God
THOUGHTS ON THE NATURE OF GOD
There has been precious little good news reported in the world over the past year, since we gathered here a year ago to look without and within. But there was one story which gave me great solace in my ongoing faith journey. News reports revealed that Mother Teresa of Calcutta had written in her diary in 1959, “In my soul I feel just that terrible pain of loss, of God not wanting me- of God not being God- of God not existing.”
How tremendously comforting! If Mother Teresa had moments of doubt, then, I conclude, there is hope for each of us. We are, after all, the people of Israel- Yisrael- the ones who struggle with God. And for many of us, faith in God, understanding God, is complex and elusive. The Torah elevates questioning God to the level of mythic heroism, as depicted in Abraham’s remarkable khutzpa, challenging the Judge of all the world to uphold justice. The actions of the very first Jew lay the foundation for our permission to question and challenge the Holy One. “Holy dissent”, writes Rabbi Harold Schulweis, “is a unique Judaic feature.”
On Yom Kippur, when we approach God with the deepest sense of humility, I invite you to join me in reflecting on the many ways that our people have sought to know God. We are blessed that our tradition allows us the freedom to form our own perspective on the nature of the Holy One. Our community includes mystics who strive for union with God, and philosophers who maintain that we can neither describe nor comprehend God’s essence. When asked- why do we repeat the refrain- God of Abraham, God of Sarah, God of Isaac, God of Rebecca- the rabbis remind us that each individual has their own concept of God- the God of Abraham is different than the God of Sarah. And I’m certain that even in each of our own lives, our understanding of God changes in response to our life experience. Just as the Inuit people discern and name various forms of snow, I sometimes think that we as a people are aware of many aspects of the Divine. We have 70 different names for the Holy One- HaMakom, the place; Av HaRakhamim- the merciful parent; Adonai Roi, my shepherd; Eyn Sof, the One without end; Tzuri v’Goali- my rock and my redeemer. Is one of these names more real, more true, more accurate than another? Of course not. With each name we focus on one way in which we have felt God’s presence with us.
“A Jew,” writes Elie Wiesel, “can love God, a Jew can fight God, but a Jew may not ignore God.” Rabbi Aaron Zeitlin expresses this reality powerfully in his classic reading:
Praise Me, says God, and I will know that you love me.
Curse Me, says God, and I will know that you love me.
Praise me or curse Me. And I will know that you love Me.
Sing out My graces, says God.
Raise your fist against Me and revile, says God,
Sing out graces or revile,
Revile is also a kind of praise, says God.
But if you sit fenced off in your apathy, says God,
If you look at the stars and yawn,
If you see suffering and don’t cry out,
If you don’t praise and you don’t revile,
Then I created you in vain, says God.
The fact of the matter is that we can never know God. When Moses begs to see God’s face, God answers that no human could survive such an encounter. We can, however, sense God in relationship. We can describe Godly actions and catch a glimpse of “when God is” if not “what God is.” Listen to the words of Rabbi Ira Eisenstein, who writes that, “Nobody ever saw electricity. We know that it exists. We can see and feel what electricity does. If we have an electric bulb and connect it with an electric wire, we get light. If we have an electric heater and connect it, we get heat. . . In other words, we get to know what electricity is by what it does. In the same way, we get to know what God is by what God makes us do. When a person is, so to speak, connected with God, he does good things. . .Whenever this force is active, we say that God has exercised influence and power.” God, then, is a motivating force in our lives, sustaining us in our struggles and urging us on towards the goal of tikkun olam, repair of the world.
Kabbala speaks of the Shekhina, God as immanent, God as with us in our pain and struggle. The notion of the Sefirot describes the flow of energy from the furthermost realms of the Eyn Sof, God as entirely Other and completely unknowable, to the realm of this world, the port of entry, as it were, into the experience of God. How interesting that the Shekhina is depicted as God’s feminine aspect, God as bride, as queen as mother. It is no wonder that in our own generation, as women have emerged as leaders within the Jewish community, that the notion of the Shekhina has emerged to a place of prominence in our contemplative explorations. The mystical tradition suggests that the sparks of the divine are everywhere, waiting for us to open our eyes and see.
On Friday nights we sing “Lekha Dodi”, and we pray- “Hitoreri, hitoreri”- “Wake up, bestir yourself.” Why the repetition? Because, wherever we are on our spiritual journey, however conscious we are of being in the presence of the holy, there is always opportunity for us to expand our sense of awe and wonder.
Perhaps the greatest challenge to our faith is in those moments of suffering when we ask, “Why me?”, though, as Dennis Prager has wrly observed, we don’t seem to ask “Why me?” when we experience undeserved blessings. Still, our cries are real and deserving of compassionate outreach, not theological speculation. It is at these times of struggle that the image of the Shekhina speaks to us, gently moving us to sense God as with us in our struggle, to see the hand of God in the actions of our friends to lend us strength and support, and in our own courage to carry on in the face of doubt. There is horrendous and undeserved pain in this world. The appropriate moral response is to rage and to respond. A Hassidic sage was once asked, if everything in creation has a purpose, what is the purpose of heresy? The purpose of heresy, he replied, is so that when there is a person in need, we should respond AS IF there were no God! We cannot rely on God to fix the world, we must act. And we cannot refrain from responding because we blame the victim for their suffering.
We should resist the impulse to read moral judgments into the processes of nature. The question of undeserved suffering is one we can only answer with our hearts, not with our heads.
At such times we might reflect on the wisdom of the famous “Serenity” prayer:
God grant me the serenity , to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
The one-ness of God is a fundamental feature of Jewish life. We davven the words of the Shema twice daily, but how often do we stop to reflect on the meaning of these words? As the Torah begins, we encounter Elohim- the God of nature, the God of creation, the God, it has been said, of the way things are, not necessarily the way they ought to be. Rosh HaShana is the holiday of Elohim- we celebrate the birthday of the world, the anniversary of the creation.
It is only later in the Torah that we encounter God as Yod Hey Vav Hey, God as the source of moral values, the God of becoming, the God of the Burning Bush- I will be who I will be. Yod Hey Vav Hey, Adonai, is the God of transformation, the God who partners with us to create a better world. HaShem/Yod Hay Vav Hey/the God we call Adonai, is the God of relationship. Elohim, the God of creation, does not need us. Adonai, the God of morality, needs us in this world, as expressed in our prayer - “For we are Your people, and You are our God; We are Your children, and You are our parent; We are Your flock, and You are our shepherd.” Yom Kippur is the holiday of Adonai, the holiday where the Judge of all earth holds us accountable for our behavior.
These aspects of God co-exist. When we say that God is One, we remind ourselves that, yes, we must accept reality, and, yes, we must work to transform reality. At the end of this long and holy day, the words we will repeat seven times, the words we will take with us into the year ahead, are, “Adonai Hu ha-Elohim”- Adonai is our God- the God in whose image we are created, the God whose attributes we are committed to emulate, is the God of goodness. In the final analysis, we come to understand that God is a verb, not a noun!
The ultimate question is not, what is God, but, when is God and how do express God in our lives? When we respect our own well-being in the choices we make with regard to food and drink, to health and exercise, when we are truthful and compassionate, when we devote ourselves to study and conduct our business honestly, when we respect all people and work for social justice- we find God in the path of the Godly life.
Rabbi Rami Shapiro writes that:
Angels are another name for feelings
When we love and act with kindness
We create angels of love and kindness;
When we hate and act with violence
We create angels of hatred and violence.
It is our job to fill our world with angels of love; messengers of kindess
That link people together as one family
As Jews we believe that being connected to God, in Eisenstein’s words, requires even more than an ethical life, it demands that we live lives of holiness, lives in which we are ever-mindful of standing in the presence of God. The entire Torah can be summarized in the words of Leviticus (19:2)- “You shall be holy, as I, HaShem, am holy.” Faith in God comes to mean faith that we have the power to work in harmony with the universe towards the goals of tikkun nefesh and tikkun olam, elevating our souls and repairing the broken-ness of the world. As Rabbi Harold Kushner writes, “God will come to mean that impulse in the human collective and in the universe as a whole. . . which helps us to identify that which is good and true and worthwhile and which moves us to pledge ourselves to live up to it.” He identifies God as the source of our moral outrage at the imperfection which surrounds us and our inspiration to end cruelty.
I’ll leave you with these thoughts, taken from an old school exercise which sought to define God in the most American of ways- through commercial advertisements:
God is like Coke- the real thing
God is like Tide- getting out the stain that others leave behind
God is like General Electric- bringing good things to life
God is like Alka-Seltzer- try it, you’ll like it
God is like AllState- you’re in good hands
God is like VO-5 Hair Spray- holding up through all kinds of weather
God is like Scotch Tape- you can’t see God, but you know God’s there
And, finally,
God is like Dial Soap- aren’t you glad you have God? Don’t you wish everyone did?
There has been precious little good news reported in the world over the past year, since we gathered here a year ago to look without and within. But there was one story which gave me great solace in my ongoing faith journey. News reports revealed that Mother Teresa of Calcutta had written in her diary in 1959, “In my soul I feel just that terrible pain of loss, of God not wanting me- of God not being God- of God not existing.”
How tremendously comforting! If Mother Teresa had moments of doubt, then, I conclude, there is hope for each of us. We are, after all, the people of Israel- Yisrael- the ones who struggle with God. And for many of us, faith in God, understanding God, is complex and elusive. The Torah elevates questioning God to the level of mythic heroism, as depicted in Abraham’s remarkable khutzpa, challenging the Judge of all the world to uphold justice. The actions of the very first Jew lay the foundation for our permission to question and challenge the Holy One. “Holy dissent”, writes Rabbi Harold Schulweis, “is a unique Judaic feature.”
On Yom Kippur, when we approach God with the deepest sense of humility, I invite you to join me in reflecting on the many ways that our people have sought to know God. We are blessed that our tradition allows us the freedom to form our own perspective on the nature of the Holy One. Our community includes mystics who strive for union with God, and philosophers who maintain that we can neither describe nor comprehend God’s essence. When asked- why do we repeat the refrain- God of Abraham, God of Sarah, God of Isaac, God of Rebecca- the rabbis remind us that each individual has their own concept of God- the God of Abraham is different than the God of Sarah. And I’m certain that even in each of our own lives, our understanding of God changes in response to our life experience. Just as the Inuit people discern and name various forms of snow, I sometimes think that we as a people are aware of many aspects of the Divine. We have 70 different names for the Holy One- HaMakom, the place; Av HaRakhamim- the merciful parent; Adonai Roi, my shepherd; Eyn Sof, the One without end; Tzuri v’Goali- my rock and my redeemer. Is one of these names more real, more true, more accurate than another? Of course not. With each name we focus on one way in which we have felt God’s presence with us.
“A Jew,” writes Elie Wiesel, “can love God, a Jew can fight God, but a Jew may not ignore God.” Rabbi Aaron Zeitlin expresses this reality powerfully in his classic reading:
Praise Me, says God, and I will know that you love me.
Curse Me, says God, and I will know that you love me.
Praise me or curse Me. And I will know that you love Me.
Sing out My graces, says God.
Raise your fist against Me and revile, says God,
Sing out graces or revile,
Revile is also a kind of praise, says God.
But if you sit fenced off in your apathy, says God,
If you look at the stars and yawn,
If you see suffering and don’t cry out,
If you don’t praise and you don’t revile,
Then I created you in vain, says God.
The fact of the matter is that we can never know God. When Moses begs to see God’s face, God answers that no human could survive such an encounter. We can, however, sense God in relationship. We can describe Godly actions and catch a glimpse of “when God is” if not “what God is.” Listen to the words of Rabbi Ira Eisenstein, who writes that, “Nobody ever saw electricity. We know that it exists. We can see and feel what electricity does. If we have an electric bulb and connect it with an electric wire, we get light. If we have an electric heater and connect it, we get heat. . . In other words, we get to know what electricity is by what it does. In the same way, we get to know what God is by what God makes us do. When a person is, so to speak, connected with God, he does good things. . .Whenever this force is active, we say that God has exercised influence and power.” God, then, is a motivating force in our lives, sustaining us in our struggles and urging us on towards the goal of tikkun olam, repair of the world.
Kabbala speaks of the Shekhina, God as immanent, God as with us in our pain and struggle. The notion of the Sefirot describes the flow of energy from the furthermost realms of the Eyn Sof, God as entirely Other and completely unknowable, to the realm of this world, the port of entry, as it were, into the experience of God. How interesting that the Shekhina is depicted as God’s feminine aspect, God as bride, as queen as mother. It is no wonder that in our own generation, as women have emerged as leaders within the Jewish community, that the notion of the Shekhina has emerged to a place of prominence in our contemplative explorations. The mystical tradition suggests that the sparks of the divine are everywhere, waiting for us to open our eyes and see.
On Friday nights we sing “Lekha Dodi”, and we pray- “Hitoreri, hitoreri”- “Wake up, bestir yourself.” Why the repetition? Because, wherever we are on our spiritual journey, however conscious we are of being in the presence of the holy, there is always opportunity for us to expand our sense of awe and wonder.
Perhaps the greatest challenge to our faith is in those moments of suffering when we ask, “Why me?”, though, as Dennis Prager has wrly observed, we don’t seem to ask “Why me?” when we experience undeserved blessings. Still, our cries are real and deserving of compassionate outreach, not theological speculation. It is at these times of struggle that the image of the Shekhina speaks to us, gently moving us to sense God as with us in our struggle, to see the hand of God in the actions of our friends to lend us strength and support, and in our own courage to carry on in the face of doubt. There is horrendous and undeserved pain in this world. The appropriate moral response is to rage and to respond. A Hassidic sage was once asked, if everything in creation has a purpose, what is the purpose of heresy? The purpose of heresy, he replied, is so that when there is a person in need, we should respond AS IF there were no God! We cannot rely on God to fix the world, we must act. And we cannot refrain from responding because we blame the victim for their suffering.
We should resist the impulse to read moral judgments into the processes of nature. The question of undeserved suffering is one we can only answer with our hearts, not with our heads.
At such times we might reflect on the wisdom of the famous “Serenity” prayer:
God grant me the serenity , to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
The one-ness of God is a fundamental feature of Jewish life. We davven the words of the Shema twice daily, but how often do we stop to reflect on the meaning of these words? As the Torah begins, we encounter Elohim- the God of nature, the God of creation, the God, it has been said, of the way things are, not necessarily the way they ought to be. Rosh HaShana is the holiday of Elohim- we celebrate the birthday of the world, the anniversary of the creation.
It is only later in the Torah that we encounter God as Yod Hey Vav Hey, God as the source of moral values, the God of becoming, the God of the Burning Bush- I will be who I will be. Yod Hey Vav Hey, Adonai, is the God of transformation, the God who partners with us to create a better world. HaShem/Yod Hay Vav Hey/the God we call Adonai, is the God of relationship. Elohim, the God of creation, does not need us. Adonai, the God of morality, needs us in this world, as expressed in our prayer - “For we are Your people, and You are our God; We are Your children, and You are our parent; We are Your flock, and You are our shepherd.” Yom Kippur is the holiday of Adonai, the holiday where the Judge of all earth holds us accountable for our behavior.
These aspects of God co-exist. When we say that God is One, we remind ourselves that, yes, we must accept reality, and, yes, we must work to transform reality. At the end of this long and holy day, the words we will repeat seven times, the words we will take with us into the year ahead, are, “Adonai Hu ha-Elohim”- Adonai is our God- the God in whose image we are created, the God whose attributes we are committed to emulate, is the God of goodness. In the final analysis, we come to understand that God is a verb, not a noun!
The ultimate question is not, what is God, but, when is God and how do express God in our lives? When we respect our own well-being in the choices we make with regard to food and drink, to health and exercise, when we are truthful and compassionate, when we devote ourselves to study and conduct our business honestly, when we respect all people and work for social justice- we find God in the path of the Godly life.
Rabbi Rami Shapiro writes that:
Angels are another name for feelings
When we love and act with kindness
We create angels of love and kindness;
When we hate and act with violence
We create angels of hatred and violence.
It is our job to fill our world with angels of love; messengers of kindess
That link people together as one family
As Jews we believe that being connected to God, in Eisenstein’s words, requires even more than an ethical life, it demands that we live lives of holiness, lives in which we are ever-mindful of standing in the presence of God. The entire Torah can be summarized in the words of Leviticus (19:2)- “You shall be holy, as I, HaShem, am holy.” Faith in God comes to mean faith that we have the power to work in harmony with the universe towards the goals of tikkun nefesh and tikkun olam, elevating our souls and repairing the broken-ness of the world. As Rabbi Harold Kushner writes, “God will come to mean that impulse in the human collective and in the universe as a whole. . . which helps us to identify that which is good and true and worthwhile and which moves us to pledge ourselves to live up to it.” He identifies God as the source of our moral outrage at the imperfection which surrounds us and our inspiration to end cruelty.
I’ll leave you with these thoughts, taken from an old school exercise which sought to define God in the most American of ways- through commercial advertisements:
God is like Coke- the real thing
God is like Tide- getting out the stain that others leave behind
God is like General Electric- bringing good things to life
God is like Alka-Seltzer- try it, you’ll like it
God is like AllState- you’re in good hands
God is like VO-5 Hair Spray- holding up through all kinds of weather
God is like Scotch Tape- you can’t see God, but you know God’s there
And, finally,
God is like Dial Soap- aren’t you glad you have God? Don’t you wish everyone did?
Posted by Rabbi Bonnie Koppell at 9/20/2008 4:11 PM 
Categories: Adonai, Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Shekhina, God, Ein Sof, Rabbi Aaron Zeitlin, Shechina, Religion, Elohim, Elie Wiesel, Rabbi Ira Eisenstein, Rabbi Harold Kushner, Mother Teresa, Shechinah
Categories: Adonai, Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Shekhina, God, Ein Sof, Rabbi Aaron Zeitlin, Shechina, Religion, Elohim, Elie Wiesel, Rabbi Ira Eisenstein, Rabbi Harold Kushner, Mother Teresa, Shechinah
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