The Jewish Approach to God

Neil Gillman

Description

A window into the Jewish understanding of God throughout
history and today—written especially for Christians.

In Jewish Scripture—Christianity's foundation—God's presence is everywhere: in nature, in history, and in the range of human experience. Yet the Torah, Maimonides, and 4,000 years of Jewish tradition all agree on one thing: that God is beyond any form of human comprehension. How, then can Judaism be so crowded with descriptions and images of God? And what can they mean to the ways Christians understand their own faith?

In this special book, Rabbi Neil Gillman guides you through these questions and the countless different ways the Jewish people have related to God, how each originated and what each may mean for you. Whether you are Christian, Muslim, or even Jewish, this nuts-and-bolts introduction will both answer your questions—and stimulate new ones.

A theologian who writes as a great teacher, Gillman addresses the key concepts at the heart of Judaism’s approach to God. From Ein Sof (Infinity) to Shekhinah (Presence), Gillman helps you understand what the search for knowing God itself says about Jewish tradition and how you can use the fundamentals of Judaism to strengthen, explore, and deepen your own spiritual foundations.

• God Is Echad (Unique)
• God Is Power
• God Is Person
• God Is Nice—Sometimes
• God Is Not Nice—Sometimes
• God Can Change
• God Creates
• God Reveals
• God Redeems

Introduction A Note on the Text God Is Echad God Is Power God Is Person God Is Nice (Sometimes) God Is Not Nice (Sometimes) God Can Change God Creates God Reveals God Redeems Conclusion: What It Means to Be Jewish Notes Glossary Suggestions for Further Reading

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• List of Jewish prayers and blessings
• Jewish philosophy
• Judaism
• Religion

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 10 août 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781580236621
• Langue: English

Extrait

For my grandchildren: Jacob, Ellen, Livia, and Judah
But take utmost care and watch yourselves scrupulously that you do not forget the things that you saw with your own eyes . And make them known to your children and your children s children. (Deuteronomy 4:9)
How do I fulfill this? It is as if to say that whoever teaches his children Torah, Scripture considers him to have taught his children, his children s children, and their children to the end of all generations. (Babylonian Talmud, Kiddushin 30a)
C ONTENTS
Introduction
A Note on the Text
1. God Is Echad
2. God Is Power
3. God Is Person
4. God Is Nice (Sometimes)
5. God Is Not Nice (Sometimes)
6. God Can Change
7. God Creates
8. God Reveals
9. God Redeems
Conclusion: What It Means to Be Jewish
Notes
Glossary
Suggestions for Further Reading

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I NTRODUCTION
W HO I S G OD ?
S OME THIRTY YEARS AGO I was walking through the corridors of the school where I teach, and I encountered my teacher, Abraham Joshua Heschel. For the budding theologian that I was in those days, Heschel was an intimidating figure: How could I ever know what he knew, write as he wrote, and have the impact that he had? Somewhat nervously, I attempted to engage him in a conversation and I asked him about his new book, What Is Man? He turned sharply and replied, It s not What Is Man? It s Who Is Man? 1
My error was well intentioned. The formula What is man? is familiar to any worshiping Jew. It appears twice in the Psalms and is recited four times a year in our Yizkor (Memorial) service:
When I behold Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and stars that You set in place, what is man that You have been mindful of him, mortal man that You have taken note of him?
-P SALM 8:4-5
O Lord, what is man that You should care about him mortal man, that You should think of him?
-P SALM 144:3
In both of these texts, the question is clearly rhetorical. In fact, despite the punctuation, the psalmist is not really asking a question, not asking for information about the nature or essence of a human being. If anything, the statement is an exclamation, an outburst of astonishment at the place of the human being against the backdrop of God s creation, as evidenced by the two responses. In the first, humanity is little less than divine ; in the second, humanity s days are like a passing shadow. Of course, both responses are profoundly true. However, my teacher wanted to accentuate the fact that human beings are persons, not inanimate objects. His question was then Who? not What?
Whatever the thrust of the biblical passages, nowhere in the Bible can we find the alternative question, Who [or what] is God? Yet, if the Bible is the story of the complex interpersonal relationship between humanity and God, then the relationship itself demands that both parties to the relationship be persons, and that both know something about the nature of the other partner.
That question remains unasked in the Bible because the biblical communities already knew the answer. First, they perceived God s presence everywhere-in nature, in history, and in the range of human experiences. For them, God was an active presence in their lives.
C AN G OD B E KNOWN ?
Beyond this, how, in principle, is it even possible for human beings to grasp the nature of God? The anonymous prophet who authored the book scholars call Second Isaiah (chapters 40-55 of the Book of Isaiah) put it this way:
To whom can you compare Me Or declare me similar? To whom can you liken Me, So that we seem comparable?
-ISAIAH 46:5
This prophet was a member of the community of Israelites who had been exiled to Babylonia after the destruction of Jerusalem and the First Temple in 586 B. C. E. His question is derisive, for as the passage continues, he sharply condemns the gods of the surrounding pagan community, gods that are made of silver and gold, that they carry on their backs, that do not budge from their place, and, preeminently, a god that if they cry out to it, it does not answer.
How can the prophet s God be compared with any of these idols? If that s what people mean by god , then indeed there is no comparison. However, the prophet s question has another layer of meaning. He is not only comparing God with idols, he is also asserting the principle that his God is beyond any form of human comprehension or expression. Yet, there is not a passage in the entire Bible that does not speak voluminously about just what this God is like.
That s precisely the paradox about the biblical God. This God cannot be compared with anything else in the world. We call this quality God s absolute transcendence. God is the utter beyond -beyond anything that we can experience, know, and describe in human language. That s precisely what makes God God, and that s the difference between any object in the created world and God. We can directly experience, hence know, and hence describe all of creation; we cannot experience, know, and describe God. Nevertheless, the authors of the biblical texts seem to know and say a great deal about what God is like, what God does in nature and history, and what God wants from humanity.
But the problems we encounter in knowing God stem not only from the inherent nature of the Divine, they also stem from our own very human nature. Deuteronomy 10:16, for example, uses the striking metaphor of circumcising the foreskin of your heart as a prerequisite for Israel s acknowledging God s authority. That metaphor reappears many times in the literature of the prophets. It indicates that we suffer from a certain hardening of the heart, or, to alter the metaphor slightly, a certain blindness that gets in the way of seeing God s presence in the world. We are asked to remove these obstacles within us so that we may reach God.
In Christian thinking, that human failure is inherent in human nature, one of the results of original sin, Adam s rebellion against God s will in the Garden of Eden as recorded in Genesis 3. That blemish is transmitted from one generation to another to all of humanity through the sexual act. Jesus vicarious death on the Cross then represents God s gracious gift, which erases the original sin and grants salvation to the believer who accepts Jesus saving act.
But in Jewish sources, the very fact that the prophets urge the people of Israel to unblock their hearts, to open their eyes, to remove the obstacles that get in the way of their relation to God suggests that this obstacle is more a matter of will, not at all inherent in human nature. The Jewish claim, then, is that there is no inherent epistemological obstacle to recognizing God s presence in the world.
But it is one thing to acknowledge God. It is very much another thing to know something about God s inherent nature. That latter achievement, because of the transcendent nature of this God, remains problematic.
T HE S IN OF I DOLATRY
The expectation that we humans can grasp the nature of God is a good preliminary definition of what the Bible calls the sin of idolatry. According to the second of the ten commandments:
You shall not make for yourself a sculptured image, or any likeness of what is in the heavens above, or on the earth below, or in the waters under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them.
-EXODUS 20:4-5
Any time we install a feature of creation and call it God, we are committing the sin of idolatry, the cardinal Jewish sin. It need not be a material object; it can be something much more abstract or elusive: a nation, history itself (as in Marxism), financial reward, or another human being. Whenever we take something that is relative and install it as our ultimate value, we have committed the sin of idolatry. We have reduced God to something that cannot bear the burden of ultimacy, of transcendence. That s idolatry.
T ALKING A BOUT G OD
Where does that leave those of us who do need to talk about God? How then are we to understand the multiple characterizations of God that crowd the classical Jewish texts?
There are two possible answers to these questions-both of them true to the Jewish tradition. One is to slip into worshipful silence, to acknowledge that since God cannot be grasped by the human mind or described in human language, we must simply fall silent, worship only through song and dance, or just acknowledge God s intrinsically unknowable quality. This strategy is reflected in one of the terms Jewish mystics use to refer to God. God is Ein Sof , or Infinity-not the Infinite One, but simply Infinity itself in its literal meaning of beyond anything finite. This is more a confession of ignorance than a description of God.
It is also the approach of Maimonides doctrine of negative attributes. Maimonides (1135-1204) is universally acknowledged as the most accomplished Jewish philosopher of all time. His doctrine of negative attributes claims that God can only be described by what God is not-not personal, not ignorant, not wise, not weak, not strong-because any positive identification of God would be too limiting. To claim, for example, that God is omniscient would imply that omniscience exhausts God s nature. However, God is beyond omniscient, which is to say that God surpasses whatever we say about God. Paradoxically, this accumulation of negative characteristics leaves us with an image of God as the sum total of all positive qualities, even though Maimonides ultimate conclusion is that no human being can grasp the essential nature of God.
The second answer is to concede that although we cannot know God s essence, we must still speak about God, all the while fully realizing that everything we say about God is only marginally accurate, partial, impressionistic, imaginative, and intrinsically subjective. These characterizations become utterly false and idolatrous if and when we understand them to be liter