God in Judaism
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In
God is conceived as unique and perfect, free from all faults, deficiencies, and defects, and further held to be
According to the rationalistic Jewish theology articulated by the Medieval Jewish philosopher and jurist
Names
The name of God used most often in the
Godhead
In Judaism, Godhead refers to the aspect or substratum of God that lies behind God's actions or properties (i.e., it is the essence of God).
Rationalistic conception
In the philosophy of Maimonides and other Jewish-rationalistic philosophers, there is little which can be known about the Godhead, other than its existence, and even this can only be asserted equivocally.
How then can a relation be represented between God and what is other than God when there is no notion comprising in any respect both of the two, inasmuch as existence is, in our opinion, affirmed of God, may God be exalted, and of what is other than God merely by way of absolute equivocation. There is, in truth, no relation in any respect between God and any of God's creatures.
— Maimonides, Moreh Nevuchim (Pines 1963)
Kabbalistic conception
In Kabbalistic thought, the term "Godhead" usually refers to the concept of
Ein Sof is a place to which forgetting and oblivion pertain. Why? Because concerning all the sefirot, one can search out their reality from the depth of supernal wisdom. From there it is possible to understand one thing from another. However, concerning Ein Sof, there is no aspect anywhere to search or probe; nothing can be known of it, for it is hidden and concealed in the mystery of absolute nothingness.
— David ben Judah Hehasid, Matt (1990)
Properties which are attributed to God
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In modern articulations of traditional Judaism, God has been speculated to be the
Creative
Maimonides describes God in this fashion: "The foundation of all foundations and the pillar of wisdom is to know that there is a Primary Being who brought into being all existence. All the beings of the heavens, the earth, and what is between them came into existence only from the truth of His being."[15]
Omniscient
Jews often describe God as omniscient,[16] although some prominent medieval Jewish philosophers held that God does not have complete foreknowledge of human acts. Gersonides, for example, argued that God knows the choices open to each individual, but that God does not know the choices that an individual will make.[17] Abraham ibn Daud believed that God was not omniscient or omnipotent with respect to human action.[18]
Omnipotent
Jews often describe God as omnipotent, and see that idea as rooted in the Hebrew Bible.[16] Some modern Jewish theologians have argued that God is not omnipotent, however, and have found many biblical and classical sources to support this view.[19] The traditional view is that God has the power to intervene in the world.
Omnipresent
"That the Lord, He is God in heaven above and upon the earth beneath" (Deut. 4.39) Maimonides infers from this verse that the Holy One is omnipresent and therefore incorporeal, for a corporeal being is incapable of being in two places simultaneously.[20]
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Incorporeal and non-gendered
"To whom will ye liken me, that I should be equal?" (Isa. 40,25) Maimonides infers from this verse that, "had He been corporeal, He would be like other bodies".[20]
Although God is referred to in the
Some modern Jewish thinkers take care to articulate God outside of the gender binary,[22] a concept seen as not applicable to God.
Kabbalistic tradition holds that emanations from the divine consist of ten aspects, called sefirot.
Unimaginable
The Torah ascribes some human features to God, however, other Jewish religious works describe God as formless and otherworldly. Judaism is aniconic, meaning it lacks material, physical representations of both the natural and supernatural worlds. Furthermore, the worship of idols is strictly forbidden. The traditional view, elaborated by figures such as Maimonides, reckons that God is wholly incomprehensible and therefore impossible to envision, resulting in an historical tradition of "divine incorporeality". As such, attempting to describe God's "appearance" in practical terms is considered disrespectful, and possibly heretical.
Morally good
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Conceptions of God
Personal
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Most of classical Judaism views God as a
The "predicate "personal" as applied to God" does not necessarily mean that God is corporeal or anthropomorphic, views that Jewish sages sometimes rejected; rather, "personality" refers not to physicality, but to "inner essence, psychical, rational, and moral".[23] However, other traditional Jewish texts, for example, the Shi'ur Qomah of the Heichalot literature, describe the measurements of limbs and body parts of God.
Jews believe that "God can be experienced" but also that "God cannot be understood", because "God is utterly unlike humankind" (as shown in God's response to Moses when Moses asked for God's name: "I Am that I Am"). Anthropomorphic statements about God "are understood as linguistic metaphors, otherwise it would be impossible to talk about God at all".[24]
According to some speculations in traditional Judaism, people's actions do not have the ability to affect God positively or negatively.[citation needed] The Book of Job in the Hebrew Bible states: "Gaze at the heavens and see, and view the skies, which are higher than you. If you sinned, how do you harm God, and if your transgressions are many, what do you do to God? If you are righteous, what do you give God? Or what does God take from your hand? Your wickedness [affects] a person like yourself, and your righteousness a child of humanity." However, a corpus of traditional Kabbalistic texts describe theurgic practices that manipulate the supernal realms, and Practical Kabbalah (Hebrew: קבלה מעשית) texts instruct adepts in the use of white magic.[citation needed]
A notion that God is in need of human beings has been propounded by Abraham Joshua Heschel. Because God is in search of people, God is accessible and available through time and place to whoever seeks God, leading to a spiritual intensity for the individual as well. This accessibility leads to a God who is present, involved, near, intimate, and concerned for and vulnerable to what happens in this world.[25]
Non-personal
Modern Jewish thinkers claim that there is an "alternate stream of tradition exemplified by ... Maimonides", who, along with several other Jewish philosophers, rejected the idea of a personal God.
Modern Jewish thinkers who have rejected the idea of a personal God have sometimes affirmed that God is nature, the ethical ideal, or a force or process in the world.
Baruch Spinoza offers a pantheist view of God. In his thought, God is everything and everything is God. Thus, there can be conceived no substance but God.[27] In this model, one can speak of God and nature interchangeably. Although Spinoza was excommunicated from the Jewish community of Amsterdam, Spinoza's concept of God was revived by later Jews, especially Israeli secular Zionists.[28]
Hermann Cohen rejected Spinoza's idea that God can be found in nature, but agreed that God was not a personal being. Rather, he saw God as an ideal, an archetype of morality.[29] Not only can God not be identified with nature, but God is also incomparable to anything in the world.[29] This is because God is "One", unique and unlike anything else.[29] One loves and worships God through living ethically and obeying His moral law: "love of God is love of morality."[29]
Similarly, for Emmanuel Levinas, God is ethics, so one is brought closer to God when justice is rendered to the Other. This means that one experiences the presence of God through one's relation to other people. To know God is to know what must be done, so it does not make sense to speak of God as what God is, but rather what God commands.[30]
For Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, God is not a person, but rather a force within the universe that is experienced; in fact, anytime something worthwhile is experienced, that is God.[31] God is the sum of all natural processes that allow people to be self-fulfilling, the power that makes for salvation.[32] Thus, Kaplan's God is abstract, not carnate, and intangible. In this model, God exists within this universe; for Kaplan, there is nothing supernatural or otherworldly. One loves this God by seeking out truth and goodness. Kaplan does not view God as a person but acknowledges that using personal God-language can help people feel connected to their heritage and can act as "an affirmation that life has value".[33]
Likewise, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, the founder of the Jewish Renewal movement, views God as a process. To aid in this transition in language, he uses the term "godding", which encapsulates God as a process, as the process that the universe is doing, has been doing, and will continue to do.[34] This term means that God is emerging, growing, adapting, and evolving with creation. Despite this, conventional God-language is still useful in nurturing spiritual experiences and can be a tool to relate to the infinite, although it should not be confused with the real thing.[35]
See also
References
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- ^ LCCN 2010035774.
- ^ a b "Jewish Concepts: God". Jewish Virtual Library. American–Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE). 2021 [2014]. Archived from the original on 12 April 2017. Retrieved 23 October 2021.
- JSTOR j.ctt32bxpm.6.
- ^ ISBN 978-90-04-27564-5.
- ^ S2CID 245169096.
- (PDF) from the original on 23 September 2017. Retrieved 20 October 2021.
- ^ S2CID 213883058.
- ISSN 0098-9444. Archived from the original(PDF) on 31 March 2012.
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- ISBN 0-8028-2329-7. Archivedfrom the original on 23 January 2021. Retrieved 19 May 2020.
- S2CID 154932078.
- ^ Popkin, Richard Henry, ed. The Columbia history of western philosophy. Columbia University Press, 1999.
- ^ Mishneh Torah, book HaMadda', section Yesodei ha-Torah, chapter 1:1 (original Hebrew/English translation)
- ^ a b ""Jewish Beliefs about God" in C/JEEP Curriculum Guide American Jewish Committee" (PDF).
- OCLC 21039224.[page needed]
- OCLC 1497829.
- ^ Geoffrey Claussen, "God and Suffering in Heschel's Torah Min Ha-Shamayim". Conservative Judaism 61, no. 4 (2010), p. 17
- ^ a b Maimonides, Moses (1180). Mishneh Torah, Sefer Ma'adah: Yesodei haTorah. The Book of Knowledge: Foundations of the Torah Law. p. 1§ 8.
- ^ "The fact that we always refer to God as "He" is also not meant to imply that the concept of sex or gender applies to God." Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, The Aryeh Kaplan Reader, Mesorah Publications (1983), p. 144
- ^ Julia Watts-Belser, "Transing God/dess: Notes from the Borderlands," in Balancing on the Mechitza: Transgender in Jewish Community, ed. Noach Dzmura (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2010)
- ^ Union of American Hebrew Congregations.
- ^ a b c d Edward Kessler, What Do Jews Believe?: The Customs and Culture of Modern Judaism (2007). Bloomsbury Publishing: pp. 42-44.
- ^ Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism (New York: Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, 1955).
- ^ http://www.pewforum.org/files/2013/05/report-religious-landscape-study-full.pdf Archived 2017-04-17 at the Wayback Machine, p. 164
- ^ Benedictus de Spinoza, The Ethics; Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect; Selected Letters, trans. Samuel Shirley, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1992), 40.
- ^ Daniel B. Schwartz, The First Modern Jew: Spinoza and the History of an Image (Princeton University Press, 2012), ch. 5.
- ^ a b c d Hermann Cohen, Reason and Hope: Selections from the Jewish Writings of Hermann Cohen, trans. Eva Jospe (New York,: Norton, 1971), 223.
- ^ Emmanuel Levinas, Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism, trans. Sean Hand (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 223.
- ^ Alan Levenson, An Introduction to Modern Jewish Thinkers: From Spinoza to Soloveitchik, 137.
- ^ Alan Levenson, An Introduction to Modern Jewish Thinkers: From Spinoza to Soloveitchik, 138.
- ^ Mordecai Menahem Kaplan, The Meaning of God in Modern Jewish Religion (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994), 29.
- ^ Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and Joel Segel, Jewish with Feeling: A Guide to Meaningful Jewish Practice (New York: Riverhead Books, 2005), 20.
- ^ Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and Joel Segel, Jewish with Feeling: A Guide to Meaningful Jewish Practice (New York: Riverhead Books, 2005), 8.
Bibliography
- Betz, Arnold Gottfried (2000). "Monotheism". In Freedman, David Noel; Myer, Allen C. (eds.). Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible. ISBN 978-90-5356-503-2.
- S2CID 161791734.
- Gruber, Mayer I. (2013). "Israel". In LCCN 2012049271.
- ISBN 978-90-04-27564-5.
- Niehr, Herbert (1995). "The Rise of YHWH in Judahite and Israelite Religion: Methodological and Religio-Historical Aspects". In Edelman, Diana Vikander (ed.). The Triumph of Elohim: From Yahwisms to Judaisms. OCLC 33819403.
- ISBN 978-90-5356-503-2.
- Smith, Mark S. (2003). "El, Yahweh, and the Original God of Israel and the Exodus". The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel's Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts. ISBN 978-0-19-513480-3.
- Smith, Mark S. (2017). "YHWH's Original Character: Questions about an Unknown God". In Van Oorschot, Jürgen; Witten, Markus (eds.). The Origins of Yahwism. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft. Vol. 484. S2CID 187378834.
- ISBN 978-90-04-11119-6.
- ISBN 978-90-04-11119-6.
Further reading
- Amzallag, Nissim (August 2018). "Metallurgy, the Forgotten Dimension of Ancient Yahwism". The Bible and Interpretation. University of Arizona. Archived from the original on 26 July 2020. Retrieved 20 October 2021.
- Gaster, Theodor H. (26 November 2020). "Biblical Judaism (20th–4th century BCE)". Encyclopædia Britannica. Edinburgh: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Retrieved 20 October 2021.
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