Zohar 1:115b-116a

Jewish Mysticism
R. Jose began his discourse- “Your wife should be as a fruitful vine within your house; your sons, like olive saplings around your table” (Ps. 128-3). “Your wife should be as a fruitful vine,” all the time that your wife is inside the house and does not go out she is modest (senu‘ah), and it is proper for her to give birth to righteous offspring. “As a fruitful vine,” just as the vine is not planted in another species but only in its own, so the worthy woman does not produce seedlings in another man, and just as there is nothing grafted unto the vine from another tree, so too in the case of the worthy woman. … From this we learn that when the Shekhinah is hidden (seni‘a’) in her place as is appropriate for her, as it were, “your sons, like olive saplings,” this refers to Israel when they are dwelling in the land. “Around your table,” for they eat, drink, offer sacrifices, and are joyous before the blessed holy One, and the supernal and lower beings are blessed on account of them. When the Shekhinah departs, Israel are exiled from the table of their father and they are amongst the nations. They scream every day and there is none who hears them but the blessed holy One, as it is written, “Yet, even then, when they are in the land of their enemies, [I will not reject or spurn them so as to destroy them, annulling My covenant with them- for I the Lord am their God]” (Lev. 26-44).

Translated by Elliot Wolfson in “Occultation of the Feminine and the body of Secrecy in Medieval Kabbalah,” in Rending the Veil- Concealment and Revelation of Secrets in the History of Religions, 113-154. Edited by Elliot R. Wolfson, New York and London- Seven Bridges Press, 1999.