JEWISHLIFETHEOLOGY
How Reform Jews Picture God
By Leah Hochman
As a child visiting my grandmother, for a long time I saw a drawing taped to the refrigerator that my cousin had made in
elementary school. It included four separate images depicting the four things for which my cousin felt most grateful—my
grandma (hence its position of honor), recess, candy, and God.
I stared at that drawing for years. Wanting to honor God but knowing that God had no image, my cousin had made an
astonishing artistic decision: first, she drew a block androgynous figure with arms, legs, and a head—and then she erased it.
Left behind was an obvious physical impression of God created by her intentionally removing evidence of a divine form. In her
own way, this eight-year-old had solved a theological conundrum: my cousin’s drawing suggested both the absence and
presence of God. God was there but not there.
Curious about his congregants’ perceptions of God, Rabbi Mark Dov Shapiro of Sinai Temple, Springfield, Massachusetts
surveyed his congregation in 2011, essentially asking members to do what my cousin had done: Draw a picture of your idea
of God within the boundaries of your belief in God. Reform Judaism magazine published Rabbi Shapiro’s analysis of “The
God Survey” findings and then invited the entire Reform Movement to take “The God Survey” in the hopes of gauging the
God beliefs of Reform Jews throughout North America.
More than 4,300 people responded, including Jews by birth, Jews by choice, men, women, teenagers, Gen Xers, Baby
Boomers, and people from the “Greatest Generation.” Respondents shared their thoughts and doubts about God, choosing
from a range of divine attributes that might describe God and God’s actions, and indicating where and when they felt closest
to—and most distant from—God. They also considered when in their lives they needed or wanted a God-figure to praise, to
blame, or from whom to derive comfort.
God Wondering
An overwhelming majority of respondents—79.8%—responded “a lot” or “a little” to the question: “I wonder about God.” That
so many contemplate God on a regular or semi-regular basis might not be overly surprising given their choice to complete a
survey about God. Perhaps more striking is that many of them queried the question itself: “Is thinking about God ‘daily’
frequent enough to be considered ‘a lot?” “Does ‘wondering’ about God mean the same as ‘thinking,’ ‘believing in,’
‘questioning,’ and/or ‘reflecting?’” Their uncertainties tell us that Reform Jews think deeply about the nature of their intellectual
and/or emotional relationships with God, and that they care about the vocabulary they use to describe those relationships. For
Reform Jews, who are grounded in an almost 200-year-old tradition of reflecting on God as the supreme creator of morality,
justice, and ethical behavior, such care and attention to the language of faith may be as significant as the data itself.
God Wrestling
Contemporary Jews also wrestle with how to understand the divine. More than 67% of teenagers answered “frequently”
when asked how often they question God. The percentage dipped as Jews entered mid-life (52% of 40-year-olds answered
“rarely” or “never” to the same question) and rose near the end of life (57% within the 90s+ bracket questioned God
“frequently”). “The God Survey” results suggest that teenagers begin God-wrestling once they encounter God on their own
terms, outside of the walls of the institutions of Jewish education. Older Jews, having largely decided on their conceptions of
God, question God’s presence less. Yet the questioning of God begins again as seniors more advanced in age encounter
illness or feel the loss of loved ones.
The God–Nature Connection
Notably, an overwhelming majority of respondents across all age categories said that of all the life experiences they had (or at
least those listed in the survey), they feel closest to the divine while experiencing “nature’s wonders.” For teens (75.5%)
through Jews in their 50s (76.6%), 60s (74.5%), and 70s (63.9%), the great outdoors is where people most often encounter
divinity; this connection tapers off only as people reach their 80s and 90s (47.7%). This shows that the majority of
contemporary Jews do not need the four walls of a Jewish institution to facilitate a relationship with the divine. Appreciating
God’s presence in all the workings of the larger ecosystem is compatible with the Jewish theological understanding that God
works within and through nature; the Psalms are full of references to and praise of the glory of God in the natural world.
God Connections at Services
Interestingly, in contrast to data that indicate the “Millennials” (ages 18–30) and Gen Xers (ages 32–47) have distanced
themselves from participation in institutional programs and services, “The God Survey” shows that both groups feel closer to
God while attending Shabbat services (66.75% of Millennials and 67.4% Gen Xers) than do empty nesters—people in their 50s
(66.1%) and 60s (56.9%). This finding may explain why Jews in their 50s and 60s whose children have become b’nai mitzvah
and who do not feel close to God in the synagogue are finding fewer reasons to stay engaged with their congregational
communities. Without specific synagogue obligations, many of these middle-aged Jews seek out individuals and communities
with shared interests that go beyond ethnic and religious identification.
Responsibility for Moral Behavior
The majority of Reform Jews believe in human accountability for moral/immoral behavior, as indicated by the finding that
75% blame humans for the presence of evil in our world (“Evil is a human responsibility, not God’s”).
In response to the two questions related to the Holocaust (“Auschwitz tells us that God’s power is severely limited” and
“God could have prevented Auschwitz”), a number of respondents added comments rejecting the questions’ simplification of
God’s power (“It’s not clear to me that God has anything to do with this”; “‘Distant’ isn’t the right word for me in thinking about
the Holocaust; it’s more ‘why’”; “I think it is irrelevant to an understanding of God”; “I have a problem with the personification of
God that makes it hard to answer the questions”). Along the same lines, many of the comments responding to the statement
“Sometimes innocent people suffer without any reason” (86.5% said yes) mentioned that the question does not allow the
important qualification that God may not be to blame. The mixed nature of people’s responses—for every person who wrote
about a personal loss, another mentioned feeling close to God in moments of deep need and sadness—points both to a deep
diversity of belief and to a healthy questioning that one could date back to Abraham’s argument with God over the fate of
Sodom and Gomorrah.
Gender Differences
Women tend to view God more in terms of relationship and interdependence, whereas men conceive of God in a more
abstract and autonomous way. Women were marginally more likely than men to say that God comforts, and men decidedly
less willing to allow that God serves as a “presence in the universe supporting us to do our best.”
Imitation vs Anthropomorphism
As a whole, Reform Jews consider their own acts as imitatio Dei—imitating God—rather than employing anthropomorphisms
to understand divinity. Men and women saw the act of feeding others (78.1%) and healing the sick (77.5%) as divine, and
named both justice (73.4%) and mercy (73.8%) as “Godly.” Far fewer (together, fewer than 39%) defined God as “merciful”
or “just.” There seems to be an unwillingness to think that God acts in human ways (in comparison to humans acting in
Godly ways), and a concomitant desire to think of God as a transcendent partner. Reform Jews also appear to consider the
adjectives describing God as less than adequate in capturing what God can—and should—be.
And when respondents do encounter what they think of as “God,” the survey shows they do so in “traditionally” Jewish ways
and images. While the responses do not echo the explicit vocabulary describing God in the Torah (“king,” “father,” “just,” “all
powerful,” etc.), they nonetheless model divine behavior, thinking of God in terms of acts of loving-kindness and in the
models of human action that help us to take care of ourselves and one another.
The Larger Picture
“The God Survey” seems to suggest that contemporary Jews are still heavily invested in Jewish notions of God and God’s work.
We see this link not only in their beliefs but also in their wondering, questioning, and doubting.
Fostering the complexity of God talk is Jewish; the messiness of the Jewish relationship with God dates back thousands of
years. And, similarly to my cousin’s drawing, these results indicate that contemporary Jews think of God as there—not as an
image, but as an impression—different impressions that depend on our age, genders, and time of life. As the rabbis say: God is
everywhere.
Leah Hochman is director of the Louchheim School for Judaic Studies at University of Southern California and assistant professor
of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew Union
College-Jewish Institute of Religion.