In Judaism, God has been understood in many ways. According to the rationalism of Judaism articulated by Maimonides, which then dominates many traditional Jewish traditional thought, God is understood as the absolute, indivisible, and unmatched which is the main cause of all existence. Traditional Judaism states that YHWH, the gods of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and the national god of Israel, freed the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, and gave them the Mosaic Law on the biblical Mount Sinai as depicted in the Torah. Traditional interpretations of Judaism generally emphasize that God is personal, while some modern interpretations of Judaism emphasize that God is power or ideal.
The name God most commonly used in the Hebrew Bible is Tetragramaton (YHWH Hebrew: ????). In the Jewish tradition, the other names of God are Elohim and El Shaddai.
Video God in Judaism
Name
The most commonly used name of the Hebrew Bible is the Tetragrammaton (Hebrew YHWH: ???? ?). Jews traditionally do not say it, and instead refer to God as HaShem , literally "Name". In the Tetragrammaton prayer is replaced by Adonai pronunciation, which means "My lord".
Maps God in Judaism
From the local god of the Iron Age to Monotheism
The national god of the Iron Age of Israel (Samaria) and Judah is Yahweh. The exact origins of this god are disputed, though they reach back to the early Iron Age and even the Final Bronze. His name may have started as the nickname of El, the head of the god of the Canaanite Virgin century, but the earlier mention is in Egyptian texts that placed him among the travelers in the southern Transjordan.
Having evolved from its monolatristic roots, Judaism became very monotheistic. There is no consensus reached by academics about the origins of monotheism in ancient Israel, but Yahweh "is clearly out of the world of the ancient Near Eastern gods."
The worship of the double gods (polytheism) and the concept of God has many people (as in the doctrine of the Trinity) equally unimaginable in Judaism. The idea of ​​God as duality or trinity is perverted in Judaism - it is considered to be the same as polytheism.
God, the cause of all, is one. This does not mean one as one of a series, or one like a species (which includes many individuals), or one as in an object consisting of many elements, or as a single unlimited single object can be divided. On the contrary, God is a unity unlike any other unity. (Maimonides, 13 Principles of Faith , Second Principle)
Because, according to the mystical conception, all existence comes from God, whose ultimate existence is independent of another thing, some of the sages of the Jews regard God as penetrating the universe, which is itself considered a manifestation of the existence of God. According to this line of theological speculation, Judaism can be regarded as compatible with panenteism, while always asserting true monotheism.
The kabbalistic tradition states that the divine consists of ten sefirot (attributes or emanations). It has been described as a strand of Judaism that may appear to be contrary to Jewish commitments to strict monotheism, but the Kabbalah consistently emphasize that their traditions are strictly monotheistic.
Any belief that intermediaries between man and God can be used, whether necessary or even optional, is traditionally considered heresy. Maimonides wrote it
God is the only one we can serve and praise.... We can not act this way against anything under God, whether it be an angel, a star, or one of the elements... There is no intermediary between us and God. All our prayers should be directed to God; there is nothing else to consider.
Some rabbinical rulers disagree with this view. In particular, Nachmanides argues that it is permissible to ask the angels to ask God on our behalf. This argument is manifested in Selichot's prayer called "Machnisay Rachamim", a request to the angels to intercede with God. The Modern print edition of Selichot includes this prayer.
Godhead
The divinity refers to the aspect or substratum of God that lies behind the actions or attributes of God (ie, that is the essence of God).
Rationalistic conception
In the philosophy of Maimonides and other Jewish rationalistic philosophers, little is known about the Deity other than its existence, and even this can only be asserted vaguely.
How then can a relation be represented between God and anything other than God when there is no idea consisting in everything good from both, as far as existence is, in our opinion, affirmed of God, may Allah be exalted, and what is but God by way of absolute excuses. Actually there is no relationship in any case between God and God's creation.
The mystical conception
In Kabbalistic thought the term "Godhead" usually refers to the concept of Ein Sof (?????), which is an aspect of God that is outside the emanation ( sephirot i>). The "cleverness" of the Godhead in Kabbalistic thought is no better than that conceived by rationalist thinkers. As Jacobs (1973) says, "About God as God is within Himself - Ein Sof - nothing can be said at all, and no mind can reach there".
Ein Sof is a forgettable and forgettable place. Why? Because of all sefirot, one can find out their reality from the depths of eternal wisdom. From there it is possible to understand one thing from another. However, regarding Ein Sof, there is no aspect anywhere to search or investigate; nothing can be known of it, because it is hidden and hidden in the mystery of absolute absence.
The property attributed to God
In the modern articulation of traditional Judaism, God has speculated to be the creator of the eternal, omnipotent and omnipotent universe, and the source of morality. God has the power to intervene in the world. Maimonides describes God in this way: "The foundation of all the foundations and pillars of wisdom is to know that there is a Primary Being which manifests the existence of all." All the creatures of the heavens, the earth, and what is among them come into existence only from the truth of His existence. "
The Jews often portray God as omniscient, although some of the leading medieval Jewish philosophers argued that God did not have complete knowledge of human actions. Gersonides, for example, argues that God knows the options are open to every individual but that God does not know the choices that will be made by a person. Abraham ibn Daud believed that God is not omniscient or omnipotent with respect to human actions.
The Jews often portray God as omnipotent and see the idea as rooted in the Bible. Many modern Jewish theologians argue that God is not omnipotent, however, and has found many biblical and classical sources to support this view.
Though God is mentioned in Tanakh with a masculine image and grammatical forms, traditional Jewish philosophy does not attribute gender to God. Although Jewish aggadic literature and Jewish mysticism sometimes refer to God using the language of gender, for poetic or other reasons, this language is never understood by Jews to assert that God is gender specific.
Some modern Jewish thinkers are careful to articulate God outside of the gender binary, a concept that is deemed not to apply to God.
The kabbalistic tradition states that the emanations of the gods consist of ten aspects, called sefirot .
God's Conception
Personal
Most classical Judaism views God as a personal god, meaning that man can have a relationship with God and vice versa. Rabbi Samuel S. Cohon writes that "God understood by Judaism is not only the First Cause, Creative Power, and the Reason of the World, but also a living and loving Father Man not only cosmically but personally... Jewish monotheism thinks of God in definite character or personality, while pantheism is satisfied with God's view as impersonal. "This is shown in the Jewish liturgy, as in the Adon Olam chant, which includes" a sure assertion "that" He is my God, the living God... Who who heard and answered. " Edward Kessler writes that the Hebrew Bible "describes an encounter with a God who cares passionately and who deals with humanity in times of quiet existence." The head of British rabbi Jonathan Sacks stated that God was "not far in time or apart, but vigorously engaged and present."
"The" private "predicate as applied to God" does not necessarily mean that God is physical or anthropomorphic, a view that Judaism rejects occasionally; more precisely, "personality" does not refer to the physical but to the "inner, psychic, rational, and moral essence." Other traditional Jewish texts, for example, Shir Qomah of the Heichalot literature, describe the size of the limbs and parts of the body of God.
Although most Jews believe that "God can be experienced," it is understood that "God is incomprehensible" because "God is nothing like man" (as shown in God's response to Moses when Moses asks God's name: "I AM I AM "); all anthropomorphic statements about God "are understood as linguistic metaphors, if not impossible to speak of God at all."
According to some speculations in traditional Judaism, the actions of people do not have the ability to influence God in a positive or negative way. The Book of Job in the Hebrew Bible states: "Look to the heavens and see, and behold the heavens, which are higher than you, If ye sin, how do you hurt God, and if your transgressions are many, what do you do to God? what do you give to God or what God takes away from you? Your evil [affects] someone like you, and your truth is a son of man. "However, the traditional Kabbalistic text corpus describes the theurgic practices that manipulate supernatural realms, and the Kabbalah practical texts (Hebrews: ??????????) instruct the experts in the use of white magic.
The idea that God needed humans was put forward by Abraham Joshua Heschel. Because God seeks humans, God is accessible and available through time and space to anyone who seeks Him, which leads to spiritual intensity for the individual as well. This access leads to a God who is present, involved, close, intimate, and caring and vulnerable to what is happening in the world.
Non-personal
Although the dominant tension in Judaism is that God is personal, modern Jewish thinkers claim that there is "an alternative flow of tradition exemplified by... Maimonides", which, 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 sometimes affirm that God is the nature, ethical aspiration, or power or process of the world.
Baruch Spinoza offers a pantheistic view of God. In his mind, God is everything and everything is God. Thus, it can not be understood without substance but God. In this model, one can talk about God and nature in turn. Although Spinoza was ostracized from the Jewish community in Amsterdam, Spinoza's concept of God was revived by later Jews, especially the secular Zionists of Israel.
Hermann Cohen rejects Spinoza's idea that God can be found in nature, but agrees that God is not a personal being. Instead, he sees God as an ide, an archetype of morality. Not only is God unidentifiable with nature, but God is also unmatched by anything in the world. This is because God is "One," unique and unlike any other. One loves and worships God through life ethically and obeys His moral law: "God's love is a love of morality."
Similarly, for Emmanuel Levinas, God is ethical, so one is brought closer to God when justice is given to the Other. This means that a person experiences the presence of God through one's relationship with another person. Knowing God means knowing what to do, so it makes no sense to talk about God as God, but rather what God has commanded.
For Mordecai Kaplan, founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, God is not a human, but a power in the universe experienced; actually, whenever something valuable is experienced, it is God. God is the sum of all natural processes that enable people to satisfy themselves, the forces that make salvation. So, Lord Kaplan is abstract, incarnate, and intangible. It is important to note that, in this model, God exists in this universe; to Kaplan, nothing supernatural or any other world. Someone loves this God by seeking truth and goodness. Kaplan does not view God as a person but acknowledges that using the personal God language can help people feel connected with their inheritance and can act as "the affirmation that life has value."
Similarly, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, founder of the Jewish Reform movement, viewed God as a process. To aid in the transition in this language, he uses the term "godding," which summarizes God as a process, as the process of the universe has done, and will continue to do. This term means that God appears, grows, adapts, and evolves with creation. However, conventional God-language is still useful in nurturing spiritual experiences and can be a tool for connecting with the infinite, although it should not be equated with the original.
According to the Pew Forum on Religion and US Religious Landscape Survey 2008 Public Lives, Americans who identify as Jews by religion are twice as likely to support the ideas of God as "impersonal forces" over the idea that "God is the one with whom one can have relations. "
See also
- God in Abrahamic religions
- Holocaust theology
- Holy Spirit (Judaism)
- Shekhinah (divine presence)
References
Further reading
- Yochanan Muffs. "The Personality of God: Biblical Theology, The Faith of Man and the Divine Image". LibraryThing.com . The library stuff Ã,
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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