Why I Write "G-d"

[August 2026]

One of the things people sometimes notice when Jews write about the Divine is that some of us write “G-d” instead of “God.” To someone unfamiliar with Jewish practice, it can look strange, even fussy. Why leave out a letter? Why put a hyphen in a perfectly ordinary English word? Is it superstition? Is it an attempt to make the word look more religious? Is it simply a Jewish version of saying “bless you” after someone sneezes?

For many Jews, it is none of those things. Writing “G-d” is connected to a much older Jewish relationship with the written word, with the sanctity of Divine names, and with the idea that the things we write are not necessarily disposable. For me personally, it is also a small physical reminder of what I am doing when I write about Hashem. I am not talking about an abstract philosophical concept called “God.” I am talking about the One I understand as the Divine presence, the source of creation, the One with whom I have a relationship. Leaving the letter out is one tiny way of treating that relationship with care.

Judaism has a long tradition of treating the names of G-d as something different from ordinary words. The Hebrew Bible contains several names and titles for the Divine, including the Tetragrammaton, which Jewish tradition treats with particular reverence. There is also Elohim, El, Adonai, Shaddai, and others. These names are not all interchangeable in their biblical contexts, and Jewish tradition developed particular rules and customs around how they are written, pronounced, erased, and handled.

This is partly where the prohibition against erasing the Divine Name comes from. In Deuteronomy 12:3-4, after describing the destruction of idolatrous sites, the Torah says that the names of the pagan gods are to be destroyed and then warns Israel not to do the same to Hashem. Rabbinic Judaism understood this as part of a broader principle concerning the sanctity of Divine names. A written Divine name is therefore not simply ink on paper in the same sense as an ordinary word.

That has practical consequences. Traditional Jewish law distinguishes between Hebrew names of G-d that have particular sanctity and ordinary descriptions or titles. There are extensive discussions in rabbinic literature and halakhic tradition about which names have this status, what can be erased, what happens when something containing a Divine Name becomes damaged, and how sacred writings should be treated. This is one reason Jewish tradition developed the practice of putting worn-out sacred texts into genizah rather than simply throwing them into the garbage.

The custom of writing “G-d” in English is a later extension of this concern. “God” is an English word, not one of the Hebrew Divine Names, and there is considerable variation among Jewish communities and authorities about whether English writing actually requires the hyphen. Some Jews write “God” without giving it a second thought. Others habitually write “G-d,” or "Gd", particularly in religious writing. Still others use “Hashem,” meaning literally “the Name,” as a way of referring to the Divine without writing or speaking the Tetragrammaton.

So “G-d” is not some universal Jewish spelling rule. Jews do not all do this, and there is no single Jewish position that says every occurrence of the English word “God” must have its vowel removed. It is a religious custom, especially associated with Orthodox and traditionally observant Judaism, that has also been adopted by Jews from other movements and backgrounds.

And that distinction matters to me, because I don't write “G-d” because I think Jews who write “God” are doing something wrong.

I write it because it means something to me.

There is a particular intimacy involved in writing about Hashem. I am a Jew, and my relationship with Judaism is not merely academic. I am not writing about a historical character from an ancient text or about a philosophical proposition that may or may not have an answer. When I write “G-d,” I am referring to the Divine as I encounter the concept within my own Jewish life.

The missing letter creates a tiny interruption.

G-d.

You can see what the word is. You know exactly what it means. Nothing is being concealed in any practical sense. But the word has been deliberately prevented from becoming completely ordinary. That is part of the point.

Human beings have a tendency to make everything ordinary through repetition. We say a word often enough and eventually stop thinking about it. “God” can become just another noun, especially in English, where it is used constantly and in an enormous range of contexts. It can mean the God of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. It can mean a generic supreme being. It can be used metaphorically. Someone can say that a person is “a god” at something. Someone can exclaim “God!” when they drop something on their foot. Someone can use “God damn it” as a swear.

There is nothing inherently wrong with any of those linguistic uses. English is English.

But I don't want the word to become ordinary in my own writing.

Writing “G-d” reminds me that I am not referring to just another character in the universe. I am referring to the Divine.

There is also something deeply Jewish about the tension between naming and refusing to name. Judaism is extraordinarily concerned with language. Words matter. Names matter. What we say matters. What we write matters. At the same time, Judaism is intensely aware that human language is inadequate to contain G-d.

The Tetragrammaton itself sits at the center of that tension. There is a Name for the Divine that is written but traditionally not pronounced as written. When Jews encounter it in prayer, we traditionally say “Adonai” instead. Outside prayer, many Jews say “Hashem,” “the Name.” The practice itself communicates something profound: we can refer to G-d, but we cannot reduce G-d to a word.

“G-d” participates in that same impulse for me, even though the English word itself does not have the same halakhic status as the Hebrew Divine Names.

The hyphen is almost absurdly small. That's what I like about it.

It isn't a grand theological declaration. It isn't a dramatic ritual. It is one little mark in the middle of a word.

And yet every time I type it, I have made a choice.

I could type “God.” Instead, I type “G-d.”

That choice says: I am talking about something sacred.

It says: I don't want this name to become casual in my hands.

It says: words have consequences.

It says: this matters to me.

There is another reason the practice resonates with me personally. Judaism does not generally ask us to pretend that human beings can fully comprehend G-d. In fact, Jewish theology contains a tremendous amount of argument about what we can and cannot say about the Divine. Maimonides famously pushed this very far with his negative theology, arguing that we are better able to say what G-d is not than to define what G-d is. Other Jewish traditions speak of the Divine through attributes, stories, metaphors, names, actions, and relationships, while still insisting that none of these descriptions can contain the Infinite.

That makes the hyphen feel appropriate to me.

It is a tiny acknowledgment of the limits of language.

I can write about G-d. I can pray to G-d. I can argue with G-d. I can be furious with G-d. I can love G-d. I can wonder where G-d is when the world is horrible. I can experience awe, gratitude, doubt, anger, grief, connection, alienation, and joy in relation to G-d.

But I cannot fit G-d into a word.

So I leave a little gap.

For me, that gap is not an attempt to make G-d more mysterious than G-d already is. It is an admission that my language is limited.

And there is something else about the practice that I find particularly compelling as a Jew: it turns an ordinary act of writing into a small act of mindfulness.

Most of the time, when we write, we are moving too quickly to think about every word. We type, delete, correct, send. Words become functional objects. We use them to communicate information and move on.

But when I type “G-d,” I have to remember.

I have to remember whom I mean.

I have to remember that this is not just a theological term to me.

I have to remember that Jewish tradition has been thinking about the power and sanctity of Divine names for thousands of years.

And I have to remember that I am participating in that tradition now, even if my particular way of doing so is a modern English-language custom rather than a biblical command.

That is one of the things I love about Jewish practice in general. Sometimes the thing that carries tradition forward is enormous: keeping Shabbat, observing Passover, reciting the Shema, lighting Hanukkah candles, fasting on Yom Kippur. But sometimes it is tiny.

A word.

A letter.

A mark on a page.

A decision not to throw something away.

A particular way of saying a name.

Jewish tradition is full of these little physical reminders that the sacred is not supposed to remain confined to abstract ideas. It enters ordinary life. It affects what we eat, how we rest, how we speak, how we treat other people, how we handle books, how we bury the dead, how we mark time, and even how some of us spell a word in English.

That is why I don't regard “G-d” as a cute Jewish affectation.

For me, it is an act of reverence.

It is also an act of continuity. I am writing in English, in a modern world, using a language that did not exist in biblical Israel. I am not pretending that I am living in ancient Judea. I am not pretending that my English-language spelling convention is identical to the laws governing the Tetragrammaton in a Torah scroll.

But I am taking something ancient and carrying it into the way I live now.

The tradition says that Divine names deserve special care. I have chosen to extend that feeling into my English writing.

And ultimately, that is what “G-d” means to me.

It means that I don't want to treat the Divine as disposable.

It means that I want to approach the subject with a little more attention than I give an ordinary noun.

It means that even in the middle of an ordinary sentence, I can stop for half a second and remember what I am talking about.

There is no magic power in the hyphen. The hyphen does not make G-d more sacred. G-d does not become less sacred if somebody types “God.” And I don't believe that a missing letter is going to determine whether someone is a good Jew.

The meaning is in the intention.

For me, the intention is simple: reverence.

I write “G-d” because I am Jewish, because Jewish tradition has taught me to treat Divine names with care, and because that care has become meaningful in my own relationship with Hashem.

It is only one tiny mark.

But sometimes one tiny mark is enough to remind you that you are speaking about something much bigger than yourself.