Tchiya Froman’s “The Shekhinah as a Tool for Political Critique: The Mystico-Political Thought of Rabbi Menachem Froman"

I am very happy to share Tchiya Froman’s new article “The Shekhinah as a Tool for Political Critique: The Mystico-Political Thought of Rabbi Menachem Froman.” I helped ready the article for publication, and I am excited to share it with the broader public.

Tchiya is a scholar of the Zohar, but she also has far-reaching familiarity with Rav Froman’s writings. One of her relatively unique contributions is her careful study of his short stories. “For the Sake of Unification: The Dialectic Between the Ayin and the Yesh in the Thought of Rav Froman,” published last year in Siah Shalom: Halakhah, Kabbalah and Antipolitics, ed. Avinoam Rosenak (Carmel Books, 2024), analyzes “A Story of Life” (“Sippur MehaHayyim”), an unpublished story from the Rav Froman archive in the National Library of Israel. A partial translation of that article, alas without the section on the story, was published in English last year on ARC.

The present article analyzes, “Life as an Arrow,” a story published in 1986 in the Religious Zionist periodical Nekudah. Tchiya meticulously combed through the various journals and publications where Rav Froman used to publish, and has found some real gems. I look forward to reading her work as she writes and publishes more on Rav Froman in the future.

In her analysis of “Life as an Arrow,” Tchiya draws out Rav Froman’s gender-based critique of the Gush Emunim movement—arguing that unless it can embrace the feminine, it is doomed. Tchiya shows how form is fit to content: Rav Froman’s gender critique is written in the form of fiction rather than as a philosophical treatise, what he saw as a choice for the feminine over the masculine. She also shows how Rav Froman’s story works with themes from the Zohar—her own expertise in the Zohar complementing Rav Froman’s thoroughgoing engagement with it.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy!

(With gratitude as always to the team at The Lehrhaus)