Q&A: Where Is God Found??
Where Is God Found??
Question
Hello,
A. People commonly say, based on the Sages, that after a righteous person dies he merits to delight in God (the Garden of Eden), or the opposite. Does the Rabbi have any idea what led them to think so?
After all, I don’t encounter God in this world (maybe only through intellectual speculations); perhaps there too, in the state of the soul without a body, He also is not present?
B. What does the Rabbi think about Yuval Steinitz’s book “A Logical Missile to God and Back”? Is it worth reading, or is it nonsense?
Answer
A. All the speculations about what happens in the world beyond seem to me baseless. Nor do I know of any indications that these things came by tradition from Sinai. So I don’t deal with them either.
B. Steinitz’s books are useful for provoking thought and raising various angles that are worth considering, mainly for beginners who are in a process of philosophical maturation. But when you mature, you understand that he is what they call in yeshivas a “laykhter”—meaning that on more careful reading, his arguments, including those that seem brilliant and logical, are shaky, and many of them don’t hold water. So I definitely recommend reading all his books critically.
Discussion on Answer
Well, they attribute almost anything that isn’t written down to Rabbi Heshel (and let this be your rule of thumb: every “the world asks” is Rabbi Rabbi Heshel. One of the famous ones is the well-known difficulty in the Mishnah at the beginning of Bava Kamma. I think it appears there in Chanukat HaTorah). Much like attributing all witty stories to Rabbi Yonatan Eybeschutz.
And I’ll add two more grains, by way of association:
1. So-and-so came to the Reform synagogue on the holiday and found it closed. On the door was a sign: Closed for the holidays.
2. The priest was preaching in church and saw opposite him his Jewish friend sitting on the bench and listening very attentively. He stopped and asked: All the Jews present here, please leave. The Jew doesn’t respond. He asks again and again, and the fellow does not answer. After the priest asked for the tenth time, the Jew got up, took the statue of that man from the wall, and said to him: Listen, my friend, they don’t want us here. He took it and left.
In connection with the question “Where is God found”—two nice sayings:
Once, Rabbi Mendel of Kotzk turned to several distinguished people and asked: “Where is God found?” The men laughed and answered: “Everywhere—for it is said, ‘The whole earth is full of His glory’!” The rabbi said: “The Holy One, blessed be He, is found wherever people let Him in.”
Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev, the defender of Israel, met a small child and said to him: “I’ll give you a coin if you tell me where God is.” The child answered him: “I’ll give you two coins, and you tell me where He is not.”
(These sayings are attributed in different ways. The second is also attributed to Rabbi Heshel of Krakow, in his childhood).