Encountering God

When it comes to God, it is not belief that matters but experience. Where, in human life, does Judaism promise the possibility of experiencing God?The Thirteen Attributes (Adonai, Adonai, el rachum v'chanun), a small but critical prayer with which Yom Kippur begins and ends, highlights the Jewish insistence that the God of Jewish tradition is experienced through love. Of all prayers, this one especially tackles head-on the way we encounter God and how that encounter informs the purpose behind human life itself.Through a series of lively introductions and commentaries, almost forty contributors—men and women, scholars and rabbis, artists and thinkers from all Jewish denominations and from around the world—explain how finite human beings can know an infinite God. They explore the history and significance of the attributes that the Hebrew Bible ascribes to God—and how Jewish tradition refines and recasts them as the best way also to understand human nature and our search for meaning.Prayers of Awe: A multi-volume series designed to explore the High Holy Day liturgy and enrich the praying experience for everyone—whether experienced worshipers or guests who encounter Jewish prayer for the very first timeContributors:Rabbi Jonathan BlakeDr. Annette M. BoecklerDr. Marc Zvi BrettlerRabbi Angela Warnick BuchdahlRabbi Joshua M. DavidsonRabbi Lawrence A. Englander, CM, DHL, DD Rabbi David Ellenson, PhDRabbi Shoshana Boyd GelfandRabbi Edwin Goldberg, DHLRabbi Andrew Goldstein, PhDRabbi Aaron GoldsteinDr. Joel M. HoffmanRabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, PhDRabbi Walter Homolka, PhD, DHL Rabbi Delphine HorvilleurRabbi Elie Kaunfer, DHLDr. Sharon KorenRabbi Asher LopatinCatherine MadsenRabbi Jonathan Magonet, PhDRabbi Dalia Marx, PhDRuth W. MessingerRabbi Charles H. Middleburgh, PhD Rabbi Jay Henry MosesRabbi Julia NeubergerRabbi Sonja Keren Pilz, PhDRabbi Nicole RobertsRabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin, DMinRabbi Dennis C. Sasso, DMinRabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso, DMin Rabbi David A. Teutsch, PhDRabbi Andrea L. Weiss, PhDRabbi Margaret Moers Wenig, DDRabbi Daniel G. ZemelDr. Wendy Zierler