Across the board from clergy to congregants, you will see a variety of ways that people spell God. My personal practice is to write out the name, G-o-d, God. Although, when I was in the 3rd grade, I remember a teacher took off points from an assignment because I “spelled God’s name incorrectly,” when I wrote G-d. When I asked my rabbi at the time about it, he said that there was no need for me to write G-d, I could write G-o-d, though he didn’t think the elementary school teacher needed to be taking off points for such things! There is no law that prohibits the writing of God’s name in Hebrew or in English. However, there is a law that prohibits the erasure of God’s name in the Hebrew. Deut. 12:3 reads, “Tear down their altars, smash their pillars, put their sacred posts to the fire, and cut down the images of their gods, obliterating their name from that site.” Rashi comments on the obliteration of their names and says that from this text we learn that blotting out God’s name is … [Read more...]