[Editor’s Note: This excerpt series is from Asherah: Roots of the Mother Tree ed by Claire Dorey, Janet Rudolph, Pat Daly, and Trista Hendren (Girl God Books, 2025).]
Asharah and the Trees
Ivy Helman, Ph.D.
When it comes to Asherah and my relationship with her, two distinct memories stand out. One: I was, as a child, always climbing the apple tree in our front yard. I would spend hours up there clinging on, exploring, or resting on her branches. Two: I have always drawn trees, and they have always looked realistic. For a long time, trees were the only thing I could draw. But it wasn’t until considerably later in life that these two aspects of myself coalesced with the goddess Asherah.
Fast forward to Yale Divinity School and my first realization that Asherah and I have some kind of connection. At Yale, we read the mythology of the gods and goddesses of Mesopotamia, including the Sumerians, Assyrians, Canaanites, Hittites, Phoenicians, and later Egyptians. It is within this context that the Israelites became a people who would eventually (many, many hundreds of years later) choose to worship only one deity, but that deity came from the context of where they lived and with whom they interacted. Within that large pantheon was the goddess Asherah, who was sometimes understood to be the wife of the Israelite deity and sometimes the wife of Ba’al, another deity of Mesopotamian origin. Asherah was primarily worshiped by erecting a pole or planting a tree for her at high places.
It is important for me, as a Jewish person, that Asherah was present in Israelite religion for a long time. My ancestors would not find my love of, and connection to, Ashera abhorrent to the tradition or otherwise strange. They loved and worshipped her too. In fact, if it wasn’t for the campaign of King Josiah, as we will see, Asherah might still be a significant figure within Judaism. In the first temple, built by King Solomon, there were her ritual objects (2 Kings 23:4) and an image of her (2 Kings 23:6). In addition, women would spend time in the temple weaving for Asherah (2 Kings 23:7). She was worshipped on high places and poles were erected in her honor (2 Chronicles 14:3). In addition, throughout Canaan and the lands of Judah and Israel, where the Israelites lived, there was regular worship by the Israelites of various other deities as well: the sun, the moon, the stars, and the hosts of heaven (2 Kings 23:5). It was only with the reforms of King Josiah, who reigned from roughly 640 to 610 BCE, that the argument for monotheism came to the fore, and even he struggled to instill it resorting to violent clashes with adherents. In the end, his reforms did succeed, and it is often said that his ending of Israelite polytheism also signifies the end of the worship of Asherah and the other Israelite/Canaanite deities.
While this is the case with other deities, it is not the case with Asherah. She appears in various forms within Judaism. In The Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Mysticism, and Magic, Geoffery W. Dennis writes, “…Asherah makes a startling reappearance in post-biblical Jewish mysticism as another name for the sefirah of Malchut, bringing the pre-Israelite idea of a divine consort back almost full circle,” (43). In other words, within the sefirot[1] of the Tree of Life configuration within the Zohar, Asherah plays a central role within our understanding of what divinity is. I often like to think of Asherah as the Tree of Life itself. As far as I am aware, this notion is not founded on traditional scholarship, but I do not think this idea is far-fetched. Rachael Pass provides an example of how Asherah relates to the Tree of Life, this time the Torah, within Judaism. When the Torah is put back into the ark, the congregation says Proverbs 3:18, in English, “She [the Torah] is a tree of life to those who hold fast to her and her supporters are blessed.” Pass points out how the root of the verb me’ushar,[2] meaning blessed, – aleph-shin-resh – is the same root for the word Asherah. Thus, as Pass reasons, the Torah is associated with the blessings – the Asherah – of the Tree of Life. To me that means that as the Tree of Life, the tree goddess Asherah bestows her blessings.
Since my childhood, I have instinctively connected to trees, climbing them, drawing them, and now my connection with trees has deepened on account of Asherah. Her association with the Tree of Life roots her deeply within the Jewish tradition, even if some Jewish individuals would not agree with me. Yet my understanding of her is deeper than the two Jewish examples I have mentioned above. I also look at her from my ecofeminist commitments, personally and scholarly. As a tree goddess, Asherah connects us all just as trees connect the earth to the sky. Yet, she, like trees, does more than that. In a way, perhaps, she is the Jewish version of Gaia. For, trees provide animals, including humans, with food, medicine, and shelter. Their leaves provide cool shade from the heat and their bodies warmth in the cold. Trees keep soil in place and displace the heat generated within cities. Trees also delight in the joy of existence and the renewal of the seasons as they bud and flower and their early lime green leaves emerge. Trees trap carbon from the atmosphere and are essential for mitigating the ravishes of patriarchal environmental destruction. We need to plant more of them, not just in the high places but everywhere.
Many Jewish people will argue that the more we bring the divine into the world, the closer the world is toward salvation. I agree that the more we honor Asherah through the planting of trees and understanding their sacred role for life here on earth, the more we bring about the salvation of our planet and us.
Bibliography:
Dennis, Geoffery W. The Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Mysticism, and Magic. Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 2020.
Pass, Rachael. “Meet Asherah, the Little Known Jewish Tree Goddess.” HeyAlma, 6 February 2020.
[1] Sefirah, mentioned in the quote from Dennis, is the singular of sefirot mentioned here. The sefirot are divine attributes which can be found on the Tree of Life, described in the Jewish mystical text the Kabbalah. There are ten of them in total and metaphysically they link the four worlds that separate creation from divinity.
[2] This is not necessarily the most typical word one hears related to blessing on a day-to-day basis. That is b’rachah (bet-resh-chet-hey), meaning blessing and baruch would mean blessed (masc. singular).