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I ORIGINALLY POSTED THIS IN THE RELIGION AND MORALITY SUBFORUM.
I THINK I MIGHT GET BETTER ANSWERS HERE.
SKIP THE FIRST THREE CHUNKS SO I WON'T BORE YOU TO DEATH WITH MY RELIGIOUS JOURNEY.
KTHXBAI!!


Judaism today is a monotheistic religion, or in simpler words a religion that believes and worships one god, the G-d of Israel.

I am a Jewish convert.
I was raised Catholic via my mother, who was nonpracticing, and my father is strictly monotheistic but doesn't follow any one religion.
Several years ago I discovered that Catholicism, or Christianity for that matter, was not for me and went out on a three year quest in search of a religion or faith that worked for me.
I was in no way doubting my belief in G-d but I disagreed Christianity's history, morals, and the New Testament, which I found contradictory and "Jesus Fanfiction".
I looked into the faiths of the East and the European pagan beliefs and the idea of other deities other than the G-d of Israel/G-d of Abraham became a simple fact in my head.
After all, these people's gods seemed to be just as active as Hashem was with His people.
I always thought these gods lesser to that of the G-d of Israel, who I always thought of as the great Creator God.


Then I discovered Judaism and fell in love with its theology and lifestyle that the Jews follow and decided this was the true faith I had been looking for.

Now today I'm pretty sure every observant Jew believes in only Hashem and no other god.
But after talking to people who worship other gods and live within the occult lifestyle I still find myself believing in other gods lesser to the Abrahamic G-d.
I never knew the correct word for this sort of belief until recently.
The words "Monolatrism" and "Henotheism".

Monolatry - The belief that there may be more than one deity, but only one should be worshiped.

Henotheism - The belief that there may be more than one deity, but one is supreme.

Are these two theistic ideas contradictory to Judaism?
Can I be a Jew while believing that the gods of others are legitimate higher deities while still being lesser than Hashem, G-d of Abraham?

Here's my argument, while I would love to be proven wrong.


In the Torah/Tanakh/Old Testament/whatever there seems to be evidence that the Hebrew people believed that there were other gods but they devoted themselves to Hashem.
It also shows us that the gods of the Egyptians had influence in their lands and amongst those who worship them.

For example...
When Aaron turned his staff to a snake Pharaoh's sorcerers preformed the same act with their staffs but Aaron's serpent devoured theirs.

In the Ten Commandments one of Hashem's decrees is "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me"
He didn't say "There is only One God and that is I", he just told us (the Jews) that they can't worship any other god except for him.

Psalm 86:8 reads, "Among the gods there is none like you, O Lord;
no deeds can compare with yours."
It's a long shot, but it sounds like it's saying that no other god is like the Lord.

The Canaanite's gods were also recognized to have power within their land, just like the Egyptians.
Daniel also said "God of gods" to refer to Hashem and then there's everyone's favorite Genesis passage...
"When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose."
~Genesis 6:1-2

That passage has been argued over for years.
Does it mean angels? Or does it mean the characters of mythology?
Zeus loved mortal ladies.

So anyone care to prove me wrong?
I would love for an intelligent response that would wake me up.

Certainly the 'other deities' are in no way better or in equal power with Hashem.
I've always had this crazy theory that lesser spirits were worshiped as gods by the people living in the areas they lived in and their worship made them stronger to where they became 'godlike'.
(Not so much godlike like Hashem but much more powerful than your usual spirit.)

If you believe such things, I mean.
That's a theory I use to explain deities in my stories.

People also point to the story of the Tower of Babel where Hashem refers to Himself as 'us'.

This seems like the thread to post this in:

In Genesis 1:27, it says that "So G-d created man in his own image, in the image of G-d he created him; male and female he created them."

If Hashem is, purely and simply, he has no human form. If He did have a human form, then surely worshipping Him in the form of Man would be the worship of Man, and therefore wrong? So how can G-d have created Man in his own image? And all humans look different, so does G-d have many human images of himself? Or does G-d take the form of every possible human at once? And, if so, is He more than One?

It's all mind-boggling.

I'm late, but I was having similar questions regarding Judaism and henotheism. Mostly due to my research into Hinduism.

Now, to me, there's an issue of language here. In English we don't differentiate between spirits of high rank and gods. The word god brings to mind G-d, or even the Christian version. As far as I'm aware of it, many Pagan traditions did not originally call their deities gods. The Aesir were the Aesir, the Olympians the Olympians.

In my mind, they have always been a completely different classification of being than G-d. I have no issue believing in those spirits as being regional spirits. That doesn't make them supreme beings, like G-d.

This clears up a lot of things for me.
Thanks again, Divash!

To start with there is are at least two major factors I'll deal with before answering your question.

One, if you had this question at the time of your "conversion" the conversion doesn't actually count. (This is not necessarily a bad thing)

Two, Jews have a specific obligation to believe in only one god (supreme and alone), according to the seven noachide laws a non-jew must simply believe that Hashem is the supreme god, other gods can exist but none more powerful etc. The miracle of Joshua holding up the sun was done to protect non-jews who kept the noachide laws, ergo if a non-jew keeps the noachide laws jews are supposed to respect them and help them as though they were jews (virtually.)

The gemarah recounts that the power of idol worship was an incredible force in the world. Idol worship could additionally lead to real miracles. (This should not be misinterperted to magic which is a whole nother bag of beans.) Furthermore jewish scholars had "holy powers", some examples that well known are when Rab Shimon Bar Yochai came out of his cave he saw a jew working the field and a simple look incinerated the jew. (he was doing nothing wrong, however in Reb shimon bar Yochai's state he couldn't understand why the individual wouldn't be learning). The Gemarah tells about how the San Hedrin Gedolah traded Jewish nevuah (prophecy and holy powers) to remove the "power" of idol worship from the world. There is another story in the gemarah of a student telling his rabbi he thinks people of the past were fools to have worshiped idols. The rabbi temporarily restored the "power" of the idols and the student immediately ran off to worship them. It was a real power in the world, but we believe the true powers associated with them are no longer in this world.


For more on magic or "kishuf" see rashi and other commentators on Abrahams other children

No, they were cursing, its different then actual Kishuf. Think more Lavan (Rashi and I think Ramban comment with it)

Balak was technically a prophet of Hashem, he just used it to his own ends. (See many midrashim and other people who argue about this)

*bows lightly* nicely done. However using the term sorcerer as defined by artscroll isn't always associated to Kishuf but rather "powers" in general. Kishuf is a specific thing we call magic (I may be wrong if the referencing to "powers of Tuma" is actually synonymous to Kishuf, my memory is off tonight and I haven't studied these things in awhile)