RMPS - Int2/Higher - World Religions - Judaism - Education Scotland

THE HUMAN CONDITION
God is loving and wants a relationship with people, He has strict
standards and will judge people according to them.
Jewish people never pronounce the name of God. God was only called
by His name in the Temple, by the High Priest, on the Day of Atonement
(Yom Kippur). In prayer He is referred to by the Hebrew word Adonai
which means ‘my Lord’. When speaking about God, Jews often refer to
Him as ‘Ha-shem’, which translated from Hebrew means ‘the name’. This
conveys respect while not pronouncing God’s name.
Judaism forbids idolatry, i.e. worshipping an image; this violates the
principle of the divine oneness of God. Forms of idol worship in
ancient times were statues, stars, and gods of the sea or of mountains or
of the earth. Even trying to represent God as an image is regarded as
idolatrous and is forbidden in the Ten Commandments; the implication
is that He is so complex and beyond human understanding that He can
never be portrayed as an image.
Blasphemy in Jewish law is the utterance in public of the name of God. It
may also cover speaking contemptuously of God. Both idolatry and
blasphemy are considered as insults to God. A Jew is expected to
develop a respectful and sensitive attitude towards issues and matters
concerning God.
10
Source
And God said: Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness; and let
him have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and
over the cattle, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
And God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He
him; male and female created He them.
Genesis 1: 26, 27
The first line in the text above refers to mankind and not one individual
person, and shows the elevated position given to man in the world, to
rule over all the creatures of the universe which God created.
The use of the plural in this text is the Hebrew idiomatic way of
expressing deliberation and conveys God’s intent to create man. By
using the words ‘Us’ and ‘Our’ this extract may also suggest that when
God was creating man, He was speaking to all the spiritual forces that
RMPS: WORLD RELIGIONS – JUDAISM (INT 2, H)
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