October 5, 2024
Author(s): Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz,
Parshat Ha’azinu – Shabbat Shuva
A God We Can Believe In After October 7
October 5, 2024 – 3 Tishrei 5785
Temple Emanuel, Newton, MA
Rabbi David Wolpe tells a classic story of speaking to a group of American Jews in Tulsa, Oklahoma at their JCC about God. He was trying to make the case that God loves them. But he could see that his words were not resonating. Being the seasoned speaker that he is, he decided to take a bit of a gamble. He stopped his prepared remarks and said: If you think God loves you, please rise. In the entire large amphitheater which sat hundreds of people, exactly one person stood up. So Rabbi Wolpe tried again. If you think God loves you, please stand up. Nobody else got up. Just the one man standing. At last Rabbi Wolpe turned to that man and said, Sir, you believe that God loves you? I do indeed, he said. What is your name? Oral Roberts.
Oral Roberts was a Christian televangelist. He was the only one in the Jewish Community Center that believed that God loves us. That lack of ease with God is built into our very name: Israel, the one who struggles with God.
This story happened years before October 7. If it were hard for Jews to connect with a loving God before October 7, how much harder is it for us to believe in God’s love after October 7.
As we approach the one-year anniversary of October 7, is there any God we can believe in?
During the High Holiday season, we recite every morning and every night Psalm 27, which says: lulei heemanti lirot b’tuv Adonai b’eretz chaim, which means lulei (will translate that in a minute) I have faith that I shall surely see Adonai’s goodness in the land of the living. Our siddur Sim Shalom translates lulei as an affirmative I have faith. But respectfully that is a mistranslation. A more accurate translation of lulei is that it means: I wish it were so that I could see God’s goodness in the land of the living. But I am not sure that it is.
This subjunctive tense of lulei is not only what the word means; it is also more true to the lived life of the Jewish people after October 7. For folks who wish they could, but are not sure they can believe, I want to offer two models for a God we might be able to believe in.
The first comes from Exodus 25, in a passage that describes the building of the ark of the covenant. On either side of the cover of the ark are the keruvim, the cherubs, who stand with their arms outstretched facing one another. God says in that passage:
There I will meet with you, and I will impart to you—from above the
Cover, from between the two cherubim that are on top of the Ark of the
Pact—all that I will command you concerning the Israelite people.
God exists in the space between these cherubs. So too, our commentators taught, God exists in the space between people.
A book called We’re On Our Way: The Civilians Who Saved Lives on October 7, by Nachum Avniel tells story after story of ordinary Israelis who, on that desperate day, became superheroes who put their own lives at risk in order to save other Israelis’ lives. For example, a man named Rami Davidian, who lived in a moshav near the Gaza border, was extremely familiar with the terrain near the nova music festival. In his day job he is a fuel distributor. He is also the father of four. On October 7 he sprang into action. He drove his truck repeatedly into life-threatening situations where Hamas terrorists were firing at him. He would locate terrified Israelis who were hiding in ditches or behind trees. He would persuade them to come out of hiding, they would run to his truck, he would run them to his home in the moshav where he lived, and he would go out again in search of other Israelis whom he could save. He also organized his adult children into a first responder unit to receive the carloads of traumatized people, to give them food and drink, and to have them inform their parents that they were alive and safe. All told, this fuel distributor, husband, father and moshav resident rescued 700 young people hiding from Hamas.
Can we find God in these remarkable stories of ordinary citizens showing extraordinary heroism?
Rabbi Harold Kushner has a wonderful teaching on psalm 146 which says that God feeds the hungry. God shelters the homeless. God frees the captive. Rabbi Kushner points out that saying this does not mean that God is doing these redemptive activities. Rather, that when human beings do these activities, God is found. When human beings feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, free the captive, God is found. Rabbi Kushner calls this predicate theology. God is not the subject, not the actor. Rather, human beings are the subject. Human beings are the actors. But when human beings act in these redemptive ways, we can feel the presence of God.
In this new year, may ordinary people in Israel and in America continue to do extraordinary deeds of love and courage, daring and healing so that we feel the presence of God.
There is a second model for a God that we can believe in after October 7. It is a model that Israel, Israelis, and the Jewish people desperately need now. What happens when we are out of energy? We are done. Fatigue has set in. We feel like we cannot do this anymore.
Rabbi Harold Kushner has another teaching that is so pertinent to our time. He shared that while he was on the bimah at his daughter Ariel’s Bat Mitzvah, he started in real time to feel like he was out of energy. That he was depleted. His daughter Ariel was thriving. She was a radiant and proud Bat Mitzvah, knocking it out of the park. And yet, his older child, Aaron, was sick with progeria. He was not thriving. What should a father do when one child is thriving and another is languishing? How to get the strength to be present for both children when he was out of strength?
As he was wrestling with these questions, he heard his daughter chant these lines from Isaiah ch. 40, which is the Haftarah for Lech Lecha, her portion:
Those who trust in the Lord shall renew their strength
As eagles grow new plumes:
They shall run and not grow weary,
They shall march and not grow faint.
It was then and there that Rabbi Kushner understood that when we pray for more courage and strength, God gives us more courage and strength. When we pray for more internal resources to carry what we must carry, God says yes to that prayer.
This God, who renews our strength when we are out of strength, we need now. One year later, I hear story after story of Israelis who have already done 1, 2, 3, or 4 tours of duty being called in for yet another tour. They already fought Hamas in Gaza. Now they are being enlisted to fight Hezbollah in Lebanon. This phenomenon is ubiquitous.
In a recent podcast, Donniel Hartman shared that he has a 42-year-old colleague at Hartman who has already served many months, who is married and the father of several children, and whose wife is pregnant, who just got called up again. Our nephew Elon, who was away up north for 8 months while his wife Chani was pregnant, who got home and two weeks later their son was born, and he got to enjoy being with his wife and newborn for less than two months, he just got called up again, leaving his young family to face Hezbollah. We have a member of our shul, Shai Kivitsky, married to Alice, the father of two young daughters, who comes every Shabbat morning when he is not fighting the wars of Israel. He served in Gaza once for many months. He came home. He was called to serve in Gaza a second time for many months. After that service, he came home. He was resuming his life when he got called up again. Last Monday he flew to Israel for this third tour.
How do Israel’s soldiers stand it? Where do they get the courage and strength and energy to keep on fighting? How do their families at home stand it? Young children raised by one rather than two parents, again? Fatigue. Exhaustion. Depletion. It’s only human.
We can only pray that Isaiah ch. 40 is true. Kovei Adonai yachlifu choah, those who trust in the Lord will have their faith renewed. May God answer the collective prayers of the Jewish people for more strength, more courage, more energy so that Israel can become safe and peaceful again for all its inhabitants.
Psalm 27 bids us: Lulei heemanti lirot b’tuv Adonai b’eretz Chayim. I wish I could see God’s goodness in the land of the living.
May we be open to God in the space between people. May we be open to God as the source of a second wind, a renewal of energy and strength when our own energy and strength run out. The one-year anniversary of October 7 is intense. What a gift we could give ourselves if only, lulei, we could come up with a God that we could believe in. Shabbat shalom.