For more than a thousand years, the Jewish God was primarily seen and described by Christians as a vengeful God. As Robert Louis Wilken, writing in “First Things,” explains:“One of the first major theological disputes in the early Church centered on the teaching of Marcion. Marcion thought that the Christian Gospel had nothing to do…

I love speaking with seventh-graders about God. They’re so eager to shock the rabbi–they can’t wait to tell me that they don’t believe that God controls the world or, often, that they don’t even believe in God at all. I pause, then offer an invitation: “Tell me about the God you don’t believe in.” The…

Maimonides once explained that we can only know God by what God is not: God is not limited. God has no end and no beginning. God has no corporeal form and therefore no gender (which is why I use only gender-neutral language to refer to God). However, we also have certain positivist beliefs about God.…

There are few terms more fraught–and less clear–than “Zionism.” For some, it is the fulfillment of God’s ancient promise to Abraham to give the land of Canaan to his descendants. For some it is a movement of spiritual and cultural renewal, affirming the centrality of our historic homeland. For others it is a political movement…

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