What pronoun should we use for God? A meditation drawing on the Ba'al Shem Tov, Kabbalah, and Martin Buber.
Summary. Hebrew prayer-language carries the Y-H-W-H as a superposition of tenses (the Ba'al Shem Tov's reading), and Kabbalah makes God the creator-and-created sum of all that is. English offers "he," "she," "it." Each is limiting. The article proposes — partly in homage to Buber's I-Thou — that God might be referenced with Thou/Thy, setting God apart even in pronoun choice. A modest proposal, offered in good humor.
The Article (Verbatim)
Oh boy. Here comes a pronoun discussion. And, well, why not? If we mere mortals are in broiges about what we want to be called, why not a parallel (and—dare I say—equally worthy, equally impractical) discussion where Hashem is concerned?
And so, into the weeds we go: When Moses asked God for His name at the burning bush, God replied, "Ehyeh", or "I Shall Be." The Ba'al Shem Tov, founder of Hassidism, taught that God's name, Y-H-W-H, is a super-position of the three tenses of the verb "to be", or "Is-Was-Will Be" (derived from the word H-W-Y-H, pronounced hawayah, meaning "existence.")
Kabbalah teaches that God is the Creator and the Created, the sum total of all. (A kabbalistic reading of the Shema prayer says that more than "I, God, am one", it reads "I, God, am all.")
Martin Buber, a contemporary figure, a Holocaust survivor and founder of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, in his book "I and Thou" described a concept of "I and It" contrasted with "I and Thou". God is the eternal Thou, Buber says, and in those moments where we truly connect with other human beings (before again seeing them as "it"), we connect with God. We connect with God through other people, by seeing them as "thou" and not "it". Buber suggests (and I may agree) that our limited consciousness is only capable of maintaining a few people in mind at any given moment as people (with the divine spark, and eternal in nature); otherwise, they revert to "things"—until they once again take the stage of our emotional awareness, and again become people. "It" versus "thou".
English offers only three common third-person pronouns: he, she, and it. In referencing God through pronoun, the all-encompassing nature of God makes either "he" or "she" a limiting choice. But in light of Buber's insightful framing, using "it" is also uncomfortable (and beyond Buber, well… it's degrading, isn't it?)
So what are we to do?
I wonder—in honor of Buber's framing, which to my ear rings true—if we might use, for God, the novel pronouns of Thou/Thy? It does have the disadvantage of being in the second person, rather than the third. (But after all, we're growing accustomed to referencing a single person as the plural "they"; this is no greater a stretch.)
In Buber's framing, that is fitting. Thou/Thy would simultaneously set God apart, using for God a pronoun unused for any human or creature (unused in the second person at all, and unused in the third person in any contemporary speech), and acknowledge that in anyone we are addressing, we see the spark of God, and we are working to connect as "thou" rather than "it".
"When Moses asked God for Thy name at the burning bush, Thou replied, 'Ehyeh'."
Where Denominations Diverge
The pronoun question has been engaged across denominations. Reform and Conservative siddurim increasingly neutralize God-language in the English — Reform's Mishkan T'filah renders melekh as "ruler," Conservative's Siddur Lev Shalem as "sovereign" — while leaving the received Hebrew in place; rewriting the Hebrew itself remains a fringe practice, carried furthest in Renewal and feminist liturgies such as Siddur HaKohanot, which put malkah for melekh and Shechinah for Adonai. Orthodox practice retains the inherited Hebrew (Adonai, Eloheinu, with traditional gendered pronouns in English where used). The Thou/Thy proposal is the Editor's own — not a denominational position.
Sources Cited in the Article
Torah: Shemot 3:14 (Ehyeh asher Ehyeh).
Ba'al Shem Tov, on the Tetragrammaton (preserved in Keter Shem Tov and other collections).
Zohar (the Shema as "I, God, am all" reading).
Martin Buber, I and Thou (1923).
Tanya, Part II; Shaar HaYichud VehaEmunah 7 — Sefaria.
Should We Use Gender-Neutral Language for G-d? — Chabad.org.
Feminist Theology — Jewish Women's Archive.
Berakhot 9.b (Koren Talmud, Steinsaltz commentary) — Steinsaltz Center.
Further Reading
Martin Buber, I and Thou.
Arthur Green, Ehyeh: A Kabbalah for Tomorrow.
Marcia Falk, The Book of Blessings.