The Wounded Daughter: Dinah, Kabbalah, and the Hidden Files of Sexual Violence

By Shely Esses-Strom, LMFT & Sex Therapist (AST) | Aug 2025

The Israeli government declassified the “Dinah Files”—a collection of testimonies and intelligence records documenting the systematic sexual violence committed during the October 7th massacres by Hamas—it sent a wave of collective shock and grief across the nation. Survivors’ voices, long silenced by cultural taboos and political complexity, are now piercing through with painful clarity. But perhaps no name could be more prophetically fitting for this dossier than Dinah—the biblical daughter of Jacob and Leah, whose own story of violation has haunted Jewish consciousness for millennia. In this moment, Kabbalistic teachings—especially those of Rabbi Moshe David Valle (1967-1776) offers a profound mystical framework to understand the spiritual underpinnings of sexual violence, silence, and redemptive repair.

 Dinah: The Wound in the Feminine Soul

The Torah tells us, in Genesis 34, that “Dinah, the daughter of Leah, whom she bore to Jacob, went out to see the daughters of the land. And Shechem… took her and lay with her and violated her.” The brevity of the account leaves gaping silences: Did Dinah consent? Was she rescued? What happened to her afterward? The sages wrestled with this ambiguity. The Zohar interprets her as the Shekhinah, the feminine Divine Presence, going into exile and danger when unprotected.

For Rabbi Moshe David Valle, an 18th-century Italian Kabbalist and poet, Dinah is not just a girl. She is the vessel of Divine Gevurah—the feminine expression of judgment and inner strength. Her “going out” represents the descent of holiness into an unsafe world. Her violation reflects the cosmic distortion that occurs when feminine vessels of divine dignity are shattered by unholy force.

“Every descent of the Shekhinah into darkness,” writes Valle, “is ultimately for the sake of extracting hidden sparks.”

Thus, Dinah is not merely a victim—she is a symbol of the feminine Shekhinah entering into danger for the sake of future redemption. But that doesn’t erase the pain. It sacralizes it. It tells us: what happened matters on a cosmic level.

 The “Dinah Files”: Repeating the Myth in Modern Flesh

Fast forward thousands of years. On October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israeli communities and brutally murdered, tortured, and raped women. For months, these claims were dismissed or politicized. The declassified “Dinah Files” expose not only the horrors themselves but the cultural machinery that kept them hidden—a mix of shame, fear, and strategic silence.

Just like the biblical Dinah, today’s violated daughters were cast into silence, their names replaced with data points and redactions. The Shekhinah has been violated again—not in myth, but in flesh. And this time, her blood cries out not just from the land, but from hard drives and intelligence memos.

the Valle teaches that when the feminine is violated, the balance of the cosmos itself is disturbed. This isn’t just a crime; it’s a rupture in the spiritual architecture of the world.

 The Spiritual Meaning of Violation

Rabbi Valle’s Kabbalistic workings gives us four key insights into the deeper spiritual implications of Dinah’s story—and, by extension, today’s.

1. Dinah as Shekhinah in Exile

Dinah’s body is symbolic of Malchut, the lowest sefirah—feminine, earthly, vulnerable. Her “being taken” by Shechem is the exile of the Divine Presence into impurity. In today’s language: a woman’s body becomes the battlefield of spiritual war.

2. Violation as Disruption of Sefirotic Balance

Shechem represents unchecked Gevurah—force without sanctity. In Valle’s thought, this imbalance creates chaos in the higher worlds. So too, rape is not only an individual trauma but a spiritual distortion, requiring communal and cosmic repair.

3. Silencing as a Second Wounding

Just as Dinah vanishes from the Torah narrative after her violation, modern survivors are often erased. Valle emphasizes that memory and voice are vessels of healing. Forgetting Dinah—or today’s women—is a metaphysical error. Telling the story is part of tikkun.

4. Redemption through Rebalancing the Feminine

Ultimately, Valle sees all wounding of the feminine as birthing pains for a higher state of integration. He connects violated biblical women—Dinah, Tamar, Bat Zion—as symbols of the Shekhinah before redemption. Through remembrance, compassion, and light, the shattered vessel is restored.

 Tikkun Chava: Restoring the Primordial Feminine

To deepen the spiritual healing of Dinah’s wound, we must turn to an even more ancient archetype: Chava (Eve), the first woman. In Kabbalistic thought, Tikkun Chava—the repair of Eve—refers to the redemptive healing of the feminine soul, originally fractured through exile, shame, and objectification.

Eve’s descent from a state of divine unity into a world of pain, blame, and subjugation is echoed in Dinah’s story. Both represent aspects of the Shekhinah cast into brokenness. In the sexual violation of women—biblical or modern—we see the repetition of the primordial wound.

But Tikkun Chava is not passive. It is the spiritual labor of lifting the fallen sparks, of restoring voice to silence, and of reclaiming the sovereign, embodied, sacred feminine. Every act of witness, of storytelling, of protection and compassion for the wounded woman contributes to the rectification of Chava’s descent.

Dinah’s story, when held in the light of Valle’s teachings, becomes a path toward cosmic healing. It is through remembering her, honoring her pain, and refusing her erasure that we participate in Tikkun Chava—a healing not only for her, but for all daughters.

 Cosmic Healing

In Jewish mysticism, healing begins when the Shekhinah is given space to speak again. The Dinah Files are a brutal, necessary revelation. They break the silence—not to sensationalize pain—but to restore sacred witness to the desecrated body of the Divine Feminine.

This is not just about Israel. It is not just about Jews. It is about the collective responsibility to restore dignity where it was shattered, to let the silenced speak, and to understand that when a woman’s body is violated, the Divine Presence cries out with her.

The night will pass, and the moon will be full again. But only if her suffering is not forgotten.

The files may be political. But the story is cosmic. Honor the unspoken pain and restore dignity to the wounded feminine line.

Dinah is speaking, we must let her speak.