Judaism Gods

Judaism Gods

The relationship with God

Jews believe that there is a single God who not only created the universe, but with whom every Jew can have an individual and personal relationship.
They believe that God continues to work in the world, affecting everything that people do.
The Jewish relationship with God is a covenant relationship. In exchange for the many good deeds that God has done and continues to do for the Jewish People...

• The Jews keep God's laws
• The Jews seek to bring holiness into every aspect of their lives.

Judaism is the faith of a Community

Jews believe that God appointed the Jews to be his chosen people in order to set an example of holiness and ethical behaviour to the world.
Jewish life is very much the life of a community and there are many activities that Jews must do as a community.

• For example, the Jewish prayer book uses WE and OUR in prayers where some other faiths would use I and MINE.

Jews also feel part of a global community with a close bond Jewish people all over the world. A lot of Jewish religious life is based around the home and family activities.

Judaism is a family faith

Judaism is very much a family faith and the ceremonies start early, when a Jewish boy baby is circumcised at eight days old, following the instructions that God gave to Abraham around 4,000 years ago.
Many Jewish religious customs revolve around the home. One example is the Sabbath meal, when families join together to welcome in the special day.

Who is a Jew?

Jews believe that a Jew is someone who is the child of a Jewish mother; although some groups also accept children of Jewish fathers as Jewish. A Jew traditionally can't lose the technical 'status' of being a Jew by adopting another faith, but they do lose the religious element of their Jewish identity.
Someone who isn't born a Jew can convert to Judaism, but it is not easy to do so.

Judaism means living the faith

Almost everything a Jewish person does can become an act of worship.
Because Jews have made a bargain with God to keep his laws, keeping that bargain and doing things in the way that pleases God is an act of worship.
And Jews don't only seek to obey the letter of the law - the particular details of each of the Jewish laws - but the spirit of it, too.
A religious Jew tries to bring holiness into everything they do, by doing it as an act that praises God, and honours everything God has done. For such a person the whole of their life becomes an act of worship.
Being part of a community that follows particular customs and rules helps keep a group of people together, and it's noticeable that the Jewish groups that have been most successful at avoiding assimilation are those that obey the rules most strictly - sometimes called ultra-orthodox Jews.
Note: Jews don't like and rarely use the word ultra-orthodox. A preferable adjective is haredi, and the plural noun is haredim.

It's what you do that counts...

Judaism is a faith of action and Jews believe people should be judged not so much by the intellectual content of their beliefs, but by the way they live their faith - by how much they contribute to the overall holiness of the world.

here is no single Jewish conception of God. God has been described, defined, and depicted in a variety of ways in different works of Jewish literature and at different historical moments.

Names of God in Judaism

 

The name of God most often used in the Hebrew Bible is the Tetragrammaton (YHWH יהוה). It is frequently anglicized as Jehovah and Yahweh and written in most English editions of the Bible as "the Lord" owing to the Jewish tradition increasingly viewing the divine name as too sacred to be uttered. It was thus replaced vocally in the synagogue ritual by the Hebrew word Adonai (“My Lords”), which was translated as Kyrios (“Lord”) in the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Hebrew scriptures.

Rabbinic Judaism describes seven names which are so holy that, once written, should not be erased:

YHWH Tetragrammaton
El ("God"),
 Eloah ("God"),
 Elohim ("Gods"),
Shaddai (“Almighty"),
Ehyeh ("I Will Be"), and
Tzevaot ("[of] Hosts").

Other names are considered mere epithets or titles reflecting different aspects of God, but chumrah sometimes dictates special care such as the writing of "G-d" instead of "God" in English or saying Ṭēt-Vav (טו, lit. "9-6") instead of Yōd-Hē (יה, lit. "10-5" but also "Jah") for the number fifteen in Hebrew.
The documentary hypothesis proposes that the Torah was compiled from various original sources, two of which (the Jahwist and the Elohist) are named for their usual names for God (Yahweh and Elohim respectively).
Other names and titles

• 2.1 Adonai
• 2.2 Adoshem
• 2.3 Baal
• 2.4 Ehyeh asher ehyeh
• 2.5 Elah
• 2.6 El Roi
• 2.7 Elyon
• 2.8 Eternal One
• 2.9 HaShem
• 2.10 Shalom
• 2.11 Shekhinah

 for more name  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_God_in_Judaism#Elohim

 

 

About God

God is beyond human comprehension, but that has not stopped Jewish thinkers from attempting to describe God. The Jewish God is referred to with many names and euphemisms, though God’s scriptural names are traditionally only pronounced during religious activities. Belief in one God is one of Judaism’s defining characteristics. Nonetheless, some parts of the
seem less monotheistic than others. In addition, there are minor currents of thought within Judaism that play down the importance of belief in God.

Biblical vs. Talmudical Depictions of God

The God of the Bible has a multitude of roles and attributes that often contrast sharply with each other. In this sense, God is like a person — experiencing a range of emotions, often torn between competing allegiances and values. The God of the Bible communicates with people through prophets and is even open to critique. Of the varied biblical representations of God, the two that became particularly prominent in Jewish thought are God’s oneness and God’s role as creator of the world.
Classical rabbinic literature portrays God in a similar way. However, in rabbinic writings, God no longer communicates with people through prophecy, and God is no longer considered a direct legal authority. One of the most radical Jewish descriptions of God can be found in the heikhalot literature, an early corpus of mystical texts, which actually describes the physical dimensions of God. Though most early Jewish thinkers did not shy away from depicting God in human terms, Philo, a first-century philosopher, was an exception. He integrated Greek philosophy with Judaism and conceived of God in a more abstract way.

God in Medieval Jewish Thought

The medieval philosophers departed from the non-systematic theology of biblical and rabbinic literature. Philosophers like Maimonides worked tirelessly to make their philosophical interests coincide with the truths of the Bible. They wrote proofs for the existence of God and struggled with passages in the Torah that seem to compromise God’s unity. The medieval mystics–or kabbalists–also developed systematic theologies. They posited that God in Himself–known as the Ein Sof, or Infinite–cannot be discussed or described. However, God is revealed in the 10 sefirot, divine attributes or powers, and this manifest form of God is intelligible to humankind.

Modern Jewish Views of God

Secularization and the values of the modern world have created challenges for traditional conceptions of the Jewish God. Jewish thinkers adjusted to the rationalistic universalism of early modern philosophy by focusing on the ethical implications of Judaism’s belief in one God. Later, existentialists like Martin Buber focused on the experiential relationship between humans and God. Mordecai Kaplan and Richard Rubenstein took the challenges of scientific naturalism and the Holocaust so seriously that they rejected the traditional Jewish God. Finally, feminism raised serious questions about the problems of a male God.

BBC interviewed a Jewish rabbi, a Muslim imam and scholar, and a Methodist minister about this question: "Do Jews, Christians and Muslims worship the same God?" All three said, "yes … basically they do." (Not all representatives of these three traditions would agree, of course, but these three -- all veterans of the interfaith movement -- said yes right away.) Now, they recognized some complications, like the Christian belief in the Trinity and that Jesus is called the "Son of God," but they still came away affirming that God is basically one and the same for all three traditions.

Websites and Resources: Judaism Judaism101 jewfaq.org ; Aish.com aish.com ; Wikipedia article Wikipedia ; torah.org torah.org ; Chabad,org chabad.org/library/bible ; Religious Tolerance religioustolerance.org/judaism ; BBC - Religion: Judaism bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/judaism ; Encyclopædia Britannica, britannica.com/topic/Judaism; Virtual Jewish Library jewishvirtuallibrary.org/index ; Yivo Institute of Jewish Research yivoinstitute.org ; Jewish History: Jewish History Timeline jewishhistory.org.il/history ; Wikipedia article Wikipedia ; Jewish History Resource Center dinur.org ; Center for Jewish History cjh.org ; Jewish History.org jewishhistory.org ; Holocaust Museum ushmm.org/research/collections/photo ; Jewish Museum London jewishmuseum.org.uk ; Internet Jewish History Sourcebook sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Complete Works of Josephus at Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ccel.org