anscending
all created things, as well as time and space, might lead logically to the
view of the deist that He stands outside of the world, and does not work
from within. But this inference has never been made even by the boldest of
Jewish thinkers. The Psalmist said, "Who is like the Lord our God, that
hath His seat on high, that humbleth Himself to behold what is in heaven
and on earth?"(198)--words which express the deepest and the loftiest
thought of Judaism. Beside the all-encompassing Deity no other divine
power or personality can find a place. God is in all; He is over all; He
is both immanent and transcendent. His creation was not merely setting
into motion the wheels of the cosmic fabric, after which He withdrew from
the world. The Jew praises Him for every scent and sight of nature or of
human life, for the beauty of the sea and the rainbow, for every flash of
lightning that illumines the darkened clouds and every peal of thunder
that shakes the earth. On every such occasion the Jew utters praise to
"Him who daily renews the work of creation," or "Him who in everlasting
faithfulness keepeth His covenant with mankind." Such is the teaching of
the men of the Great Synagogue,(199) and the charge of the Jewish God idea
being a barren and abstract transcendentalism can be urged only by the
blindness of bigotry.(200)

11. The interweaving of the ideas of God's immanence and transcendency is
shown especially in two poems embodied in the songs of the Synagogue, Ibn
Gabirol's "Crown of Royalty" and the "Songs of Unity" for each day of the
week, composed by Samuel ben Kalonymos, the father of Judah the Pious of
Regensburg. Here occur such sentences as these: "All is in God and God is
in all"; "Sufficient unto Himself and self-determining, He is the
ever-living and self-conscious Mind, the all-permeating, all-impelling,
and all-accomplishing Will"; "The universe is the emanation of the
plenitude of God, each part the light of His infinite light, flame of His
eternal empyrean"; "The universe is the garment, the covering of God, and
He the all-penetrating Soul."(201) All these ideas were borrowed from
neo-Platonism, and found a conspicuous place in Ibn Gabirol's philosophy,
later influencing the Cabbalah.

Similarly the appellation, _Makom_, "Space," is explained by both Philo
and the rabbis as denoting "Him who encompasses the world, but whom the
world cannot encompass."(202) An utterance such as this, well-nigh
panthei