It’s a question that's haunted philosophers and theologians for millennia, and Jewish tradition definitely has some answers.
At the very heart of it all, there is ONE God. Absolutely eternal. Completely self-sufficient. As Rabbi Maimonides—the great medieval Jewish philosopher and legal scholar—emphasized, nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, existed before Him. Everything that exists, from the mightiest angel to the smallest grain of sand, owes its existence to this First Being.
Now, it's easy to fall into the trap of imagining God in human terms. But Jewish tradition is very clear: God doesn't have a physical body. How do we know? Well, Deuteronomy 4:39 tells us: "He is God in Heaven above, and upon the earth beneath." A physical body, after all, can't be in two places at once, right?
And Maimonides doesn't mince words. He states definitively that "God has no body at all." Strong stuff! He's pushing back against any tendency to imagine God as some kind of glorified idol. It's not right, the tradition asserts, to serve any other being. It's only right to bow down, offer sacrifices, and make libations to this God, the God of the universe, because there is no other. Whoever even entertains the thought of another deity violates the commandment: "You shall have no other gods before Me" (Exodus 20:3; Deuteronomy 5:7).
Think about it this way: If God didn't exist, all of creation would simply cease to be. It's a radical idea, but it underscores the absolute dependence of everything on this First Being.
Maimonides' view, then, is about as rock-solid monotheistic as you can get. One God, the creator of all, including those angels and other celestial beings we sometimes read about. But here's where it gets interesting: some see Maimonides' stark pronouncements about God’s incorporeality not just as theology, but as an antimyth. A conscious effort to push back against earlier, more anthropomorphic ways of imagining the divine. He doesn't want to describe God in mythic terms, but as a Deity whose laws are to be interpreted and obeyed.
So, what does all this mean for us? Perhaps it's a reminder to constantly check our assumptions. To resist the urge to box God into our limited human understanding. And to recognize that the very existence of everything around us is a testament to the power and the mystery of that First Being.