Searching for God in the world

A decade of 'Be' – 5773

I found it in some cafe, around the time I was in the bar.

I no longer remember what I felt at that moment, what occupied me in those days,

And where was my heart when my eyes rested on this piece of paper?

There was a pile there, I took one and put it in my wallet.

Every few months, this question pops up and hits me.

I am pulled out of my everyday life to stand in front of her, small and innocent.

And every time, something different in my mouth.

There are days when I will shrink, I will ground myself with both feet in the face of the paralyzing determination.

 And I will accept the judgment with humility, I will stretch out both hands to receive a little sweetness and certainty.

I may be just on my way to find,

And sometimes, when I was lost, I was lost.

Anyone who knows anything about his whereabouts,

Everyone knows something.

What am I actually asking, and maybe I've exaggerated a bit in asking for an answer, but it seems to me that there is no person who is not filled with

Something about encountering such a statement. The search will probably always be our lot, and the answer?

Odia, Beer Ha'aretz

With God’s help

Reply to Udaya

Michai Avraham

By virtue of my way of thinking and my personal inclinations toward philosophy and logic, the first answer that comes to mind to Odia's question is found in the philosophical sphere. What could be more reasonable than to offer some kind of proof for the existence of God (and indeed, in my opinion, there is very good proof of this), and end it with that. But my feeling in reading her words was that the distress expressed in her words does not lie in the question of proof, or in the intellectual plane in general, but rather in the existential plane. She expects God to reveal himself or establish some kind of connection with her/us. To stop hiding and disappearing into the depths of latency.

So what do we do with such a good and honest question? Where do we find God? As a Jew, I will answer a question with a question: How would we expect Him to reveal Himself to us, or to establish a connection with us? Do we expect overt miracles? Or for Him to speak to us in some way, in the sense of "Oh, that all the people of God were prophets"? At Odia's age, I walked around quite a bit with the expectation parallel to hers: Who will give me a little certainty? Why are we condemned to doubt and to decisions and activities under conditions of uncertainty?

Another question we must ask ourselves: Is the task truly placed entirely on the "shoulders" of God? Perhaps He expects a moment of silence, and then He will fulfill in us "as water meets water"? This question is no less difficult and poignant: What do we do to create this connection with God? It is important to understand that here the distinction mentioned above between the philosophical difficulty and the existential difficulty becomes even more acute. If Odia's difficulty was on the philosophical level, a person who does not know whether there really is a God, then it is truly reasonable to assume that the task falls on God and not on man. As long as I do not know that He exists, it is unlikely that He can expect anything from me, or assign me tasks. But if the difficulty is existential, then it arises within a philosophical and existential framework of faith. Even if I believe on the philosophical level, I still expect a connection with God, or His revelation to me. But here it is really important to make sure that I also do what is incumbent on me in order for such a connection to exist. As our late sages said: It takes two to tango (name, name). And yet, where do you find it? Even if the task is mine, what should I do?

Maimonides devotes Chapter 1 of his Laws of Idolatry to the beginning of the development of the phenomenon of idolatry, and then to a description (taken from the midrash of the Sages) of Abraham our father discovering God. Because of the importance of the words for our purpose, I will quote the entire chapter here:

A. In the days of Anus, humans made a great and ignorant mistake. The advice of the wise men of that generation, and Anus himself was one of the erring ones, and this was their mistake. They said that since God created these stars and spheres to guide the world and gave them on high and gave them honor, and they are suns that serve before Him, they deserve to be praised and glorified and to be given honor, and this is the will of God, blessed be He, to magnify and honor those who magnify and honor Him, just as the king wants to honor those who stand before Him, and this is the honor of a king. Since this matter came to their hearts, they began to build temples to the stars and to offer sacrifices to them, and to praise and glorify them with words, and to bow down before them in order to achieve the will of the Creator in their evil mind. This was the essence of star worship, and so would be said by its worshipers who knew its essence, not that they say that there is no God there except this star, but that Jeremiah says, "Who will not fear you, king of the nations, for you will come to you, for among all the wise men of the nations and in all their kingdoms there is none like you, and they will burn at once." And Kislev, the moral of vanity, is a tree, meaning that everyone knows that you are the only one, but their mistake and foolishness is that they imagine that this vanity is your will..

2. After a long time, false prophets arose among the people and said that God had commanded and told them to worship such and such a star or all the stars and to sacrifice to it and to pour out offerings to it in this and that way and to build a temple for it and make its image so that all the people, women and children and the rest of the people of the land, would bow down to it. He would inform them of a form that he had conceived in his heart and say, This is the form of such and such a star that he had informed him of in his prophecy. And they began in this way to make images in temples and under trees and on the tops of mountains and on hills and would gather and bow down to them and tell all the people that this is the form that is good and pleasing and worthy of being worshipped and feared. And their priests would tell them that in this work you will multiply and prosper and do this and that and do not do this and that. And other liars began to stand up and say that the star itself or the wheel or the angel spoke to them and said to them, Worship me in this and that way and inform them of the way of its work and do this and do not do that. And this thing spread throughout the world to worship the images in works that differ from one another and to sacrifice to them. And as the days went by, the honorable and terrible name was forgotten from the mouth of the entire universe and from their minds and they did not recognize it, and all the people of the earth were found, the women and the children, knowing only the form of wood and stone, and the temple of stones, which they had been taught from their childhood to bow down to and worship it, and to swear by its name. And the wise men among them, such as their priests and the like, imagined that there was no God but the stars and the wheels that made these forms because of them and in their image. But the Stone of the Worlds was not a single person who knew or knew it, except for individuals in the world, such as Enoch and Matthew, who rested there and passed away. And in this way the world went on and on until the pillar of the world was born, which was Abraham our father..

3. Since Ethan was weaned, he began to wander in his mind and while he was still young and began to think day and night and was puzzled. How could this wheel be constantly moving and not have a leader and someone to turn it, because it is impossible for it to turn itself, and it would not have a teacher or inform it of anything, but was immersed in the light of the Chaldeans among the foolish star worshipers, and his father and mother and all the people were star worshipers, and he worked with them and his heart wandered and understood until he attained the path of truth and understood the line of justice from his correct understanding, and he knew that there was one God there and He was the leader of the wheel and He created everything and there is no God in everything besides Him, and he knew that the whole world was wrong and that the thing that caused them to err was that they worshiped the stars and the shapes until the truth was lost from their minds, and at the age of forty Abraham recognized his Creator, because he recognized and knew, he began to answer questions about the children of light of the Chaldeans and to hold a trial with them and to say that this is not the path of truth that you are walking on and he broke the idols and began to inform the people that it is not right to worship except the God of the world and that it is right to bow down to Him and to sacrifice and to make offerings to Him. May all future creatures know Him, and it is fitting to lose and break all the forms so that all the people will not be deceived by them, like those who imagine that there is no God but these. Since he prevailed over them with his visions, the king sought to kill him, and a miracle was performed for him, and he went out to Haran, and he began to stand and call out with a loud voice to the whole world, and to announce to them that there is one God for the whole world, and that He is worthy of worship. He would go and call out and gather the people from city to city and from kingdom to kingdom until he reached the land of Canaan, and he would call out as it is said, and there he would call out in the name of the Lord, God of the world. And since the people would gather to him and ask him about his words, he would inform each one according to his understanding until he would bring them back to the path of truth, until thousands and tens of thousands, who were members of the house of Abraham, gathered to him, and he planted this great principle in their hearts, and he composed books about it, and they informed Isaac his son. Isaac sat teaching and warning, and Isaac informed Jacob and appointed him to teach, and sat teaching and holding all those who were with him, and Jacob our father taught all his sons, and he distinguished Levi and appointed him head, and they sat in the assembly to teach the way of the Lord and to keep the commandments of Abraham, and he commanded his sons not to stop the sons of Levi from one appointed to another, so that they would not forget to learn, and the matter would grow stronger. In the sons of Jacob and those who followed them, and there was a nation in the world that knew God, until the days of Israel in Egypt were prolonged and they returned to learn their deeds and worship idols like them, except for the tribe of Levi who stood by the commandments of the fathers, and the tribe of Levi never worshiped idols, and almost nothing was the point that Abraham's planting was uprooted and the sons of Jacob returned to the error of the world and its errors, and out of God's love for us and keeping the oath to Abraham our father, He made Moses our master of all the prophets and sent them, since Moses our master prophesied and God chose Israel for an inheritance, crowned them with the commandments and informed them of the way of His worship and what will be the judgment of idolatry and all those who err after it. +/The attainment of the R'Avad/ And at the age of forty years Abraham knew his Creator. A. There is a legend of three years that says, "According to what Abraham heard in my voice, from where is the accursed?"

The process of correction that the Rambam describes here begins with the intellectual conclusion of our forefather Abraham regarding the existence of a God who created and governs the world. From the moment Abraham reaches his philosophical conclusion, he begins to spread the faith and himself serve as a conduit for the connection between God and his world. He also designates his descendants and their descendants for this purpose, in the sense of "for I know him so that he will command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord to do righteousness and justice." The Holy One does indeed reveal himself to him, but the Rambam hardly mentions this. It is probably not really important. Later in the process, a miracle occurs to him, which is a type of revelation. But the entire emphasis is on what Abraham did, and not on God's part in the process. Thus begins the chain that runs from Abraham, the "knight of faith" in the words of the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, through his sons Isaac and Jacob, Moses and the prophets (who receive very intense revelations from God), through the sages of the Oral Torah, and to this day.

But along this chain, another process occurs, which in a certain sense is in the opposite direction. If in ancient times the Blessed One spoke to the fathers and prophets, revealed Himself to them and performed miracles for them, then in our generations (especially since the end of prophecy) this no longer exists. It is not for nothing that the Sages explain that the Book of Esther, which was written in the era of the end of prophecy (the end of the exile of the First Temple, the beginning of the Second Temple), is named after the concealment ("And I, the concealer, will hide My face"). This is part of the roots of the distress that leads us to disconnect from the Blessed One. He does not exist in our world, because He is no longer revealed. We constantly ask: Where is He? and do not receive an answer. Although the disconnections of our time are not made in the pagan directions that were customary in the eras described by Maimonides, it seems that the process is similar. If we do not have miracles and revelations, then the connection with God has been severed. Our substitutes are not idols of wood and stone, but we have found other idols for ourselves.

What is the meaning of this process? Why does the Holy One, the Blessed One, disconnect from the world He created as history progresses? Many Jews expect the connection to return to its former state, for it to be revealed and shine its light on us, and for it to reconnect with us and, of course, also restore prophecy to us. But the Sages have already said, "There is nothing between the present and the days of the Messiah except the servitude of kingdoms," and "the world behaves as it has always done." So, surprisingly, it seems that even in the utopian days of the Messiah that we all expect, no change is expected in the level of connection with the Holy One. The disconnection or concealment in which we find ourselves is probably not so bad and it seems that it is not supposed to change.

If I may offer a new interpretation of this process, I believe that this stems precisely from the ascension and progress of the world. People with primitive thinking tend to think that miracles and deviations from nature clearly and distinctly point to the hand of God. Therefore, primitive societies tend to associate a divine appearance with the manipulation of natural systems, and the Ramban's words are well-known at the end of Parashat Ba, which denies the concept of nature and claims that everything in our world is a miracle. But the same words of the Ramban can be interpreted in a completely opposite way: even what we call nature is a miracle. Not because there are no laws of nature, and not because we are supposed to deny the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology, but on the contrary: because natural and constant behavior according to the laws of nature indicates the guidance of God in a much clearer way than miracles.

Miraculous behavior expresses chaos. When there are no laws in the world, then the world is random and arbitrary. Modern science is characterized by examining the normal and natural conduct of the world and not the abnormal phenomena. It seeks the regularity and not the abnormalities in it. An abnormal phenomenon interests the scientist only as a challenge to theory and general law. This is part of the same maturation process that we have undergone since ancient times. It is precisely when the world operates according to fixed laws that we can see that there is someone who leads the wheel (in Maimonides' formulation regarding Abraham our father). Conducting according to laws means that there is a manager and a legislator. Chaotic behavior actually expresses the weakness of the manager, if any, since he himself cannot manage the world in an orderly and systematic manner and therefore requires constant intervention. Furthermore, it also indicates our weakness, since God, the Almighty, is not willing to let the world and us within it operate independently, and He is forced to intervene constantly and manage the world in our place.

In ancient times, and among many today as well, the feeling was that in order to be a believer, we must reject the natural, and certainly its systematic understanding. Scientific theory (such as the Big Bang or evolution, or psychology, or the study of the Bible and the Talmud) seems to many to threaten faith and the assumption that it is God who turns the wheel. But this is childish thinking. In modern thinking, we can, and therefore are expected to, understand that the opposite is true: the laws of nature reveal the hand of God and that the world is managed and purposeful. The study of nature reveals God, not hides it. We have grown up, and we are required to think more maturely. God will not give us a hand and lead us through His chaotic world. He created laws, He established norms and values, and whoever acts according to them and within their framework, will discover God in a more mature way. The more He is required to appear, this means that we are still dependent, we have not yet matured. For us to behave well, the teacher needs to be in the classroom.

The expectation of a miraculous revelation of God is an expectation that stems from thinking that has already lost its grip, and if not – we must lose it with our own hands, and quickly. Today we are called upon to think more maturely, which understands that if there are laws, there is a legislator, and that the laws are the expression of the legislator in our world. An adult does not need miracles to understand that he stands before God. Just as an adult can understand that scientific abstractions describe reality, even though no one has seen them directly.

God has limited Himself to leave us room. So that we do not rely solely on our Father in Heaven, as this distorted and hands-off sticker says. A good parent is supposed to let his child, at least as he grows up, develop independence and gradually free himself from his childish dependence on Him. Isaiah Leibowitz has written more than once that miracles have not converted anyone. The most striking example he gives is that immediately after the Mount Sinai stand, we fell into the sin of the calf. This is the result of childish faith. Children who believe and work only because of the discipline and by virtue of the teacher's presence, sin immediately when he is not present.

This is the meaning of the historical process of 'hiding the face'. This is not a concealment but a great revelation. God does not want us to become dependent, but to stand on our own two feet. He sees us as more mature than in previous generations, and from mature people He expects not to need miracles and natural exceptions. In this, God conveys to us an important message: belief in God is not an alternative to life in the world, but rather it is the meaning of the ordinary world in which we live. Being a believer does not mean living in another world. The Torah was not given to the ministering angels. This is the world in which we live, and into which God must be brought. Religiosity is not an alternative to life, to rationality, to naturalness, but is the foundation of all of these. I believe this is the meaning of the Hasidic story about the Rebbe of Kotzk, who, when asked where God is, answered: Wherever they let Him in.

Chazal say that in the generations after prophecy, prophecy was taken away from the prophets and given to the wise. This means that the connection with God is a task that is primarily ours, not His. The meaning given to our lives and our world, the more we understand the world and manage it ourselves in the right and best way, the deeper our connection as adults and rational people with God will be. It is difficult to be an adult. It is frustrating, and it demands and imposes responsibility. Sometimes it is discouraging, and sometimes it leads to defiance and foot-tapping. We wait for a little certainty, and it is not given to us. An adult is supposed to conduct himself in the world as he is, and not expect someone to replace him, or to lead him by the hand and manage him.

For many years, the believing Jew was passive (unlike Protestant Christianity, which, ironically, in its deterministic view, calls for activism and taking one's fate into one's own hands, and of course, in contrast to secularism). It is no wonder that our return to the land was made by people who were mostly non-believers. The lesson is that we must refresh our faith. To believe means to understand, to stand on our own two feet, to be autonomous and rational, to draw conclusions and act on them. Not to let frustrations paralyze us, and not to expect some old father in heaven to replace the 'cruel' world in which we are condemned to operate.

My answer to Odia, then, is that God is present in everything we look at. He has no need or desire to be revealed, because He is revealed to us all the time. In the era of mature humanity, this revelation is not made through miracles and transcendent events, but rather through the laws and natural conduct, and through the norms and values He has given us in His Torah. Those who do not see this simply need to grow up. And those who do see this certainly do not need to cling to a childish romanticism of a miraculous connection with the transcendent.