Who Is God?

Rabbi Wayne was one of the great original thinkers, a deep scholar, always searching and seeking, never satisfied with the status quo, never content with having “arrived,” ever-curious and hungry, always wanting more.

His masterful theological work, The Real Name of God, was published in 2012, the culmination of seven years of research and questing. Up until the day it went to press, he continued to turn it inside-out, add to it, deepen the perspective, challenge his own thinking. He desired nothing less than truth, and with an awesome strength, wrestled as much as he could of it out of the Divine.

The Real Name of God is the story and theological chutzpah of that seven-year (probably lifelong) wrestling match. It is not a light or easy book. But it stands firm in demanding an audience with the deep knowings of our hearts and souls. And so, like any complete journey, joyously brings us Home.

Always believing he needed to do more, Rabbi Wayne also wrote a pocket-size Anochi Prayer Book, and made a CD of Anochi Chants to accompany the book. Thanks to amazingly devoted friends in the community, last week we did the intense garage archeology to find all of Rabbi’s books – and all of them will soon be available to you. I will send you a complete listing of all that we have, and I thank you for your interest and your patience!

As I culled the significant gems from his gorgeous teachings for this Legacy Piece, I remain in awe of the immensity of Rabbi Wayne’s courage and vision, as he questioned all of it – no matter what it cost him, personally, professionally, physically, emotionally.

In his name, I offer you pieces from The Real Name of God – so that you may join in Rabbi Wayne’s Divine wrestling match with as much chutzpah and wonder and delight as he enjoyed.

In this season of giving thanks, please know how very grateful I am to have the honor and privilege of knowing you and walking with you in this life. Thank you.

Ellen, continuing the work of the Elijah Minyan

Excerpts from The Real Name of God

by Rabbi Wayne Dosick, PhD

The Hebrew Bible — in its original language and its hundreds of translations — is the best-selling book of all time.

It is the core text for Jews, Christians, and Muslims — all of whom are sourced in the Abrahamic faith of the Bible, and it is the premiere and foundational masterpiece of all western literature.

It is so beloved because it touches our minds and hearts, telling the story of God, the universe, and humankind — the record of our history, the blueprint for our existence, and the design for our destiny.

Yet, some consider the Bible to be disturbing and disquieting; its tales and accounts pure fantasy, its characters seriously flawed, its main character demanding and capricious, and its lessons holding little if any moral authority. Throughout its long and storied history, many have seen the Bible not as a fount of guidance and inspiration, but as a source of conflict and strife between peoples and communities across the globe.

Either way — both ways — even in this highly rational, scientific, technological age, for good or for ill, the faith-based Bible captures the human imagination, and remains of immense interest and great import to people and societies throughout the world.

The Bible begins with the assumption of the existence of God. It tells us what God does; it tells us about God’s characteristics and attributes; it tells us God’s word and will.

But, the Hebrew Bible does not tell us who God is.

None of the names we have for God in the Bible — nor any of the names by which God is later identified and known — is God’s real Name — the wholeness, the totality, the full Essence of God. And since “you don’t know something until you know its ‘name’,” we have never wholly known the real God.

Hello

Hello. I’m Wayne Dosick.

I, like you, am a child of the universe, a child of God.

Here, for most of my life, my main connection to God, my primary pathway to God, has been through religion.

I grew up in a home where my parents showed me how to observe Jewish rituals and traditions. Since I was a little boy, I have attended synagogue, prayed Jewish prayers, and observed Jewish holidays, I went to Jewish schools, learned Hebrew, and studied sacred texts. I was active in the synagogue youth group, and journeyed — again and again over the years — to Israel.

I learned to pray to Adonai Elohenu, “the Lord our God,” the God of the Hebrew Bible, who has been embraced and sustained throughout the millennia by Jewish law and custom.

Then I went to seminary and became a rabbi. I learned, and prayed, and meditated, and chanted, so that I could develop and build a personal relationship with God — the God of love, and care, and compassion whom I remember from “Before;” the God I knew in the Heavens before I came into body on this Earth.

For almost four decades, I have tried to help guide people to their own personal relationship with God, by celebrating God’s living Presence. I have led worship services, and, in every possible setting, taught about Judaism to everyone from the youngest to the oldest. I have officiated at weddings and funerals, presided over community functions, and I have written books about Jewish faith and practice — all with God at the center, and faith at the core.

Yet, for a long time, I stood on the pulpits of those suburban congregations, looking out at the folks in the pews, and I realized that it was “not working” for them. And, eventually, it began to “not work” for me.

Why?

I have a big problem with God.

Not the God with whom I lived in the Heavens.

Not the God I remember from there.

Not the God of personal intimacy.

But, the God whom we all meet on Earth in the places where God has chosen to be revealed and known — the Bible, the prayerbook, and holy writings.

I am very uncomfortable with the God whom I meet in the Bible, and to whom prayer is addressed — the God who is venerated and worshipped as Creator, Redeemer, Commanding Law-Giver, and Sustainer.

In one glorious aspect, the God of the Bible is a God who creates human beings in the Image of the Divine; who celebrates the human spirit; who gives grand and majestic laws for the highest ethical behavior; who invites human beings to be partners in the work of the ongoing creation and betterment of the world; who makes even the most mundane human interaction sacred; and elevates the ordinary to the holy.

Yet, those noble aspects of God are far too often overshadowed by a God who is, in great part, a rigid, militaristic, hierarchical, male authoritarian. It is God who brings plagues, and kills firstborn, who throws temper tantrums, and metes out harsh punishments, who opens the ground to swallow up opponents, and makes war to obliterate enemy nations. It is God who gets angry and is jealous and vengeful, and makes outrageous demands, and, frankly, behaves very badly. It is God who, in later manifestations in other faith communities, inspires crusades, inquisitions, and holy wars; in whose name is preached fire and brimstone, hell and damnation.

That God is not my God. My God would never act that way. God — the one I know personally and intimately — is total perfection and pure love. My God cares, comforts, protects, and balances justice with sweet compassion. My God is Spirit, and Goodness, and Righteousness.

I am well aware that God has many aspects and attributes.

Throughout the centuries, various faith groups have attempted to meld God’s seemingly contradictory nature. The Jewish mystics focus on God who loves and embraces. In its beginnings, Christianity tried to balance the demanding, law-giving God with a God of Love; a God who has three inseparable yet distinct faces — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Islam tried to synthesize the God of law and the God of Love by proclaiming One (newly named) Godhead, but succeeded, rather, in providing a third vision of God.

There are those who, for themselves, have successfully integrated the many characteristics and behaviors of the biblical God into a satisfactory and satisfying relationship of belief and practice.

But, for me, there has to be a better answer — rational, emotional, and spiritual — that explains the wildly differing behaviors of God. And all the old canards — “God has many different characteristics, and He can display any one of them whenever He chooses:” or, “God is God; He can do whatever He wants;” or, “It’s God’s will” — just will not do. There has to be a solution to the mystery of God’s paradoxical character that we have just not yet seen, or been able to comprehend.

I know that I am not alone. There are so very many Jews, Christians, and Muslims — you! — who are all sourced in the Abrahamic faith of the Hebrew Bible who feel the same way.

That may be one of the reasons that our synagogues, churches, and mosques are not overflowing with worshipers. When we go to pray, to whom are we speaking? When we seek God, whom do we find? When we read sacred Scripture, where do we find the God of “abounding love,” rather than the God who is “a man of war”? No matter what the evolving theologies of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have tried to do to change the image of God — and some of the attempts have been very successful —the original biblical text endures, with its image of a powerfully foreboding God.

So, over the years, I immersed myself in study and envisioning. Over and over again, I have delved into biblical text — its language, legends, and laws; its theologies, I have read the works of scholars, sages, and mystics of many disciplines and traditions.

My prayers, and meditations, and dreams have taken me to the depths of doubt, and to the heights of revelation. I have listened and listened to the “still small Voice.”

Why Now?

There are moments in history when accumulated wisdom and conventional thinking give way to the great leap of knowing beyond knowing; to the white spaces between the black letters; to the silence between the words. Human consciousness expands to discover and embrace what has always been there, but is only-now revealed.

This is one of those moments.

Evolving human consciousness, that has brought us to a pinnacle of human intellectual, cultural, scientific, and technological achievement, now brings us to this pivotal juncture when the eternal truth of God’s real Name that is embedded deep within our soul memory, and the archetypal knowing of the real God that is at the depth of our collective unconscious, “bubbles up,” manifests, and is proclaimed.

For, despite living in a world that often seems to hang on the precipice of painful and chaotic self-destruction, it is also a time pregnant with the possibility that the age-old promise of a messianic world of faith and love can be ours. We come with God to embrace and fashion God’s greatest vision: the long-awaited moment when all God’s children will touch hands in peace.