In Their Image: Queer Temporality in Jewish Medieval Poetry

Rabbinical explorations of gender during the Middle Ages, as it manifests both spiritually and physically, illuminate the timeless elusivity between these already slippery concepts, and nowhere is this fluidity more artistically captured than in the prolific love poems written by Jews during this period. The femininity of the physical body and masculinity of the internal spirit recur as integral motifs, articulating a fixation born from the lovers in the Song of Songs, adopted and expanded during the Middle Ages as a dynamic intimately tied to the historic persecution of Jews and their undying faith in redemption. The lovers God and Israel mourn their separation, and the poets pen their devout longing for reunion-not simply a rejoining of lovers, but a reunion of one simultaneously celestial and corporeal being. This divine primordial figure exists as both lover and beloved-their gender-fractured state felt through the Jewish diaspora in a temporal stasis of religious, romantic longing. In exploring the nuances of these abstractions, I uncover the queer philosophical awakenings that later concretize in the Kabbalah, and which continue their longevity in modern day, queer Jewish ideologies.