In the book of Genesis we read that human beings are created in the divine image. Does this famous verse then imply that God is a person with a human-like form? Does God have a body?
The traditional God of Judaism or what I call “The God of Hebrew school,” is a king who has a gray white beard and sits up on a throne up in heaven. This is Avinu Malkeinu, “Our Father, Our King” who watches over us on the High Holidays to see if we will repent of our sins.
The Bible seems to suggest that God has a body. We know that God can talk. God used words to create the world. God spoke to people in the Bible including Abraham and Moses. If God has a voice, it stands to reason that God would have a mouth, as God’s voice has to come from somewhere. When we finish reading from the Torah scroll on Friday nights, we lift it high in the air and sing: Vezot HaTorah, “This is the Torah that Moses wrote down and placed before the Israelites, from the mouth of God.”
If God has a mouth, it also stands to reason that God has a face. At the end of each Friday night Shabbat service, I bless the congregation. I ask all to rise and I raise my hands in the air. Looking over the whole sanctuary, I recite the words of the Priestly Blessing, which comes from the Bible: May God bless you and Keep you. May God’s light shine upon you and be gracious to you. May God lift up God’s face towards you and Grant you Peace. The Priestly Blessing says that God has a face, panim in Hebrew, or punum in Yiddish. Even though some prayer books like to translate panim as “God’s Countenance” the clear and obvious meaning of the Hebrew is that God has a face.
For some people, the idea that God has a face is comforting. A congregant once told me that for him, it is easier to have a relationship with God if God has a body. The more human-like that God is, the closer we can feel to God.
Yet, for many people, the God on the throne with the long white beard is difficult to accept. Modechai Kaplan, a 20th Century Jewish philosopher, was a true innovator. His daughter Judith, became the first Bat Mitzvah in Jewish history in 1922. Kaplan founded the first JCC, Jewish community Center and he created a fourth movement of American Judaism, Reconstructionist Judaism.
Kaplan’s innovative nature also drove him to offer new ideas about God. He believed that God is not a person, a king on a throne. Rather, for Kaplan, God is a force, power, spirit or energy. Think Star Wars: May the Force Be With You. For Kaplan, God is a force for good, an energy that brings goodness into the world.
Kaplan believed that prayer is not about God; it is about us. When we pray, we take a moment to escape the difficulties of the world and reflect on our lives. Prayer then is not so much about asking God to grant our requests, for how can you ask a force or energy for something? Rather prayer is about finding spiritual strength and shalom peace.
When I teach adult education classes about God, I discuss both the traditional God of Judaism, the king on the throne, and Mordechai Kaplan’s ideas about God as a force for good in the universe. Sometimes I ask people to vote on which view of God they find more compelling. Usually it is split, with some preferring the traditional male king and others liking the idea of God as a force or power. Personally, I find myself more drawn to Kaplan’s idea of God as a force for good as it makes more sense to me in the modern and scientific world in which we live.
The primary message I try to convey when teaching about God is that there is a diversity of beliefs about the Divine in Judaism and that we all do not have to believe the same thing. Ultimately, we benefit from exploring many Jewish views of God and seeking beliefs that help to sustain us spiritually in our own lives.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Monday, July 5, 2010
Is God Male or Female?
The traditional God of Judaism or what I call “The God of Hebrew school,” is male. In religious school we all learned that God has a gray white beard and sits on a throne up in heaven. This is Avinu Malkeinu, “Our Father, Our King” who watches over us on the High Holidays to see if we will repent of our sins.
We know that God is male because the Torah tells us so. The very first verse of Genesis reads: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Hebrew is a gendered language, like Spanish and French, which means that verbs in Hebrew have separate male and female forms. In the first verse of Genesis, the form of the word “created,” bara, indicates that God is a male.
Even though God is male, God creates both man and woman. Modern scholars have determined that the Torah contains two stories of the creation of human beings. The one most of us are familiar with appears in Genesis chapter 2, in which God forms Adam out of the clay of the earth puts him to sleep, takes a rib from his side, and forms Eve from it. In this version, God creates both man and woman, but the woman is seen as inferior to the man as she came from him.
Genesis chapter 1 also contains a story about the creation of human beings that is more egalitarian. The Torah says: “And God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” (Genesis 1:27) It seems that God created both male and female at the same time, indicating the equality of both genders. The rabbis even wrote a midrash, a legendary interpretation of the Torah, which states that God first created a hermaphrodite, a being that was both male and female, and only later split it into the two genders we have today.
The issue of God’s gender appears most clearly in the siddur, the Jewish prayer book. The standard Jewish prayer begins with the words Barukh Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melekh HaOlam, Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe. All of the verbs here all male, and God is referred to as King.
With the emergence of feminism in the 70s, Reform Jews began to question why God is always male in our prayers. Many suggestions were offered as to how to deal with God’s male gender. Some people said that we should translate the Hebrew words differently in English to remove gender all together.
In the 1970s, a new Reform Jewish prayer book was published that translates Barukh Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melekh HaOlam as “Praised be the Lord our God, Ruler of the universe.” Another way I have seen this done was in a prayer book written by Rabbi Larry Kushner’s Congregation in Boston. They translate Barukh Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melekh HaOlam as “Holy One of Blessing, Your Presence Fills Creation.”
In confirmation classes that I have taught over the years, I noticed that my students often referred to God as male even though many of my students are women! One year I pointed this out to them and said that if they believed that God is man, then they should continue to call God “He.” But if they do not, they should try something else.
I personally believe that God understands both men and women but is beyond gender. I view God not so much as a king on a throne, but rather a force or power or essence in the universe.
Ultimately, words are powerful, and the words we use for God are even more so. As Reform Jews we decide our own beliefs about God, whether we see God as a male, a female or non-gendered. And once we make this informed choice about what we believe, I suggest that we choose our words for God deliberately.
We know that God is male because the Torah tells us so. The very first verse of Genesis reads: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Hebrew is a gendered language, like Spanish and French, which means that verbs in Hebrew have separate male and female forms. In the first verse of Genesis, the form of the word “created,” bara, indicates that God is a male.
Even though God is male, God creates both man and woman. Modern scholars have determined that the Torah contains two stories of the creation of human beings. The one most of us are familiar with appears in Genesis chapter 2, in which God forms Adam out of the clay of the earth puts him to sleep, takes a rib from his side, and forms Eve from it. In this version, God creates both man and woman, but the woman is seen as inferior to the man as she came from him.
Genesis chapter 1 also contains a story about the creation of human beings that is more egalitarian. The Torah says: “And God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” (Genesis 1:27) It seems that God created both male and female at the same time, indicating the equality of both genders. The rabbis even wrote a midrash, a legendary interpretation of the Torah, which states that God first created a hermaphrodite, a being that was both male and female, and only later split it into the two genders we have today.
The issue of God’s gender appears most clearly in the siddur, the Jewish prayer book. The standard Jewish prayer begins with the words Barukh Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melekh HaOlam, Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe. All of the verbs here all male, and God is referred to as King.
With the emergence of feminism in the 70s, Reform Jews began to question why God is always male in our prayers. Many suggestions were offered as to how to deal with God’s male gender. Some people said that we should translate the Hebrew words differently in English to remove gender all together.
In the 1970s, a new Reform Jewish prayer book was published that translates Barukh Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melekh HaOlam as “Praised be the Lord our God, Ruler of the universe.” Another way I have seen this done was in a prayer book written by Rabbi Larry Kushner’s Congregation in Boston. They translate Barukh Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melekh HaOlam as “Holy One of Blessing, Your Presence Fills Creation.”
In confirmation classes that I have taught over the years, I noticed that my students often referred to God as male even though many of my students are women! One year I pointed this out to them and said that if they believed that God is man, then they should continue to call God “He.” But if they do not, they should try something else.
I personally believe that God understands both men and women but is beyond gender. I view God not so much as a king on a throne, but rather a force or power or essence in the universe.
Ultimately, words are powerful, and the words we use for God are even more so. As Reform Jews we decide our own beliefs about God, whether we see God as a male, a female or non-gendered. And once we make this informed choice about what we believe, I suggest that we choose our words for God deliberately.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)