[Avodah] Just one Hashem in Heaven

[Joel C. Salomon]

On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 1:49 PM, Akiva Miller <kennethgmiller at juno.com> wrote:
> R' Shmuel Weidberg wrote on Areivim:
> : It has always bothered me when we say that Hashem is in heaven,
> : because as far as science is concerned up contains outer space. And it
> : seems that it is meant literally when we say that Hashem is up,
> : because we say that the Shechina does not come below ten tefachim.
>
> And it never bothered me to say that HaShem is in heaven, because
> "heaven" is not the same thing as "sky". Outer space is part of the sky,
> but I understand heaven and shamayim to be the metaphysical world,
> which has nothing to do with science.

A slight tangent to this discussion:

The linguist & author J.R.R. Tolkien "translated" the (Christian)
"Lord's Prayer" into one of his invented languages.  The prayer begins
with "Our Father, who Art in Heaven," but in the fictional culture in
which the language is based there is no conception of the "sky" (or
some generalization thereof) as the abode of God.

So he cheated.  His translation starts, "Ataremma i ea han ea," which
translates as, "Our Father, who Exists (ea) beyond the universe (ea =
"all existence")."

This is at least broadly similar to AM's response to SW.

--JCS