Q&A: Persona
Persona
Question
In a course I once took, “Reading the Zohar for Beginners,” the lecturer spoke about how the God of the Zohar has a persona—something like human character traits: angry, happy, and so on. Of course it’s a bit more complex, with the whole family of the sefirot.
I thought that such an approach gives life to the observance of commandments—like prayer, Torah study, even havdalah—compared to an approach that relates to God as some kind of computer (I’m not sure that’s a good analogy), with whom it’s very strange to speak, and certainly to try to appease Him (as in certain readings of Maimonides).
Is that a correct and legitimate way of looking at it, or perhaps idolatry?
Answer
The question here is not whether this is idolatry, but whether it is true or not. These attributes represent Him, and He appears here through them. But that does not mean these are His attributes in the sense that we have attributes.
The question of whether this injects life into the worship of God is not relevant. The question is whether it is true. You do not invent a god in order to inject life into serving Him.
Discussion on Answer
I didn’t understand the question. What is decision-making without judgment? A lottery?
I meant something like a computer that provides an automatic answer without judgment, as opposed to a judge who weighs the matter and decides (and has the flexibility to make different decisions under the same circumstances). Maybe the gap is emotion or intuition.
Apparently He isn’t a machine.
Does God exercise judgment in making decisions? (When this doesn’t concern the natural order of the world.)