Finding God: Ten Jewish Responses

by Rifat Sonsino

Book Overview

Finding God by way of essays on significant Jewish thinkers attempts to answer the questions looming above us all: What is God? Is there more than one God? How can we know God? What does God "want"... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807403121
• ISBN13: 9780807403129
• Release Date: January 1986
• Publisher: Urj Press
• Length: 140 Pages
• Weight: 0.59 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Super useful Jewish theology reference

I recommend this book to almost everyone I talk to about theology. I am Jewish and am very interested in different theories and approaches to G-d. This is a very nice, useful, and easily laid out overview of different Jewish approaches to G-d and religion. There is a chart in the back that gives the answers to common questions in each different approach, so you can easily check and compare.

awesome book

i find myself re-reading sections all the time. Excellent book. Great seller. fast and secure shipping.

Finding God in a Jewish religious and perhaps not Jewish religious way

This book is a very clear exposition of various Jewish approaches to God. It is written in a very understandable way, and provides basic principles rather than detailed commentary. It has chapters on 'God in the Bible' ' God in Rabbinic Literature' ' Philo's Spiritual Monotheism' 'The Neo- Aristotelianism of Maimonedes' ' The Pantheism of Spinoza' 'The Philosphy of Dialogue of Buber' 'The Limited Theism of Milton Steinberg' ' The Religious Naturalism of Kaplan' ' The Humanism of Erich Fromm'. The broadness of the authors approach will however raise certain problems for traditional Jews. i.e. The pantheism of Spinoza is ordinarily considered a denial of the basic tenet of Judaism regarding the Creator being a Personal God. The religious naturalism of Kaplan speaks of a God- Idea but also is not based on the personal God concept. It is questionable whether the Humanism of Fromm is truly a religious approach. This said there is no doubt that this work outlines in an accurate way all the positions included.

A better concept for a book than it is a book

Sonsino and Syme are to be congratulated for having the idea to write this book. In a religious community where atheism has come to be seen as a sign of education, open-mindedness and even intelligence, Sonsino and Syme wish to call this trend to a halt. Theirs is but a simple message: never again should we feel compelled to define "God" narrowly in the most traditional theistic terms. Amen to that! Spiritual Jews throughout the centuries have searched their souls for their own concepts about the existence and nature of God, and have come up with very different answers. It is presumptuous for an Orthodox Jew, for example, to tell followers of Baruch Spinoza or Mordecai Kaplan, "You might THINK you believe in God, but you're really just an atheist. Only MY God is the true God." That attitude is rubbish, as Sonsino and Syme aptly demonstrate. Ah, but while the idea of this book was wonderful, the execution was less than divine. Sonsino and Syme purport to be describing ten different concepts of God that Jews have adopted over the years. But the depictions are dry, uninspired and ultimately uncompelling -- or at least that was my reaction. What the authors should have done is identified ten brilliant writers, or at least gifted minds, who actually believe in these ten Gods and have them explain why they've adopted those views. As it is, too many readers will come away from this book wondering why anyone believes in ANY of these Gods, which I can't imagine was the authors' intent, given that they are both rabbis.

A Variety Of Meaningful Approaches To Age-Old Questions.

Questions about God have probably existed for as long as mankind has existed. Who is God? What is God? Does God exist? How does he fit into our lives? The authors of the newly revised "Finding God: Selected Responses," Rifat Sonsino and Daniel B. Syme, objectively present a variety of approaches to the profound questions about the divine being we call God. This very readable book offers a historical review of how theologians and philosophers have viewed God, over a period of thousands of years, without pushing a single approach, or suggesting that the reader believe anything at all. This is a wonderful resource book that I originally read for a class and have reread, and passed along to others, since then.Jewish scholars have debated the nature of God for millennia. This short book packs a lot into each chapter as the authors present over a dozen views of Jewish thinkers and teachers, including those who transcribed, or wrote the Bible, the great Rabbis quoted in Rabbinic literature, Philo, Maimonides, Luria, Spinoza, Buber, Steinberg, Kaplan, Fromm, Heschel, and Alvin Reines. The authors wrote in their Introduction: "This is a book about God. More specifically, it is a book about ways in which Jews have spoken of God through four thousand years of Jewish history. This book will not attempt to tell you what to believe as a Jew. Rather, it will present a spectrum of theological options that have been explored and affirmed by great Jewish thinkers, ancient and modern." The authors take care to point out that in the Jewish tradition, there is no one "correct" way to think of God. "Finding God" offers a solid foundation to begin the exploration of the concepts of God.Rabbi Rifat Sonsino, rabbi of Temple Beth Shalom in Needham, MA, and Rabbi Daniel B. Syme, spiritual leader of Temple Beth El in Bloomfield Hills, MI, wrote, "If we make it possible for one Jew to reclaim his or her Jewish spiritual identity, if we help others to begin to talk about God without ambivalence or embarrassment, if we serve as a catalyst for further study of these and other Jewish thinkers, we will consider our work worthwhile." This is an extraordinary book, beautifully written, and is most worthwhile. JANA

Judaism does encompass many conceptions of the nature of God

Today the vast majority of American Jews are not Orthodox. Judaism does not have a fixed creed which tells us exactly how we must understand the nature of God and what we should expect of Him. There is a Rabbinic vision of the nature of God, but Jews who are not Orthodox and many who are nominally Conservative are not always comfortable with the Rabbinic vision and, indeed, the Torah says that the form and nature of God cannot be known or understood by man. This book describes ten ways, including the Rabbinic, in which Jews have and still do see God...Some of these infuriate traditional Orthodox Jews, who may equate any concepts other than the Rabbinical as either heresy or atheism, but their condemnation does not invalidate the thought of some of our greatest and best known scholars as described in this book. It is an invaluable reference for the Jew who is seeking a reconciliation between Judaism and his existance in the modern world.