GEN826 Many contemporary Jews who are skittish about belief in God but strongly committed to helping others may be disturbed by the centrality of the belief in God in motivating Judaism’s commitment to others. Jewish sources provide a series of rationales for caring for others, and some of them, as we shall see, invoke God much less than others do. As a result, atheistic or agnostic Jews can find ample grounds in the Jewish tradition for the duty to help others, and even those who firmly believe in God will at times be motivated more by Judaism’s nontheistic reasons than by its theistic ones. At the same time, it would be misleading to pretend that the Jewish concept of (and belief in) God plays only a minor role in Judaism’s demand that we care for others. On the contrary, God is very much at the center of that Jewish duty. The ultimate theological foundation for Judaism’s commitment to help others is the belief that God created the world and therefore owns it. The Torah (Genesis 14:19, 22) describes God as “koneh shamayim va’aretz,” which in biblical Hebrew means both Creator of heaven and earth and also Owner of heaven and earth. (“Heaven and earth” is a merism, a biblical device that names the ends of the spectrum and means everything in between as well.) The Bible also spells out this idea in verses such as these: (Mark, the heavens to their uttermost reaches belong to the Lord your God, the earth and all that is on it!” (Deuteronomy 10:14) and “The land and all that is on it belongs to God, the earth and those who dwell on it”. (Psalms 24:1). DORFFWITO 23