Super Jew
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Hey Mimi - good question. The real reason it has become common practice for Jews to write "G-d" or "L-rd," is so that His name won't come to be erased. When the Israelites entered Canaan, they were instructed to cut down the Canaanite's Asherah Trees (these are trees that were the subjects of worship), smash their altars, etc. Personally, I always get filled with mixed emotions when you read about some Islamic theocracy smashing the sacred relics of a polytheistic faith. Because on the one hand, hey, those things are of historical value to society, and they're still sacred to some people, and that's not nice. On the other hand, from a theological standpoint, I want to see idols wiped out just like a G-d-fearing Muslim. On this much at least, the Muslim and I can agree. Idolatry = Bad
Sorry, got a little sidetracked there. So like I was saying, the Jews came to Canaan, and were instructed to wipe out all the pagan artifacts, and the names of their many gods were to be wiped out and erased. Then, to contrast with the way we were to approach paganism, we were taught to never, ever erase the name of the Creator, may He be blessed and His name be blessed. As a result, we hesitate to write the name out in full in the first place. If I write or type something with a name of G-d on it, and give it to someone else, and he crumples it up and throws it away, well, the divine name has been desecrated, and I facilitated it.
When sacred artifacts become unusable, like, if a Torah scroll is rendered unreadable, or a pair of tefillin are ruined by water, or book of the Bible just disintegrates from age, or we have a photocopy of something that we have no use for, but that G-d's name was written on it, well, those items are stored in something called a geniza, and ultimately they are to be buried, with reverance similar to that afforded a human body. Take this to its extreme, and if you wrote G-d's name on whiteboard in like, a yeshiva (a Jewish men's madrassa), you could cause a serious problem. They might have to get rid of the whiteboard, or at least cut out the part with the name and put it in the geniza.
So now you understand the respect with which Jews are obligated to treat the name of the Creator. Further questions arise from this, like: what if the name is typed, or recorded on say, an audio casette? Most opinions rule that erasing these is not a problem - you can hit the backspace, and since the word existed in a purely ephemeral medium, well - actually, I don't know the full reasoning behind the halakha (Jewish law - the equivalent for you would be shari'a) in this instance. But suffice it to say that writing or erasing the name on computer, or on the internet, is not a problem. For most of us, it's either force of habit, or else it's the fear that, G-d forbid someone might print out our words, and then desecrate the hard copy. Even though it's out of our hands at that point, we want to do anything we can to avoid the name being erased.
Just as a sidenote, Jews are also careful in the utterance of the names, only using them when reading them from the Torah, or saying them in prayer. For instructional purposes, it is also permissable, so as not to confuse a student with substitute names. But most are careful even in that case. As a result, Jews often write and say "Hashem" (lit. "The Name", in place of the four letter name, comprised of the Hebrew equivalents of the letters Y-H-V and H), and "Elokim" in place of the word rendered as "G-d," which actually is spelled with the equivalent of an "h" and not a "k" - the latter is often substituted for the former.
Now, at it's most basic, I think this rule only applies to divine names in the original Hebrew, but many of us are cautious about the name in any language. Since it is widely understood that Jews and Muslims worship the same G-d, I wouldn't be surprised (I may have done this myself in times past), to write "All-h".
For the record, the G-d of the Jews is often called the "nameless G-d," which is ironic, because of course he is known to us by many names. I don't know if we've got 99, but I know that a lot of the names we use are synonyms and sometimes even semitic cognates with names you guys use. One example: "Al-Rahman" = "Ha-Rachaman"
For the record, "Elokim" most closely means "G-d," and evokes more the attribute of justice. The more common name used in our prayers is the Y-H-V-H, known to biblical scholars as the "tetragrammaton," which the Christians corrupted into a name that starts Jeho-- (there is no "J" in Hebrew - this is what happened to the letter Yud on it's way to Europe). So yeah, the tetragrammaton is never enunciated, even in prayer, and we use the name HaShem (Al-Ism, if you like) in casual contexts, and the name Adon-y (fill in the blank with an "a" or "o," depending on the speaker's accent) in formal use. The latter corresponds more to the English "L-rd," and evokes G-d's attribute of Mercy. When we pray, we evoke all aspects, but obviously we want G-d to learn more heavily on His mercy than His justce. Because if all we had was justice, the world could not stand.
I hope you find this information helpful, and if you have any other questions, feel free to ask me directly. |
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