Illustration/Devdutt Pattanaik

Many Jewish Americans choose to write G-d instead of God. By not taking God's name directly, they show respect. Jewish people believe that long ago, maybe 4,000 years ago, G-d gave Moses the history of his people, and the law, which he recorded in five books which constitute Torah, the Jewish Bible. This written word of God, written in Hebrew, is read out in the Jewish synagogue regularly. Here, we find 613 commandments of God, equal to the number of seeds in a pomegranate, say some, which is why many believe that the Forbidden Fruit of the Jewish people was probably the pomegranate, and not the apple of the Christian Bible.