mmc@zeppo.UUCP (12/15/83)
#R:utcsrgv:-290300:zeppo:24000002:000:1393 zeppo!mmc Dec 7 11:24:00 1983 > Judaism tends to view G-d as male, but in fact G-d is of course > neither male or female. In fact, the feminine form is often used > where the use of G-d is passive. For example: > Modim anachnu lach ... (we bow down to thee) - this phrase > begins a paragraph which occurs in the thrice-daily Amidah prayer. > "lach" is "to you [fem.]". The masculine would be "l'chah". > > Dave Sherman Sorry, Dave, but the use of "lach" rather than "l'chah" is an instance of the pausal form of the second-person masculine singular dative pronoun, often though not always used in Biblical and Mishnaic Hebrew at the end of sentences, clauses, or phrases (roughly where we would normally place a comma, semicolon, or period). The particular reference continues, ...she-Attah hu Ado-nai Elo-heinu... (...for Thou <Attah-MASCULINE> art the Eternal our God...) This particular class of irregularity is one of the things that makes public reading of the Torah (from an unpunctuated, vowel-less text) a nightmare. This is in no way intended to obviate the substantive point you made; God has no sex, and has attributes we associate with both male and female. As to grammatical gender, however, in the Hebrew lanuage, the nouns used to refer to God are commonly masculine, though God's attributes (e.g., the Presence <Shechinah> of God, the Spirit <Ruach> of God) are often feminine. Mark Chodrow
dave@utcsrgv.UUCP (Dave Sherman) (12/18/83)
Thank you, Mark Chodrow. I was about to post a retraction anyway,
since the same had been pointed out to me by someone else in
personal mail. My reading of the grammar was wrong, but as you
say, the point about G-d having no gender remains.
Dave Sherman
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