I emphatically disagree that gendered-male words can be gender-neutral. They are sometimes used as if they were, but I think that's a reflection of the patriarchy more than anything else. If gendered-male is gender-neutral, and therefore normative, that means that gendered-female is not normative. It's a subtle form of grammatical othering.

Jews may have been trying to avoid idolatry for thousands of years, but that doesn't necessarily mean they have been successful. I am wary of automatically attributing righteousness to things that Jews have been doing for a long time just because we have been doing it for a long time; as I said before, there are many flawed and harmful things we've been doing for a long time too. So, yes, in short I think you are onto a loser, but I'm sure it's thoughtless rather than malicious.

As I said in my first comment, I find the consistent use of the same attributes, anthropomorphic or not, used exclusively to describe God, to be idolatrous. God is not exclusively a flowing spring, or exclusively a pillar of fire, or exclusively a firm bedrock, or exclusively a sheltering tree, or exclusively male. God can be all those things, but not only all those things, and using only male-gendered language to describe God is a false limitation.