 Hi, this is Ruth Guggenheim with GPS for the Jewish Soul. Welcome back, and we're so happy to have Rivka Malka-Perman of WOW from Baltimore, Maryland joining us today. Rivka, thank you again for being with us. My pleasure. You look magnificent. I always love, you know, you dress so gorgeous. Oh, the scarves. It's great, yeah. So, you know what? I wanted to talk about today, how do we perceive God? You know, is God our parent? Is God our mother? Is God our father? How do we envision God? Can you help me on that one? Yeah, I think sometimes this is what I think about, this amazing fact that God is different for you than He is for me. How so? I just, I've never peaked into your brain, Ruth, but I know that our relationship with God is individual, but sometimes, and I think this is what your question is asking, how do we step out of that God as the man in the sky, versus that God is my loving father, my loving mother, my best friend, and all those other things that He is. God is my Creator. God is the one who believes in me. You know, what you're saying reminds me as a parent of what the idea of unconditional love is. You know, there are times as a parent that I could murder my children, you know, but I love them more than anything in the world. And I sometimes wonder, when I became a parent, if that didn't give me a view into God, into what it must need to be a parent, a loving God that loves us as His children. Yeah, 100 percent there no matter what, even when your kid is infuriating. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think, I once heard a rabbi say this amazing thing he actually showed a, you know, picture on the wall of Michelangelo's depiction of God, the biggest disservice that has been done, and there's so many afterwards he showed all these comics, you know, from the New York Times, you know, magazine in the New Yorker, and all these depictions of God as the man in the sky, and an angry man with ripped biceps, and he's probably pointing his finger, and he's about to strike with lightning, and you know, we can't relate to God like that. And I don't think that that's accurate either. I mean, is that the man who made the flowers grow? You know, not just that. Yeah. You're right about Michelangelo. It's also, you know, many people aren't aware that in Judaism, in the Torah and the Bible, there is a totally feminine attribute of God, and it's the Hebrew word shchina, and shchina, which is Hebrew and used numerous times throughout Jewish scripture, is the presence of God in the feminine. Yeah. You know, it's our mother. Our, our, you know, our mother gives unconditional love. It's not always about discipline. It's unconditional love. And knowing that no matter what we do, God is always there for us. Yeah. Yeah. I think we miss that a lot. It reminds me, my husband and I, we love to watch the Olympics, you know? We just, that's how we love it, Olympics time counts. So especially, especially some of the gymnastics, crazy stuff. So you have this guy, and he's out there, and he's doing flip, flip, flip, flip, and he does an incredible job. And then some of these foreign countries, the coach looks at him and gives him like a little nod, like, you know, like my husband says, if you don't get 10 points, we're going to kill your whole family. You know, like something, it's so scary, like perform, be your, be the best or you're, you're not good for anything. Then you have these American athletes. This is, you know, meaning no disrespect to any other countries. We just, you know, we like the American athletes and they do their flips and their coaches, no matter what they do, their coaches give them a hug. Their coaches smile at them. Their coaches give them a pat on the back. That to me is, that's God right there. He's encouraging us. He does want us to be the best people we can be. He does have expectations of us, and yet no matter what, we're going to get that hug at the end. It's unconditional. You know, you remind me of one of the Hebrew scriptures, Shirah Shirim, song of songs, which was written by King Salomon, which so much depicts the relationship, almost like between, you know, our spouse, like, like truly the most intimate relationship that you cannot get closer to anything than God. And that, you know, there are times I think we're all down, we're down in the dumps, we're down in the, you know, totally. And when we call out, when we call from our hearts and our soul, I really do think God hears us, just like a parent. You know, have you ever been where you kind of wake up out of a horrible nightmare and you hear your kids and you go running? Yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely. And it's, it's true what you're saying. And sometimes if you look in the Torah and how Jewish tradition is, we have this thing called Shabbos, every week Shabbos. Now not only good Jews get to keep Shabbos. There's no such thing as a bad Jew, but no matter what you do, every week God wants you at his table. Every week he says, come on, let's do dinner together. Let's light the candles, let's have a glass of wine. Like God's been a wife, have a romantic day. Every week let's renew this relationship, no matter where we've been during the week. Shabbos comes and that's a gift. I think that speaks to this relationship that you're talking about. A true gift from God to us, his children. Griff Gamalka, thank you so much for joining us today. It was a pleasure and thank you for joining us at GPS for the Jewish Soul.