(א) בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ׃
(1) When God (Elohim) began to create heaven and earth—
(ד) אֵ֣לֶּה תוֹלְד֧וֹת הַשָּׁמַ֛יִם וְהָאָ֖רֶץ בְּהִבָּֽרְאָ֑ם בְּי֗וֹם עֲשׂ֛וֹת יהוה אֱלֹהִ֖ים אֶ֥רֶץ וְשָׁמָֽיִם׃
(4) Such is the story of heaven and earth when they were created. When יהוה God made earth and heaven—
(יג) וַיֹּ֨אמֶר מֹשֶׁ֜ה אֶל־הָֽאֱלֹהִ֗ים הִנֵּ֨ה אָנֹכִ֣י בָא֮ אֶל־בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵל֒ וְאָמַרְתִּ֣י לָהֶ֔ם אֱלֹהֵ֥י אֲבוֹתֵיכֶ֖ם שְׁלָחַ֣נִי אֲלֵיכֶ֑ם וְאָֽמְרוּ־לִ֣י מַה־שְּׁמ֔וֹ מָ֥ה אֹמַ֖ר אֲלֵהֶֽם׃ (יד) וַיֹּ֤אמֶר אֱלֹהִים֙ אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֔ה אֶֽהְיֶ֖ה אֲשֶׁ֣ר אֶֽהְיֶ֑ה...
(13) Moses said to God, “When I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is [God's] name?’ what shall I say to them?” (14) And God said to Moses, “Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh..."
(ה) וְעַתָּ֗ה אִם־שָׁמ֤וֹעַ תִּשְׁמְעוּ֙ בְּקֹלִ֔י וּשְׁמַרְתֶּ֖ם אֶת־בְּרִיתִ֑י וִהְיִ֨יתֶם לִ֤י סְגֻלָּה֙ מִכׇּל־הָ֣עַמִּ֔ים כִּי־לִ֖י כׇּל־הָאָֽרֶץ׃ (ו) וְאַתֶּ֧ם תִּהְיוּ־לִ֛י מַמְלֶ֥כֶת כֹּהֲנִ֖ים וְג֣וֹי קָד֑וֹשׁ אֵ֚לֶּה הַדְּבָרִ֔ים אֲשֶׁ֥ר תְּדַבֵּ֖ר אֶל־בְּנֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃
(5) Now then, if you will obey Me faithfully and keep My covenant, you shall be My treasured possession among all the peoples. Indeed, all the earth is Mine, (6) but you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the children of Israel.”
Maimonides' Thirteen Principles of Faith
- God exists; God is perfect in every way, eternal and the cause of all that exists. All other beings depend upon God for their existence.
- God has absolute and unparalleled unity.
- God is incorporeal—without a body.
- God existed prior to all else.
- God should be the only object of worship and praise. One should not appeal to intermediaries, but should pray directly to God.
- Prophets and prophecy exist.
- Moses was the greatest prophet who ever lived. No prophet who lived or will live could comprehend God more than Moses.
- The Torah is from heaven. The Torah we have today is the Torah that God gave to Moses at Sinai.
- The Torah will never be abrogated, nothing will be added to it or subtracted from it; God will never give another Law.
- God knows the actions of humans and is not neglectful of them.
- God rewards those who obey the commands of the Torah and punishes those who violate its prohibitions.
- The days of the Messiah will come.
- The dead will be resurrected.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel - Radical Amazement
- The grandeur or mystery of being is not a particular puzzle to the mind, as, for example, the cause of volcanic eruptions. We do not have to go to the end of reasoning to encounter it. Grandeur or mystery is something with which we are confronted everywhere and at all times. Even the very act of thinking baffles our thinking.
- The grandeur of nature is only the beginning. Beyond the grandeur is God.
- The Sabbath is the presence of God in the world, open to the soul of man. God is not in things of space but in moments of time.
- Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement. ....get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.
Martin Buber - Existentialism
- Every particular Thou is a glimpse through to the Eternal Thou; by means of every particular Thou the primary word addresses the Eternal Thou.
- Meet the world with the fullness of your being and you shall meet God.
- When two people relate to each other authentically and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them.
- Creation is the origin, redemption the goal. But revelation is not a fixed, dated point poised between the two. The revelation at Sinai is not this midpoint itself, but the perceiving of it, and such perception is possible at any time.Martin Buber - ExistentialismEvery particular Thou is a glimpse through to the Eternal Thou; by means of every particular Thou the primary word addresses the Eternal Thou.Meet the world with the fullness of your being and you shall meet God.When two people relate to each other authentically and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them.Creation is the origin, redemption the goal. But revelation is not a fixed, dated point poised between the two. The revelation at Sinai is not this midpoint itself, but the perceiving of it, and such perception is possible at any time.
Rabbi Dr. Rachel Adler
As storytellers together, we and God write our lives. God presents Us with inevitabilities, with opportunities and constraints.We present God With our choices and responses. Because of our power of choice, things also, as it were, happen to God. God as powerful Other, as the one who perceives beyond the bounded perspective, who permits into our stories elements we experience as disruptive, as agonizing, is the lightning rod for our rage and fear, awe and dependency. To continue to affirm that we are in relationship with this God is not to affirm God-as-power or God-as-patterner in some abstract sense, but rather to assert that we as actors have moral weight: we matter to God. This does not necessarily require from us passive acceptance of God's will. Our indignation is an equally powerful act of trust: it presumes that our covenant partner can be held accountable in relationship...expunging anthropomorphism from the language of prayer, even if it were possible, would be undesirable. We can still include the beautiful images of God as bird or rock or water. But these images alone are not sufficient to sustain relatedness. Anthropomorphism is necessary because stories are necessary. We know God from the stories we and God inhabit together. Stories are a human genre. For God to step into the story for us, God must clothe Godself in metaphor, and especially in anthropomorphic metaphor, because the most powerful language for God's engagement with us is our human language of relationship.
Rabbi Bradley Artson - Process Theology
Process theology recognizes every “thing” is really a series of events across time, a process, that emerges in relationship. We are each a process, and creation is a process. God is a process, revelation is a process. All emerge in relationship, meaning that no thing can be understood in isolation. Each event has an interiority in which it integrates the reality around it with its own choice about how to proceed. In addition, an exteriority in which it has an impact on the choices of every other event around it. We are all part of something interactive and dynamic.
In such a worldview, God is not outside the system as some unchanging, eternal abstraction. Instead, God permeates every aspect of becoming, indeed grounds all becoming by inviting us and every level of reality toward our own optimal possibilities. The future remains open, through God’s lure, to our own decisions of how or what we will chose next. God, then, uses a persistent, persuasive power, working in each of us (and all creation at every level) to nudge us toward the best possible outcome. But God’s power is not coercive and not all powerful. God cannot break the rules or unilaterally dictate our choices. Having created and then partnered with this particular cosmos, God is vulnerable to the choices that each of us makes freely as co-creators.