Searching for God in the World

A Decade of “Be’er” – 5773

I found this in some café, around the time I was at Be’er.

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

or where my heart was when my eyes came to rest on this slip of paper.

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

Once every few months, this question resurfaces and meets me.

Out of everyday life I am pulled up to stand before it, small and wondering.

And each time, something different is on my lips.

There are days when I defy it, stamping both feet in the face of that paralyzing pronouncement.

 And there are times when I accept the verdict humbly, holding out both hands to receive a little sweetness and certainty.

There are times when I am just on the way to finding,

and there are times when, once I am lost, I am lost.

Anyone with any information about His whereabouts,

anyone with any information.

What am I really asking? Perhaps I have gone a bit too far in asking for an answer, but it seems to me that there is no one who does not feel something upon encountering a statement like this. The search, apparently, will always be our lot—and the answer?

Odia, Be’er 5

With God’s help

A Response to Odia

Miky Abraham

Given my mode of thought and my personal inclinations toward philosophy and logic, the first answer that comes to mind to Odia’s question lies in the philosophical sphere. What could be more natural than to offer one proof or another for the existence of God (and indeed, in my opinion, there are very good proofs for this) and leave it at that. But my feeling, on reading her words, was that the distress expressed there is not rooted in the question of proof, or in the intellectual plane at all, but rather in the existential plane. She expects God to reveal Himself or to create some sort of contact with her/us—to stop hiding and vanishing into the shimmering recesses of concealment.

So what does one do with such a good and honest question? Where does one find God? Like a Jew, I will answer a question with a question: how would we expect Him to reveal Himself to us, or to make contact with us? Are we waiting for open miracles? Or for some kind of speech from Him to us, in the sense of Would that all the Lord's people were prophets (Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets)? At Odia’s age, I too carried around a similar expectation: if only I could be given a little certainty. Why are we condemned to doubt, to decision-making, and to action under conditions of uncertainty?

Another question we must ask ourselves: is the task really laid entirely on God’s “shoulders”? Perhaps He expects an awakening from below, and then He will fulfill in us As in water, face answers to face (as face answers to face in water). This question is no less difficult and piercing: what are we doing in order to create this connection with God? It is important to understand that here the distinction mentioned above between the philosophical difficulty and the existential one becomes even sharper. If Odia’s difficulty were on the philosophical plane—that of a person who does not know whether God really exists—then it is indeed reasonable to assume that the task lies with God and not with the human being. So long as I do not know that He exists, it is not reasonable that He can expect something of me or impose tasks on me. But if the difficulty is existential, then it arises within a philosophical and existential framework of faith. Even if I believe on the philosophical plane, I still expect a connection with God, or His self-revelation to me. But here it is truly important to make sure that I too am doing what is incumbent upon me for such a connection to exist. As our Sages said: it takes two to tango (ibid., ibid.). And yet—where does one find Him? Even if the task is mine, what am I to do?

Maimonides devotes chapter 1 of his Laws of Idolatry to the beginnings of the development of idolatry, and afterward to a description (drawn from rabbinic midrashim) of Abraham our patriarch discovering God. Because of the importance of these words for our purposes, I will quote the entire chapter here:

A. In the days of Enosh, people fell into a great error, and the counsel of the wise men of that generation was foolish; Enosh himself was among those who erred. This was their mistake: they said, since God created these stars and spheres to govern the world, placed them on high, apportioned honor to them, and they are attendants who minister before Him, they are worthy of being praised, glorified, and honored. And this is the will of God, blessed be He: to magnify and honor those whom He has magnified and honored, just as a king wishes to honor those who stand before him, and that is the king's honor. Once this idea entered their hearts, they began to build temples for the stars, to offer them sacrifices, to praise and glorify them with words, and to bow down to them, in order thereby to attain the Creator's will according to their evil understanding. This was the essence of idolatry. And this is what its worshippers, who knew its basis, would say—not that they claimed there is no God except this star. This is what Jeremiah meant when he said, 'Who would not fear You, O King of the nations? For it befits You; for among all the wise of the nations and in all their kingdoms there is none like You. But in one thing they are brutish and foolish: the instruction of vanities is but wood'—that is, everyone knows that You alone are God, but their error and folly is that they imagine this vanity is Your will..

B. After many days had passed, false prophets arose among mankind and said that God had commanded them, saying: Worship this particular star, or all the stars; offer to it such-and-such sacrifices and libations; build for it a temple; and make its image so that all the people—women, children, and the rest of the common folk—may bow down to it. He would present them with a form that he had invented in his own mind and say, 'This is the image of that particular star which was made known to me in prophecy.' In this way they began making images in temples, under trees, on mountaintops, and on hills. People would gather and bow down to them, and they would tell all the people that this image does good and evil and is worthy of worship and reverence. Their priests would tell them that through this worship they would multiply and prosper: do such-and-such, and do not do such-and-such. Then other liars arose and said that the star itself, or the sphere, or the angel had spoken with them and told them, 'Worship me in such-and-such a way,' and informed them of its mode of worship: do this, and do not do that. This practice spread throughout the whole world—to worship images through differing rites, to offer them sacrifices, and to bow down to them. As the days went on, the glorious and awesome Name was forgotten from the mouths of all living beings and from their minds, and they no longer recognized Him. Thus all the common people, the women and the children, knew only the image of wood and stone and the stone temple in which they had been trained from childhood to bow down to it, worship it, and swear by its name. And even the wise among them—such as their priests and the like—imagined that there was no god except the stars and spheres for whose sake and in whose likeness these images had been made. But the Rock of the universe—there was no one who recognized Him or knew Him except for isolated individuals in the world, such as Enoch, Methuselah, Noah, Shem, and Eber. And in this way the world continued to turn until the pillar of the world was born—our patriarch Abraham..

C. Once this mighty one was weaned, he began to roam in his mind while still a child. He began to think day and night and wonder: How is it possible that this sphere should always move without having a mover? And who causes it to turn? For it cannot possibly turn itself. He had no teacher and no one to inform him of anything; rather, he was sunk in Ur of the Chaldeans among foolish idolaters, and his father and mother and all the people were idol worshippers—and he worshipped with them. But his heart kept searching and understanding until he attained the path of truth and grasped the line of justice through his sound understanding. He knew that there is one God, that He guides the sphere, that He created everything, and that among all that exists there is no god besides Him. He realized that the entire world was in error, and that what had caused them to err was their worship of the stars and images, until the truth had perished from their minds. And Abraham recognized his Creator at the age of forty. Once he came to know and understand, he began answering the people of Ur of the Chaldeans and debating with them, saying that this was not the path of truth they were following. He smashed the idols and began making known to the people that it is fitting to worship only the God of the world; to Him alone it is fitting to bow down, to offer sacrifices, and to pour libations, so that all creatures yet to come may know Him. It is also fitting to destroy and smash all the images, so that all the people should not err through them as these people do, imagining that there is no god but these. Once he overcame them by his proofs, the king sought to kill him; a miracle was performed for him, and he left for Haran. Then he began to stand and proclaim in a loud voice to the whole world that there is one God for the entire world, and Him alone it is fitting to worship. He went about calling out and gathering people from city to city and from kingdom to kingdom until he reached the land of Canaan—still proclaiming, as it is said: 'And he called there in the name of the Lord, God of the world.' When people gathered around him and asked him about his words, he would explain to each and every one according to his capacity until he brought him back to the path of truth, until thousands and tens of thousands gathered to him. These were the members of Abraham's household. He implanted this great principle in their hearts, composed books about it, and taught it to his son Isaac. Isaac sat teaching and warning others. Isaac taught Jacob and appointed him to teach, and he sat teaching and strengthening all who joined him. Our patriarch Jacob taught all his sons; he set Levi apart, appointed him as head, and placed him in a study hall to teach the way of God and to keep the commandments of Abraham. He instructed his sons that the office should never depart from the descendants of Levi, with one appointee succeeding another, so that the teaching would not be forgotten. This continued to grow stronger among the children of Jacob and those who joined them, and there came into being in the world a nation that knew the Lord. But when Israel's days in Egypt grew long, they reverted to learning the practices of the Egyptians and worshipping stars as they did, except for the tribe of Levi, which remained faithful to the commandment of the patriarchs. The tribe of Levi never worshipped idols. And in but a short while, the principle planted by Abraham was nearly uprooted, and the children of Jacob would have returned to the errors and delusions of the world. But because of the Lord's love for us, and because He kept the oath made to our patriarch Abraham, He appointed Moses our teacher, the master of all the prophets, and sent him. Once Moses our teacher prophesied, and the Lord chose Israel as His inheritance, He crowned them with commandments and made known to them the way He is to be worshipped and what the law is regarding idolatry and all who go astray after it.
+/Raavad's gloss/ 'And Abraham recognized his Creator at the age of forty.' Abraham said: There is an aggadic tradition that he was three years old, as it is said, 'Because Abraham obeyed My voice'—the numerical value of ekev indicates this.

The corrective process that Maimonides describes here begins with Abraham our patriarch’s intellectual conclusion about the existence of God, who created and governs the world. From the moment Abraham arrives at his philosophical conclusion, he begins to spread faith and to serve as a conduit for the connection between God and His world. He assigns this task as well to his descendants and their descendants, in the sense of For I have known him, so that he may command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, doing righteousness and justice. God does indeed reveal Himself to him, but Maimonides scarcely mentions this. Apparently it is not all that important. Later in the process a miracle occurs for him, which is a kind of revelation. But the entire emphasis is on what Abraham did, not on God’s part in the process. Thus begins the chain nourished by Abraham our patriarch, the “knight of faith,” in the phrase of the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, through his sons Isaac and Jacob, Moses our teacher and the prophets (who are granted very intense revelations of God), through the sages of the Oral Torah, down to our own day.

But along this chain another process takes place, one that in a certain sense runs in the opposite direction. If in ancient days God would speak with the patriarchs and the prophets, reveal Himself to them, and perform miracles for them, then in our generations (especially since the end of prophecy) this no longer exists. It is no accident that the Sages explain that the Scroll of Esther, written in the age of the end of prophecy (the end of the First Temple exile, the beginning of the Second Temple period), takes its name from concealment—And I will surely hide My face (I will surely hide My face). This is part of the root of the distress that leads us to disconnect from God. He is absent from our world, because He no longer reveals Himself. We keep asking: where is He? and we receive no answer. True, the disconnections of our day do not head in the pagan directions common in the ages Maimonides describes, but the process seems similar. If we have no miracles and revelations, then the connection with God has been severed. Our substitutes are not idols of wood and stone, but we have found ourselves other idols.

What is the meaning of this process? Why does God, as history advances, withdraw from the world He created? Many Jews await the restoration of that connection to its earlier condition: that He reveal Himself and shine His light upon us, that He return to relating to us, and of course restore prophecy to us as well. But the Sages already said The only difference between this world and the days of the Messiah is subjugation to foreign kingdoms alone (the only difference between this world and the messianic days is subjugation to foreign rule), and The world follows its natural course (the world follows its ordinary course). Astonishingly enough, it seems that even in the utopian messianic days for which we all long, no change is expected on the plane of our relation to God. The disconnection, or concealment, in which we live is apparently not so bad, and it seems that it is not meant to change.

If I may offer a new interpretation of this process, I think it stems precisely from the world’s elevation and progress. People with primitive ways of thinking tend to think that miracles and departures from nature point clearly and sharply to the hand of God. Therefore, in primitive societies there is a tendency to associate divine manifestation with the suspension of the natural order, and the well-known words of Nachmanides at the end of Parashat Bo deny the very concept of nature and claim that everything in our world is miracles. But those same words of Nachmanides 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 regular conduct according to the laws of nature points to God’s governance far more clearly than miracles do.

Miraculous conduct expresses chaos. When there are no laws in the world, the world is random and arbitrary. Modern science is characterized by examining the regular and natural conduct of the world, not anomalous phenomena. It seeks lawfulness, not deviations from it. An anomalous phenomenon interests the scientist only as a challenge to the theory and the general law. This is part of the same process of maturation that we have undergone since ancient times. Precisely when the world proceeds according to fixed laws, we can see that there is Someone guiding the sphere (in Maimonides’ formulation regarding Abraham our patriarch). Conduct according to laws means that there is a ruler and a lawgiver. Chaotic conduct, by contrast, expresses the weakness of the ruler, if there is one at all, since he himself cannot manage the world in an orderly and systematic way and therefore requires constant intervention. Moreover, this points to our weakness as well, because God is not willing to let the world—and us within it—conduct itself independently, and He is forced to intervene all the time and run the world in our place.

In ancient times, and for many even today, the feeling was that in order to be a believer we must reject the natural, and certainly its systematic understanding. A scientific theory (such as the Big Bang or evolution, or psychology, or the academic study of the Bible and the Talmud) seems to many to threaten faith and the assumption that God is the One who turns the wheel. But this is childish thinking. In modern thought we can—and therefore are also expected to—understand that the opposite is true: the laws of nature reveal God’s hand and the fact that the world is governed and purposeful. The investigation of nature reveals the divine; it does not hide it. We have matured, and more adult thinking is now required of us. God will not take us by the hand and lead us through His chaotic world. He created laws, He established norms and values, and whoever lives by them and within their framework will discover God in a more mature way. The more He is required to appear, the more it means that we are still dependent, that we still have not grown up. For us to behave nicely, the teacher has to be in the classroom.

The expectation of a miraculous revelation of God is rooted in a mode of thought that has already outlived its usefulness—and if not, then we must make it do so with our own hands, and quickly. Today we are called upon to think more maturely, to understand that if there are laws, there is a lawgiver, and that the laws themselves are the very expression of the lawgiver in our world. An adult does not need miracles in order to understand that he stands before God, just as an adult can understand that scientific abstractions describe reality even though no one has ever seen them directly.

God withdrew Himself to leave room for us. So that we would not rely only on our Father in heaven, as that distorted, enervating bumper-sticker slogan would have it. A good parent is supposed to allow his child, at least when the child matures, to develop independence and gradually free himself from childish dependence on the parent. Yeshayahu Leibowitz wrote more than once that miracles never led anyone to repentance. The most striking example he gives is that immediately after the revelation at Mount Sinai we fell into the sin of the Golden Calf. This is a result of childish faith. Children who believe and obey only because of discipline and by virtue of the teacher’s presence sin the moment he is absent.

This is the meaning of the historical process of “divine hiddenness.” It is not concealment but a great revelation. God does not want us to develop dependence; He wants us to stand on our own feet. He regards us as more mature than earlier generations, and from mature people He expects that they not require miracles and departures from nature. In this God conveys an important message to us: faith in God is not an alternative to life in the world; it is the meaning of the ordinary world in which we live. To be a believer does not mean living in another world. The Torah was not given to the ministering angels (the Torah was not given to ministering angels). This is the world in which we live, and it is into it that God must be brought. Religious life is not an alternative to life, to rationality, or to naturalness; it is the foundation of them all. It seems to me that this is the meaning of the Hasidic story about the Kotzk Rebbe: when they asked him where God is to be found, he answered: wherever one lets Him in.

The Sages say that in the generations after prophecy, prophecy was taken from the prophets and given to the sages. The meaning of this is that the connection with God is a task that rests primarily on us and not on Him. To the extent that we understand the world and manage it ourselves in a proper and better way, our connection—as mature and rational people—to God will deepen. It is hard to be an adult. It is frustrating, and it demands responsibility and imposes it. Sometimes it is despairing, and sometimes it leads to defiance and foot-stamping. We wait for a bit of certainty, and it is not given to us. An adult is supposed to conduct himself in the world as it 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 (in contrast to Protestant Christianity, which, ironically, specifically within a deterministic outlook calls for activism and taking fate into one’s own hands, and of course in contrast to secularism). It is hardly surprising that our return to the Land was carried out mainly by people who were, for the most part, non-believers. The lesson is that we must refresh our faith. To believe means to understand, to stand on our own feet, to be autonomous and rational, to draw conclusions and act upon them. Not to let frustrations paralyze us, and not to wait for some old father in heaven who will come and change the “cruel” world for us—the world within which we are condemned to act.

My answer to Odia, then, is that God is present in everything we look at. He has neither need nor desire to reveal Himself, because He is revealed before us all the time. In an age of mature humanity, that revelation does not take place through miracles and transcendent events, but through law and the natural order, and through the norms and values that He gave us in His Torah. Those who do not see this simply need to grow up. And those who do see it certainly have no need to luxuriate in the childish romanticism of a miraculous connection with the transcendent.