Where To Find God
D’var Torah for
Shabbat Toldot
Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman
November 16, 2017
A student of the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, once
asked the great rabbi: “In our prayer,
the Tefilah, why do we refer to God
as ‘God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob?’ Is there—God forbid!—more
than one God? Did our forefathers, the
great patriarchs of the Jewish People, not each serve the one and same Creator
of Heaven and Earth?” Answered the
rabbi: “We say: ‘God of Abraham, God of
Isaac, and God of Jacob,’ for Isaac and Jacob did not base their work on the
searching and service of Abraham; they themselves searched for the unity of the
Maker and His service.”
In this famous story we see the genius of the Baal Shem Tov. For his words not only answer his pupil’s
question. He more than merely explained
the threefold repetition of the word “God.”
Rather, by his response the great rabbi and teacher placed a similar
burden on each one of us. We do not
merely rely on the teachings of our ancestors; we do not merely mimic their
behavior. Just as each of the Patriarchs
and Matriarchs had to seek God in his and her way, so does each of
us, in our turn, struggle with the same difficult questions. We too seek God in places we did not know, in
strange lands and new times. We too seek
to understand: Where are you, God? How do we recognize your presence? And more importantly, how do we reach
you? What paths to you lie before us
that we have not yet explored?
The stories we read about in the Torah offer us our first
clues.
Abraham looked up for the answers to his questions. Gazing
at the stars, he realized that God was beyond everything and anything that we
might be able to see or know. Looking to
the tops of mountains, he knew where he might find God’s message, and at the
top of one particular mountain, Mt. Moriah, he understood what God asked of
him: Not sacrifice, but dedication; not
the killing of his child, but rather the compassionate teaching and upbringing
that would guide Isaac on his own path, to his own understanding of God’s
purpose.
However, at the top of the mountain, at the moment that he
was holding the knife over his son, at the very instant when God restrained his
hand, Abraham understood that, as far as Isaac was concerned, this was as far
as he could go. Earlier, as they climbed up the mountain together, the boy had
asked his father some pertinent questions about the nature of this journey: “Here is the knife, father; here is the wood
and the fire; but where is the lamb for the sacrifice?” Abraham answered as
well as he could, but his response left much unexplained. “God will see to the sacrifice,” he said. TBD. He
himself didn’t know. From now on,
Abraham realized, Isaac would be seeking his own answers, looking for God on
his own, along his own lonely and difficult journey.
Isaac’s perspective also changes up on that
mountaintop. Isaac would never again be
as innocent and trusting as he once was.
His vision of God would be forever tainted by his understanding that he,
Isaac, was the intended sacrifice; his view of God would be forever eclipsed by
the sun’s reflection that he saw on the knife poised above his heart. Isaac understood the irony of a God who
sometimes seems to play games with us, a God who has a cruel side to Him, but who
ultimately could not—would not, ever again—ask for the terrible price of human
sacrifice.
Life and circumstances would never be the same for Isaac. His home life was not peaceful. He found love late in life—he was forty when
Rebecca came into his life, sixty when he became a father. Then, their twin boys, Jacob and Esau, were
always struggling, always fighting.
Isaac had his preference among the two; he loved Esau, the hunter, the
man of the open fields and untamed wilderness.
Rebecca loved Jacob, in whom she saw more of herself and the family that
she had left behind to marry Isaac. Theirs was a house divided, with whispering
and intrigue going on behind the tent flaps.
Moreover, in his life’s work as a farmer, Isaac endured many
hardships. Drought forced him and his
family to move frequently. For a while
he lived among the Philistines, whose rules and morals were so different from
his own. He dug water wells, which, one
by one, the Philistine shepherds, for spite and jealousy, filled in and
stopped.
For most of his life, afraid to look up, Isaac instead
looked down. Rather than seek God on
mountaintops, Isaac dug wells into the earth—an act that the Rabbis understood
as searching for God deep within himself.
As for Jacob, though the Torah describes him as a quiet,
simple man, he was far from it. A
conniver and schemer, he trusted only himself.
Plotting to gain the blessing of the first-born, he waited for the right
moment—when Esau came back from the hunt—offering his hungry and tired brother a
bowl of soup in return for their father’s blessing and a future inheritance. Joining with the schemes woven by his mother,
Rebecca, Jacob cheats and lies to his father, trusting his instincts rather
than the laws of righteousness and morality that his father and grandfather followed.
Jacob’s true understanding of God would only come later,
once he leaves home. Waking up from a
fitful night spent on rocky terrain, after a mysterious dream about a ladder
with its top in the heavens, Jacob realizes that God resides not only in the
heavens above, nor only in the depths below.
Jacob understands that God’s presence is everywhere—particularly where
we least expect it. From that moment on
and for the rest of his life, from his life’s experiences and from his
interactions with neighbors, in-laws, wives and children, Jacob will learn
about love, trust and faith; he will learn about laws of justice and about sh’lom bayit—making peace at home. Along
his many journeys, Jacob will learn that God works through us, through our
deeds and our words, and that God’s presence is, indeed, everywhere,
transcending heights, depths and even time.
Today, some 3200 years after our Patriarchs and Matriarchs
walked this earth, our understanding of God is still founded on their
perceptions, but it has also changed and evolved. Shaped by our culture and traditions,
influenced by our past as much as by our the present, by our faith as well as
by our skepticism, we still look for our vision of God, each of us gazing
at the heavens, or deep within our souls, for a sign, for a message all our
own. Like Isaac’s wife, Rebecca, who,
during a difficult pregnancy, sought an answer to her question, אנכי זה למה –“Why am I so,” what is the purpose of all this
struggle and pain—so does each of us seek meaning and direction along a journey
that each of us, uniquely and alone, must undertake.
Here is where the teaching of the Baal Shem Tov comes to help us. Hasidism
teaches that holiness is found wherever and whenever we look for it. Sometimes it appears in disguise. Sometimes it is completely hidden—yet we must
seek it out. Learning from our ancient ancestors,
we understand that holiness does not exist in a vacuum, somewhere outside
us. Like Abraham, we gaze up in awe to
experience the grandeur of Creation; like Isaac, we search deep within our
hearts for the answer to our doubts and questions. Like Jacob, we realize that holiness exists
in how we relate to one another and to the world around us. In view of the
harsh realities of life, holiness is found in the tenderness and compassion
that we bring to it. In the loneliness of existence, holiness exists in our
friendships and in our love. In a world where
injustice and violence are all too common, holiness can be found in the give
and take, in our everyday interactions—at home, on the street and at our
workplace.
May we, like our Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and like our
Matriarchs Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah, find God’s Presence wherever we are
and in everything we do. And may our
deeds be a guiding light for our children, and for their children after them, as
they seek God and search for their own way of serving God.
Ken y’hi ratzon—may this be God’s
will.
© 2017 by Boaz D. Heilman
No comments:
Post a Comment