Definition:

The Supreme Being.

When Jacob wrestles with a Divine being (Gen. 32) we are unsure as to exactly who or what he is wrestling. At the end of the encounter, his adversary changes his name to Israel, which means “He struggled with God.” The very fact that Jacob’s struggle with God is impossible for us to fully understand is perhaps indicative of the wondrous and difficult relationship that Jews have had with God throughout the ages.

Most people believe that the Torah (the Five Books of Moses) is a monotheistic document – one that proposes that there is only one God, and will often cite Deut 6:4 as evidence – “Hear O Israel, the Eternal is our God, the Eternal is One.” However, a growing number of people read the Torah as a henotheistic document – one that accepts the existence of other gods for other peoples but which sees the God of Israel as the God who created the world, who intervenes in human history and who is above all gods. While this may initially seem surprising, this viewpoint is supported by texts such as the following: “Who is like You among the gods people worship?” With this reading, Deut. 6:4 is usually translated as “Hear O Israel, the Eternal is our God, the Eternal alone.” Regardless of translation, the Bible sees the people of Israel as having a unique relationship with God established through eternally binding covenants. Through that unique relationship, God commands us to perform mitzvot (lit. “commandments” although recently translated by Rabbi Tikvah Sarah as “compelling commitments”) because it is through appropriate action that we perform God’s Will. These mitzvot were, according to early Judaism, given to us on Mount Sinai in written form or in oral form.

Certainly by the early Rabbinic period two thousand years ago, Jewish thought had universally adopted a monotheistic pattern and understood references to other gods in the Bible as references to false gods. As Hellenic thought was assimilated into Jewish theology, it became assumed that God was omniscient (all-knowing), omnipotent (all-powerful) and completely benevolent. This led to the rise in the Rabbinic understanding of an afterlife, something which had not been mentioned in the Bible as such. The belief that righteous people are rewarded and the wicked are punished in the afterlife restored a sense of complete justice to God, which was very important for the Rabbis, especially for those living under Roman oppression, wondering how God would allow such suffering to the Jewish people. It is important to note that Rabbinic Judaism was not dogmatic in its theology, though, except for core assumptions – that there is only one God, that God created the world, and that God has a unique relationship with Israel. Despite the belief that God is omniscient, the Rabbis were adamant that human beings had free will, thus Rabbi Akiva said that “all things are foreseen yet free will is granted” (Mishnah: Avot 3:19). It is in this period that the Oral Law was written down, therein recording a multitude of discussions between Rabbis on all theological and religious matters.

By the Middle Ages, influential philosophers such as Moses Maimonides (1135-1204) had developed Jewish theology along different paths. To Maimonides, God was the First Cause of all things and yet was completely beyond human ken. In what is commonly referred to as “negative theology,” Maimonides describes how we cannot describe God positively, only negatively – for example, we cannot say that God is ‘good,’ but we can say that God is not ‘bad.’ Maimonides understood all the anthropomorphisms (terms that describe God in human language, e.g. God’s feet (Ex. 24:10), God’s finger (Ex. 31:18), God’s hand (Ex. 9:3)) of the Bible as completely metaphorical, a belief that has continued throughout most of the Jewish community up to today. Most important in this regard is the notion of God ‘speaking’ which obviously does not mean a literal sound, even if some early Rabbinic writings might suggest this. Maimonides firmly believed, as with other neo-Aristotelian authors, that God created the world from nothing, another belief which has continued up to the modern day. This belief, which naturally is reinforced by modern-day perceptions is not necessarily the plain reading of the Biblical Creation story – as Rashi notes, the most accurate translation of the opening verses of the Torah are “In the beginning of God’s creating the heavens and the earth, the earth was [already] unformed and void and darkness was [already] on the face of the deep” Gen. 1:1-2). While the basis for many people’s theology is in Maimonidean readings of Torah, few realise that his understanding of God is as a being so removed from us that God is, in fact, incomprehensible. More importantly, though, for Maimonides God is unaffected by our actions, which certainly provides a challenging understanding of the efficacy of prayer.

In the modern age, a number of varying theologies have come forward which profoundly challenge Rabbinic Judaism but which often are more appealing to the modern mind. For example, Benedict Spinoza (1632-1677) suggested an almost pantheistic approach to God – that God and the universe are synonymous. Thus, to Spinoza, God did not create the universe as understood by Maimonides, rather he understood everything as having being “conditioned by the Divine Nature” (The Ethics, I, 29, p.68). Spinoza’s departure from the notion of a personal God and his open questioning of the Torah as having been written by God is generally seen to be the reason for his expulsion from the Jewish community, although it has also been stated that these were perhaps incidental and the real reason had to do with his family’s unpayable financial debt to the Jewish community.

Martin Buber (1878-1965) does not attempt to describe God, he describes moments when we can meet God, for “all real living is meeting” (I and Thou, p.11). To Buber, there are two states of relationship with the outside world – I-It and I-Thou. The I-It relationship is the everyday encounter where we are independent from the other, whereas in the I-Thou while each partner in the relationship still maintains their unique identity, they completely accept and confirm the other. It is only in the I-Thou encounter, according to Buber, when we encounter God, God being the ‘Eternal Thou.’ Buber is adamant that God cannot be described or defined, but can only be met.

Mordecai Kaplan (1881-1983) could not understand God as a supernatural Being and described God as “the Power that makes for salvation.” Here, salvation is not understood in the Christian sense but rather God is the sum of everything that makes life significant or holy, or God is the totality of everything that drives us forward to become fully human. For Kaplan, our conception of God is far less important compared with the effect that belief in God has on our lives, and the Reconstructionist Movement which sprang from his thoughts continues to promote action based on faith. For Kaplan, prayer is not a dialogue with God in the sense of a two-way conversation, but rather a process through which we become aware of God in our lives and our needs.

For at least a thousand years, Jews have prayed from a siddur, a prayer book, and it is in our prayers that our theology is given its strongest expression. The latest version of Forms of Prayer, the Siddur for the Movement for Reform Judaism, describes God in gender-neutral terms (such as ‘Eternal’ instead of ‘Lord’), seeing gendered names of God as human constructs that narrow our understanding of God.

The Jewish struggle with God is a joyous one that gives meaning to our lives and that drives us to greater things. This summary has only touched upon some of the major themes of Jewish belief in God over the millennia. Reform Judaism actively encourages the right to spiritual search of every Jew and we invite you to contact a Rabbi if you would like to talk about your relationship with God.

Sources

Written by Rabbi Neil Amswych

• Finding God, Soncino & Syme, Jason Aronson Inc, New Jersey, 1993
• Progressive Judaism – A Collective Theological Essay and Discussion Paper aka “The MANNA Platform,” MANNA Theology Supplement, Rabbi Tony Bayfield, MANNA Magazine, Number 27, Spring 1990
• Encyclopaedia Judaica, Keter Publishing House, 1972, Vol. 7, 641 – 674

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