Solution: God, to Hebrews - NYT Crossword

O.K., this one is tricky. Jews never spell or pronounce the holiest of God’s names. In fact, Jews don’t know how to pronounce this name because it was only uttered by the High Priest and, with the Temple’s destruction, all knowledge of the pronunciation was lost. Hebrew letters are all consonants. The Torah doesn’t include any vowels so this name, the Tetragrammaton, is replaced with another of God’s names when praying. Observant Jews will not like writing this word, even in English, or even reading it. Secular scholars believe these are the right vowels, but there’s no good way to clue this word without offending religious Jews. “Jehovah” is another transliteration never used by Jews. [Fun fact: The entry YAHWEH has appeared only once before in The New York Times Crossword. — D. A.]