stic in tone, leads directly to theories like those of Spinoza or
of David Nieto, the well-known London Rabbi, who was largely under
Spinozistic influence(203) and who still was in accord with Jewish
thought. Certainly, as long as Jewish monotheism conceives of God as
self-conscious Intellect and freely acting Will, it can easily accept the
principle of divine immanence.

12. We accept, then, the fact that man, child-like, invests God with human
qualities,--a view advanced by Abraham ben David of Posquieres in
opposition to Maimonides.(204) Still, the thinkers of Judaism have ever
labored to divest the Deity of every vestige of sensuousness, of likeness
to man, in fact, of every limitation to action or to free will. Every
conception which merges God into the world or identifies Him with it and
thus makes Him subject to necessity, is incompatible with the Jewish idea
of God, which enthrones Him above the universe as its free and sovereign
Master. "Am I a God near at hand, saith the Lord, and not a God afar off?
Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the
Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth?"(205) "To whom will you liken Me,
that I should be equal?"(206)

Chapter XIII. The One and Only God

1. From the very beginning no Jewish doctrine was so firmly proclaimed and
so heroically defended as the belief in the One and Only God. This
constitutes the essence and foundation of Judaism. However slowly the
people learned that there could be no gods beside the One God, and that
consequently all the pagan deities were but "naught and vanity," the
Judaism of the Torah starts with the proclamation of the Only One, and
later Judaism marches through the nations and ages of history with a
never-silent protest against polytheism of every kind, against every
division of the Godhead into parts, powers, or persons.

2. It is perfectly clear that divine pedagogy could not well have demanded
of a people immature and untrained in religion, like Israel in the
wilderness period, the immediate belief in the only one God and in none
else. Such a belief is the result of a long mental process; it is attained
only after centuries of severe struggle and crisis. Instead of this, the
Decalogue of Sinai demanded of the people that they worship only the God
of the Covenant who had delivered them from Egypt to render them His
people.(207) But, as they yielded more and more to the seductive worship
of the gods of the