God

Abraham challenges God’s plan to destroy Sodom with two distinct arguments: the innocent must not suffer alongside the guilty, and a righteous minority should suffice to spare an entire city. Why does Abraham stop at ten innocents? Can collective punishment ever be just? The Rabbis sharpen Abraham’s critique of divine justice. Yet the story’s implications extend beyond whether perfect justice is attainable: God chose Abraham to teach his descendants righteousness and justice, even when it means challenging God.

Why does Elohim, and not YHWH, create the world? Philo and the rabbis—though in opposite directions—each read the two names as two divine attributes, one beneficent and one that judges. The kabbalists see these as the sefirot דין Judgment and חסד Lovingkindness—while Ramchal further unites them as two colors in the prism of the divine crystal.

YHWH also reveals to Moses His goodness, glory, and name, but are knowing these the same as knowing YHWH?

In the Bible, God’s appearance is a blessing, while God’s hidden face is a punishment. But does that mean we've been punished for millennia? Chasidic masters offer a profound reinterpretation: God’s absence is a divine invitation—calling those who are willing to seek God out, to forge a deeper connection.

The creation accounts, the Garden of Eden, the innovations and life spans of early humans, and the flood story are best understood as an Axial Age critique of polytheistic, mythical cosmology.

Seeking a permanent connection with their god, ancient Mesopotamians would place votive statues of themselves in front of their god. Psalm 27 represents the Israelite alternative: the spoken request to see YHWH face-to-face uses words, not statues, to give the petitioner a refuge with God that endures even after departing the Temple.

The body of an executed criminal is hanged but must be buried on the same day, כִּי קִלְלַת אֱלֹהִים תָּלוּי, “because a hanged body is a cursing of God” (Deuteronomy 21:23). What does this phrase mean?

Job’s friends piously justify God’s actions and challenge Job to accept that he has done wrong. Yet God sides with Job and rebukes the friends for not “speaking about me in honesty as did my servant Job.”

Rachel weeps over her exiled descendants and God hears her plea (Jeremiah 31:14–16). Expanding on this passage, the rabbis in Midrash Eichah Rabbah envision Jeremiah awakening the patriarchs and Moses to plead with God to have mercy on Israel. Upon their failure to move God, the matriarch Rachel intervenes successfully.

Already in the early 2nd millennium B.C.E., people knew that diseases were contagious, and fear of contagion plays a key role in the Torah’s laws regarding the skin ailment, tzaraʿat. What does this mean for understanding other kinds of tum’ah?

Atop the kappōret, the ark’s cover, sat the golden cherubim, which framed the empty space (tokh) where God would speak with Moses. Drawing on the connection between the word kappōret and the root כ.פ.ר (“atone”), and noting how the golden calf episode interrupts the Tabernacle account, the rabbis suggest that the ark cover served as a means of atoning for the Israelites’ collective sin.

What is the gender of the God of creation? Of YHWH in general?

“God has not given you a mind to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear until this very day.”—Deuteronomy 29:3

Malchuyot is a prayer for the coming of God’s exclusive kingship over Israel. In contrast, the psalm of the shofar (Ps 47) offers an alternative approach, to stop waiting for God’s eschatological intervention and start building rapport with other religious groups, all of whom are the “Am Elohei Avraham,” the retinue of the God of Abraham.

The Shema has many interpretations, philosophical, eschatological, national, etc. A historical-critical way to understand the Shema is to read it (and Deuteronomy more broadly) against the backdrop of Assyrian domination, when Assyria touted their god Ashur as the supreme master of the world.

The meaning of God’s names, especially YHWH, is central to Jewish theology. Two approaches have dominated: the philosophical, focusing on God’s essence (“being”) and the kabbalistic, focusing on God’s evolving relationship with Israel (“becoming”). Some modern thinkers such as Malbim and Heschel have looked for new syntheses or formulations.

By erasing the boundaries between Written and Oral Torah, and removing any clear content from God’s revelation of law, Sommer undermines the concept of authoritative halakha that he wishes to refine.

A postmodern look at Deuteronomy’s view on God’s role in politics, the challenge of monotheism in biblical times, and the relative positions of Israel and her neighbors in God’s eyes.

Philosophically inclined rabbis, such as Maimonides, attempted to understand the mitzvah to love God in Aristotelian terms, imagining God as a non-anthropomorphic abstract being. Shadal argues that this elitist approach twists both Torah and philosophy, and in its place, he offers a moralistic approach that can be achieved by all.

The reading of Lamentations on Tisha b’Av functions both as the climax of the three weeks of mourning and the beginning of the seven weeks of conciliation, which leads us into the High Holidays.

Ancient Near Eastern cultic rituals located the presence of gods and divine messages in nature.

Notwithstanding modern day biblical critical and historical critical claims, applying the tools of contemporary philosophy demonstrates how room still exists to have faith that something extraordinary happened to our ancestors and that this event had a permanent effect on the development of Torah and Judaism.

The Difference between God’s “Name (שם)” and “Presence (כבוד)”

Tracing the tannaitic and biblical sources for the famous claim that God held Mount Sinai over the Israelites and threatened to bury them if they did not accept the Torah.

Viewing the Divine as transcendent and without a physical presence in the world, the authors of Deuteronomy recast earlier stories to show that the Torah—and by extension God—is nonetheless “very close to you.”

A Mysterious Transgression or a Mysterious Deity?

The Jewish-Greek version of Esther adds several elements into the story, including prayers to God, prophetic dreams, and recognition of God's intervention.  These passages were added in Hasmonean Jerusalem, and highlights the conflict between the original diaspora book and how it was received in Hasmonean Judea.

Babies, birds, angels, even Torah scholars, tradition has interpreted cherubs in various ways, but what was their function on the ark?

Sharing his religious journey into biblical scholarship, a young married Hasidic man challenges the Modern Orthodox world to lead where his community cannot. 

Many Orthodox Jews believe that God composed the Torah, and feel no need to inquire further. Nevertheless, it does occurs to me to inquire further, and find a respectful answer to the question of how people, including myself, come to this belief. An honest question beats a dishonest answer, even if the dishonest answer produces much more comfort.

The midrashic Parable of the Illuminated Palace concerns Abraham and the existence of God. In Part 1, we looked at Maimonides rationalistic, Aristotelian approach. Alternative interpretations focus on the idea of an experiential, living relationship with God.

The midrashic Parable of the Illuminated Palace centers on Abraham and the existence of God. Maimonides’ interpretation of the parable envisions an Aristotelian Abraham for whom God is a scientific fact.

The approaches in Lamentations