G‑d and Us

Think of prayer as G-d talking to Himself -- through you

I feel like a liar saying the prayers. How can I exclaim, "love G-d with all your heart" when I don't really feel that way?

Please don't tell me "We can't understand G‑d's ways." I am sick of hearing that. I want an explanation

You're right, it shouldn't work that way. The world was not designed this way. The plain truth is: They've hacked the system

We cannot accept the cowardly theology that G-d is not responsible -- that anything that happens in the world that doesn't mesh with our idea of His goodness is just an amoral and indifferent act of nature...

Adam wasn't supposed to eat from that tree. Cain and Abel were supposed to talk things out. Everyone was supposed to get along. That was Plan A

Why can we say that biblical tragedies were punishments, yet contemporary ones are "the mysterious way of G-d"? Have today's rabbis changed their perception of G-d to fit what's politically correct?

If G-d "already" knows what I will do tomorrow, is not my freedom to choose nothing more than an illusion?

Isn’t everything predetermined by the mechanics of the universe? I’m just a programmed machine; how can I be blamed for being what I am? Since G-d knows the future, what choice do we have in it?

A survey of the roots of this question, the scientific context, the classical Kabbalistic answers, and the explanation offered by the Chassidic masters

If evil had some explanation that we understood, would we be as outraged as we are now in the face of its incomprehensibility? Would we abhor it as much, would we fight it as vehemently?

If G-d is G-d, then obviously He is in no way altered or affected by His creations. But if a world full of people means nothing to Him, why did He create one?

How does one become a prophet? What is it like to experience prophecy? Does prophecy exist today?

We've had Nostradamus up to our noses, Bible Codes out of our ears, and every brand of pundit and prophet. Is there anyone out there with some bona fide inside information that'll help me sleep better at night?

Since there's no way to know anything with certainty about anything in existence, how can we know that G-d exists? All the evidence is from a "reality" that we have know way of knowing exists at all!

I accept that some sort of "Higher Being" created the universe. But why couldn't there be many such beings?

Judaism is beautiful, no question about it. But is it true? I would like to believe so. But I will not believe for belief's sake...

You see a ray of light from the sun shining in through your window. "Where did you come from?" you ask. It answers, of course, that it came from the sun. So you ask it, "Let me see what you look like as you are in your source within the sun..."

What are "words" but representations of things and concepts that G-d Himself created? Any words we use -- even words like "infinite" and "ultimate abstraction" --are meaningful only in the context of our logic, and as such, utterly meaningless when applied to G-d, the creator of logic and its terms!

My father-in-law put it in his typical engineer terminology, "By now, I have figured out which buttons to push. But I still have no idea how it works"