Male and Female He Created Them: Masculine and Feminine in the Kabbalah

There’s a line near the very start of the Torah that has puzzled and delighted readers for thousands of years. In one breath it says God created the human being in the divine image — and in the next, “male and female He created them.” Then, a chapter later, the story seems to start again, and this time the woman is formed from the side of the man. Two accounts. One mystery. People have been turning it over ever since.

This guide is about what the Jewish mystical tradition has contemplated in that mystery — and, just as importantly, what it does not claim. In Kabbalah, “masculine” and “feminine” are first of all cosmic and spiritual principles — the dynamic of giving and receiving woven through all of reality — and the tradition itself teaches that both live, in some measure, inside every single person. They are not a rulebook for how actual men and women must live. Hold that lightly, and the rest opens up.

What do the two creation stories actually say?

The Torah tells the creation of humanity twice, and they read differently. In the first account (Genesis chapter 1), God makes humankind in the divine image, and the text says plainly, “male and female He created them” — together, in one verse, almost as a single act. In the second account (Genesis chapter 2), a human is formed first, and then a partner is fashioned from his side. Readers across the centuries have noticed the gap between these two tellings and asked what it means.

The simplest honest thing to say is that Judaism has never read these as a contradiction to be embarrassed about. It has read them as a depth to be explored. The plain text gives you two angles on the same truth: that the human being is not meant to be alone, and that male and female belong, somehow, to one original picture. Everything below is interpretation layered on top of that — and the tradition offers several.

Was the first human originally both?

One of the most famous readings, found in classical midrash (the early rabbinic storytelling-commentary on the Torah), takes the two accounts and weaves them together with a striking idea: the very first human was a single being containing both male and female at once, later separated into two. We’re paraphrasing the midrash here, not quoting it — but the picture it paints is unforgettable.

The sages used the term du-partzufin (דּוּ־פַּרְצוּפִין) — roughly “two faces” or “two sides.” On this reading, the first human was created two-sided, back to back, masculine and feminine fused in one body. When Genesis 2 describes the woman being formed from the man’s “side,” the midrash hears not the removal of a small part but the separation of two halves that had been one. Creation, in this telling, begins with a wholeness that is then divided — so that the two parts might find their way back to each other freely, by choice rather than by being stuck together.

Sit with that for a moment, because it quietly overturns a common assumption. In this reading the woman is not an afterthought or a lesser piece. She is one half of an original unity, equal in origin to the other half.

And there is a second, much-loved teaching that sharpens the point. The sages asked why the partner was formed from the side, and offered (we paraphrase) a now-famous answer: not from his head, that she should rule over him; not from his feet, that she should be beneath him; but from his side, near his heart, that she should stand beside him as an equal. It’s one of those lines that has outlived its century. As with all midrash, it’s a teaching and an image, not a legal verdict — but the dignity in it is hard to miss.

What do “masculine” and “feminine” mean in Kabbalah?

Here is where care matters most, so let’s be slow and clear. When Kabbalah speaks of masculine and feminine, it is mostly not talking about men and women as social beings. It is using those words as names for two great principles it sees pulsing through all of reality. Read them as cosmic categories first, and a lot of confusion falls away.

The two principles are usually described with two Hebrew words. Mashpia (מַשְׁפִּיעַ) means the giver or the one who influences — the source that flows outward, offers, initiates. Mekabel (מְקַבֵּל) means the receiver — the one who takes in, holds, nurtures, and brings to fruition what was given. The tradition often labels the giving principle “masculine” and the receiving principle “feminine.” But — and this is the heart of it — neither is ranked above the other. A gift that is never received does nothing. A vessel with nothing poured into it stays empty. The two only mean anything in relationship.

Crucially, every person plays both roles, constantly. You are a mashpia when you teach, give, comfort, create. You are a mekabel when you learn, listen, receive love, take something in and let it grow in you. A parent gives to a child and receives from a teacher in the same afternoon. So even within the mystical scheme, “masculine” and “feminine” are better understood as modes the soul moves between than as fixed labels stamped on bodies. Many teachers say exactly this: that both principles dwell within each of us, and a whole life learns to do both well.

The sefirot and the zivug

Kabbalah maps these principles onto the sefirot (סְפִירוֹת) — the ten channels through which, in this framework, the infinite light flows into the world (there’s a fuller introduction to the sefirot in our guide What Is Kabbalah?). Some sefirot are described as giving and some as receiving, and the tradition pictures a flow between them. A frequent image is the relationship between Tiferet (תִּפְאֶרֶת, “beauty” or “harmony,” often spoken of as a giving, masculine channel) and Malchut (מַלְכוּת, “kingship” or “sovereignty,” often spoken of as the receiving, feminine channel that brings the flow into the lived world).

When giving and receiving meet in balance, the tradition calls it zivug (זִיוּוּג) — “union” or “pairing.” It’s one of Kabbalah’s central images of cosmic harmony: not one side conquering the other, but two complementary forces coming together so that the whole becomes more than its parts. The zivug is a picture of wholeness through union — and, read inwardly, a picture of a soul at peace with both its giving and its receiving.

These are interpretations, and Judaism holds many. Different schools and teachers read the sefirot and their pairings quite differently. We’re sketching one widely-taught picture, not the only one.

What is the Shechinah?

If there is one place the feminine imagery becomes deeply tender, it is the Shechinah (שְׁכִינָה). The word comes from a root meaning “to dwell,” and it names the indwelling Presence of God — the sense of the Divine being near, accompanying people in the ordinary places of their lives rather than staying remote and high above. In much of Kabbalah the Shechinah is spoken of in feminine terms, closely linked to Malchut, the channel through which God’s presence reaches into the world we actually live in.

A great longing runs through the tradition’s language about the Shechinah: a longing for reunion. The mystics speak, in poetic and paraphrased terms, of the Shechinah as somehow in exile alongside the Jewish people, separated from the higher, more hidden aspect of God — and of the deep hope that the two be reunited, that the rift in the world be healed. When the Friday-night welcome of Shabbat is described as greeting the Shechinah like a bride, that is this same image at work: the yearning for the giving and receiving aspects of reality to come back into union, for the world to feel whole again.

You don’t have to read any of this literally to feel its pull. At the human level it speaks to something we all know — the sense that wholeness is something we’re reaching toward, not something we simply have.

What does any of this mean for a whole life?

Here we have to step very carefully, because this is exactly the place where a beautiful idea can be misused. So let’s say it directly. None of this is a prescription for how you, personally, must live, marry, or be. The masculine and feminine of Kabbalah are spiritual principles, and the tradition itself plants both of them inside every person. To turn “the masculine gives, the feminine receives” into “men must lead and women must follow” is to mistake a cosmic poem for a household rulebook — and to flatten a tradition that, in truth, holds a wide range of views on gender, marriage, and roles.

What can be drawn from it, gently, is something more like an invitation. The recurring intuition across these teachings is that wholeness comes through the union of complementary opposites — and that the work of a life includes learning to hold both sides within yourself: to give generously and to receive gracefully, to initiate and to nurture, to act and to make room. Many people find they’re fluent in one and clumsy at the other. The tradition’s quiet suggestion is that growth often lies in the side you’ve neglected.

And if there’s a relational hint in any of it, it’s the dignity of the du-partzufin picture and the “from his side” teaching: that partnership at its best is two whole people standing beside each other, each giving and each receiving, neither above nor beneath. That’s a posture, not a set of assigned jobs.

Take what speaks to you. Leave what doesn’t. That’s not a weakness in how we’re teaching this — it’s faithful to a tradition that has always been a long, open conversation rather than a single closed answer.

A note before you go further

These guides are a doorway into ideas, written by learners in the tradition — not rulings, and certainly not guidance for the real, particular shape of your life. The questions that sit near this topic — about marriage, family, identity, and how anyone should live — are among the most personal there are, and the people best placed to walk them with you are those who actually know you. For anything with real-world stakes, please speak with a qualified rabbi or an appropriate professional. Honour your own conscience and your own life. That always comes first.

What stays, when the mystical language settles, is something simple and kind: a very old hope that the world is moving toward wholeness, that giving and receiving are both holy, and that every one of us carries the makings of both. That’s an idea you can hold gently, turn over slowly, and let change how you see the person beside you — and the two sides within yourself.