Beyond the Garments: the Grammar of Divine Names, Human Projection, and the Post-Holocaust Condition
This essay develops a Jewish process theology grounded in the principle אֵלָיו וְלֹא מִדּוֹתָיו ("to Him and not to His attributes"). Beginning with Exodus 6:3, it traces the evolution of divine naming from the Hebrew Bible through rabbinic interpretation, Kabbalah, Hasidism—especially the theology of the Lubavitcher Rebbe—and post-Holocaust Jewish thought. Drawing on the scholarship of Moshe Idel, Michael Fishbane, Elliot Wolfson, Joseph G. Weiss, and Eli Rubin, the essay argues that divine names function as historically conditioned interfaces between divine presence and the human psyche. While divine essence remains inaccessible, revelation unfolds relationally within history, trauma, and ethical demand. This trajectory yields a distinctively Jewish form of process theology capable of sustaining faith after catastrophic rupture.