In this course, we will follow in the footsteps of the mitnabot (מתנבאות), an imaginary school of Israelite mystics who lived during the period of the Judges circa 1100 BCE, when the Israelites were just beginning to differentiate themselves from other Canaanites. By so doing, we will utilize the genre of religious fantasy, or historical fiction, as a methodology for exploring new/ancient meanings of Judaism.

The mitnabot school of prophecy focused on cultivating altered states of consciousness for intensified encounters with YHVH-Asherah. These states were referred to as hitnabut , which may be translated as “prophesying” or “speaking in ecstasy”. They saw no contradiction between devotion to YHVH alongside - and through - service to the Goddess Asherah. And they served together, women and men in equality. In regard to these ideals, the mitnabot upheld long standing prophetic traditions.

But powerful currents emerging in Israelite society threatened the mitnabot ’s existence. First, voices calling for the obliteration of the Asherah became louder and more violent. In parallel, a male-only priesthood claimed authority over all divine instantiations. Worse yet, amidst violence between Israelites and neighboring peoples, leaders who preached genocide increased in power. At the same time, a consensus was building that political power should be concentrated in the hands of a human king who would dominate Israelites and exterminate other peoples.

In many cases, it was these forces of destruction that dominated Israelite society. They edited the Hebrew Bible and often set its tone. But we can reconstruct the Torah of the mitnabot. Their Torah is not only a road not taken; it is a clandestine map of holiness and power for the good in Torah tradition. Combining research and imagination, we will (re)construct the politics, practices and theology of the mitnabot prophetesses.
We will begin by exploring biblical descriptions of prophetic schools at the margins of early Israelite society, alongside historical and archeological research into the phenomenon of prophecy in the ancient Near East. Getting deeper into the symbolism of the Goddess, and into more imaginative territory, we will compare ancient Asherah imagery with parallels in later Jewish mysticism. And we will consider what practical exercises for achieving prophetic consciousness might look like in light of the techniques taught by Abulafia’s ecstatic-prophetic school of Kabbalah. The class will also include a meditative element in which we practice these techniques ourselves.