God, Torah, Israel Part II:  Experiencing God in Our Lives
Sermon, Rosh Hashanah Morning 5765
Rabbi Bruce Kadden

When I first considered becoming a rabbi, I came across the book:  Amen, The Diary of Rabbi Martin Siegel.  Its front cover featured a necklace with both a Star of David and a peace symbol.  And its back cover contained this provocative quote:  “I don’t believe in God but that has nothing to do with being Jewish.”  Even for the 1960s, that was a pretty radical statement for a rabbi.

When I read the book, I discovered that Rabbi Siegel was not really an atheist; rather, he was simply pointing out that Judaism is not particularly concerned with belief in God.  “A true Jew does not believe in God,” but “believes that God can be a vital force in the expression of his or her life,” he wrote.

This difference is crucial to understanding how Jews approach God.  Throughout history, Jews have questioned and challenged God, but have not questioned and challenged God’s existence.  Jews have argued with God, but did not argue about God.  Jews spoke to God, but for the most part did not speak about God, or write about God, or discuss God in polite company.

There were, of course, exceptions.  During the 12^th century, for example, when Moslems and Christians engaged in intense philosophical discourse, Jews responded with their own philosophical and theological treatises, such as Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed.  Jews were part of that culture, and works such as this one were written in response to what was happening in the surrounding culture.

For the most part, though, Jews had little to do with the surrounding culture.  They were content leading Jewish lives, observing mitzvot, and could not be bothered by theology.  No one needed a discourse on the existence of God or a theological treatise to be a good Jew.  Tevye could be intimate with God without ever studying theology.

Even through most of the past century, we Jews did not pay much attention to God.  Think back a moment on your Jewish education.  Did you ever discuss God or theological issues?  Did you ever hear a sermon about God or theology?  Do you remember reading a Jewish book about God?

Until recent years there were few Jewish books about God.  You would have to search far and wide to find a Jewish book with the word “God” in its title.  There were, of course, exceptions, such as Abraham Joshua Heschel’s classic, God in Search of Man, and Martin Buber’s I and Thou, which is very much about God and our relationship to God.  Not so coincidentally, Heschel’s and Buber’s works appealed as much to Christians as Jews.

All that has changed, as Jews have discovered God and spirituality, with such books as Harold Kushner’s Who Needs God, Arthur Waskow’s Godwrestling, Anton Laytner’s Arguing with God:  A Jewish Tradition, and Jeff Salkin’s Putting God on the Guest List, a guide to making Bar and Bat Mitzvah more meaningful.  There are also many wonderful children’s books for introducing God such as God’s Paintbrush, In God’s Name and God Said Amen, all by Sandy Sasso.

It is clear that we Jews have not only put God on the guest list, but have put God on our agenda.  We are finally ready to talk about God.  This morning, as I continue my series of sermons on God, Torah, and Israel, I want to talk about God.  I want to discuss the roles God plays in our world, according to Judaism, and reflect on how we can experience God in our lives.

There is no more appropriate time to talk about God than the High Holy Days.  The festivals of Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot all have agricultural background, historical significance, and ritual symbolism, making them easy to celebrate without being concerned about theology.  Shabbat is well, it’s Shabbat.  You don’t need God to know that it’s important to rest and refresh yourself once a week.  The story of Purim doesn’t even mention God and as for Chanukah, the rabbis may have created the story of the oil to bring God into the picture.  We can easily celebrate each of those holidays without giving God a second thought.

Not so Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.  On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur we come face to face with God.  According to the liturgy, God will decide our fate for the coming year.  God forgives us for our transgressions.  God listens to our prayers and, we pray, answers them.  Any other time of year, theology is not important for the Jew.  But on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, it is not only important, it is essential.  Without a basic understanding of God and our relationship to God, it is difficult, if not impossible to make sense of the High Holy Days.

So let me discuss three basic roles that God plays in this world, according to Judaism:  Creator, Revealer of Torah, and Redeemer.  Each is essential to our understanding of God and each is important to consider at this season.

“Hayom harat haolam – Today is the birthday of the world,” our liturgy declares.  Rosh Hashanah is indeed the birthday of the world, the anniversary of creation.  Now, that does not mean that we literally believe that God created the world 5765 years ago as described in Genesis.  Rather, it means that we affirm God’s role as the ultimate creator of the universe.  We affirm that there was a beginning (perhaps the Big Bang) and that God was responsible for that beginning.

This affirmation has important implications.  It means that we are not here by accident, but by conscious choice, and that there is meaning and purpose to our existence.  There is a reason that each of us is here on earth.  It is up to each of us to discover that purpose and meaning, the reason we are here. 

Some of us have a rather easy time discovering that purpose.  We find it at an early age and never lose our focus.  For others, it is more of a struggle.  We aren’t quite sure why we are here and what we want to do with our life.  We try one thing and get frustrated; we try something else, and it also doesn’t turn out the way we had hoped.  And some of us may have discovered that purpose without even knowing it.

A second important implication of the teaching that God is Creator is that God is ultimately responsible for everything on earth; God is the source of both good and evil.  The prophet Isaiah spoke of God as “yotzeir or uvorei choshech, oseh shalom uvorei et hara/forming light and creating darkness, making peace and creating evil.” 

Now, these words might be familiar to you; in fact, we said them this morning in our worship service, with one significant change.  When the rabbis composed the morning prayer of creation, the Yotzer, they included Isaiah’s words, but apparently didn’t want Jews to praise God each day for creating evil.  They therefore changed the word “ra/evil” to the word “hakol/everything.”  Now, “everything” includes “evil,” but it rolls off the tongue a lot easier, and more importantly, does not present us with such a theological challenge each time we recite this prayer.

Nevertheless, we cannot ignore the teaching that God is ultimately responsible for both good and evil.  We do not attribute evil to another source of power as, for example, the Zoroastrian’s did.  Rather, implicit in our affirmation of one God is the idea that God is ultimately responsible for all that is here.

However, that teaching does not necessarily mean that God directly causes everything that happens, that God is responsible for every detail, that God decides who will get cancer and who will be healthy, who will get into an accident and who will avoid an accident, who will be on a plane that crashes and who will not.

God has given us free will, which allows us to make good choices and bad choices.  No one sitting here today has always made the right choice.  We have all, at one time or another made a poor choice.  Hopefully, as we mature, we learn from the choices we make and make fewer poor choices.  One of the purposes of these High Holy Days is to think about the choices we made this past year, make amends for the poor choices we have made, and commit ourselves to making the right choices during the coming year.

Our poor choices can have unfortunate consequences for us, and sometimes for others.  We are called upon at this time of year to ask forgiveness of those that we have harmed intentionally or unintentionally and to be forgiving when someone asks our forgiveness.

Poor choices account for only some of the evil in this world; diseases and so-called natural disasters also cause significant pain and suffering.  However, we need not blame God for such occurrences.  For although God indeed created a world in which hurricanes and tornadoes and earthquakes occur, that does not mean that God intended for a particular disaster to occur in a specific place at a specific time.  And although God indeed created a world with cancer and other diseases, it does not mean that God intended for a certain person to be afflicted with a certain disease.

Indeed, some argue that God created an imperfect world, so that we would have the opportunities to be co-creators and work to perfect the world.  Each of us can make the world a better place by reaching out and helping those in need, by giving tzedakah, by doing g’milut chasadim, acts of lovingkindness.  God created a great and wonderful world, but a world that is far from perfect.  We can affirm God as the creator by committing ourselves to be partners with God in the ongoing creation of this world.

The second role that God plays in the world, according to Judaism, is revealer of Torah.  As Jews, we acknowledge that God has provided us with a guide to living our lives, a source of Divine wisdom, our Torah. 

Last night I discussed the important role that Torah plays in the life of our community, its central place in Judaism.  We are Jews because we affirm that the Torah is the prism through which we view our world, the basis on which we decide what is right and what is wrong, the foundation of our teachings. 

Revelation began when Abram responded to God’s call to leave his home and kin to go to a land that God would show him.  It continued as Abraham and Sarah and their descendants encountered the Divine as they faced the many challenges of their lives and when God appeared to Moses in a burning bush and told him to return to Egypt to lead the people out from Pharaoh’s oppressive grip.  It continued as the Israelites left Egypt, and with the Egyptian’s in hot pursuit, crossed the Sea of Reeds to celebrate their freedom.  And it reached its climax when Moses and the Israelites encountered God at Mount Sinai and the people responded to God’s offer of the Torah with the affirmation:  “na’aseh v’nishmah, we will do and we will obey.” 

Revelation did not end at Sinai, but has continued throughout our people’s history as each generation encountered God and developed teachings and traditions as a result of that encounter.  And revelation continues today as we encounter God and record our version of that encounter in prose and poetry, in songs and art.

Thus, when we speak of God as Revealer of Torah, we affirm that we can access the teachings contained in the Torah and made manifest to our people throughout history.

The third role that God plays in the world, according to Judaism, is Redeemer.  We believe that ultimately God, with our help, will redeem the world.  We affirm that one day poverty and injustice, hatred and bigotry will be eliminated.  We assert that the world the prophets envisioned, a world of peace and justice, will one day be realized.

God’s role as redeemer is found throughout scripture.  In our Torah reading this morning, Sarah gets jealous of Hagar and her son Ishmael, and demands that Abraham cast them out of his house.  With God’s blessing, Abraham sends them away with bread and water for the journey.

But when the water ran out, Hagar could not bear to see her son die, so she left him under one of the bushes and walked away.  “And God heard the cry of the boy, and an angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, ‘What troubles you, Hagar?  Fear not, for God has heeded the cry of the boy where he is…’” (Genesis 21:17).  God saves Ishmael from certain death, and affirms that he will be the father of a great nation.

God’s role as redeemer is thus established.  It is a role most dramatically exhibited when God frees the people from Egypt, a story we relive each year at Passover.  It is a story familiar to all of us, but there is one aspect of the story that we often don’t appreciate.  When God decided to redeem the people from slavery God theoretically could have taken the people up in one fell swoop and brought them to freedom across the sea.

But instead God appeared to Moses and told him to go to Pharaoh.  Moses is reluctant and anticipates that the people won’t listen to him.  Nevertheless, God insists that Moses go to Pharaoh.  Redemption is not a “one-God show” so to speak.  Rather, redemption is a partnership between God and human beings.  God provides the inspiration, the means of redemption, and it is up to us to respond to that inspiration and use the tools to redeem our world.

This important role is affirmed in the first of the Ten Commandments when God says:  “I am Adonai, your God, who led you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage” (Exodus 20:2).  The first thing that God wants us to know, the way that God chooses to be identified in this central teaching, is as the God who redeemed Israel from oppression.

We affirm God’s roles as Creator, Revealer of Torah and Redeemer at each worship service when we recite the Sh’ma and its blessings.  The first blessing before the Sh’ma, the Maariv Aravim in the evening and the Yotzer Or in the morning, affirms God’s role as creator.  The next blessing, Ahavat Olam in the evening and Ahavah Rabbah in the morning, affirms that God’s love for us is reflected in the gift of Torah.  And the blessing after the Sh’ma, Emet V’emunah in the evening and Emet V’yatziv in the morning, celebrates God’s role as redeemer as exemplified in the Exodus from Egypt.  Thus, each time we recite these prayers, we affirm that God is Creator, Revealer of Torah, and Redeemer.

Understanding that God is Creator, Revealer of Torah and Redeemer, is important, but it is not enough.  For each of us must also develop a relationship with God.  Each of us must be open to experiencing God.  Unfortunately, there is no easy formula, no simple process, no tried and true blueprint for experiencing God. 

In the Avot/Imahot prayer, we speak of the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God of Sarah, the God of Rebecca, the God of Leah and the God of Rachel, rather than simply saying the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Leah and Rachel.  Why this redundancy?  Why do we repeat “God of” before each ancestor?  To teach us that each of our ancestors had a unique relationship with God, that each one experienced God in a different way. 

Each of us will experience God differently.  Each of us will have a unique relationship with God.  My relationship with God will be different than yours.  My experience of God will be unique, as will yours. 

I have experienced God at the birth of our children.  I have experienced God in the words of a seriously ill woman who accepted that she would die.  I have experienced God serving a meal to a homeless man at a soup kitchen.  I have experienced God watching a brilliant sunset.  I have experienced God marching in Washington D.C. for freedom for Soviet Jews and in sitting with those Jews in their apartments in Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev, listening to their incredible stories of courage and perseverance in the face of persecution.  I have experienced God sitting in a sealed room in Israel wearing a gas mask and celebrating the airlift of 10,000 Ethiopian Jews.  I experienced God when I was ordained as a rabbi and I most recently experienced God standing before you last Shabbat, accepting the Torah as your rabbi.

Now, I know what many of you are thinking:  “You are a rabbi.  It is easy for you to experience God.”  Not so!  I am by nature very much a rationalist and would rather approach matters intellectually than spiritually.  Some of you may be afflicted with the same “disease,” or should I say “dis-ease,” not being comfortable with our emotions and feelings.

What might be different about me is that I have recognized this tendency and have worked on changing it.  I have tried to stop thinking and start feeling.  I have tried to identify places and moments in time which are conducive to experiencing God.  And I have tried to pay attention to these experiences.

Let me share with you what I have learned, so that you too might be able to experience God.

Each of us has opportunities to experience God on a daily basis.  Some of us will more readily experience God through nature.  We live in one of the most beautiful places in the country with Puget Sound, Mount Rainier, and the Olympic National Park virtually at our doorstep.  Taking the opportunity to enjoy the beauty of these places can allow one to experience God.  Just watching a sunset or the steady rain or looking up at the stars away from the city lights offers us the opportunity to experience the magnificence of creation.

Some of us will more readily experience God through reaching out to others, doing acts of lovingkindness.  Each of us is created in God’s image, and when we interact with our fellow human beings we have the opportunity to experience the spark of the Divine in the other. 

Some of us will more readily experience God through noticing the miracles of everyday life.  One of the most profound biblical teachings about God is found in the book of Kings, in the story of Elijah.  After slaying the prophets of Baal, Elijah is frightened of retaliation and escapes to a cave at Horeb.  God appears to him and tells him to stand outside the cave.  “And behold, God passed by and a great and mighty wind split mountains and shattered rocks before God; but God was not in the wind.  And after the wind, an earthquake, but God was not in the earthquake.  And after the earthquake, fire, but God was not in the fire.  And after the fire a still, small voice” (I Kings 19:11-12).

Too often we assume that God is found in the great and mighty forces of nature, rather than deep within the recesses of our hearts.  Too often we expect God to perform miracles such as the parting of the sea and forget that God is in the miracles of everyday life. 

Each day there are miracles all around us:  no, the sun doesn’t stand still, but it rises, makes its way across the sky and sets.  No, the waters of the seas don’t part, but the tides regularly go in and out and waves break incessantly on the shores. 

Each day thousands of babies are born; thousands of children say their first words; thousands of other children take their first steps.  Almost everything we need to know about experiencing God, we can learn from young children who truly appreciate the miracles of everyday life. 

The key to each of these ways of experiencing God is that we have to pay attention.  We have to take notice.  We have to be aware.

The word Sh’ma” is usually translated as “hear” or “listen.”  Lisabeth Kaplan, the cantorial soloist from Salinas who was up here last weekend for my installation, likes to translate Sh’ma as “pay attention.”  Pay attention to the beauty of nature.  Pay attention to your fellow human beings in need.  Pay attention to the miracles of everyday life.

I’m sure you have heard the question, “If a tree falls in the forest, but no one is there, does it make a sound?”  The religious version of that question is “If there is a miracle, but no one notices, did it really occur.

We lead incredibly busy lives, often going from one thing to another without catching our breath.  Many of us don’t stop going from the time we wake up until we fall into bed at night.  We don’t take time to experience life.  We are too busy.  If a miracle occurred in our presence, we would probably miss it.

I don’t believe that Moses was the first person to see the burning bush.  I think that there were many people who passed by, barely noticing it.  Moses just happened to be the first one to really pay attention and recognize that it was not just another burning bush, but that this bush contained the presence of God.  Perhaps God didn’t know that Moses was the right person for the job of leading the Jews out of Egypt until Moses recognized God’s presence in the bush. 

Each and every day we pas by many “burning bushes” and don’t realize it.  We encounter many miracles waiting to be discovered, and don’t stop.  We miss the opportunity to encounter God, because we are too busy to pay attention.

Rosh Hashanah is a time to being anew, to turn from our old ways and return to the right path.  Let us commit ourselves to slowing down, to taking notice, to paying attention to the world around us.  Let us make the effort to experience the miracles of every day life.  Let us open ourselves to experiencing God.

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