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The Palpable Absence of God

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Divine absence paradoxically serves as the most profound evidence of God's existence beyond being, manifesting through the face of the other and generating ethical obligation. Drawing extensively on Emmanuel Levinas's philosophical framework, a phenomenological analysis reveals how theological language, while inherently inadequate to articulate understanding of God, remains instinctively necessary for human religious expression. Revelation precedes both consciousness and language, emerging primarily through tactile expressions that constitute pre-linguistic religious experience. Through analysis of Jewish liturgical texts, particularly psalms from the morning service, prayer functions as a performative language that transforms the reality of divine absence into moments of presence. The methodology combines textual analysis of liturgical sources with phenomenological interpretation of religious experience to illuminate how this absence-presence dialectic constitutes the essential structure of Jewish religious life. This structure, embodied in halakhah and sustained through prayer, ultimately reveals love's endless obligation as the core of religious existence, as the trace of God appears on the neighbor's face, commanding ethical action.

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    Published 1999

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    Ira Stone