Wall Street Journal Op-Ed: Jews Need to Get Personal With God, by Roberta Rosenthal Kwall (DePaul; Author, Polarized: Why American Jews are Divided and What to Do About it (2026):
The mere belief in a ‘higher power’ is an impoverished form of spiritual sustenance.

The holiest time of the Jewish year is approaching. According to Jewish tradition, God opens the gates of heaven on Rosh Hashanah and closes them when the sun sets at the end of Yom Kippur.

The period is known as the Ten Days of Repentance or the Days of Awe. Special prayers are recited, and the liturgy’s imagery focuses on repentance and seeking forgiveness. People are commonly greeted by wishing that their names be inscribed in the Book of Life—because on Rosh Hashanah God examines our past deeds and determines our individual fates for the following year.

Faith in God is a complicated topic for many American Jews (outside of the roughly 10% who identify as Orthodox). That’s unfortunate for several reasons, beginning with this: American Jews could benefit from a personal relationship with God in our increasingly insecure environment.

Last Rosh Hashanah, my rabbi took up the issue of faith in a room of roughly 2,000 Jews. Acknowledging the absence of talk about faith in the non-Orthodox world, he pointed out that “faith is actually a relationship, not a belief.” I often hear Christian friends discussing their personal relationship with God, but this language is dangerously rare in Jewish circles. Even discussions among more traditionally observant Jews often focus instead on applications of Jewish law.

American Orthodox Jews maintain a widespread faith in a personalized conception of God. … [R]eligiously liberal American Jews … believe in a higher power or spiritual force, but don’t typically embrace a more personalized belief that the God of the Bible determines the course of their lives and is active in human affairs. …

Intellectual barriers to faith are most likely to recede at certain liminal moments when the emotional or spiritual pull takes over, and tradition and community assume more importance. In nearly three years since the brutal attack on Israel, American Jews have been experiencing unprecedented trauma and despair, with escalating antisemitism around the world and across our own country. As we usher in the Jewish year of 5787, this is a time for American Jews to think more deeply about their faith in, and their relationship with, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

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