Torah For Our Times

The late 19^th century Torah scholar Tzadok Ha’Kohen of Lublin made the following pronouncement:  “The foundation and the root of estrangement from God and the source of all sins, comes from saying that God does not supervise creation and that everything is only happenstance, without reckoning, without purpose.”

Moses adjures the Israelites by asking, “Who led you through the great and terrible wilderness of poisonous snakes and scorpions and thirst, where there was no water, who brought you water from the flint rock, who fed you in the wilderness with manna which your fathers had not known, in order to make you humble, in order to temper you, in order to ultimately make it good? (Deut. 8:15-16).  Rabbi Lawrence Kushner asks, “Everything comes from God.  What is the alternative?  That only some things come from God?  But then from where do the other things come?  The devil?  Happenstance?  Another God?  Ourselves?”

The Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, father of religious existentialism, expressed his doubts and concerns with regard to God, but also taught that one had to first take a leap of faith-assuming God plays a role in the world-as a precursor to theological criticism.  First, you have to believe!  The religious skeptic philosopher Voltaire (18^th century) used to doff his hat when passing a religious processional.  Asked whether his gesture signified his return to the faith, Voltaire would say:  “When God and I pass each other, we politely salute.  We do not speak.”  Rabbi Harold Schulweis describes the theological condition of Judaism today by noting, “The major constituency of those affiliated, nonaffiliated, and underaffiliated do not speak to God or of God.  The muteness is testimony to their coolness toward religious faith and practice.”  The fact we continue to debate the presence and role of God in the world is not to be disparaged, but celebrated.   

Logic and reason may be able to explain the explainable but have no answers for the plethora of unknowns.  It is amidst the vast universe of unknowns that the moral and ethical teachings based on faith in the One God take root, bring order to the chaotic,  joy to the joyless, and meaning to the confused.  As Abraham Joshua Heschel profoundly noted, “If God is not of supreme importance, God is of no importance!”