What Do You Mean When You Say "God"?

By Shaiya Rothberg

In this book, I'll tell you what I mean by "God". I hope I'll also teach you a methodology for refining what you mean by "God" so that God can more powerfully energize your religious life (or whatever you call it). And then together, in light of whatever religion you practice (or form of atheism you believe in), we can try to imagine what humanity could become if she was liberated from her present state of exile (galut) and destruction (chorban).

This is the first book of what is meant to be a trilogy:
"A Theology of ADAM".

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shaiya Rothberg
• Release date: Aug 30, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476091662

Shaiya Rothberg

Shaiya Rothberg grew up in New Jersey and made aliyah to Israel in 1988. Today he lives in Jerusalem with his wife Gittit, and three sons, Amos, Binyamin and Yotam. He holds a PhD in Jewish Thought from Hebrew University and a B.A. in Talmud and Jewish Philosophy from Bar Ilan University. Shaiya teaches Bible, Kabbalah and Jewish Philosophy at the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem.

Book preview

What Do You Mean When You Say God?

First Experimental Smashwords Edition

Elul 5772/2012

Copyright 2012 Shaiya Rothberg

Table of Contents

Preface

Chapter 1: Identifying God

Chapter 2: The All

Chapter 3: Foundations of the Torah

Chapter 4: Divinity

Chapter 5: Higher Humanity

Chapter 6: God as Person

Chapter 7: Shechinah

Notes

About the Author

Preface

Why talk about God?

God is a word. Sometimes, it gets so loaded with meanings that we forget that the word God is not God. It's just a word that people use to say all sorts of things. Does God exist? Is God real? That depends on what you mean when you say God, and on what your picture of the world is. If you define God in reference to things that you believe are real, then God is real. If you define God as something that does not exist in the universe as you picture it, then there is no God. If you're reading this book because you're interested in making sense of the word God for yourself, I think that this is very important to remember!

Since God is a word, it can and has been defined in a mind boggling number of ways. Debates about whether God exists are notoriously unproductive. I think that's because most of the time, people are using such different definitions of the word God that they don't understand each other. One person is sure that she's proven that God exists, just to find that her interlocutor doesn't understand how she's said anything about God at all. I suspect that often both sides largely agree about everything; everything, that is, except what they mean when they say God.

Given that there's so much confusion about what God means, why bother to use this word at all? Before I tell you why I use it, it needs to be clear that I claim no logical necessity to use the word God. You might accept the truth of what I mean when I say God, and then say but I prefer to call that 'any-name-just-not-God!' You'll get no argument from me. What matters to me is what is signified by the word God, and what that means for human life. The vision laid out in this book is not about how we use this or that word. It's about transcendence and redemption; it's about realizing the potential of our species to become something greater than we are.

And while it will take me a few chapters to make it clear to you what I mean by God, and how that works with the Bible and the prayer book, I'll begin here by pointing out the basic intuition that motivates me to talk about God. That intuition is that human beings have the potential to be higher kinds of creatures, and that there is something worthy of our worship and service. We all know glory and transcendence; we've experienced unspeakable beauty and overwhelming love. We've seen the heights that humanity is capable of; things like compassion, knowledge, solidarity, medicine, technology, music, literature and higher states of consciousness. But as a species we are in the grips of a barbaric world order in which millions starve or are murdered and billions live, somehow, without the conditions for dignified human life. Even those of us lucky enough to have been born into plenty and freedom often waste our energies, pursuing thoughts and tasks that we know are destructive to our higher selves.

I talk about God because I need words to express what that unspeakable beauty and overwhelming love mean to me. I need a language to reflect on how those things, and the other things that fill my life with meaning and purpose, fit into the universe and define my place in it. Words like God, divinity, sacred and holy refer to real things that I experience. I need the words in order to reflect on those experiences and figure out how to live more in their light. God language is a language for figuring out what is truly valuable and then transforming ourselves and the world to have more of it.

In this book, I'll tell you what I mean by God. I hope I'll also teach you a methodology for refining what you mean by God so that God can more powerfully energize your religious life (or whatever you call it). And then together, in light of whatever religion you practice or form of atheism you believe in, we can try to imagine what humanity could become if she was liberated from her present state of exile and destruction.

About this book

This book is the product of an ongoing theology workshop at the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem. Through discussion, guided imagination, creative writing and rancorous argument we've played and struggled with the ideas of this theology over the years. The book that has emerged is something between a book of theology and a program (with source texts) for a workshop on theology. I guess I sort of imagine the reader as a workshop all-in-one.

In the spirit of the workshop, the most important ideas are presented in a few different formats. First, you'll meet them in theoretical prose. The aim is to be clear. The style of the writing will be more like how you speak when you want to be understood, and less like the way philosophy is generally written. Then, you'll meet the ideas again, this time in the interpretation of sacred text. That is, I'll use the ideas of the theology to make sense of religious texts like the Zohar and the writings of the Rambam (who is also called Moses Maimonides). Finally, scattered throughout the book, there are exercises for experiential learning. Examples of this kind of thing are guided imagination, creative writing and thought experiments.

The texts for the experiential exercises, as well as quotes from primary texts, will come indented like the words you're reading now.

I hope that these three different formats of presentation (prose, interpretation and experience based learning) will make this book accessible to anyone who really wants to get into it.

Like the workshop, the book is a work-in-progress. This is a first experimental edition. The chapters flow coherently, but I hope to add a few more chapters, filling out the picture, in the coming months. You will find many mistakes (please let me know when you do!). And there will be many more revisions. My plan is that the book you're reading now will be the first of three:

A Theology of ADAM

Book I: God and Prayer

What do you mean when you say God?

Constructing a language of God and prayer from the sources of Jewish tradition

Book II: Torah and Meaning

What does it mean to say that the Torah is the Word of God?

Constructing a language of revelation from the sources of Jewish tradition

Book III: Israel and Humanity

What does it mean to be Israel?

Jewish particularism, Human Rights and the telos of the human species

The book is structured as follows:

Chapter 1: Identifying God. In this chapter, we'll explore the things that we mean by the word God so that in the following chapters we can ask if these things are real and true.

Chapter 2: God as the All. In this chapter, we'll hear from the faithful shepherd of the Zohar about God as ein sof (without limit) and ayn (nothing). This is the first revelation: God as the source of all things.

Chapter 3: Foundations of the Torah. Here we'll learn from the Rambam what key ideas need to be true in order for Torah life to make sense. And then we'll see why they are in fact true in light of the first revelation (God as the All).

Chapter 4: Divinity (Elohut). God as the All is infinite and powerful. But the All includes evil and death. Why should we love God? I love God because I experience the numinous ultimate good. This is the second revelation: God as the source of meaning and value.

Chapter 5: Higher Humanity. Humanity has the potential to embody the presence of God. But across the planet, she is wounded by mass poverty, violence and oppression. And all of us, individually, are often broken and lost. The praxis of divinity is the liberation of humanity, as individuals, as peoples and as a species, from her present state of exile (galut) and destruction (chorban).

Chapter 6: God as Person. The just and loving God of the Bible and prayer book is a true revelation of divinity and a true personal presence. In this chapter, we'll follow how God as Person arises from the experience of divinity.

Chapter 7: Shechinah. In this chapter, we'll begin to explore what higher humanity might look like, both as a species and in the particular form of the People, Torah and Land of Israel.

Notes: Here and there, I've taken liberties in translating and interpreting the texts. Generally, I've done this for simplicity. Also, while I want to accurately portray the historical meaning of the texts when I talk about what they mean in their own right, I also want to emphasize the parts that I'm using for the theology presented here. In the notes, you'll find details about the translations and interpretations.

Acknowledgments

Many people have participated in the workshop at the Conservative Yeshiva over the years, and I think that all of them left a mark on what is here. There are too many people to mention by name, but I am profoundly grateful to all of them. Two people have been particularly important. They are Dr. (and soon to be Rabbi) Ilana Goldhaber-Gordon and Rabbi Joel Levi. While they may not always agree with what is written in this book, their footprints are everywhere in it! And it has been a great pleasure to pursue this project together with them. Also, while he wasn't physically in the workshop, the thinking of Rabbi Dr. Shmuel (Richie) Lewis, our Rosh Yeshivah, has been foundational. We often began with the ideas in his weekly sichot, and then went off in the direction of this theology from there.

Chapter 1: Identifying God

Introduction

I think that a big part of what people mean when they say God is that which is greater than what I can know. Something simple that lies before us exposed cannot be God. In this sense, the word God is like the word mysterious: if I know everything about something, then that something is not mysterious. That's part of what the word mysterious means. Similarly, when I say God, I mean something which is beyond my grasp.

At the same time, if I didn't mean anything at all when I said God, then this word would be meaningless. If I really don't mean anything, then there's no difference between God and gibberish words like Gog or Dod. This is also true of the word mysterious. I call something mysterious because I see something that somehow says to me there's interesting and hidden stuff here that you don't see! If I didn't see anything that looked mysterious, I'd have no cause to use this word.

While we cannot contain God in a definition, we can reflect on what we mean when we use this word. Identifying what we mean when we say God is the first step of this theology. In this chapter, I won't argue that the things that I mean when I say God are real or true. The purpose of this chapter is just to figure out what they are. Then, in the following chapters, we can ask whether they are real and true. Let's begin with some exercises. The first exercise is the more important. But the second is more fun.

Exercise: Identifying God

This exercise should take about 15 minutes. The goal of the exercise is to bring to your mind some meanings of the word God. The meanings that we're looking for are the ones that are most important to you. You don't have to believe in God to do this exercise. We're just learning about the meanings of the word.

For many of the exercises in this book, you'll do some writing. It would be great if you did all the writing in the same place (like a notebook or computer file). That way, you'll be able to review your thinking. Write down the chapter, and the name of the exercise, each time you make an entry so that you'll know what goes with what.

Step 1: Choosing a context in which God is important.

Try to think of a context in which you've felt that God had an important role. Examples of such a context are a time that you remember in which God was important, or a quality of your life that involves God, or a value that you believe in. For some people, there are many such contexts. If you're one of these people, choose one that seems particularly important.

For other people,