The Mother in the Religious Concepts of Judaism

In his investigation on the psychology of religion “Der eigene und der fremde Gott” (Int. Ps. A. Verlag 1933, pag. 63) Reik emphasizes that “the Israelites like all other Semitic nations had (at least in pre-Jehovistic times) a goddess of love and motherhood, analogous to Istar, Kybele and Astarte. This supposed mother-goddess of the Israelite tribes must have belonged to a period of which no book or epic poem tells1 (pag. 33).”

However, Psychoanalysis being the science which, as a sort of archeology of the Psyche, teaches us how to dig up what has been deemed buried in oblivion or to find at least small but instructive traces. The progress of our science has proved repeatedly that by sufficiently deep soundings the archeological proofs for many earlier psychic realities can be established. Therefore it seems justified not to be content with Reik's supposition nor with Jones' statement (Psychoanalysis of the Christian Religion, p. 118) “that a nebulous mother image floats in the background of Hebrew Theology”, but rather to throw some more light on this nebulous form by finding out the actual remnants and to cite the sources. The first attempt in this direction was made by E. Fromm (Psychoanalysis of the Sabbath, IMAGO 1927). The main point of his disquisition is the emphasis laid on the prohibition of work by the Sabbath-laws which he justly recognizes as an expression of the prohibition of incest, an opinion which however had been already presented by G. Róheim (Die wilde Jagd, IMAGO 1926). To those traits which belong to the “joy of Sabbath” Fromm paid much less attention, considering them as a later preponderance of positive tendencies in the sense of the “return of the repressed.”2