Malchut: Revealing the Feminine Energy on Rosh Hashanah

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The idea of Hesther Panim, G-d’s hidden Presence, is a ubiquitous Jewish concept, and it underpins the entire purpose of Creation: G-d is hidden, and Jews are here to reveal His presence.

But there is another layer to the “push and pull” of G-d’s hidden Presence and our tireless effort to reveal Him: that of malchut, royalty. If we were to define malchut and understand its implications in our daily lives, one could claim that its plain sense is royalty and crowning the king, but its practical sense signifies to bring down spirituality into our daily lives, and further, into the most mundane activities that we may be busy with.

Malchut is the highest of the ten sefirot, the ten attributes describing how the world works, and is consistently referred to as the feminine attribute. “Kabbalists explain that the first six sefirot are masculine, providing sparks of energy, but malchut is feminine and allows all the other sefirot to develop. The first six sefirot give, while malchut receives.”¹ This attribute further means to reveal Hashem in the depths of the material world, which is a revolutionary idea unique to Judaism. Rav Shimshon Dovid Pincus adds that Hashem’s malchut signifies that the reality of G-d becomes the central characteristic of our life². And part of women’s role is to do just that. Revealing Hashem not in the Beit Midrash or in shul, but most particularly in the home, with her kids, in her kitchen. Making sure that Hashem becomes the central figure in our day-to-day actions, and to infuse that ideal into our environment.

But beyond the practical sense of malchut and its inherent feminine essence, how can we understand its deeper meaning in connection to Rosh Hashanah?

From a Kabbalistic point of view, malchut is also a manifestation of the Shechina, the feminine G-dly presence. Rebbetzin Devorah Fastag’s The Moon’s Lost Light states that the Shechina is the aspect of G-d which is impacted by other people’s actions. When a Jew sins, he or she reduces G-d’s ownership of the world, and thus the shechina’s state is lowered, and when we repent, the shechina’s level in the world increases.

Furthermore, one can understand the level of the shechina by looking at the state of righteous women. For instance, when our foremother Sarah was taken captive by Paroh, this means that negative spiritual forces were trying to get a hold of malchut. Similarly, when Esther haMalka was in Achashverosh’s palace, this signifies that malchut, embodied by Esther, was in exile amongst evil forces. However, when the women crossed the Yam Suf, they reached an unprecedented spiritual level, comparable to Chava’s level before the sin, and G-d’s kingship became apparent to all.

On Rosh Hashanah, we approach the new year with a mixture of fear and excitement. We ponder on the last year, assess our successes and failures, and we pray that G-d will inscribe us in the Book of Life, and we hope that we will only see revealed good.

We can now understand the close connection between the spiritual level of women and the corresponding level of malchut and shechina, and our subsequent avoda on Rosh Hashanah, whose purpose is malchut, to crown the Master of the Universe.

While this is undoubtedly a commendable approach to the new year, I would like to challenge you to have a different mindset on Rosh Hashanah, based on this essay’s teachings. As part of your own cheshbon nefesh, I would like to challenge you to reflect on the state of malchut in the world, on your own spiritual level, and on Jewish women’s as a whole.

On Rosh Hashanah, how can we maximize our spiritual potential to its fullest, and make sure that our own spiritual level is most elevated to bring an equilibrium to G-d’s malchut in this world, and ultimately crown Him as King on that holy day? How can we, beyond our individual selves, can ensure the well-being and enhance the spiritual level of Jewish women as a whole, so as to reveal malchut in today’s world?

To put it simply, think of these concepts as being intertwined in a triangle. The three elements are malchut and shechina, women and Rosh Hashanah. If the level of Jewish women is high, Hashem’s malchut is revealed, the Shechina is at its place, and crowning the King becomes a much more straight-forward task on Rosh Hashanah!

I believe this is an innovative outlook to bear in mind as we approach Rosh Hashanah, and I sincerely believe that every single Jewish woman, with all the kochot that Hashem gave her, can bring her own significant contribution to the state of G-d’s royalty. May we all be zoche to do just that!

¹ Rabbi Yaakov Haber. Sefiros: Spiritual Refinement Through Counting the Omer. p.128

² Moadei Hashanah, p.219.