For the John Templeton Foundation, I wrote about the exploration of divine concepts within Jewish philosophy.
Despite the ways in which Jewish conceptions of God have shaped many of the world’s religious traditions, serious constructive theology is not a discipline often practiced by contemporary Jewish scholars, says Yoram Hazony, an Orthodox Jewish philosopher and president of the Jerusalem-based Hertzel Center. “The resources for theological exploration are definitely available,” Hazony says, “but they’re not so much pursued by the community, which tends to be oriented towards thinking about how God expects us to behave and what constitutes the best way to live.”
Hazony believes that orthodox Jews still confront many unanswered questions about God and God’s nature, and that the Hebrew Bible and classical rabbinic sources may still yield new tools and approaches for, he says, “approaching fundamental questions about the nature of God, the ultimate nature of reality, metaphysics, as well as human flourishing, human virtue, and our relationship to God.”