This volume deals with the female dynasty of the House of David and its influence on the Jewish Messianic Myth. It provides a missing link in the chain of research on the topic of messianism and contributes to the understanding of the connection between female transgression and redemption, from the Bible through Rabbinic literature until the Zohar. The discussion of the centrality of the mother image in Judeo-Christian culture and the parallels between the appearance of Mary in the Gospels and the Davidic Mothers in the Hebrew Bible, stresses mutual representations of ""the mother of the messiah"" in Christian and Jewish imaginaire. Through the prism of gender studies and by stressing questions of femininity, motherhood and sexuality, the subject appears in a new light. This research highlights the importance of intertwining Jewish literary study with comparative religion and gender theories, enabling the process of filling in the 'mythic gaps' in classical Jewish sources. The book won the Pines, Lakritz and Warburg awards.

This volume deals with the female dynasty of the House of David and its influence on the Jewish Messianic Myth. It provides a missing link in the chain of research on the topic of messianism and contributes to the understanding of the connection between female transgression and redemption, from the Bible through Rabbinic literature until the Zohar. The discussion of the centrality of the mother image in Judeo-Christian culture and the parallels between the appearance of Mary in the Gospels and the Davidic Mothers in the Hebrew Bible, stresses mutual representations of ""the mother of the messiah"" in Christian and Jewish imaginaire. Through the prism of gender studies and by stressing questions of femininity, motherhood and sexuality, the subject appears in a new light. This research highlights the importance of intertwining Jewish literary study with comparative religion and gender theories, enabling the process of filling in the 'mythic gaps' in classical Jewish sources. The book won the Pines, Lakritz and Warburg awards.

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.