Kol Nidre, 5769, 10.8.08
We are about to begin our davenning, our prayers for the holiest day of our year. In all of our prayers we again and again ask God to help us identify our transgressions, be able to let go of them, help us change and become the best people we can be and find a way to tell people we have hurt how sorry we are. I wonder how many of us have an image of God in mind as we are saying these prayers, a God who will actually hear and respond to them. I know that many of us believe that God has the power to grant our requests but I’m equally aware that others simply do not.
For most Jews the understanding of God stopped evolving when we were teenagers, after our Bar or Bat Mitzvah or our Confirmation. As we grew older, we didn’t think much about God at all; or for that matter about Jewish history, philosophy or theology. Instead we retained the vision of God as portrayed in the Bible, all seeing, all knowing, and all doing. While that God is comforting to believe in; as we grow older, our experience of how the world works may not fit with that image of God.
The understanding of God has evolved through the last 3000 years in Jewish thought but even so there is no such thing as a definitive Jewish understanding of God. As I spell out that evolution, I’m hoping each of us can see some parts of the God we believe in.
I know there some here tonight who believe that because we cannot physically see or touch God, then He could not possibly exist. To those people I would like to point out the concept of love. We cannot see Love, we cannot pin it down, we cannot even predict with any accuracy when or if we will feel love but we know very clearly that love exists. We can use our imperfect human words to explain love but it will never express the completeness of how we feel love. God is very much like that and as with love, the best way to describe God is through poetry and metaphor. For those who do not think that God exists, please allow yourself to be open to one of these descriptions.
There are two basic understandings of God throughout the ages. The first is God as transcendent being; God who is far away from us, filling us with awe and wonder as we behold God’s works. The second is God as immanent being, very close to us, possibly even inside of us, with whom we may feel a regular connection.
Judaism in general believes that God is the embodiment of holiness, righteousness, justice, wisdom, morality and compassion. It is our task to make those qualities tangible through our mitzvot, our commandments. The ultimate purpose of doing mitzvot is to feel connected to God, to our community, to the deepest part of ourselves that wants to change and grow, no matter how hard that may be.
All people are equal in the eyes of God. Even though we can distinguish people by how they look, where they live, how much education or money they have, God does not let those criteria affect how He sees each person. All are created in God’s image and all are equally worthy.
It’s ironic that God is not even a name; it’s more of a job description. The ultimate name for God is Yod Hay Vav Hay, a combination of the past, present and future of the Hebrew verb to be. God always was, God is now and God always will be. It is from this beginning that we can look at the ways God has been seen through the ages.
God in Hebrew Bible
There fours visions of God in our Bible.
God is Creator who brings order out of chaos in an effortless manner.
God makes covenants with his people.
God as Commander gave us Jewish law which we honor before any other set of laws and is non-negotiable.
And finally God is redeemer. He brought the Israelites out of slavery, He will bring all Jews back to Israel from the four corners of the earth.
God in Talmud
Between 200 before the Common Era and 700 of the Common Era, the rabbis wrote in the Talmud how we should follow the Torah laws. They created observances only hinted at in the Torah itself. In addition to seeing God as a Giver of commandments, they also saw Him as HaMakom, the immanent aspect of God and as Shamayim, the Heavens, the transcendent aspect.
The rabbis saw God as a compassionate, not punitive law giver. It was out of God’s love for us that He gave us these laws so that we could live righteous and holy lives.
It was also form this time that we gained the concept of God as Shekhina, the indwelling presence of God in our lives.
God in Midrash
The God of Midrash, the stories the rabbis told to fill in the missing pieces in the Torah is the first God that gives us meaning in our lives. When Rebekkah prays to God to relieve the pain of her children fighting in body, God comforts her by saying that she will give birth to two great nations. She does not just have to live through pain but out of it she will create new nations. The midrashim also tell us that we are partners with God in co-creating our world.
God in Medieval Jewish Philosophy
Rambam, who lived in 12th century Spain, represents the rational understanding of God from the Middle Ages. He said that all descriptions of God in the Bible are figurative. God really didn’t free the Israelites from Egypt with a strong hand and an outstretched arm. Those were simply metaphors so that humans could understand the strength and glory of God in human terms. Rambam also believed that because God was unknowable by humans, we could describe Him only by what he is not. We can not say that God is wise but that God’s actions are wise.
God in Hassidut
By the 18th century we have a very different vision of God created by the Baal Shem Tov, founder of the Hassidic movement. It brought God from the rational, transcendent vision of the Middle Ages into a more mystical, immanent relationship with us.
The Hassids, meaning Pious Ones, believe that as God was creating the world, He intentionally shattered the vessel containing His light. These shards of light were scattered everywhere, each one becoming a being. Our goal is to bring these shards back together by following mitzvot to recreate the wholeness of the universe. When that happens, the physical world will disappear and the primordial divine universe will be restored.
The Hassids follow the mitzvot as a way to attain what they yearn for, an intimate relationship with God. This is the way to experience God until the shards are brought together and all is unified.
God in Modern Jewish Thought
As we get to our Modern times, the ways of seeing God have multiplied. In one view God is a process, not a being. We are not like God, rather we do Godly acts. In this vision our mitzvot are folkways not binding laws; but folkways that should be followed because they are the essence of the identity of the Jewish people. An extension of this belief is that God’s purpose is to overcome evil and create goodness;
In another vision our relationship with God is the most important one that we have. When we are in true relationship with God, we experience being One with Him, not even knowing it is happening. As soon as we become aware of the Oneness, we are suddenly observing it from outside of it.
The most radical vision of our modern times comes from Abraham Joshua Heschel who believed that in experiencing God, we experience the radical amazement at what God has created. We connect to God through nature, Torah and sacred acts. After Heschel marched with Martin Luther King in 1963, his colleagues at JTS rebuked him. ‘You are supposed to be praying,’ they told him. Heschel replied, ‘I was praying, with my feet.’ He believed we could experience the mystery of God by working to make holy changes in our world.
Perhaps we can relate to at least one of these descriptions of how God has been seen and experienced over the last 3000 years. I hope there is a vision of God as immanent or transcendent; as being or process; rational or mystical for each of us to focus on through our prayers for this Yom Kippur.
However we each envision God, that envisioning is an active task, not a passive one. We are each responsible for growing spiritually, for understanding Jewish law and practice, for creating a holy community and for keeping God as close to us as possible as we move through our days and our lives.
May each of us find our inspiration for our prayers and may we each have an easy fast.
Gmar Hatima tova, may we be signed and sealed in the Book of Life.