Are you my Shechinah?

I heard back from the editor of the publication I refer to in Major Transitions. They've decided they can't print my article. She said that our dialogue has brought about some interesting conversation in her office and that she thinks our dilemma comes from different interpretations of the word "Shechinah." She describes that she thinks many children are taught that Hashem is a "power outside" but that many people who come to Judaism as adults think of Hashem as "residing within." It upsets me that she may be right that children are taught Hashem is only outside, and my impression is that she is speaking for herself as having learned about G-d in that way. She is upfront about saying that both views hold truth, but I guess it took some personal risk on her part to say so

She explained very diplomatically the breadth of the publication's readership, including Modern Orthodox Jews, Conservative Jews etc., but is still concerned that the "chassidic/yeshivah" community would be alienated by my article.

I have not yet sent her my response, but in a draft I agreed with her on some points about how Hashem cannot be described in just one way and that the Torah knows this even as it anthropomorphisizes G-d. (I am tempted to use this a chance for my soapbox that this is the very reason so many people refuse to refer to G-d with the pronoun He, but I think that may cause me to lose some ground in our discussion.)

I also thanked her for continuing to advocate for my article since she says she normally doesn't ask writers to revise their work in order to fit it to the publication. It is usually either accepted or rejected as is. I can tell this really has been a difficult issue for her.

But I also challenged the idea that the Chassidic community would not understand my article, as it seems they are the most likely to describe mitzvot as being the vehicle to developing an intimate partnership with Hashem. I also brought up Alissa's response (see the Major Transitions link again) about the Shechinah coming into a union between a man and woman to help create a child. I used the argument that Judaism is beautiful specifically because of our close relationship with G-d, and that the Shechinah is a manifestation of this.

I think that this all comes down to a series of arguments in their office about how my work would be received, and I'm both fascinated and sad that my work should be so controversial. I admit that I wrote this article with a particular agenda. At the time I was noticing more and more how much guilt and fear of G-d I felt from the Orthodox Jewish community and I found it to be destructive. As my article says, I could still use the trauma of my experience to become a better person, but I didn't have to kick myself over SIN in order to get there. The reason it was important to me to actually write the article was to help other Jews stay out of the SIN cycle.

But obviously there are limitations to how we can understand each other's interpretation of Hashem. In fact it means so much to people that this publication cannot risk losing readership based on such an exploration.

I have sent another article and hope it would be less problematic. In the meantime, I hope that the dialogue in that office may have got some people thinking intimately about Hashem and how we describe Hashem to others. For my part, I want to be equally open-minded about what the "problem" is with my piece, but the truth is, I can't.