Shoshana Ronen
Prof. dr. hab. Head of Hebrew Studies Department,
Faculty of Oriental Studies, Uni-versity of Warsaw,
Krakowskie Przedmiescie 26/28, 00‒927 Warsaw, Poland;
e-mail: ronen@uw.edu.pl

The essay presents two different concepts of God in Jewish thinking. The first underlinestheperfection of God, in the Aristotelean manner, and the second the personhood of God.Itseems as if the second concept reflects better the approach of the Hebrew Bible, however,traces for the first concept can also be found in the same biblical text. On the one hand,theMaimonidean approach that rejects totally the anthropomorphic portray of God is deeplyaccepted, but, on the other hand, the biblical God is not unmoved mover or nature, but he isaperson. His way with human beings is not blind or mechanical but intentional and deliber-ate. He reacts and responds to the actions of human beings. The essay discusses two modernJewish thinkers: Abraham Joshua Heschel, a philosopher who emphasized the personhood ofGod, and Yeshayahu Leibowitz who is the successor of the Maimonidean approach