jewishhenna:

stupidjewishwhiteboy:

judeoceltische:

gnomerino:

animatedamerican:

jewish-privilege:

In Jewish custom, you’re not supposed to write or enunciate the full name of G-d outside of formal liturgical situations–in prayerbooks and in prayer, for example.  So, outside of those settings, the name isn’t written or pronounced in full, or substitutes are used (“Hashem” simply means “The Name”, for example).

Personally I object a little bit to hyphenating the English word “God,” as it bears no relationship whatsoever to the actual Name.  (As I’ve occasionally put it, “It’s not a name, it’s a job description.”)  I don’t know of any formal opinion that agrees with me on that, though.

I had a rabbi in high school (he ended up being the m'sader kedushin for my sister and brother-in-law and was a survivor who had taught at the school since 1945) who said that writing “G-d” is unnecessary because it is nowhere near the real name of Hashem. He said if you insist on writing “G-d,” you should also say “ginger kale.” Ever since then, I’ve written “God” with no compunction.

I enjoy seeing the way it’s done in different languages. I’ve seen d-eu, d’us and d-os. 

I mostly do it as a cultural marker: Jews omit the middle letter, I am a Jew, therefore I omit the middle letter

Yeah there’s no actual need to do it (certainly not in English) but for personal emotional reasons I don’t like writing out a full Divine name, but I also don’t like the implications of taking something away, so I follow a Renewal practice of writing G!d with an exclamation point to remind myself of G!d’s overflowing expansiveness… I have a friend who writes G?d for their own well-thought-out reasons. :)