Encountering God

It is time to recover rabbinic lessons of late antiquity: God is a God of grace and love; human beings can aspire to goodness and promise; on Yom Kippur the two of them meet—God's love energizes human potential and the world is reborn with hope restored.

The God of Jewish tradition is far from the strict God of justice commonly understood to be the God of the Hebrew Bible. God’s self-introduction to Moses atop Mount Sinai does indeed conclude with the image of punishment throughout the generations but begins with "God merciful and gracious," the imagery that finds its way into rabbinic liturgy and lore as solely the God of grace and compassion, pardon and love.

To arrive at this selective perception of biblical tradition, the Rabbis of the Talmud deliberately misread the biblical text, and then fashioned a myth of God who dresses up as a leader of prayer and promises pardon if Israel will only repeat these merciful attributes as part of its prayer ritual on that day. Ever since, the Thirteen Attributes—as the list comes to be known—becomes central to Jewish prayer, accompanying the liturgy for holidays generally, and framing the opening and closing services of the holiest day in the Jewish year, Yom Kippur, the “Day of Judgment” itself.

In this seventh volume in the Prayers of Awe Series, contributors—men and women, rabbis and laypeople, scholars and artists from across the spectrum of Jewish life, and representing the US, Israel, the UK, Germany, France, Canada, and Australia—chart the importance of these Thirteen Attributes of God. They explore the kind of God Jews meet in prayer and the consequent self-reflection about the human condition that Judaism recommends on the basis of its idealized image of God as, above all, merciful and gracious.

When it comes to God, it is not belief that matters but experience. Where, in human life, does Judaism promise the possibility of experiencing God?

The Thirteen Attributes (Adonai, Adonai, el rachum v'chanun), a small but critical prayer with which Yom Kippur begins and ends, highlights the Jewish insistence that the God of Jewish tradition is experienced through love. Of all prayers, this one especially tackles head-on the way we encounter God and how that encounter informs the purpose behind human life itself.

Through a series of lively introductions and commentaries, almost forty contributors—men and women, scholars and rabbis, artists and thinkers from all Jewish denominations and from around the world—explain how finite human beings can know an infinite God. They explore the history and significance of the attributes that the Hebrew Bible ascribes to God—and how Jewish tradition refines and recasts them as the best way also to understand human nature and our search for meaning.

Prayers of Awe: A multi-volume series designed to explore the High Holy Day liturgy and enrich the praying experience for everyone—whether experienced worshipers or guests who encounter Jewish prayer for the very first time

Contributors:

Rabbi Jonathan Blake
Dr. Annette M. Boeckler
Dr. Marc Zvi Brettler
Rabbi Angela Warnick Buchdahl
Rabbi Joshua M. Davidson
Rabbi Lawrence A. Englander, CM, DHL, DD Rabbi David Ellenson, PhD
Rabbi Shoshana Boyd Gelfand
Rabbi Edwin Goldberg, DHL
Rabbi Andrew Goldstein, PhD
Rabbi Aaron Goldstein
Dr. Joel M. Hoffman
Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, PhD
Rabbi Walter Homolka, PhD, DHL Rabbi Delphine Horvilleur
Rabbi Elie Kaunfer, DHL
Dr. Sharon Koren
Rabbi Asher Lopatin
Catherine Madsen
Rabbi Jonathan Magonet, PhD
Rabbi Dalia Marx, PhD
Ruth W. Messinger
Rabbi Charles H. Middleburgh, PhD Rabbi Jay Henry Moses
Rabbi Julia Neuberger
Rabbi Sonja Keren Pilz, PhD
Rabbi Nicole Roberts
Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin, DMin
Rabbi Dennis C. Sasso, DMin
Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso, DMin Rabbi David A. Teutsch, PhD
Rabbi Andrea L. Weiss, PhD
Rabbi Margaret Moers Wenig, DD
Rabbi Daniel G. Zemel
Dr. Wendy Zierler