For a large part of the Jewish believers – “God” has long since become a mere excuse to believe in the “Rabbi” and worship him. In fact, this is, in a sense, the definition of a “cult” or a “sect”, but if you ask the religious followers of one rabbi or another, they will of course tell you that they are against the phenomenon of “cults” and they fight against it. They do it so much, that sometimes they will also fight – literally – with a rival religious section, led by another rabbi.
The phenomenon of “the man in the middle” (between “God” and myself) received an entire chapter in the book “And Man Created God in His Own Image”. He (typically a male figure) is the one who assumes the role of clarifying for the believers what “God” supposedly wants from them, since the latter never really bothers to do it himself. He is also the one who constitutes for the believer something tangible that can be seen and touched. Sometimes.
And as for seeing, touching, and advertising – what’s better than graffiti, stickers and large billboards emphasizing the importance of God’s representative on Earth? Thus, our public space is filled with images of angry messiahs, old and bearded rabbis who seem like they know a secret. Sometimes they are alive and sometimes they’re already dead. The common thing between all their followers is probably the belief that they have a bigger and more important one.