Moshe + Eli: Finding the Divine Feminine in Jerusalem

My new friend Eli motioned to the beautiful girl shopping nearby and asked her if she spoke Hebrew. "Yes, I do," she replied cautiously as she stepped closer to where we had been chatting in the corner of the book store in the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem. "What name is this?" Eli asked, as he pointed to the Hebrew he had scribed days before onto a skinned paper with special, traditional ink in his quilled hand. "Patricia," she said. 

Moments before Eli was sharing what he did, his meticulous and ancient process of scribing the Torah, parts, verses, and even visitor's names, in Hebrew. He was holding  a long slip of paper as he shared a Jewish belief with me, that names are very important in this faith, and that each person has their own corresponding verse which is based on their first name. The verse is found by using the first and last letters of a person's first name. The verse starts with the first letter, and ends with the last letter.

The truth is this divine day was filled with many gifts. Weeks before I set an intention with a pain-filled heart, to reconnect with this holy place. I was craving divinity, purity, a connection to the divine mother, feminine essence...and as soon as the idea of Jerusalem landed in my heart I knew it was a calling seeded with a solid intention.

God led me to Her there, She is easy to find. You can feel Her in the ever-changing breeze, soft and gentle one minute and full of spirit the next. You can see Her in the eyes of every beautiful pilgrim visiting with a longing, a searching, and a loving realization that feels kindred and absolute. She is in the hems of the skirts, dresses, and robes worn by devoted ones. In the songs of many tongues both shared and sung. She is in the shiny stone walkways polished with each step, when the sun covers them and they glisten. And in every swaying censer as they fill the air with their jeweled fragrance. She is there in a million ways, both overtly and subtly; the nuisance is undeniable.

But God led me to a place I wasn't expecting to find Her, and in His profoundly simple and loving way it will always be one of my most cherished gifts.

My guide Suzanne was heaven-sent, I researched before arriving because I wanted a woman to guide me with this feminine theme. Her wisdom, care, and guidance filled our day together with visits to Saint Helena's Church, Rachel's Tomb, Saint Anne’s Church, Mary Magdalene's Church, Virgin Mary's tomb, and the Abbey of Dormition. Each powerfully holy, filled with sacred essence and vibration, and several of them brought me to tears, and to a palpable edge of feeling as if I could touch Her.

Just before our visit to Eli's shop to get my first Siddur, we stopped to meet Moshe who had promised Suzanne a few days before that he would save the last copy of a book about women in the Bible for me. 

Moshe spoke to me with his eyes, and the wisdom poured out. "Men sense God from the outside in, women sense God from the inside out," he told me during our quickly intimate discussion. This was for sure one thing I loved about this trip, especially because of my craving to connect deeply, but also because I've made my home recently in a coy city where much energy is spent for simple connection and rarely shared with strangers in intimate ways. Everyone in Jerusalem wanted to be my friend this trip.

Moshe shared his beliefs with me, the Jewish faith, the way women intuit God and devotion, it was beautiful to discover Her in him, and a witnessing that felt like an initiation.

While we were talking a case full of silver rings caught my eye, and I wandered over feeling immediately pulled to one ring in particular which has two lines from The Woman of Valor verse engraved on it. The ring says: "I am to my beloved," and "My beloved is to me." Moshe explained that he liked this translation better because of one simple yet profound word: "to." Instead of meaning I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine, this translation celebrated "the process, not the destination," which are words carrying a code for me that I heard said by my last beloved. I tucked this message into my heart with great gratitude and bought the ring for my ring finger as a reminder to be both to myself first.

By the time we made it to Eli I was filled with the love and care of the heavenly mother, of the divine feminine, and of story that filled my head and heart to spilling.

And so when Eli asked me my name and I told him it was Patricia, he took his glasses off and placed them carefully on his table, and called the girl over to tell me that the paper he was holding was the Patricia verse because he thought I might not believe him if he told me himself.

Serendipity is God's way of saying hello, and I felt Him touch me in my entire body in that moment - from the inside, out...we all did.

My verse is Proverbs 31, The Woman of Valor, and my exact line is line 26: "She opens her mouth with great wisdom, and tales of love are on her tongue." Suzanne almost started to cry, this was one detail of her tour that she couldn't have planned by herself but it was the absolute best gift of my life.

"Do you know why God says to man, find a good woman, Patricia?" Eli asks me, "Why doesn't he tell women they should find a good man?" He was referencing my verse, "the woman of worth," is another translation. 

"It's because God speaks to man through woman" he said as he looked into my eyes. "When you make a woman cry, you make God cry..."

I wasn't expecting to find Her here, in the hearts of Moshe and Eli, where She lives daily cultivated by human divinity that is honored and cherished. 

"Man can become more spiritual, and more powerful with a woman," Eli told me, his conviction a beautiful testament and gift of inspiration.

She lives in each one of us.