The intertwined questions of how we are to understand the nature of God, and how best to address God, are ones that concern Jews (and other believers) at all time, but perhaps no time quite so strongly as during the Yamim Noraim, the High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and the ten days of repentance that encompass them. We can and should, of course, seek atonement and a stronger relationship with God at any time of the year, but this is the moment in particular that our tradition sets aside for this purpose, and the time in which our tradition teaches that we have a particularly pressing obligation to do this spiritual work. But to be able to repair and strengthen our relationships with the Divine, surely it is important to have some sense of Who it is we wish to be in relationship with - and Who wishes to be in relationship with us.
And yet... Part of what defines God as God is that God is not simply another "who" - or "Who" - with whom we are, or could be, in relationship. We seek a personal relationship with God, but surely God is something more than a Person like ourselves only more powerful, knowing, lasting, etc. At the heart of the Jewish encounter with God, going well back into the biblical period, is a paradox. On the one hand, God is beyond all comparison, all human ability of description, all comprehension; again and again prophets, psalmists, and leaders of the people ask "Who is like You?" and assert that "There is none like You" (for examples, see Exodus 15:11, II Samuel 7:22, I Kings 8:23, Jeremiah 10:6-7, Micah 7:18, Psalms 35:10, 71:19, and 86:8). On the other hand, it is not unreasonable to claim that the Bible itself exists as an attempt to make God, and God's will, known to humanity, and indeed it is full of descriptions of Who God is and what God is like.
One way I find helpful to thinking about what it is we are doing when we talk about and to God is the suggestion that all "God talk" must be metaphorical, an inherently partial means of capturing something that we as individuals or a community have come to experience of God and God's working in the world. The medieval philosopher and halakhist, Maimonides, is known as one of the chief advocates of the idea, although it is not unique to him. Even in his legal code, the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides writes of his views on the foundational principles of Jewish belief: of the many anthropomorphic images found in Tanakh, which seem to ascribe bodily characteristics to God (such as "an outstretched arm"), he writes (Basic Principles of the Torah, 1:9), "The Torah speaks in human language. And all of them are metaphors." So too, he states just a little further on (1:12), this is the case regarding statements about God's actions and emotions.
Every image we have of God is partial, and no single image or even set of images can be taken a true and sufficient picture of Who God is. As my teacher Rabbi Neil Gillman has written, our "characterizations become utterly false and idolatrous if and when we understand them to be literally true, objective, and accurate." (The Way Into Encountering God in Judaism, 6). What follows is that the images of God that we invoke at any given moment may thus be attuned to the needs of the moment, to the relationship we need or seek in the here and now. As a midrash teaches, at the Red Sea the Israelites experienced God as warrior fighting for their safety, at Sinai as an elder full of wisdom and mercy, and at yet other times as a monarch or a burning flame (Mekhilta Shira 4 and BaHodesh 5).
This is an especially good Shabbat to open ourselves to the multiplicity of metaphors our tradition gives us to connect to the Divine. Both the liturgy of the season and the words of the weekly parashah are rich sources of Jewish metaphors by which each of us can find a path to come closer to God. During the ten days of repentance, we especially return repeatedly to a linked pair of images of God: Our Father, Our King. The metaphor of God as father is meant to express God's parental love for us, but also the web of obligations of respect, guidance, and even obedience that parents and children have to each other; imagining God as King is to speak to God's power and our sense of submitting ourselves to God's will. Perhaps because of the urgency inherent in the day, the liturgy of Yom Kippur is especially abundant in metaphors for God. At Kol Nidre, we imagine a creator God as an artisan who shapes us, the raw materials, in whatever way God wishes. At every service, just before the Vidui, the communal confession of sins, we recite a series of metaphors that attempt to characterize God in relation with Israel (a dozen in all):
We are your People and You are our God.
We are Your children, and You are our Father.
We are Your servants, and You are our Master...
Yet if there is one metaphor in Jewish tradition that seems to have been understood "to be literally true, objective, and accurate," or at least as inviolable, it is that God is male. Despite the numerous metaphors which the High Holy Day liturgy holds out us, this one is constant. Here, then, I turn to this week's Torah portion, Ha'azinu. The body of the text of this parashah is a poem that Moses is to recite to the people as they prepare to enter the Land of Israel and he prepares to die without being allowed to reach that goal. As a poem, it is full of metaphorical and other figurative language to describe God: Rock, Eagle, Avenger, One Whose face may be hidden.
For the present, I would like to single out two verses which provide striking images of God as a Mother to the people. Verse 32:13 is translated (in part) in the Etz Hayim Humash as "He fed him honey from the crag; And oil from the flinty rock." The word rendered here as "fed" is in the Hebrew va-yeinikeihu, which comes from the root that also means "to suckle," as a mother nurses her child. In verse 32:18 we read: "You neglected the Rock that begot you, Forgot the God who brought you forth." Here again, the English does not capture the full force of the Hebrew words, y'lad'kha and m'hol'lekha, both of which carry implications of giving birth. The Midrash ha'Gadol further connects the word tzur, Rock, into this maternal theme, by means of a wordplay with tzirim, birth pangs, as found in Isaiah 21:3. This metaphor of God as mother is rare indeed in Jewish tradition, but also appears at least once in the prophecy of Isaiah; when Israel fears that they have been abandoned by God, God replies to them, "Can a woman forget her baby, Or disown the child of her womb?" (49:11).
Rabbi Gillman further writes: "the process of creating new images of God never ends as long as there are people who continue to experience God's presence in their lives and to reflect on that experience. Every generation encounters the classic system, sifts the useful exemplars from those that no longer work, and substitutes its own novel ones-and the chain continues." (12)
On this Shabbat Shuvah, the Sabbath of Return, may we find the words and images that bring our souls back a little closer to the One who is our Father, our King, but also our Mother, our Rock, and much more besides.