Jews: The Case for God | Ep 1: Egypt

When the Chozeh (Seer) of Lublin was a child, he would regularly run away from school and go into the forest. His teacher would usually punish him, but one day decided to follow him to see what the young Yaakov Yitzchak was doing.

He saw the young boy stop by a tree and shout, "Shma Yisrael! Listen, Israel - Hashem is our God! Hashem is One!" The teacher approached him with a smile and asked what was his reason for going to the forest. "I'm seeking God," said the child. "But isn't God everywhere?" his teacher asked. "He is," the Chozeh replied, "But I'm not."

#Torah #Judaism #God

The book here is Likkutei Moharan, the brilliant inspirational essays of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov (1772-1810)
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SEEKING SPIRITUAL CONNECTION

For modern Jews, wrestling with issues of faith is not unusual. Our very name “Israel” means to ‘struggle with God’. Many of us seek clarity amidst a confusing world of uncertainty. Woody Allen once quipped, “If only God would give me a clear sign – like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss bank!”

The Torah offers a simple yet vital insight for those desiring a closer relationship with God. “…You shall seek out His presence and come there” (Deuteronomy 12:5). Rabbi Moshe Sofer of Pressburg spun this verse as an encouragement that if you will seek God’s presence, you will attain the nearness you desire.

Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk took this idea even further. Basing himself upon a similar verse (4:29) “And you shall seek God from there and you shall find Him,” the Kotzker asserted that the seeking itself is the finding.

This concept was used by Rabbi Noach Weinberg to explain a difficult verse in the book of Genesis. After emerging victorious from a dangerous war against four great kings, God reassured Abraham not to be afraid and that his reward will be very great (15:1). It’s hard to understand why Abraham would be apprehensive after his victory, and where the idea of being rewarded fits into the passage. Rabbi Weinberg suggested that Abraham’s fear was a persistent one that plagued him for years. He was worried that he’d be punished for all the years of his life that he didn’t fully believe in God. Although Abraham began to think about God when he was three, he didn’t come to full faith until he was 48 years old. God here tells him that nonetheless, for all those years Abraham searched and struggled, he’d be greatly rewarded!

The key factor in the spiritual quest is sincere desire. King David wrote in the book of Psalms “God is near to all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him with sincerity” (145:18).

Realizing that our forefathers were paragons of this characteristic can help explain a very puzzling comment by the famous commentator Rashi to a verse in the book of Exodus. God declared, “I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob…” (6:3), and Rashi notes that God appeared “to the forefathers (avot)”. Since we already know that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are the forefathers, we wonder why Rashi felt the need to inform us of this here. Rabbi Moshe Sofer noted that the Hebrew word for forefathers, avot, is related etymologically to the Hebrew word for ‘desire/crave’. Rashi, therefore, is providing us with an insight into why the Almighty appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – because they desired Him. They sought after Him.

The children of Rabbi Baruch of Mezhibuzh, grandson of the Baal Shem Tov, were playing hide and seek with friends. One of his children came running home terribly upset and bitterly crying. When Rabbi Baruch asked what happened, the child sobbed and said that when it was his turn to hide, his friends lost interest in the game and didn’t bother trying to find him. Rabbi Baruch sighed and said that God too is hiding (the Hebrew word for world, ‘olam’, means hidden - because G-d is not manifest in His world) and that it’s sad that many people don’t bother trying to find Him!

The great Babylonian sage Rav Saadiah Gaon composed a special personal prayer that he would say each morning. “Oh God who is concealed from the eyes of all living things, who is sublime and wonderful beyond the sight of all His creatures, the many heavens cannot contain You. But all those who seek You can find You in their hearts, and all who meditate upon you can find you in their thoughts.” Ultimately, it’s up to us. The Kotzker Rebbe said it best. When asked, “Where is God?” he responded by observing that “God is wherever you let Him in”!

#Torah #God #Hashem #Judaism 

MOSES AND THE ROCK: California Dreaming

In June of 1980, after a year of learning at Machon Gruss in Jerusalem, I returned to the United States. A few days after unpacking, I flew off to Venice, California to help run a Shabbaton for the Flame, a campus outreach organization.

We were spending Shabbat at a very funky synagogue whose entrance led right out onto the famous Venice beach. A number of us slept in the shul that night on its’ old wooden pews.

That Shabbat was parshat Chukat, and I laid down to try and fall asleep wondering about what I might speak about the following day. I had been thinking about the story of Moshe hitting the rock to produce water for the thirsty nation and being severely punished by God for his action.

Rashi explained that Moshe was commanded to speak to the rock and was punished for disobeying God’s instructions and striking it instead. This failure squandered an opportunity to sanctify God’s Name. The people could have thought, “If a rock, that does not speak or hear, and that does not need to be sustained fulfills the words of God - then certainly we should do so” (Rashi to Numbers 20:11-12).

Ramban disagrees and notes that since God had commanded Moshe to take his staff (verse 8) there was an implicit instruction to strike the rock with it. He compares this story of producing water from the rock to the plagues in Egypt and asserts that whenever Moshe took his staff then, it was in order to strike with it. (See Ramban’s extensive discussion on this passage in his notes to Numbers 20:1).

Sleep finally overtook me, but the story continued to occupy my mind while dreaming. (I should note this is the only time I’ve experienced something like this). Was it true that Moshe always smote with his rod in Egypt? I saw that this was not actually the case.

There were three occasions where Moses’ staff was taken to strike something, but three where he simply held it in his hand. Moshe’s staff was cast to the ground by Aaron to transform into a snake (Exodus 7:10). Later, Aaron struck the Nile with the staff to produce the first plague of blood (7:20) and later smote the earth with the staff to produce lice in the third plague (8:13).

However, to produce the plague of frogs, Aaron merely stretched the staff over the waters of Egypt (7:1-2). Likewise, for the plague of hail, Moshe just stretched his staff towards the heavens (9:22-23) and to bring the plague of locusts, he stretched his staff over the land of Egypt (9:13).

When I awoke early in the morning, my body felt stiff getting up from the wooden bench but I was eager to check the accuracy of what I had dreamt about. Sure enough, Moshe’s rod was not always used for striking. I sat for a while thinking about the different stories and realized there was a pattern.

Whenever the miracle was one where something that did not ordinarily exist in nature had to be materialized (staffs turning into snakes, water turning to blood and sand turning to lice), then just holding the staff was not enough – it had to strike something. However, when whatever was going to be produced did exist (at least potentially) such as frogs in the Nile, locusts and hail from the sky - the staff merely had to be held aloft.

I wondered if this distinction might explain the disagreement between Rashi and Ramban and perhaps at issue was what kind of rock it was. If there were a reservoir of water beneath the rock in the desert, there would have been no reason to strike the rock according to Ramban. However, according to Rashi, this might have been a rock with no natural water under or within it, so it would need to be struck to produce water.

Bringing this reflection closer to home, we can think about our own spiritual nature. What is at the core of who we are?

Rabbenu Bachya Ibn Pakuda, in the Introduction to his classic Chovot Halevavot wants us to know that “Wisdom is imbedded in and is part of our nature and mind like water hidden in the depths of the earth. The man of understanding will always search for it to the best of his abilities until he uncovers it, reveals it and draws it out of his heart, like one would to get at water hidden in the depths of the earth.”

In our own spiritual growth, it is important to remember that we are, by nature, spiritual – it is who we are deep down inside. Rav Tzadok HaCohen of Lublin famously taught that not only do we have to believe in God – we must believe in ourselves as well. We must realize that as people created in the image of God, we are innately spiritual and have tremendous spiritual potential (Tzidkat HaTzadik 154).                                    

#Torah #Judaism

Bruce Springsteen and the Jewish People

by Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz

Does Bruce Springsteen's music contain the key to future of the Jewish people? Can a man who made an international career singing about teenage blues in Asbury Park, New Jersey teach us something about Jewish identity?

In a fascinating column in yesterday’s New York Times, David Brooks writes about his experiences going to Bruce Springsteen concerts in Europe. The fans there are younger and more intense than those in the U.S.. Brooks was amazed that a concert filled with 56,000 Spaniards could be enthralled by mentions of Asbury Park and the Meadowlands. Trying to explain Springsteen’s appeal to people who live far away from New Jersey, Brooks writes:

“The most interesting moment of Springsteen’s career came after the success of “Born to Run.” It would have been natural to build on that album’s success, to repeat its lush, wall-of-sound style, to build outward from his New Jersey base and broaden his appeal. Instead, Springsteen went deeper into his roots and created “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” which is more localized, more lonely and more spare.

That must have seemed like a commercially insane decision at the time. But a more easily accessible Springsteen, removed from his soul roots, his childhood obsessions and the oft-repeated idiom of cars and highways, would have been diluted. Instead, he processed new issues in the language of his old tradition”.

The Boss has managed to transcend small town New Jersey, not by leaving it behind, but by immersing himself in it. He has been able to articulate a world view while maintaining his authenticity. The question is, whether the Jewish people can do the same.

The question of Jewish continuity has dogged our community for quite some time. Some have turned to the universal aspects of Judaism in order to make it more appealing. As Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove recently argued in a sermon:

…for a non-Orthodox Jewry that does not have a natural point of contact with Jewish observance, is it really such an odd tactic to seek Jewish engagement by way of common ethical concern? After all, when a would-be convert asked the ancient sage Hillel to summarize all of Judaism while the questioner stood on one foot, Hillel responded, “that which is hateful unto you, do not do unto others.” For this you need to go to a rabbi, for this you need Judaism?! This is the most universal statement of interpersonal ethics I can imagine. I suspect Hillel knew what many Jewish leaders today know, that for the initiate to our faith – the first task is to find an agreeable point of entry and establish common ground. I imagine Hillel’s goal, like that of my peers and myself, was to cultivate Jewish communities filled with learned, observant and passionate Jews.

There are benefits to this approach, but enormous costs as well. In emphasizing the universal, we overlook a lot of what Judaism is about. A recent essay by Jack Wertheimer (to whom Cosgrove was responding) argues that overemphasis on inclusion and universalism can undermine Judaism:

“Such is the current Jewish ethos. It demands a global consciousness and rejects tribal allegiances so that the Torah might evidently no longer be described, as the Pentateuch itself does, simply as morasha kehillat Yaakov, the inheritance of Jacob’s community, but as God’s gift to all humanity. Evidently, for something Jewish to be meaningful, everyone must find it meaningful; it must speak to the world.”

Wertheimer and Cosgrove both write with the awareness that Judaism is both particularistic and universalistic. They argue, and argue profoundly, on how to negotiate the dialectic between these two aspects of Judaism. (And yes, for those rolling their eyes, I recognize the irony inherent in posting an entry on a blog named “Pop Jewish” about Jewish authenticity).

Rav Kook, who grappled profoundly with the tensions between the particularistic and universalistic aspects of Judaism, understood that when you authentically embrace a tradition, that embrace can allow an even deeper universalism to sprout forth. And in a sense, Springsteen’s ability to transcend the particular is enabled, not hindered, by his very embrace of the particular, in a way R. Kook envisioned for Judaism.

Perhaps the last words in Brook’s column should be considered by all who debate Jewish continuity:

Don’t try to be everyman. Don’t pretend you’re a member of every community you visit. Don’t try to be citizens of some artificial globalized community. Go deeper into your own tradition. Call more upon the geography of your own past. Be distinct and credible. People will come.

Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz is a rabbi in Montreal.
His article first appeared in 2012.

#Torah #Judaism #God

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM OF JUDAISM:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENwm-_vRgKw&list=PLnM_MXuVYZv9GFQkgjGDq7zzKYKnkTYmc&index=129&t=0s


#Judaism #God

Sometimes, you have to lie down in the lowest ditch to be able to see the brightest stars. (Chassidic saying)

#Torah

"Your eyes are composed of white and black components, and you only see through the black." (Midrash Bamidbar Rabbah 15:7)

So often, it is only through the dark, painful moments in life that we really gain clarity, spiritual growth and understanding.

#Torah