The only "holy spirit" that can be found in Judaism is the female holy spirit, often called Pneuma, or the Holy Soul.

In Judaism, the medieval writers of the Kaballah concentrated on the masculine aspects of the sefiroth (the 13 aspects of God) and relegated Sophia to an inferior sphere than that she had heretofore occupied. Roman Catholicism explicitly associated Old Testament Sophia texts with Mary or the Mother Church. In the Eastern Church, Sophia survives and is often associated liturgically with the Holy Spirit and sometimes with Christ, himself.

it flowered in the writings of the Jewish Kabbalists of medieval Spain and southwestern France. In Kabbalah, religion ceases to be a matter of worship and collective belief. It becomes a direct path of communion between the individual and the Divine. In the imagery of the Shekinah, Kabbalah gives us the cosmology of the soul and the relationship between the two aspects of the godhead that has been lost or hidden for millennia. The mythology of the Kabbalah is so gloriously rich, so broad in its imaginative and revelatory reach, and so intensely nourishing to a world that lacks any awareness of the Divine Feminine, that to discover this tradition is immensely exciting. The Shekinah reveals the missing imagery of God-as-Mother that has been lost or obscured in both Judaism and Christianity. Whereas the Old Testament is the written tradition of Judaism, Kabbalah offers the hidden oral tradition, wonderfully named as "The Voice of the Turtle" (turtledove). This mystic knowledge or mystic tradition of the direct path to God was described as the Jewels of the Heavenly Bride. The Bronze Age imagery of the Great Goddess returns to life in the extraordinary beauty of the Kabbalistic description of the Shekinah and in the gender endings of nouns that describe the feminine dimension of the godhead. But the Divine Feminine is now understood as cosmic soul, the intermediary between the godhead and life in this dimension who, as the Shekinah brings together heaven and earth, the divine and the human in a resplendent vision of their essential relationship. The mythology of this tradition restores the image of the sacred marriage in the union of the Divine Father-Mother in the ground of being. There is not a Mother and a Father but a Mother-Father who are one in their eternal embrace: one in their ground, one in their emanation, one in their ecstatic and continuous act of creation through all the invisible dimensions they bring into being and sustain. No other tradition offers the same breathtaking vision, in such exquisite poetic imagery, of the union of male and female energies in the One that is both. The Song of Songs was the text most used by Kabbalists for their contemplation of the mystery of this divine union. Yet one has the feeling that this way to union with the Divine may descend from some unknown source that nourished Egypt, Sumer, and India. The Kabbalistic tradition describes the feminine image of the godhead as Mother, Daughter, Sister, and Holy Spirit, giving woman what she has lacked throughout the last two and a half thousand years in Judeo-Christian culture - an image of the Divine Feminine in the godhead that is reflected at the human level in herself. The Shekinah is Divine Motherhood, Mother of All Living. Women can know themselves, in their role as mothers, in their care and concern for the well-being of their loved ones, as the instinctive custodians of her creation. The thirteenth-century "Zohar, The Book of Radiance or Splendor" that was the principal text of Kabbalah, contemplates the mystery of the relationship between the female and male aspects of the godhead expressed as Mother and Father, and their emanation through all levels of creation as Daughter and Son. The essential conception of this mystical tradition expresses itself as an image of worlds within worlds. Divine Spirit (Ain Soph or Ein Sof) beyond form or conception is the light at the center, the heart, and moves outward as creative sound (word), thought and energy, bringing into being successive spheres, realms, veils, or dimensions imagined as veils or robes that clothe and hide the hidden source yet at the same time transmit its radiant light.

As the upper Shekhinah of the Sefirah of Binah, femininity is the full expression of ceaseless creative power-it is receptive, to be sure, but is spontaneously and incessantly transformed into an element that gives birth, as the stream of etemally flowing divine life enters into it. One might almost say, to use the terms of Indian religion, that the upper Shekhinah is the Shakti of the latent God; it is entirely active energy, in which what is concealed within God is externalized. In the division of the Sefirotic world into the three upper and seven lower Sefiroth-a division generally accepted since Sefer ha-Bahir-the upper Shekhinah stands at the edge of the seven Sefiroth or seven primal days, emitting them from herself and realizing her strength in them (this is the inner, theogonic side of Creation!). In the same way, the lower Shekhinah stands at the edge of the external Creation, formed during the temporal seven days of Creation. Insofar as each of the two Shekhinahs is, so to speak, the "mother" of one of the two aspects of the process of God's self-manifestation or extemalization (the esoteric and exoteric aspects, respectively), the two necessarily share many features in terms of this structure. But the difference between them is equally plain. The process of emanation, through which the Kabbalists represented their conception of God as an expanding life (one doubts whether the Neoplatonic image of emanation adequately expresses their actual intention), achieves its richest expression in Binah, the "upper mother," while it ends in the "lower mother," the final Sefirah. That which flows out of Binah still belongs to the realm of Godhead, and is identical with God in His unfolding oneness. But this is not true of the lower Shekhinah: the divine potency in all its purity flows from it only back into itself; what emerges from the lower Shekhinah is no longer God, but Creation. This Sefirah can only receive the Divine, not transmit it. Thus, the active side of the female energy in God, the strength by which He eternally gives birth to Himself and emerges in His attributes as a personal God, is realized in the upper Shekhinah, while the passive side is realized as the lower Shekhinah. One must realize however that the whole process is a circit or hoop. This circut has been applied to both the Zodiac and Christian symbols by gnostic mystics.
 

While the Bible does not mention the name Shekhina, she is nevertheless bound to extremely old traditions, and closely relates to the ancient goddesses. Particularly significant is the Canaanite goddess Ashera who, at the beginning of the Israelites' settlement in the land of Canaan, was often referred to as Yahweh's Consort. The literature also calls her the "Holy Spirit"(Chokma) which, in Hebrew, is also a feminine form. The feminine nature of the Shekhina is so easy to establish in Hebrew, because the gender of the subject plays an important role in the sentence structure. In English, you can say "The Glorious Shekhina returned to bless us" without mentioning gender. In Hebrew, both verbs and adjectives have a male or female forms, and many names suggest gender to anyone who understands the language. The simple sentence above indicates three times that the Shekhina is female, and the fact sinks easily into the consciousness of the reader.

From the first covenant, Yahweh presented an image of a harsh, daunting God. His character almost demanded the birth of an entity like Shekhina. Also, He could not be seen by human eyes, and only a few prophets heard His voice. Yet almost every religion shows that human nature seeks intimacy with a deity. The manifestation of a loving maternal entity, ready to defend her people even from God Himself, brings a feeling of comfort that a paternal, invisible entity like Yahweh cannot bestow upon His worshipers. Shekhina represented compassion in its purest form, and despite being, officially, the female side of God, she was visible and audible as a feminine entity in her own right. A beautiful being of light, whose most important function was to intercede with God on behalf of her children. Such an entity had to come into being to soften the harshness of the original Judaism.

But how did such a complex entity develop? It started with the changing of God's dwelling. During Biblical times, people assumed God dwelled in the clouds. When the Israelites built the desert Tabernacle, and later, Solomon's Temple, Yahweh descended in a cloud and dwelt there. The word Shekhina, in Hebrew, is derived from the Biblical verb shakhan, meaning "the act of dwelling" but taking the feminine form. Therefore, at the beginning of the Talmudic era, the word Shekhina meant
the aspect of God that dwelt among people and could be apprehended by the senses. For example, one Talmudic verse said: "Let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell (ve'shakhanti) among them." However, in a later version, the translation said "Let them make Me a Sanctuary so that My Shekhina will dwell among them." In other words, a separate entity.

Slowly, the manifested entity became stronger. A complete distinction appears in a Talmudic quotation from the end of the 1st century BCE: "...while the Children of Israel were still in Egypt, the Holy One, blessed be He, stipulated that He would liberate them from Egypt only in order that they built him a Sanctuary so that He can let His Shekhina dwell among them... As soon as the Tabernacle was erected,
the Shekhina descended and dwelt among them." Another quotation from early 3rd century says: "On that day a thing came about which had never existed since the creation of the world. From the creation of the world and up to that hour the Shekhina had never dwelt among the lower beings. But from the time that the Tabernacle was erected, she did dwell among them."

Another tradition claimed that she had always dwelt among her people, but their sins drove her, on and off, into Heaven. However, she was drawn back to her children and tried to save them, over and over. By that time, her image was so ingrained into real historical events, that when the Jews were exiled to Babylonia, she transferred her seat there, and appeared alternately in two major synagogues. She often made herself visible to the congregations there, particularly in one synagogue, which was built of stones and dust taken from a holy place in Jerusalem.

As the Jews dispersed further, sightings occurred in Italy, Spain, Germany, Poland, Russia - in every town where Jews lived. Shekhina comforted the sick, the poor, the suffering, and had a particular concern for repentant sinners "These are accepted by the Shekhina as if they were righteous and pious persons who never sinned. They are carried aloft and seated next to the Shekhina...he whose heart is broken and whose spirit is low, and whose mouth rarely utters a word, the Shekhina walks with him
every day...".

The paradox of dwelling in one place, and being in various places and with many people at the same time, had to be resolved. The Talmud reconciled the two ideas beautifully in a well-known anecdote. "The Emperor said to Raban Gamaliel: ‘You say that wherever ten men are assembled, the Shekhina dwells among them. How many Shekhinas are there?' Thereupon Raban Gamaliel beckoned a servant and began to beat him, saying: ‘Why did you let the sun enter the Emperor's house?'
‘Have you gone mad?' said the Emperor, surprised at the violence of the usually gentle Raban Gamaliel, ‘the sun shines all over the world!' ‘If the sun,' answered Gamaliel ‘which is only one of a thousand myriad servants of God, shines all over the world, how much more so the Shekhina of God!"

As time went by, her position strengthened. An interesting Medieval anecdote shows the Shekhina as a total separate entity, in her most important role - interceding on behalf of her children. "The Shekhina comes to the defense of sinful Israel by saying first to Israel: ‘Be not a witness against thy neighbor without a cause' and then thereafter saying to God: ‘Say not: I will do to him as he hath done to me..' " This is obviously a conversation taking place among three distinct entities - Israel, God, and the Shekhina. Another significant passage from the 11th century, describes Rabbi Akiva (a second century sage) saying: "When the Holy One, blessed be He, considered the deeds of the generation of Enoch and that they were spoiled and evil,
He removed Himself and His Shekhina from their midst and ascended into the heights with blasts of trumpets..."

Like any good mother, she could punish too. When she behaved violently, her character came closer to her powerful aspect of the great Asherah, Yahweh's Canaanite Consort. She descended to Earth to punish Adam, Eve, and the Serpent when they sinned at the Garden of Eden. She confused the builders of the Tower of Babel. She drowned the Egyptians at the Red Sea crossing during Exodus. When needed, she even killed righteous people. Since the beginning of time, six people -- Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, and Miriam -- could not be taken by the Angel of Death because of their perfect purity. Someone had to bring their souls to Heaven, and only Shekhina could do that. By kissing them, she released their souls from bondage to this world. In a particularly touching story, after kissing
and releasing Moses' soul, she carried his body for a long distance on her wings, to his secret grave. This myth connects Shekhina to another ancient goddess, Anath. According to the legends, Moses had to live apart from his wife so that he would always be pure enough to communicate with the Shekhina. This gave rise to the curious myth, later elaborated on in the Kabbalah, that Moses and Shekhina
lived as husband and wife. The image of Shekhina, carrying the dead body of her husband to his final resting place, resembles the myth of Anath, carrying the body of her husband Baal to his burial place.

Nor is this the end of her development. The Kabbalah greatly elaborated on the theme of the feminine aspect of God. She would appear as the powerful Matronit, the controversial Lilith, and finally, as the glorious figure of Shabbat Hamalka - Queen, Bride of God, celebrated every Saturday by Jews all over the world as they light the Sabbath candles. And by tradition, the candles must always be lit by a woman. Naturally -- Ashera, too, was served chiefly by priestesses. The cycle
is very neatly completed.

Shekinah is the Supreme Spirit
devoted to the good of all people . .
She shines bright in the bloom of ignorance;
She is unfading;
She is easily seen by those who love Her;
easily found by those who look for Her,
And quickly does She come to those who seek Her help.
One who rises early, intent on finding Her, will not grow weary of the quest--
For one day he will find Her seated in his own heart.
To set all one's thoughts on Her is true wisdom,
And to be ever aware of Her is the sure way to perfect peace.
For Shekinah Herself goes about in search of those who are worthy of Her.
With every step She comes to guide them;
in every thought She comes to meet them . . .
The true beginning of spiritual life is the desire to know Shekinah.
A desire to know Her brings one to love Her.
Loving Her enables one to follow her will.
Following Her will is the sure path of immortality.
And immortality is oneness with God.
So the desire to know Shekinah leads to God
and His Kingdom - - a never-fading Kingdom.
With all your thrones and scepters you may rule the world for a while,
But take hold of Shekinah and you will rule the world forever.
~ The Wisdom of Solomon (50 BCE)
 

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