Wow, this is enlightening David_Jay. The following may be stupid questions, but they're sincere.
1. So god is this Cause and is unknowable. What do Jews do at a temple worship session, for lack of a better term? All I know is going to a KH and trying to know everything there was to know about what you deem unknowable.
2. Do Orthodox Jews see "The Cause" the same way that other variations do (I plead ignorance on the various types so I won't throw around the terms I know)? Or is that kind of the beauty of it, that "The Cause" just is and each group reads into it their own way.
3. Were sacrifices and other forms of worship given to this abstract Cause, or was there a time when there was Jewish belief in something more personable and finite? I mean, there are recorded instances on the Bible of Jews speaking directly to God. It seems like they didn't find their God to be so abstract.
4. Did Judaism take their God(s) from other people that existed before them, like the Sumerians? Do you see evidence of them borrowing from those pre-existing belief systems?
I find the history of this fascinating, though admittedly I struggle to keep dates and periods straight. If I butchered anything above, my apologies, and feel free to set the record straight. My grandfather was of Jewish cultural descent, though his parents were in the Christian Science movement. I have had an interest because of him. I wish I could have picked his brain about so much, but I was a kid when he died.
