ABSTRACT
In exile the feminine aspect of God, the Divine Presence, i.e., Shekhinah, is impoverished. She is outside her sacred place, the temple or Jerusalem or the holy land, because she went into exile with her children (to be with the people of Israel there). The author uses well-known rabbinic texts that speak about the poor and our obligations towards them and calls to exercise them toward the Shekhinah, thus shaping his theological, as well as his ethical, world view. He explains that everyone from “her side” is poor because she is poor. The special contribution of this text is to praise the people of Israel for their ability to praise God in this difficult and burdensome situation. Lastly, the author expresses here his understanding of pilgrimage and wandering from place to place as a sacred ritual that displays empathy and identification with the poverty of God and the further connection between poverty and suffering by stating that even a rich person can be poor because poverty is a state of distress.
