Erev Rosh Hashanah 2022 at Congregation Agudas Achim
Ways of Relating to God and Holiness
Rabbi Talya Weisbard Shalem
Shanah Tovah! In preparation for leading these services, I have been thinking a lot about the liturgy, and especially how God-focused many of the High Holiday prayers are, and contemplating how best I can help everyone here to find their own way to relate to both the prayers and the mention of God on every page. I decided to focus on this question throughout our High Holiday services, both in my teachings, and the English readings throughout all our services. Tomorrow I will talk more about approaches to prayer itself, and that is what I asked our three members to talk about, Rosanna Wertheimer, Myra Paull, and Ora Szekely.
Tonight I would like to offer a few models of ways to think about God, from the more emotive world of literature.
First, a well-known story among rabbis is the story of the person who comes to see the rabbi, desperate to tell them that they don’t believe in God. When the rabbi asks them to describe the God they don’t believe in, they describe, as you might imagine, a being on a throne in heaven watching and judging all, perhaps even all-knowing and all-powerful. The rabbi responds, “I don’t believe in that God either!”
And now a story about a story. As I was writing this sermon, I tried to track down the origin of this story I just quoted, of who the original rabbi was. I asked in a few Facebook groups of rabbis, both a group of Reconstructionist rabbis, and a group for Jewish women clergy of all denominations. First, a few people from various denominations responded that they have this conversation all the time! Then people started to suggest well known Jewish theologians. Rabbi Dr. Neil Gillman. Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson. Rabbi Art Green. Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. Then Rav Kook, who lived from 1865-1935, in the pre-statehood land of Israel. Then Chasidic Rebbi Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev, who lived from 1740-1809, in what was then Poland and is now the Ukraine.
So clearly this conversation has happened many times in many places. Jews have always struggled to understand and relate to God or notions of divinity, and many many different ideas and models have been suggested over the centuries.
For us in this postmodern world as Reconstructionists, most if not all of us have rejected the idea of God as omniscient or omnipotent. Many of us do not believe that God intervenes in human history today, or contravenes the laws of nature. But what do we affirmatively believe, if anything?
Perhaps we are asking the wrong question: “Who is God?”, and a better one is “Where can we find God?” Here is a longer Chasidic story that begins to address this question.
A man was going from village to village, everywhere asking the same question, “Where can I find God?” He journeyed from rabbi to rabbi, and nowhere was he satisfied with the answers he received, so quickly he would pack his bags, and hurry on to the next village.
Some of the rabbis replied, “Pray, my child, and you shall find God.” But the man had tried to pray and knew that he could not. And some replied, “Study, my child, and you shall find God.” But the more he read, the more confused he became, and the further he seemed from God. And some replied, “Forget your quest, my child, God is within you.” But the man had tried to find God within himself and failed.
One day, the man arrived wearily at a very small village set in the middle of a forest. He went up to a woman who was minding some chickens, and she asked whom could he be looking for in such a small place, but she did not seem surprised when he told her he was looking for God. She showed him to the Rabbi’s house.
When he went in, the Rabbi was studying. He waited a moment, but he was impatient to be off to the next village, if he could not be satisfied. Then he interrupted, “Rabbi – how do I find God?” The Rabbi paused and the man wondered which of the many answers he had already received would he be told this time. But the Rabbi simply said, “You have come to the right place, my child, God is in this village. Why don’t you stay a few days; you might meet Them?”
The man was puzzled. He did not understand what the Rabbi could mean. But the answer was unusual, and so he stayed. For two or three days, he strode round and round, asking all the villagers where God was that morning, but they would only smile, and ask him to have a meal with them. Gradually, he got to know them, and even helped with some of the village work. Every now and then he would see the Rabbi by chance, and the Rabbi would ask him, “Have you met God yet, my child?” And the man would smile, and sometimes he understood and sometimes he did not understand.
For months he stayed in the village, and then for years. He became part of the village and shared in all its life. He went with everyone to the synagogue on Friday and prayed with them, and sometimes he knew why he prayed, and sometimes he didn’t. And sometimes he really said prayers, and sometimes only words. And then he would go to someone’s house for Shabbat dinner, and when they talked about God, he was always assured that God was in the village, though he wasn’t quite sure where or when God could be found. Gradually, too, he began to believe that God was in the village, though he wasn’t quite sure where. He knew, however, that sometimes he had met God.
One day, for the first time, the Rabbi came to him and said, “You have met God now, have you not?” And the man said, “Thank you, Rabbi, I think that I have. But I am not sure why or how or when. And why is God in this village only?”
So the Rabbi replied, “God is not a person, my child, nor a thing. You cannot meet God in that way. When you came to our village, you were so worried by your question that you could not recognize an answer when you heard it. Nor could you recognize God when you met, because you were not really looking for God. Now that you have stopped persecuting God, you have found Them, and now you can return to your town if you wish.”
So, the man went back to his town, and God went with him. And the man enjoyed studying and praying, and he knew that God was within himself and within other people. And other people knew it too, and sometimes they would ask him, “Where can we find God?” And the man would always answer, “You have come to the right spot. God is in this place.”
I find this story very telling. Many people would like to find God, even in our world today.
(Just parenthetically, I do want to underscore that I not think you need to believe in God to belong to our congregation, to pray, or to be a good Jew. I’m choosing to address this particular sermon to those who would like to find a way of relating to God that works for them, or to understand those that do.)
And yet, it is very hard to put your finger on any one thing and say “That is God!” or to ever feel like you can fully grasp an answer to that question. The story is careful to show that one may be able to feel or access or understand God sometimes, and not at other times.
Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionism, rejected the idea that God is a person or being, and suggested instead that God is a force in the world (technically, “the power that makes for salvation.”) When I was in rabbinical school, I participated in a program called spiritual direction, where I met in a group of four students with a spiritual director once a month, and we talked about our lives, and looked for moments that one might call holy or divine, within our experiences, even when any of us were going through a rough period.
For me, I am most able to access that notion of holiness in community. Like the story I just told, I experience holiness through being with other people. Through people’s helping actions and through a shared acknowledgment of moments of wonder and gratitude. Our congregation is just starting to feel like the mythic village in the story for me, but I know it already works that way for many of you who have been members here for many years, through life’s tragedies and simchas. We are a beautiful and strong community, warm at supporting each other. I do want to encourage everyone to take a moment over the holidays to explore your feelings about being here in our community, and whether there are moments you have felt anything you might call holiness or divinity here.
