Birth in Kabbalah and Psychoanalysis examines the centrality of birth in Jewish literature
gender theory and psychoanalysis thus challenging the centrality of death in Western culture
and existential philosophy. In this groundbreaking study Ruth Kara-Ivanov Kaniel discuss
similarities between Biblical Midrashic Kabbalistic and Hasidic perceptions of birth as
well as its place in contemporary cultural and psychoanalytic discourse. In addition this
study shows how birth functions as a vital metaphor that has been foundational to art
philosophy religion and literature. Medieval Kabbalistic literature compared human birth to
divine emanation and presented human sexuality and procreation as a reflection of the
sefirotic structure of the Godhead - an attempt Kaniel claims to marginalize the fear of
death by linking the humane and divine acts of birth. This book sheds new light on the image of
God as the Great Mother and the crucial role of the Shekhinah as a cosmic womb. Birth in
Kabbalah and Psychoanalysis won the Gorgias Prize and garnered significant appreciation from
psychoanalytic therapists in clinical practice dealing with birth trauma postpartum depression
and in early infancy distress.
