem,
Kabbalah, 98, 101).
496 Slavic Review

Solov'ev has apparently turned around his own seemingly strict gender categories. Where
before male mankind united with female Sophia, female earth (represented by the female World
Soul) now unites with male heaven. By bringing in the function of the World Soul, Solov'ev has
confused the issue of gender. In the analogy Solov'ev seems to have been developing of Sophia
and Shekhinah, the divine had been female, uniting with the male mystic.
When are men "female" for Solov'ev? This new formulation might imply that man be-
comes like the female creation when he is passive instead of active. Solov'ev stresses, however,
the inappropriateness of the active-passive or subject-object contrast in his system; all actors play
both roles (compare 11:307). Rather, he implies that men are "female" when they actively unite
in the church (always female); joined in an ideal community, they become the universal ecclesia.
Since the ecclesia is Sophia (Shekhinah in Solov'ev's Kabbalah, the "body" of Sophia), man
then becomes divine. Man does not become female, but, united with the World Soul, creates an
ideal male-female, androgynous whole (compare 9:238). In Kabbalah, man never actually be-
comes Shekhinah, despite her designation as ecclesia. Rather, the mystic enters through her into
speculation of God. Solov'ev's androgynous ideal is much more literal.
Again taking a cue from Kabbalah, Solov'ev sees in biblical terminology an erotic symbol
with which to describe the union of humanity and God (11:305-306; emphasis in original):
[The earth] at last returns into herself, assuming a form that allows her to meet God face-to-
face. . . . Here earth knew heaven and was known by it. Here both facets of creation, the
Divine and the extradivine, the upper and the lower, indeed become one; they actually unite
and possess a conscious sense of that union. For in truth it is possible to know one another
only in a real union: perfect knowledge must be realized, and real union must be idealized
in order to become perfect. That is why union, and in the main the union of the sexes, is
referred to in the Bible by the term knowledge.
It is particularly telling that the knowledge of which Solov'ev writes is arrived at face-to-
face; Solov'ev conceives of his androgynous ideal sexually. In another work discussing erotic
love, Zhiznennaia drama Platona (9:235), Solov'ev tells us that the Platonic androgyne is
united back-to-back; Solov'ev's own ideal, with Kabbalistic authority, assumes a more erotic pose.
The Zohar suggests a similar sexual drama (1:35a; Soncino edition, 1:131):
When the lower union was perfected and Adam and Eve were turned face to face, then the
upper union was consummated. . . . When this lower world was turned face to face to the
upper, it became a support to the upper, for previously the work had been defective, because
"the Lord God had not caused rain to fall upon the earth."
For both Kabbalah and Solov'ev, earth and heaven are involved in a grand sexual drama,
the purpose of which is tikkun, the healing of the universe in the words of Kabbalah, or God-
manhood for Solov'ev. The true Godman, like the anthropomorphized sefirot as a whole, is an-
drogynous: not asexual, but potently and productively bisexual. As opposed to Gnosticism, Bud-
dhism, and many Christian mysticisms, the spiritualization of mankind does not require the
elimination of the genders. Despite the Augustinian Christian tradition of western philosophy in
which he was trained, Solov'ev turns through Eastern Orthodoxy and German idealism to Jewish
theosophy in order to assert that sexuality is not the result of fallen, and therefore evil, matter.
Women as well as men are members of a divine-human family, that, understood as a whole, is an
erotic, yet androgynous ideal. This is perhaps Solov'ev's closest affinity with the Jewish
Kabbalah.33

33. See Idel, "M6taphores et pratiques sexuelles," 353-354.