The closest corresponding term in the classical and modern languages of Jewish scholarship is אלוהות (elohút), meaning deity (essential nature of a god) or divinity.
In his Fons Vitae, Gabirol's position is that everything that exists may be reduced to three categories: the first substance (God), matter and form (the world), with the will as intermediary.
While there are passages in the Fons Vitae, in the Ethics, and even in the Keter Malkut (from which Sachs deduces Gabirol's acceptance of the theory of the doctrine of divine attributes) which seem to support this assumption, a minute examination of the questions bearing on this, such as has been made by Kaufmann (in Gesch.
How then can a relation be represented between Him and what is other than He when there is no notion comprising in any respect both of the two, inasmuch as existence is, in our opinion, affirmed of Him, may He be exalted, and of what is other than He merely by way of absolute equivocation.
There is, in truth, no relation in any respect between Him and any of His creatures.In Jewish mystical thought (Kabbalah), the term "Godhead" usually refers[citation needed] to the concept of Ein Sof (אין סוף), the aspect of God that lies beyond the emanations (sefirot).
Azriel (commentary on the Sefer Yetzirah, p. 27b) and, after him, Menahem Recanati (Ṭa'ame ha-Miẓwot, passim) considered the sefirot to be totally different from the Divine Being.