ABSTRACT
For Jews, God is conceived as the transcendent creator of the universe. According to the author of Ecclesiastes, God is in heaven whereas human beings are confined to earth. In the medieval period the doctrine of the Shekhinah was further elaborated by Jewish scholars. According to Saadiah Gaon the Shekhinah is identical with the glory of God, which serves as an intermediary between God and human beings during the prophetic encounter. In the early modern period the traditional belief in God's transcendence and immanence was attacked by the seventeenth-century Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza. In Tractatus Theologico-Politicus Spinoza propounded a metaphysical system based on a pantheistic conception of nature. With the rise of science in the eighteenth century, the traditional belief in divine immanence became more difficult to sustain. Nonetheless, Jewish thinkers continued to insist on the validity of the Biblical and rabbinic view of God's involvement with the universe.
