Answers from an Orthodox Jew

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We are brother? And sister in Christ. I will delete my posts to you. I apologize for my presumptive and impulsive flags. Please forgive me.
 
Thank you @Moses613 for answering my question concerning Hasidic Judaism. I would have one more question regarding this. Would Orthodox Judaism also believe that when God Spoke and created the world, that he used the power of the alef-bet to do this? And would it be believed that mankind can also, to a certain extent, use this same power in some fashion? ( I don’t personally meditate on the alefbet, but I find this interesting.)

And would Orthodox Judaism also see symbols and meaning in each Hebrew letter? (I’m only familiar with Hasidic commentary in this area)

I guess that’s 3 questions 🙂

Thank you for taking the time to answer all of our questions.
 
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Gab123 said:
and acts through the “Spirit of God”. As described in the Creation passages.
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God doesn’t act “through” any medium; you are still dividing God into parts. The Godly spirit mentioned in Creation is not a part or aspect of God and is not characterized as creating anything. The spirit (or literally, wind) is a created, cosmic force that executes the will of God. The spirit of God is “of God” in the sense that it only carries out God’s will and nothing contrary to His will, just like the “ark of God” (Sam. I ch.4) is named so because it contains the Torah, which is knowledge of God, and the “man of God” (I Kings ch.12&13) is a man who is singularly devoted to the will of God. In Judaism we distinguish between beri’ah, which is creatio ex nihilo and only accomplished by God’s unmediated will, and yetzirah, which is formation of previously created matter and energy into new forms. Spirit, angels and other forces including humans can be agents of yetzirah, but they are not any kind of aspect of God.

Whereas Man has intellect, will and power, and these are all separate facets of Man, they are a limited reflection of God, for whom intellect, will and power are all one. Your “thought” “word” and “spirit” are three gods.

We find in Maimonides’ Foundations of the Torah:
This God is One God; He is neither two nor more than two but One to whose Unity there is no comparison among the individual units in the universe; not like the unit of a genus which embraces many individual units, nor like the unit of a body which is divisible into parts and particles, but a Unit to Whose Unity no other unit in the universe is like…
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The Holy One, blessed is He! recognizes His Own Truth and knows it as it really is; and He does not know with an intelligence which is apart from Himself, as we know, for, we and our intelligence are not one, but the Creator, may He be blessed! and His Intelligence and His Life are One from every lateral, angle and manner of Unity. Since but for this, He would live a life and understand with an intelligence apart from Himself, then there would be many gods, He, His life and His Intelligence; and it is not so, for He is One from every lateral, angle and manner of Unity. Consequently you must say that, what He knows, and that by which He is known, and the Intelligence itself are all One. But this matter the mouth has no power to express, nor the ear to perceive, neither is it within the heart of man to see it clearly. Therefore, it is spoken of, “the life of Pharoh” (Gen. 42,5) and “the life of thy soul” (Sam. 1.26), and it is not spoken of “the life of God,” but “the living God,” (Judg. 8.19) because the Creator and His life are not two, as are the lives of living bodies, or as the lives of angels. Wherefore, He does not recognize the creatures nor knows them because they are creatures as we know them, but by reason of knowing His Own Self does He know them. Therefore, because He knows His Own Self, He knows all; for, all depend upon Him in being.
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Gab123 said:
the Word of God who became man
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What you are actually saying, stripped of elegant verbiage, is that God has parts and that one of those parts became a physical body. A physical body is per se finite, which concept divides and limits God. This is idolatry.
Gab123 said:
We can only know as much about Him as we can deduce from nature and study what He has revealed about Himself.
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We can know nothing positively about God’s essential nature, we can only deny Him imperfection. Therefore, we can only with certitude deny His finiteness, but we cannot describe or understand His infiniteness. We can deny multiplicity in Him, but we cannot understand His oneness. Since God has revealed His oneness to Man, we can immediately dismiss any idea that qualifies or limits that unity.
Gab123 said:
The idea of a military messiah who will use modern military weapons to crush enemies and create a worldly empire in the Middle East is incompatible with Catholic theology.
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Well, yeah, because you believe in a god-man, and we believe in a God who is God, and a messiah who is a man, and those two beliefs are mutually exclusive. The messiah will bring about the final redemption, as an agent of God. The same way if someone saves my life, I will say that God saved me, but that man is not God. He is an agent of God.
 
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Fauken said:
Thank you for your time to answer questions!

I’m curious, what’s your favorite tradition in Judaism and why?
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You’re welcome. There are so many great traditions, it’s hard to pick one. We just had the Passover Seder, which is really a big highlight of the year. It represents the fulfillment of several different Biblical commandments at once, strengthens the foundations of our faith and is one of the most powerful ways of transmitting that faith to the next generation.
 
Lol I don’t know who “Ms. Sarah” is but I’m happy she seems to “heart” everything I write!
 
Autumn-Smoke said:
Would Orthodox Judaism also believe that when God Spoke and created the world, that he used the power of the alef-bet to do this? And would it be believed that mankind can also, to a certain extent, use this same power in some fashion? ( I don’t personally meditate on the alefbet, but I find this interesting.)

And would Orthodox Judaism also see symbols and meaning in each Hebrew letter? (I’m only familiar with Hasidic commentary in this area)
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  1. Well, this is getting into Kabbalah, and it all depends on what you mean by “used the power of”. God created the aleph-bet, in which the Torah is written and kabbalistic sources say that the Torah is a blueprint for Creation, made up of different permutations of these letters. Obviously, this is meant in some kind of metaphysical sense that I simply cannot explain to you.
  2. Some people believe that there is something called “Practical Kabbalah” whereby humans can manipulate spiritual forces to create supernatural results, if they know exactly how. Some people don’t believe in it. It’s not a fundamental part of the religion. There is a story in the Talmud that tells of a rabbi who created something by uttering a divine name, but this could be interpreted allegorically.
  3. Each letter has a significance and symbolism, especially in the context of the Torah.
 
meltzerboy2 said:
Ouch! The apologetics is becoming less user-friendly here.
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I didn’t come on here to argue about the trinity, in fact I’d rather not because I have no particular interest in trying to offend any Catholics. But I felt compelled to answer because I dislike the attitude of, “well, if you just understood our sophisticated theological ideas, you would get it.” I wanted to show that we understand and reject it and there is a fundamental divide here, and that we have our own answer. But I don’t think I should continue in this vein much longer, if at all.

Thanks.
 
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Moses613 said:
There is a story in the Talmud that tells of a rabbi who created something by uttering a divine name, but this could be interpreted allegorically.
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I was privileged to go to Prague and spent a full day in the Jewish Quarter visiting the museums and various Synagogues. I learned all about the ''Prague Golem" which was ‘created’ in this fashion by the great Rabbi Loew during a time of great persecution. The Golem’s body is supposed to be in the attic of the Old-New Synagogue in Prague. All of Prague is just gorgeous.

Thank you for this thread. HaShem is the Great G-d and thank you for sharing His attributes with us as revealed in Holy Scripture. We may have vast theological differences, but there is great learning to be derived from studying from a Jewish perspective. It is very appreciated by most here.
 
Autumn-Smoke said:
I learned all about the ''Prague Golem" which was ‘created’ in this fashion by the great Rabbi Loew during a time of great persecution.
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This is a great story, but most orthodox Jews who are “in the know” say this story is a myth, even if they believe in the concept of golem generally.

Thanks for your kind words.
 
Moses613 said:
What you are actually saying, stripped of elegant verbiage, is that God has parts and that one of those parts became a physical body.
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In Catholic theology, God is a spirit, thus He has no parts. God does not occupy a place, doesn’t have a size, doesn’t weigh anything, has no color, etc. God is outside of time and matter itself. Since God is Eternal and One without any parts, God is Unchangeable, He is Infinite, Eternal, Omnipotent, Omnipresent. God knows all things, not because He is vey smart, but because God IS Truth itself. God IS Goodness itself; God is Love itself.

Thus for God to create Man in His Image and Likeness, means that Man has an intellect and a will for a specific purpose: God. The purpose of our intellect is Truth (GOD). The purpose of our will is Goodness and Love (GOD). Thus we must love and serve God with all our heart, with all our mind, with all our strength, and with all our soul, because we are made for Truth; we are made for Love; We are made for God. We must also love neighbor as we love ourselves, because we are all made in the image and likeness of God.

Therefore, the divine Mystery of the Holy Trinity is the Oneness of God in whom there are three “Persons”: “Father”, “Son”, and “Holy Spirit” . As described earlier, the Eternal Thought Eternal Word and Eternal Spirit of God. Not three things, not three beings, but three relations that God Has within Himself.
 
Moses613 said:
We can know nothing positively about God’s essential nature, we can only deny Him imperfection
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With mere human reason it is impossible. But with God’s revelation of Himself we can know things. For example, Man could have never known God’s name without Him revealing it to Man. So it’s a question of God’s self-revelation. We know about the Trinity because of what God has revealed about Himself.

The three divine Persons are only one God because they equally possesses the fullness of the one and indivisible divine nature. Thus theTorah begins with referring to God in the plural Elohim, not because God is many parts or many Gods, but because of the true nature of God, namely the Mystery of the Holy Trinity. They are distinct from each other by reason of the relations which place them in correspondence to each other:

The Father generates the Son; the Son is generated by the Father; the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.

We know this through God’s revelation of Himself. Christ fulfilled all the prophecies, performed countless miracles and showed authority over nature and life itself, thus the unfolding revelation of God to Man culminated with Jesus Christ.
Moses613 said:
A physical body is per se finite, which concept divides and limits God. This is idolatry.
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The Eternal Word (the Son of God) became flesh and assumed a true humanity. Thus Christ’s physical body was finite; at the same time, in the body of Jesus we see God made visible. No longer do we relate to God as an abstraction but as someone who proved His love for us, someone who makes us inheritors of His Eternal Kingdom, someone whom we can know and love with our human affections and have a share in His Eternal Life.

The Eternal Word of God assumed a human nature in order to accomplish our salvation. As God and author of creation itself, the unique event of the Incarnation of the Eternal Word does not mean that Jesus Christ is part God and part man, nor does it mean that he is the result of a mix of the divine and the human.

The Eternal Word became truly man while remaining truly God. Thus Jesus Christ is true God and true man, thus to worship the Eternal Word of God is to worship God Himself.

Thus Jesus said “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” . . “I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me” . . “If you love me, keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—the Spirit of truth.”

God’s unfolding revelation of Himself culminated with Himself taking a human nature not only to dwell among us and teach us the Truth about Himself, but to take on a human nature in order to suffer for our sins on the cross as The True Lamb of God.
 
Moses613 said:
The messiah will bring about the final redemption, as an agent of God. The same way if someone saves my life, I will say that God saved me, but that man is not God. He is an agent of God.
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The Tora states:
“I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior” Isa. 43:3
" I, am the Lord, and apart from me there is no savior." Isa. 43:11
“This is what the Lord says—your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel” isa. 43:14

The list goes on. Then there are the prophecies of the suffering messiah which are overwhelming. It is God Himself who became Man the messiah. It may sound like a contradiction to you, but realize that God’s ways are not Man’s ways. All the first Christians were Jews who understood this after the resurrection of Christ. Catholicism itself is the flowering of Judaism. We are rooted in the Old Testament. I would recommend reading the New Testament not in the spirit of refuting, but in the spirit of discovering. God’s revelation continued in the New Testament.
 
Can this thread stick to just what we want to know about the Jews and their beliefs. I do not want to read about the Catholic or Christian beliefs.
 
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