נאריש זשלאָב מענטש<p>"Sacred <a href="https://babka.social/tags/Jewish" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Jewish</span></a> texts almost always refer to God using masculine imagery and grammar. God is routinely referred to with <a href="https://babka.social/tags/male" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>male</span></a> metaphors — Father, Lord, King — and with male pronouns. <a href="https://babka.social/tags/Hebrew" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Hebrew</span></a> being a <a href="https://babka.social/tags/gendered" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>gendered</span></a> <a href="https://babka.social/tags/language" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>language</span></a>, references to God are nearly always conjugated with masculine verbs and pronouns. The standard formulation for a Jewish blessing, Barukh atah adonai (Blessed are you God), uses the male form of you (atah) and refers to God as melekh (king). Some texts even explicitly refer to God as a man, perhaps most famously Exodus 15:3: “God is a man of war.” This is true despite the fact that mainstream Jewish <a href="https://babka.social/tags/theology" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>theology</span></a> does not believe God has a body or a <a href="https://babka.social/tags/gender" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>gender</span></a>. </p><p>In recent decades, Jewish <a href="https://babka.social/tags/feminists" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>feminists</span></a> have argued that not only is this language inconsistent with the Jewish understanding of what God is (and is not), but it also reifies the second-class status <a href="https://babka.social/tags/women" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>women</span></a> have long occupied in Jewish life."</p><p><a href="https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/alternatives-to-masculine-god-language/" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">myjewishlearning.com/article/a</span><span class="invisible">lternatives-to-masculine-god-language/</span></a></p>