What does 'God' mean?

The rav asked a disciple who had entered his room: "Moshe, what do we mean when we say 'God'?" The disciple was silent. The rav asked him a second and third time. Then he said: "Why are you silent?"

"Because I do not know."

"Do you think I know?" said the rav. "But I must say it, for it is so, and therefore I must say it: He is definitely there, and except for him nothing is definitely there - and this is He."

Martin Buber from The Tales of the Hasidim

Wittgenstein - following Kant - provoked a great deal of philosophical musings on the nature of theological language. He seemed to suggest, not that it was false, but that somehow its meaning could not be treated as equivalent to everyday talk of tables, teachers or tragedies.

It can be seen that Hasidic thinkers had already covered the same ground. However they were more aware that truth itself is one of those categories that is hard to pin down. I may be confidently using a term like 'table' and you may assuredly understand me. But we can be less sure about the real and ultimate truth of our assertions. Often the price certainty of certainty is a kind of emptiness.

The Rabbi understood the truth of God's existence without being confident he understood the meaning of the term God - this is as it should be when our language tries to grasp that which is by its nature greater than us. The price of meaningfulness is certainty.