Chapter 16

Knowing the Unknowable God

In This Chapter

Accepting the inconceivable nature of God

Exploring how Kabbalists know and relate to God

Working through God’s many names

Being a Kabbalist sure has its challenges. And one of the biggest ones has to do with God. For Kabbalists, God is the center of everything, the goal of everything, and the source of everything. All study and actions are ultimately about God. In a way, God is all that there is for a Kabbalist. And yet, there’s no comprehensive way to understand, know, or conceive of God, nor can one fully describe, imagine, or encounter God.

In this chapter, I fill you in on why it’s impossible to fully understand God but why Kabbalists don’t let that stop them from trying. I also explain how Kabbalists know God and the various names they use to refer to God.

Understanding that You Can’t Understand is the First Step Toward Understanding

Kabbalists learn about God through the many verses in the Holy Scriptures that speak about God. Following is a list of some of the things Kabbalists learn about God through a careful study of the texts:

God is omnipotent; God’s power is unlimited. “All that God wishes, he does, in heaven and earth, in the seas and all the deeps” (Psalms 135:6).

God is incorporeal; God has no physical form. “Take good heed of yourselves, for you saw no manner of form on that day that God spoke to you at Horeb.” (Deuteronomy 4:15).

God is unique and unlike anything. “To whom will you then liken God? To what likeness will you compare Him?” (Isaiah 40:18); “There is none like You, O God” (Jeremiah 10:6); “There are none like You among the powers (angels), O God, and there are no words like Yours” (Psalms 86:8).

God is absolutely unchangeable and unchanging. “I am God, I do not change” (Malachi 3:6).

God is immanent, filling all creation. “Holy, holy, holy is God of Hosts, the whole world is filed with His Glory” (Isaiah 6:3).

God is omnipresent; God is everywhere. “All the earth is filled with God’s Glory” (Numbers 14:21).

God is omniscient; God knows everything. “Can a man hide himself in secret places so that I will not see him? Do I then not fill heaven and earth?” (Jeremiah 23:24); “God’s eyes are in every place, beholding the evil and the good” (Proverbs 15:3).

God knows man’s thoughts. “God probes every heart and perceives every urge of thought” (1 Chronicles 28:9); “[God] knows the secrets of the heart” (Psalms 44:21).

God exists outside of time; God knows the future as God knows the past. “I call the generations from the beginning; I, God, am the First, and with the last I am the same” (Isaiah 41:4).

God’s knowledge is identical with God’s infinite Essence. “[God’s] understanding is infinite” (Psalms 147:5).

God is impossible to comprehend. “Can you by searching find out God? Can you probe the Almighty to perfection?” (Job 11:7); “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are My ways your ways” (Isaiah 48:17).

The study of Kabbalah is full of paradoxes. A long time ago, one of my teachers taught me the difference between a paradox and an absurdity: A paradox is a statement that’s seemingly contradictory or opposed to common sense but perhaps is true, whereas an absurdity is ridiculously unreasonable, unsound, or incongruous. More important, my teacher taught me that a paradox is usually a sign that one is going in the right direction. When discussing the subject of God, this lesson rings very true.

Simply put, it’s impossible to conceive of God. So a paradox is at work in the question, “How can a person even begin to discuss a subject that’s categorically beyond his understanding?” The answer is that, in some mysterious way, the acknowledgement that something is beyond understanding is indeed a giant step in the direction of understanding the very thing that can’t be grasped.

Kabbalists believe that the greatest leader who ever lived was Moses and that, of all Moses’s personality traits and characteristics, the most fundamental was his humility. Kabbalists take a similarly humble stance when approaching God.

The attitude to cultivate is not that God is possible to grasp but rather that God is impossible to grasp. In this vast, infinite universe, Kabbalists see each person as a mere speck, a tiny little detail in an inconceivably gigantic universe. How could anyone even begin to dare to think that he or she could grasp the world, let alone its creator? It simply can’t be done, and those who claim that they can do it are either fooling everyone else or fooling themselves.

God is beyond all possible understanding

One of the mistakes that people often make when pursuing a spiritual path is foolishly thinking that they can master a curriculum. Even though there’s much to learn, one can never understand or master the ultimate subject, God. In fact, one of my teachers pointed out that any God that can be understood isn’t a God worth having.

Over the years, one of my Kabbalah teachers has stressed the absolutely unbridgeable gap between each of us and God. As he put it, you would never find a Kabbalist preaching about what God is on a Sunday morning television show. If anything, a Kabbalist would preach that all he or she knows is what God is not.

If God is at the center of everything, and if God is the focal point of everything that the Kabbalist does, how is it possible to proceed if all one can say about God is either nothing or what God is not? Here again the paradox reveals itself: Kabbalists are able to make spiritual progress by continuously understanding that they can’t understand.

Kabbalists do understand that humans can and do get glimpses of God in any number of ways. One way is through the hints and statements found in the Holy Scriptures. However, generally the sages teach that what people know about God is known mainly through the way God manifests in the world. They clarify that although people see how God manifests, they can’t know God. Some Kabbalists believe that the way to know God is through the ten sefirot, which I cover in Chapter 4.

Kabbalists recite a well-known passage about God from the classic Kabbalah text, the Zohar (see Chapter 13), as a meditation every morning before the morning prayers. The passage, which follows, is found in the standard Kabbalah prayer book. It addresses the unknowable nature of God.

You are One, but not in counting. You are exalted beyond all exalted, more hidden than all hidden. No thought grasps You at all. You brought forth the ten sefirot with which to guide concealed and revealed worlds; in them You concealed Yourself from human beings . . . You guide them but no one guides you . . . You are the Reason of reasons and the Cause of causes . . . In you there is no image or likeness of anything, inside or out . . . No one knows You at all. And beside You there is no Oneness . . . You are known as the cause of all and the master of all . . . Each sefirah has a name . . . but You have no known name for You fill all names and You are the wholeness of all . . . You are wise but not with a known wisdom. You are understanding but not with an known understanding. You have no known place . . . But in order to make your power and might known to human beings and to show them how the world is guided with judgment and compassion there exists justice and lawfulness in accordance with the deeds of human beings . . . to demonstrate how the world functions, but not that You have a known trait of exacting justice nor a known lawfulness, which is associated with compassion, nor any of these measures whatsoever.

One of my Kabbalah teachers looks to a theorem in geometry as a way to approach the issue of knowing an unknowable God. The Desargues’ Theorem in projective geometry is rather easy to grasp when one looks at the detail of it, but a problem arises in that there seems to be no way to prove this theorem . . . unless one introduces a point located in the infinite (which, of course, is impossible to grasp).

My teacher explains that so it is with life and the Kabbalist’s relationship to God: Without God, the world seems to make little (if any) sense, yet when the Infinite factors into the vision of the world, a transformation occurs. So although it’s true that God is beyond all possible understanding, the Kabbalist introduces the totally incomprehensible God into the formula of life and, miraculously, things begin to make some sense.

Despite the fact that understanding God is impossible, Kabbalists never give up trying. In Kabbalistic terms, the mysteries of life and efforts to understand them are an exercise in the sefirah of Binah (understanding; see Chapter 4). In fact, the Kabbalistic way of meditation is to meditate on the unknowable God, trying to use the mind as much as possible to go beyond limited concepts and limited perspectives and essentially try to leap over the boundaries of the mind. And although Kabbalists know that God can never be grasped, the effort is nonetheless profoundly worthwhile.

God is beyond time

The concept of God being beyond time is a difficult, perhaps impossible, one to grasp. Nevertheless, as I explain in the preceding section, the Kabbalist doesn’t throw her hands up in helplessness. She recognizes the impossibility of the task and tries anyway, knowing that an effort to grasp the ungraspable is precisely the task of the Kabbalist.

One of the notions about God and time that appears often in Kabbalistic literature is that God was, is, and will be, and that God knows what was, what is, and what will be. The Kabbalist needs to push her mind out of the usual realm of thought in order to grasp what it means for God to be outside of time.

The opening words of the Torah are, “Bereyshis boro Elohim es ha-shamayim v’es ha-ah-retz” (ber-ay -shees ba-ra el-loh-heem es hah-shah-mah -yim ves hah-ahr- etz). The popular translation of this first Hebrew line of the Five Books of Moses is “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” Kabbalists look at this statement differently, breaking down the Hebrew into the following:

The first word, Bereyshit, means “In the beginning.”

The second word, boro, means “created.”

The third word, Elohim, is one of God’s names.

The translation of these three words is, “In the beginning created God” or “God created in the beginning.” How does this differ from the popular translation? For Kabbalists, God existed before the beginning, and therefore God created the beginning. God created time.

If God sees the future, do people have free will?

The notion that God is beyond time and that God knows what was, what is, and what will be certainly challenges usual sensibilities. If God knows what will be, the logical question is “Are people able to choose freely?” After all, if God knows what will happen, doesn’t that imply that everything is preordained?

The great sage and mystic Rabbi Akiva expresses this paradox concisely when he writes, “All is foreseen and free will is given.” Rabbi Akiva approaches this paradox head-on by reminding Kabbalists that although God sees what will be, the human experience is one of free will and free choice.

Remember that humans are made in God’s image; just as God can create and has free will, so does the human being have freedom of choice. Keeping that point in mind, Kabbalists are able to reconcile the ideas that God is outside of time, God can see the future, and people have freedom to choose. The effort to grasp what is impossible to grasp has positive results for the spiritual seeker.

God is beyond matter

All Kabbalists know that one of the names of God is HaMakom (hah-mah-cohm; the place). They conceive God as “the place of the world” and often say that everything is God, and even that there is nothing else but God. But God isn’t material, and any inclination to conceive of God as physical or material is a profound transgression. Since time immemorial, Kabbalists have made every effort to avoid picturing God in any physical terms whatsoever. A distinction can be made between two ways of thinking about God: pantheism and panentheism. Whereas pantheism equates God with the world, panentheism means that God is in all the worlds. A Kabbalist would say that everything resides in God.

A legend involving the patriarch Abraham reflects the Kabbalistic notion that God is beyond matter. The legends says that Abraham was the son of an idol worshipper and was given the task of watching over his father’s idols. One of the idols broke, and when Abraham’s father returned, Abraham explained that the idol was smashed by another idol. This clever explanation was Abraham’s attempt to show his father that belief in physical objects was foolishness.

Because the Holy Scriptures state that man was made in God’s image, Kabbalists go so far as to prohibit the sculpting of the human form as a three-dimensional object in an effort to prevent any possible conception of God. God isn’t the sun, the moon, mountains, the universe, or anything else that can be conceived of in finite terms. The Kabbalist is urged to push his mind beyond anything ordinarily conceivable.

God is beyond the spirit

One of the most serious errors made by individuals who adopt a spiritual path is to conceive of God as “Spirit,” or to say that God is spiritual, not physical. Kabbalists are emphatic about this point and say that God is not only beyond matter but also beyond spirit; God is beyond anything that can be conceived of in any terms whatsoever.

The emotion of love, for example, is a spiritual notion. One can’t hold love, take a photograph of love, or contain love in any physical sense. Ideas are also spiritual when they’re expressed in the abstract. Just as God isn’t an emotion, God isn’t an idea.

Often people make the mistake of thinking that God is spiritual. Kabbalists must always remind themselves that there’s no effective way to define God and break free of any limitations that they have concerning a definition of God. Many things in the world are spiritual, including feelings, thoughts, and angels (see Chapter 8), but God isn’t spiritual.

God is beyond infinity

In Kabbalah, thinking of God as infinite is a limitation. As I explain throughout this chapter, God is beyond everything that the human mind can possibly grasp. People have a tendency to make things concrete; an example is the designation of God as G-O-D, a three-letter word. No word, whether three letters or a million letters, can even begin to name or describe God.

One of my Kabbalah teachers points out that the word infinity still refers to something finite. For example, even though a set of numbers is infinite, the numbers themselves are finite. When Kabbalists talk about God, however, the notion of infinity expands to the infinite degree. (Am I blowing your mind yet?) God is infinite but in no way similar to an infinite set of numbers — God is infinite beyond any terms.

One of the implications of the Kabbalistic notion of God as infinite beyond all infinity is that nothing in the world is farther away from God or nearer to God. Similarly, from the vantage point of the infinite, everything is of the same proportion; the largest disaster as measured against the infinite is no larger than the brief movement of someone’s little finger.

Calling God the paradoxical name “Our Father, Our King”

One of the phrases that Kabbalists use in prayer is Aveenu Malkaynu (ah-vee-new mal-kay-new; Our Father, Our King). This name of God reminds Kabbalists of the paradox of existence. God is both father and king. A father is very intimate; one can sit on his lap and touch his cheek. In contrast, a king is distant; one rarely even catches a glimpse of a king, and if so, simply for a short period of time. By conceiving of God as Aveenu Malkaynu, Kabbalists use their limited language to indicate that paradoxical nature of God.

So what’s the point?

If God is infinite beyond anything that people can conceive of; if God is beyond time, matter, and spirit; if God is unable to be described by any means whatsoever, then why enter into what seems to be a frustrating process (trying to understand God) with no apparent solution?

Rest assured that many a beginning Kabbalah student has thrown his or her hands up in exasperation at the intense emphasis on God being beyond everything. However, by deliberately pushing the mind in the direction of conceiving of God as inconceivable, Kabbalists ultimately come to a clearer understanding of reality. The Kabbalist wants to be absolutely honest in her explorations, and an almost constant (if not actually constant) effort to break free of limitations and to keep pushing her conception of God in the direction of the ultimate infinite nature of God is necessary to do so.

A conception of God beyond all infinite has other implications, too. For example, as I discuss in Chapter 9, a conception of God as infinite changes one’s view on the question of whether God is aware of the smallest details of human lives. By seeing God as infinite, the Kabbalist is aware that nothing happens without God knowing about it and that, in fact, nothing happens without God allowing it to happen.

The conception of God as infinite makes everything significant. If God is infinite (meaning that nothing is bigger or smaller before God), then each person’s next thought, inclination, or act has far more significance in the cosmos than it would if God were conceived of as anything less than infinite.

What Kabbalists Know about God, Even Though They Know Nothing about God

Kabbalah is the theology of the Jewish people, so although Kabbalistic notions about God aren’t different from Jewish notions about God, the difference between Kabbalists and other Jews often is simply that Kabbalists could be said to be almost obsessed with God. Kabbalists think about God, meditate about God, struggle with ideas about God, and try to stay conscious of God constantly. Kabbalists know that God is here, right now, and not in the heavens. God is in everything we do. As one of my teachers said, “It’s not that I know something you don’t know; it’s just that I’m busy knowing it and you’re not busy knowing it.”

Kabbalists are emphatic on the point that God is beyond anything that humans can conceive of, and yet, Kabbalistic tradition speaks about God in many ways. The following is what Kabbalists know and believe about God:

God exists. As obvious as this may sound, belief in God’s existence is considered to be a mitzvah, a Divine commandment. In fact, God’s existence is the very first teaching in the great Jewish philosopher Maimonides’s code of law, the Mishnah Torah (mish-neh toe-rah). Almost as background music to one’s entire life, belief in the existence of God is fundamental and all-pervasive in the life of the Kabbalist.

God is one. The oneness of God is embedded into the very root structure of Kabbalistic belief. The implication of God as one is that no other gods or beings have participated in the creation of the world. Also, God is considered to be a unity, which means that God is a single whole and complete entity; God can’t be divided into parts. The most popular prayer in Jewish life is known as the Sh’ma (sheh-mah). The first statement of the Sh’ma is “Hear O Israel the Lord our God the Lord is one.” Kabbalists recite this statement twice a day.

God is incorporeal (that is, God doesn’t have a body). A fundamental belief of Kabbalists is that God doesn’t have a body; any reference to God’s body is simply a metaphor to help make one’s understanding of God’s ways more comprehensible. Representing God physically is forbidden.

God is omnipresent. Kabbalists believe that God is everywhere and is always near. One distinction that’s sometimes made between the view of Kabbalah and the view of pantheism is that, whereas pantheism is marked by the notion that everything is God, Kabbalah has the point of view that everything resides in God. According to Kabbalah, in some way, the world is separate from God even though everything comes from God and God fills the universe. This paradox appears countless times in Kabbalistic literature.

God is omnipotent. The belief that God can do everything and has unlimited power is fundamental among Kabbalists. This belief in God’s omnipotence has been tested often throughout Jewish history, particularly when bad things have happened to the Jewish people, prompting the question, “Why?” Unlike some individuals who look at the suffering of the world and conclude that God isn’t all-powerful, Kabbalistic tradition insists that humans simply can’t understand everything; God can do everything, and it’s through faith and trust in God that people overcome the obstacle of the suffering around them.

God is omniscient. Kabbalists believe that God knows everything, including what people think. God knows everything that was, everything that is, and everything that will be.

God is eternal. Kabbalists believe that God is beyond all designations of time: God had no beginning, and God will have no end. In fact, when Moses asked God for His name, the answer that came was Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh (eh-yeh ah-sher eh-yeh; I Am that I Am). The word “ehyeh” can also be translated in the future tense to mean, “I am what I will be,” “I will be what I will be,” or “I am becoming what I am becoming.”

God is perfect. The Kabbalistic view of God includes the notions that God has no needs, God is totally whole, and God lacks nothing.

God is neither male nor female. Despite the fact that the Torah uses the male pronoun for God, the Kabbalistic conception of God is that God is genderless. Many languages have masculine and feminine forms built into the language, but in no way does that mean that the thing being named has a gender. Similarly, although ancient texts often refer to God in the masculine, in no way do they contradict the basic Kabbalistic notion that God has no physical form and no body and therefore is neither male nor female.

Developing a Personal Relationship with an Unfathomable God (Yes, It Can Be Done)

On my bulletin board, I’ve posted this quote from a book of physics: “In physics you don’t understand a new idea, you just get used to it.” The same goes for one’s faith in God: A finite human being can never grasp the infinite and certainly can’t grasp the infinite beyond all infinities. But as experienced Kabbalists have reported throughout the centuries, progress is made as one prays and meditates on God. In other words, Kabbalists get used to the idea of God being unfathomable.

Beyond that, as impossible as it seems, Kabbalists do indeed establish personal relationships with an inconceivable God. God has no face and no form, and no image could possibly be attached to one’s conception of God. And yet, by meditating and praying on one’s awareness of the presence of God at all times and all places, God becomes tangible. The dedicated Kabbalist arrives at the point where God is present always and is felt to be present always. This awareness leads to great faith and reliance on God as the one and only reality. For the Kabbalist, all that exists is God; everything else is an illusion.

We can’t find God, but God always finds us

To deal with the challenge of thinking about a God that can’t be conceived of, Kabbalists often look to one of the books of the Bible, the Song of Songs, as something of a description of the human relationship with God. The Song of Songs, which on one level is an erotic love poem, offers the senses of being hidden and flirtation. The implication is that God is a hidden God.

Among the primary teachings of Rabbi Isaac Luria, often referred to as the greatest Kabbalist who ever lived, is the notion that God needed to reduce Himself and back off in order to make room for Creation. After all, a God that’s infinite in all directions and in every way leaves no room for Creation. The word for God’s contraction is tzimtzum (tzim -tzoom), and it explains why God is a hidden God. In fact, Rabbi Luria presents the notion that, by definition, God is hidden and the task of life is to find God.

If God is not only hidden but also beyond all possible understanding, time, matter, and spirit, adding God to one’s life is quite a challenge. The natural questions the Kabbalist asks are

How is it possible to bring such a God into one’s life in any kind of meaningful way?

How can one pray to a God that one can’t conceive of?

How can one imagine a God that one can’t conceive of?

How can one speak of a God that one can’t conceive of?

What difference does it all make?

In spite of these questions, countless people of faith throughout the centuries, including Kabbalists, have stated without the shadow of a doubt that God is present in their lives, that God is real and is the most important aspect of their lives. Many people who meditate on these abstract notions even claim that they “hear” God’s voice.

Kabbalistic tradition represents that some things can’t be understood through words alone but rather need an experience. For example, as it’s recounted in the Torah, when God offered the Torah to the Children of Israel, they said, “Na’aseh v’Nishmah” (nah-ah-seh vuh-nish-mah ; We will do and we will understand).

My teacher has taught me quite emphatically that there’s simply no way for a person to make a connection with God. No amount of meditation or yearning or reaching up to the heavens can connect a person with the Almighty. The connection can only be made from the other side. In other words, only God can reach out to humans and bridge the gap between Him and His creation. Another of my teachers used this familiar analogy: A father and his little child are walking down the street together. The child wants to hold her father’s hand and reaches up to take his hand. If the father is too tall and the child too short, no amount of effort from the child can bridge the gap. The father must reach down to the child’s hand in order to make contact.

So why does God want people to seek Him? According to my teachers, even though people can’t bridge the gap between themselves and God, God appreciates their efforts. Keeping with the analogy of father and child, even though the child can’t reach her father’s hand, the father still likes to see that an effort has been made as opposed to the child holding her father’s hand without putting forth any effort.

Becoming a master of return (and I’m not talking tennis)

Twentieth and twenty-first century Kabbalists are familiar with the term baal teshuva (bal teh-shoo -vah). Baal means “master,” and teshuva, in this context, means “return.” A baal teshuva (baalat teshuva for a female), therefore, describes a person who’s trying to master the art of returning to God (more specifically, thinking about God, connecting with God, and reaching out to God). Although the term most often describes someone who wasn’t raised in a religious environment and who has decided to become “religious” (or perhaps more precisely “observant”), all Kabbalists are baaley teshuvah (the plural of baal teshuvah) because they’re all engaged in the constant process of returning to God.

Talking to God

A way to bring the reality of God closer is simply to talk to God. One of the great Kabbalistic masters, Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, urged his followers to recite prayers without preparation in addition to reciting the daily standard prayer sessions. He wanted them to just ad-lib it and urged people to spend a minimum of an hour alone each day talking out loud to God using their own words. Rabbi Nachman taught that the words one speaks during these prayers should be the same words that one would use when talking to a close friend.

This practice of talking to God is called hitbodedut (hit-bow-dih-doot; to make oneself be in solitude). Rabbi Nachman suggested that the best place to do this was in a forest or a field, among the world of nature. The practice, according to Rabbi Nachman should include pouring one’s heart out to God about one’s troubles, problems, and feelings — from personal difficulties to business woes to problems of belief and faith. He even suggested that if a Kabbalist finds it hard to talk to God, she should admit to God that she doesn’t know how to do it.

Why God matters more than you may think

Establishing a close relationship with God and continuing to work on that relationship can have a huge impact on one’s life. Kabbalists report that overcoming the fact that God can’t be fathomed is possible only through one’s sincere efforts. Studying the great sages’ words about God and regular heartfelt prayer help the Kabbalist achieve a level of consciousness where he or she feels God’s presence constantly. And when this happens, everything changes. The way one perceives the world, the way one looks at one’s own suffering, the goals one sets in life, the way one evaluates one’s life, the way one relates to others — everything changes.

In the early 18th century, the great Kabbalist, Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, wrote a book about God that has become a classic. Derech HaShem (which translates to The Way of God ) is readily available in English and is a great resource for more on the Kabbalist’s personal relationship with God.

Six ways a Kabbalist relates to God

Kabbalists work on at least six different ways of relating to God. These six ways tend to overlap and are sometimes even referred to interchangeably.

Emunah: Faith

Emunah (eh-moo -nah; faith) is a general term for the approach that Kabbalists cultivate regarding belief in a supreme being. In this world that contains so much suffering, believing in any God is difficult, let alone a God that’s the moving force behind everything. One of my Kabbalah teachers says that anyone who claims that he or she never has any doubts about God is a liar. Everyone, even the most pious people have moments of doubt. When things are going well and everything seems to be in order, faith is easy to cultivate, but when things are difficult, or worse, when tragic things happen, people grapple with their faith.

Bitachon: Trust

Bitachon (bit-ah-khone; trust) implies that even when Kabbalists have doubts or confusion about painful events around them, they cultivate their trust that God knows what He is doing and that everything that happens is for the best (in an often hidden way). In Kabbalistic literature, the terms “emunah” and “bitachon” are often used interchangeably, even though bitachon is actually a specific aspect of faith.

Deveikut: Clinging

Deveikut (dih-vay-koot; clinging) is the spiritual activity of attaching oneself to God, to the point where one feels that one has abandoned one’s own will and aligned oneself with the will of God. Deveikut is sometimes seen as a smashing of the ego and merging into God. Kabbalistic discussions of deveikut often refer to unification, implying that deveikut is an effort to connect with God on such a profound level that one almost stops being aware of one’s separateness from God and grasps and experiences the oneness of all things.

Kavanah: Inner intention

Kavanah (kah-vah-nah; inner intention) is a way of relating to God that implies that anything one does is done with God in mind. Kabbalists believe that every mitzvah (divine commandment) is actually another way to relate to God. When done with kavanah, one’s consciousness is more completely filled with attention to God. In many synagogues, the statement Dah lifnay me attah ohmayd (dah lif-nay mee ah-tah oh-maid; Know before whom you stand) appears on the wall. The Kabbalist’s goal is to always have awareness that he or she is standing before God.

Teshuva: Repentance

Teshuva (teh-shoo -vah) has many translations, including “repentance,” “turning,” and “turning to.” The word “repentance” implies a momentary activity of regretting one’s activities and reorienting oneself, but the Kabbalistic sense of teshuva is of a more constant, ongoing process of adopting a new orientation and going toward God. It ceases to be an isolated act and becomes an all-pervasive path.

Tefillah: Prayer

Tefillah (teh-fee -lah; praying) is the process of acknowledging, receiving, perceiving, and honoring that God is everywhere through prayer. Kabbalists pay particular attention to bringing the proper kavanah to prayer so that prayer isn’t just the recitation of words, without consciousness. Tefillah should be a vehicle by which a person can increase his or her awareness of God’s constant presence.

Calling God by Name (Even Though God’s Nameless)

According to Kabbalistic tradition, no finite sound or combination of letters — basically, no name — could possibly come close to doing justice to the Infinite One.

Nevertheless, many names are used to refer to God. Kabbalists know that none are God’s actual name; they’re just terms that help humans to begin to grasp the nature of God. All the names of God are considered sacred, and Kabbalistic tradition urges great hesitation when pronouncing or writing them. The following is a summary of various names of God, as known and used by Kabbalists:

YHVH: Sometimes referred to by scholars as the Tetragrammaton or the four-letter name of God, this name of God is often considered the most important of God’s names. The four letters that make up this name are yud, hey, vav, and hey. Kabbalistic tradition forbids the pronunciation of this term unless one is the High Priest in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem on the holy day of Yom Kippur. Additionally, it’s believed that the correct pronunciation of this four-letter name of God has been lost; Hebrew only includes consonants and not vowels, so a precise pronunciation is somewhat of a mystery. However, the four letter name of God is often transliterated as Yahweh.

Hashem (hah-shem): Modern Kabbalists often use the designation Hashem, which means “the Name,” to refer to God. Paradoxically, Kabbalists often avoid speaking God’s name by calling God “the Name.”

Adonai (ah-doe-noy): This term that appears in every Kabbalah blessing is technically the plural form of “my Lord.” According to tradition, the pronunciation of this name is forbidden unless it’s used in prayer. When one reads this name of God outside of prayer, one usually replaces it with Hashem.

Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh (eh-yeh ah-share eh-yeh): This phrase, which appears in the book of Exodus (3:14), is often translated as “I will be Who I will be” or “I am that I am.” According to the Torah, it’s the precise response given when Moses asks God for His name.

El (el): A designation for “God,” it’s often paired with other terms, such as El Elyon (God Most High), El Olam (the Everlasting God), and El Gibbor (the God of Strength). El also appears as the suffix of many of the names of angels (such as Gabriel and Raphael) because they’re messengers for God (see Chapter 8).

Elohim (el-oh-heem): Frequently found in the Torah, this name of God is grammatically a plural form and, because it can also be translated as “judges,” it refers to God’s attribute of justice.

Shaddai (shah-die): Sometimes Shaddai appears by itself, and sometimes it’s expressed in combination with El. Often translated as “Almighty” and “Guardian,” Shaddai connects to the sense of God as protector. It is interesting to note that when a Kabbalist puts a mezuzah (meh-zuz-ah) on his or her doorpost, the housing for the mezuzah frequently has the Hebrew letter Shin on it, standing for the name Shaddai; the mezuzah taps into the idea of Shaddai as protector in that the mezuzah is placed on the doorpost of a home as a kind of amulet for protection. Shaddai is also seen as an acronym for the three Hebrew words Shomer Daltot Yisroel, which mean “Guardians of the doors of Israel.”

Yah: This name for God is taken from the first two letters of the Tetragrammaton (see the first name in this list). Interestingly, Yah is the source of the Rastafarian name for God, Jah, which is heard in contemporary reggae music.

Tsva’ot (tzih-vah-oht): This name, which means “host,” appears often in the prophetic literature, not in the Five Books of Moses. It’s used in the sense that God is the Host of creation. Tsva’ot also implies that all the details of creation are connected to God in the sense that they’re God’s army.

HaMakom (hah-mah-comb): Kabbalists frequently refer to the universe as residing in the place of God and use the term HaMakom to refer to that place with a capital “P.”

Writing the names of God

Kabbalistic tradition doesn’t take the names of God casually. Writing the names of God isn’t prohibited, but erasing or defacing God’s names is. To be on the safe side, Kabbalists avoid writing any of God’s names unless it’s absolutely necessary. In fact, when any of the sacred names of God appear in print, Kabbalists avoid defacing the paper to the extent that old, worn-out prayer books and other sacred texts are buried instead of discarded in the trash. For centuries, Kabbalists have maintained geniza (geh-knee -zah; cemeteries) for old texts containing the names of God.

Often, to avoid writing an exact name of God, a Kabbalists replaces letters or syllables in the exact name; the substitution produces a name that isn’t accurate. For example:

Adonai becomes Hashem or Ahdoshem.

Elohim becomes Elokim (when it isn’t used contextually to refer to human judges).

Hallelujah becomes Hallelukah.

On a related note, Kabbalists don’t pronounce these names accurately or fully unless they’re being said for sacred purposes. Of course, when a teacher is teaching his or her students to pray or to read sacred texts, saying the full names accurately is permissible for the sake of accurate education.

Kabbalistic tradition requires that the following seven names of God be given special care by scribes who write sacred scrolls:

El

Elohim

Adonai

Yud, Hey, Vav, Hey

Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh

Shaddai

Tsva’ot

Why does God have so many names?

Kabbalists understand that God is unnamable and that no name can adequately describe God or do justice to God. In some Kabbalistic texts, God is referred to as “The Infinite, Blessed is He.” This is a paradoxical name because it uses the word “infinite” and also uses a word that is quite finite, “He.” (Kabbalists know that God is without gender, but there’s no neutral pronoun in Hebrew, so “he” is often used when referring to God.) “The Infinite, Blessed is He” implies that God is both near and far, yet this name, too, falls short, as does every other name for God.

Even though no name does God justice, in Kabbalistic tradition, God has any number of names, each reflecting the human experience of God. Some of these additional names are

Strong One

Our Father, Our King

The Creator

God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob

God the strong one

Truth

Endless, Infinite

Shepherd of Israel

The Holy One, Blessed be He

Holy One of Israel

Shield of Abraham

The Lord will provide

The Lord that heals

The Lord our Banner

The Lord our Peace

The Lord my Shepherd

The Lord our Righteousness

Rock of Israel

Kabbalists believe that there’s no end to the number of names for God. As is often the case in Kabbalah, this idea is a paradox: Even though no name is adequate and God is considered unnamable, God has an infinite number of names.