Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site zeppo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!seismo!harpo!zeppo!mmc
From: mmc@zeppo.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Re: Answers - gender of the deity in - (nf)
Message-ID: <1052@zeppo.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 15-Dec-83 10:27:40 EST
Article-I.D.: zeppo.1052
Posted: Thu Dec 15 10:27:40 1983
Date-Received: Sat, 17-Dec-83 02:36:51 EST
Sender: mmc@zeppo.UUCP
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Whippany
Lines: 36

#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