Our Mishna on Amud Beis speaks of a strange creature that seems to exist during its development as partially made of earth and partially of flesh. Rashi here and the Gemara later (127a) note that this creature does not come from sexual reproduction.

There is a mystical concept (GR”A, Safra Detzniusa 4, and Rasag on Sefer Yetzira 3:2) that everything in this world is a product of male and female. Sefer Daf al Daf quotes some who consider our Gemara’s creature as a contradiction to this principle.

I don’t believe this to be a question at all. I had a hard time understanding the GR”A, but Rav Saadia Gaon was more straightforward. His words are: “Everything in the world is divided into masculine and feminine forms, including the stars and even vegetation.” Clearly, if Rasag is discussing the gender of stars, he is not referring to a physical manifestation, but rather an idea. And because we are talking about an idea that embodies feminine and masculine archetypes, it is irrelevant to the particulars of sexual reproduction. It is the other way around. Sexual reproduction is one particular physical manifestation of a broader and deeper spiritual concept. 

When we speak of masculine or feminine archetypes, we are not talking about men and women specifically. While there may be certain stereotypical behaviors that statistically manifest more strongly and consistently in men and others in women, that is not the point at all. In fact, in Jungian psychology, every man has a feminine archetype within him, known as the anima, and every woman has within her a masculine archetype known as the animus. Chazal had a similar idea in mind, expressed in the tradition that originally Man was actually a single hermaphroditic entity that contained in a single body a man and a woman, and only later was separated into two entities, the masculine and feminine Adam and Chavah (Berachos 61a and Rashi).

(This has nothing to do with woke propaganda justifying gender fluidity, allowing people to mutilate their bodies because they feel they were born in the wrong body. At the same time, though, it does allow us to understand that within each person there are both masculine and feminine traits. The famous detransitioner blogger Scott Newgent makes the point that if society respected this idea more—that there are legitimate masculine and feminine aspects in each person—perhaps those who had those feelings more strongly wouldn’t be compelled to extreme measures to change their bodies. He asserts, if society made it easier for certain people to embrace inner masculinity or femininity, external changes would be less necessary.)

In a spiritual sense, the mystic cannot ignore something as powerful as sexual union and sexual pleasure. When you believe that there is a Creator with a grand design, something as intense as sexuality signals great significance. Additionally, it cannot be an accident that creation itself comes from this sexual union. Conceptually (and even the word itself “conceptually” comes from conceive!), creation comes from the encounter of two opposites who passionately combine. This is true on a material level that leads to reproduction, but even on the level of ideas, the greatest creativity comes in the embracing of opposites and integration into a joined whole. The Universe could only come into existence because God, so to speak, embraced and allowed for an otherness outside of Himself. And the echo of this dynamic is the spiritual task of the physical world: to find and attach itself back to God. The lovers who long for each other and struggle to connect—that is the subtext of Shir Hashirim.

The universal struggle of negotiating the complexity of relationships between men and women is beyond metaphor, it is the thing itself. It is the enactment of a fundamental occurrence in every aspect and dimension of existence. This is why in Judaism, the holiest individuals are not ascetics who reject love and family life. Although they might go through phases where that is necessary for their development on an individual basis, their life is not complete without having a lover and a family. Even Moshe, who is the exception to the rule in being celibate, at first did have a wife and family. In Judaism, integration and harmony in love, marriage, and family is not a superficially decent thing to do; it is the task of creation itself.

There are revered and well-accomplished people who, unfortunately, struggle greatly in their intimate life. This is the one litmus test that is private and not revealed to the world; only the spouses and children know the truth. This is not something to run away from; the closer the relationship is, the harder it is to fake, and the more vulnerable a person must be. Sometimes those who are the most intellectually developed, and even who achieved a degree of piety through a kind of intensity, have the hardest time with vulnerability.