Shituf (Hebrew: שִׁתּוּף; also transliterated as shittuf or schituf; literally "association") is a term used in Jewish sources for the worship of God in a manner which Judaism does not deem to be purely monotheistic.
Shituf is first mentioned in the commentary of Tosafot on the Babylonian Talmud,[1] in a passage concluding with a lenient ruling regarding non-Jews.
In general, Jews reject any conception of a co-equal, multi-person godhead; anything but an absolute monotheism is contrary to the Shema.
Also, they reject the notion that somehow there are "traces of the Trinity" in the Hebrew word "elohim", which in given contexts simply means "God" in superlative majesty, not necessarily "multipersonal godhead".
It is permissible to [cause a gentile's oath through litigation with one's non-Jewish partner because] today all swear in the name of the saints to whom no divinity is ascribed.
[10]Moses Mendelssohn, the 18th century Jewish Enlightenment thinker, used the concept of shituf as cited in Tosafot to justify any form of association of God with another entity.
A few worship the angels above believing that God apportioned to each one of them a nation or country ... to rule, and they have the power to do good or bad as they please.
[11]Some contemporary Orthodox commentators have stated the allowance for shituf extends only to belief in multiple or complex deity, but not to worship of such a thing: One contemporary view of Shituf holds that in Judaism there is allowance for Gentile belief that there are other gods besides the Creator, but forbidding actual worship of them:
So long as ascribing power to a deity other than the Creator remains conceptual, it is permissible to the Children of Noah according to many authorities.
Some later authorities took the continuation of that Tosafot to mean that this special type of avodah zarah is forbidden to Jews but permissible to gentiles, so that a non-Jew who engages in Christian worship commits no sin.
With all our appreciation of Christianity as an avenue to God available to the non-Jewish world, we must not gloss over the fact that the Trinitarian faith still falls short of our universal religious ideals.
Christian thinkers frequently assert that Jewish polemics against trinitarianism are based on an inadequate understanding of what the doctrine really means.