A Weekly Byte...From Isralight (Va'etchanan 5768)

What Do We Know? Humble Words to Console

When we try to understand G-d, we face an inherent obstacle with the very process of knowing. When I attempt to know anything, I am the subject and the thing that I seek to know is the object. In addition, there must be some degree of distance and separation between the subject and the object. Your eye can see almost everything, but it cannot see itself. "Knowing" implies two separate entities: the knower and the known.

However, you cannot know G-d in this normative way, because G-d is the source of all knowing. G-d is the source of all consciousness. Your very ability to think comes from G-d, who is the source of all thinking. How can you think about the source of all thinking? How can your mind hope to comprehend the source and ground of all minds? Yet if you want to know G-d, then you must seek the source of all knowing. You must search for the source of all searching.

This is why we cannot come to actually know G-d by philosophical inquiry. The philosopher tries to make G-d into an object of his mind. He thinks that he is the subject and that he can understand G-d as the object of his inquiry. Even if the philosopher comes up with a brilliant thesis about G-d, he has gained an idea, but he has lost G-d. G-d is not an idea. G-d is the source of all ideas.

In general, you are the knowing subject and everything else is the object to be known. But with G-d the relationship is just the opposite. G-d is the subject and you are the object. G-d is the knower and you are the known.

In truth, G-d is like the thinker, and the entire universe is His thought. According to the Kabbalah, creation is an act of divine thought. We come into existence through G-d's thinking of us, so to speak. We exist only as long as G-d continues to think of us. If at any point G-d forgot us, poof! We would have no existence.

Now take a moment and create in your mind a woman. Don't think of someone that you know. Rather, create a totally new character. Where does that woman exist? In your mind. Therefore, you are the knowing subject and she is the known object. Now imagine this woman in your mind trying to find her creator-you. How is she going to do that? How would this woman who is the object of your mind make you the object of her mind? How could she possibly understand you?

This is the same problem we have in our search for G-d. Relative to anything that we seek to understand, we are the knower and it is the known. But when we turn our thoughts to G-d, He is the knower and we are the known. He is the subject and we are the object.

Each one of us is like a drop in the ocean trying to comprehend the ocean.

Imagine a sphere encircling you. If this sphere were to represent G-d, you would describe yourself as being encompassed by this embracing reality that is G-d. From your perspective, what would you see? You and G-d. From G-d's perspective, what does G-d see? Just G-d.

From the perspective of the woman you have created in your mind, there is her and you. From your perspective, there's just you.

When something painful happens to you, you may find yourself accusing G-d: "How could You do this to me?" But from G-d's perspective, there is just G-d. No perpetrator and victim. Just G-d. From that perspective, your accusation appears as ludicrous as your stubbed toe shouting at you, "What are you doing to me?"

In the Book of Isaiah, G-d exclaims, "My thoughts are not your thoughts." This means that G-d's perspective is totally different from our human perspective. Just as a theoretical being who lives in a two-dimensional reality cannot possibly conceive of the perspective of three-dimensional beings such as ourselves, so we cannot possibly conceive of G-d's perspective.

This essentially is G-d's answer to Job. Job suffers a series of tragedies: the death of all his children, illness, and material loss. He tries to fathom why G-d has done this to him, given that he is a good person who has only done good. His friends and his wife offer various perspectives, all of which Job rejects as lacking the ring of truth. Finally G-d speaks to Job: "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements, if you know?" G-d is telling Job that he simply does not have the cosmic perspective to understand what happens in this world. Job is left with not knowing the answer to human suffering, not because G-d refuses to tell him, but because there is no way a human being can understand reality from G-d's perspective, which is ultimate truth.

The Sages say that when we get to the next world, we are going to look back at all of human history, and see everything as perfect. Even the most tragic events in history will look totally different. This means that in that future world, without the limitations of time and space, we will see everything from G-d's perspective. But now, ensconced in this world of time and space, that perception is simply inaccessible to us. Human beings trying to fathom the Divine plan are like trying to run a Windows 2000 on a 286 computer. We simply do not have the hardware to understand G-d, Who is the ultimate all- inclusive reality.

The answer to all human suffering is:

I don't know.

Rabbi David Aaron Author of Endless Light, Seeing G-d, The Secret Life of G-d, Inviting G-d In and Living A Joyous Life

------------------------------------------------------------ Small Tastings of Torah, Judaism and Spirituality Rav Binny Freedman, Director

For a printable format go to: http://www.isralight.org/assets/Text/RBF_vaetchanan08.htm

Portion of Vaetchanan (reprinted from 2005)

Sitting on the ground with her head in her hands, her shoulders heaving from the sobbing she could no longer control, the image of this young Israeli officer finally breaking down after her role in removing some of the Jewish families of Neve' Dekalim from their homes, is one that I cannot get out of my head. More than the mass demonstrations of hundreds of thousands, more than the images of hundreds and even thousands of settlers and soldiers locked in the painful embrace of brothers and sisters forced into a situation neither really wants, it is the solitary images caught from afar, that might have gone un-noticed, that I can't get out of my mind; The four year old girl with the beautiful blond locks, a tear rolling down her check, asking her father "why do we have to leave?"; The Israeli soldier, with bare head and sunglasses, openly embracing in a long hug, the bearded, teary- eyed Jew begging to understand why he is being forced to leave everything he has built for twenty years behind; the mother, saying good bye to the earth where her son, killed in a terrorist shooting a few years ago, lies buried....

So much pain, and so many goodbyes; this has been an especially difficult week for Jews everywhere, and particularly for the Jewish people in the land of Israel.

Wherever you stand on the political map, whether you think this is an essential step towards eventual peace, or a tragic mistake that will lead to war, one cannot help but feel the pain of entire communities forced to leave their homes, their synagogues, their fields of dreams and even their graves behind. With so much uncertainty that lies ahead, and so many unanswered questions, one wonders: is their something that can comfort us, all of us, with the terrible images we have been privy to all week?

Perhaps one of the most difficult aspects of this entire (disengagement) process is the fact that none of the people being forced to leave their homes, understand why this is necessary. Sometimes though a person may be in pain, they are not necessarily suffering, if they perceive that there is a purpose to that pain. A woman giving birth may be in pain, but she may not be suffering, if she feels that in the end there is a purpose to the pain, because a child will be born.

And what adds tremendously to the pain many are feeling, is the sense of suffering that is the inevitable result of the unanswered question: 'why?'

For whatever the reason, unlike, for example, the peace agreement and subsequent 'disengagement' from the communities in the Sinai (in 1982) which involved many of the same experiences and images, of Jews being evacuated from their homes, when people at least knew why it was being done (even if they disagreed with the decision), here, almost without exception, none of the people being forced to leave their homes are even close to understanding why this is happening. Irrespective of whether someone else may feel there are very good reasons for this evacuation, or disengagement, or expulsion (depending on your politics), the evacuees themselves and many others along with them, certainly are not privy to those reasons. The sense that this seems to be destined to breed more violence, the lack of clarity of where this will lead Israel politically, and the fact (as indicated by the term' disengagement' and not 'agreement') that this is not being done as part of any mutual agreement with nothing being gained or promised in return by the Arabs, all contribute to the sense of despair felt by so many this week, as we enter this Shabbat, less than a week after Tisha' B'Av.

All of which is very strange, considering the nature of this week and particularly this Shabbat, in Jewish tradition.

Most often, when we mourn the losses in our lives, the pain of mourning is the recognition of lost opportunities. We understand only too well what we have lost, and we wonder whether we really appreciated what we had.

Did we tell them we loved them enough? Did we take the time to appreciate their smiles, and the particular things we loved about them? Did we learn from them, and did we spend the time with them? And if indeed these lost opportunities, imagined or real as they may be, are what we mourn, can there ever be a comforting response to such loss?

This Shabbat, the Shabbat after Tisha B'av, the day we lost both of our Temples (Batei Mikdash) is traditionally called Shabbat Nachamu, the Shabbat of consolation, when we are comforted after our terrible loss. Indeed, the prophetic portion (the Haftorah) we will read from Isaiah begins with the phrase: "Nachamu, Nachamu, Ami...." "Be comforted, be comforted, my people....", hence the name Shabbat Nachamu.

But how can one be comforted after such a terrible loss? Two thousand years ago, in the year Seventy, we watched our cities burned to the ground, hundreds of thousands of our people butchered, and many hundreds of thousands more sold as slaves, mercilessly torn from the arms of their beloved families. All of which was merely the prelude to two thousand years of suffering: all the crusades and inquisitions, pogroms and blood libels, and that final unspeakable horror, the Holocaust; all this we mourn as well on Tisha B'Av, the ninth of Av. So how can a people such as ours, which have known such suffering, ever be comforted? What is the meaning of this nechama, this consolation?

And indeed, is there a consolation, any consolation, from the disengagement events of this past week here in the State of Israel?

It is no coincidence that the portion we always read on this Shabbat, the same portion read every year on Shabbat Nachamu, is the portion of Vaetchanan, which literally means "And I beseeched", referring to Moshe's heart-rending prayer beseeching G-d to allow him, mistakes notwithstanding, to enter the land of Israel with the children of Israel.

It is hard to decide which is more painful: Moshe's pleading to be let into the land of his dreams, or G-d's refusal to acquiesce. But most interesting is Moshe's response to this refusal: the Torah seems to just change the topic!

After describing how he had pleaded before G-d to enter the land, and how G-d finally admonished him to cease speaking of this request, and instead to install Yehoshua (Joshua) to take his place, Moshe immediately begins to exhort the Jewish people not to forget the Torah they have been given, and then launches into a repetition of the Ten Commandments, preceded by one of the most important sections of the Torah: the first chapter of the Shema.

All of which leaves us with a number of questions. First of all, if this desperate plea of Moshe's is so critical to the final speech he is about to give the Jewish people as they prepare to enter the land, one wonders why it is not mentioned at the beginning of the speech (which comprises most of the book of Devarim (Deuteronomy), the fifth book of the Torah). Why isn't this request offered at the beginning of Devarim (last week's portion)? Why wait till Va'Etchanan, this week's portion?

And if this week's portion's theme is all about consolation, why is there no consolation mentioned for Moshe, immediately after he is denied his life's wish of joining the Jewish people as they enter the land? And what does all this have to do with the Shema and the Ten Commandments?

Perhaps in order to understand this, we need to take a closer look at the concept of nechama, consolation, as it appears in the Torah.

The first instance seems to be the birth of Noach , at the end of the first portion of the Torah, Bereishit. His father, Lemech, names him Noach because:

"Zeh Ye'nachameinu Mi'ma'aseinu...." "This one will comfort is from the actions of our hands...." (Bereishit (Genesis) 5:29 )

In other words, in the period preceding the flood, human behavior had reached an all time low and violence filled the world. Lemech's hope was that Noach would somehow turn things around, leading the world and humanity back onto the path of ethics and righteousness.

Now, if this was indeed Lemech's hope, what then is the nature of this comfort? How will a more righteous society comfort the world after its evil ways? If anything, a re-discovery of what life was really supposed to be, would make everyone realize the lost opportunities they had wasted in living lives of violence and lust, causing them to mourn their mistakes, not be comforted in their newfound righteousness?

How will a redirection be a comfort of past mistakes, rather than simply a change of course to a new mode of behavior?

Interestingly, Rashi there suggests that the way Noach will be a 'comfort' to his generation, is not by leading them down the path of ethical excellence, but rather by inventing the plow! Jewish tradition credits Noach with the invention of the plow, and this somehow is the vehicle for Noach's ability to comfort the world! Why is plowing the field the comfort here? Why not Noach's ability to be a role model of righteousness, as suggested by the verse at the beginning of the portion of Noach?

Even more confusing is the fact that 'Nechama' does not always mean comfort; sometimes, it seems to have a completely different connotation, as, for example, when G-d, in response to Moshe's entreaties, decides not to destroy the Jewish people after the sin of the Golden calf:

"Vayinachem Hashem al ha'ra'ah asher diber la'asot le'amo." "And Hashem (G-d) relented, concerning the evil He had said He would visit upon His people." (Shemot (Exodus) 32:14)

In this instance, G-d is not comforting the Jewish people, (although it must certainly have been a comfort to them to know they would not be destroyed!) but rather changing His course of action. And this meaning of the word 'Nechama' can be found in various places, including G-d's relenting of having created man, thus hastening the coming of the flood in order to destroy the world and build it all over again, through the vestiges of Noach. (See Bereishit (Genesis) 6:6) And yet, just as often, we find Nechama used in its more traditional format, such as when Yitzchak, still mourning the loss of his beloved mother Sarah, is finally comforted after her loss when he marries Rivkah. (See Genesis (Bereishit) 24:67) And, as well, when Yaakov is not comforted after the loss of his beloved Joseph, whom he believes to be dead at the hands of a wild ox. ("Va'yema'en le'hitnecham" See Bereishit (Genesis) 37:35.)

What is the relationship between G-d 'changing His mind', and our being comforted? Perhaps the message of Shabbat Nachamu, is that there really is no difference; our ability to be comforted really depends on our decision, as it were, to 'change our minds', or, more accurately, to change our perspective.

In a world gone mad, where violence was the rule, and wanton destruction of life and property the norm, Noach bursts onto the scene with the message that life is not about destruction, but about planting and building. Ultimately, if we are created then we must have a purpose, and every time we tap into that meaning and that purpose, we give meaning to creation all over again. So Noach invents the plow, which is a vehicle for planting and growth, and belief in a future down the road. And this stands in direct contradiction to the wanton destruction all around him.

Noach had the potential to be a comfort to the world, because he offered the world, even such a world gone mad, a new perspective, and a different way of looking at the world.

And this as well is what the Torah means when it suggests that only after marrying Rivkah was Yitzchak comforted from the loss of his mother. It cannot mean that the loss loses any sense of pain, but rather that now as a married man, ready to build a family and plant a seed that would ultimately grow to become the Jewish people, an orchard that would one day feed the world with the fruits of life, Yitzchak's life takes on a whole new direction, as well as a renewed sense of purpose.

And of course it was precisely this different way of looking at the world that Ya'acov could not grasp, not realizing that Joseph was still alive. Indeed on his deathbed, Ya'acov points out that he never dreamed he would see Joseph alive again, thus implying this different outlook was not even within the realm of possibility for him, and thus he could not be comforted.

And this might serve as well to explain G-d's apparent change of heart after the sin of the Golden calf. It goes without saying that G-d (Hashem) does not change. (If G-d is unlimited, there cannot be something G-d isn't today that He will be tomorrow, nor something He is today that He wasn't yesterday.) So the Torah cannot mean that G-d 'changes His mind'! Rather, we change, and with that change in us, the entire world changes along with us.

It was not G-d that changed, rather, Moshe, in refusing to accept the view of a Jewish people's imminent destruction, instead sees the world through completely different lenses. And, by changing the way he viewed the world, Moshe changed the way we looked at the world as well, thus changing our destiny as a people forever.

All of which leads us back to our portion this week. Moshe begs G-d to enter the land, because that is the way he has looked at the world till now. But when G-d refuses to allow Moshe to enter the land, Moshe's response is to see the world in a completely different way. And that is actually Moshe's 'Nechama', or comfort. If Hashem tells Moshe he is no longer meant to enter the land, then there must be a purpose to that decision. Somehow, there is meaning to the fact that Moshe will be the role model whose students must learn to apply his lessons even when he is no longer present; indeed, long after he is gone.

This may explain why, after telling Moshe he cannot enter the land, Hashem nonetheless acquiesces to Moshe's request to see the land, taking him up on the mountain of Nevo' to see the land. (Devarim (Deuteronomy) 3:27)

And so, Moshe's immediate response to this decision is to understand that he must pass on the essence of Judaism and Torah to the next generation of Jews whose job it will be to build a homeland where that message can flourish, without its being dependant on any one leader. Hence, Moshe immediately begins preparing the Jewish people to see Yehoshua (Joshua) as their new leader.

And of course this is why so much of the essence of Judaism is in this week's portion, including the Shema, and the Ten Commandments. Because our greatest comfort after losing the Beit HaMikdash (the Temple) was to find the strength to see a world without our holiest place, and even without a homeland at all, as a world still filled with meaning.

And we do not read of Moshe's entreaty and the subsequent Nechama (comfort), because it is only after Tisha B'Av, after we have mourned the loss and appreciated what opportunities we have missed, that we are ready to look at the world with fresh eyes and rebuild it with a renewed sense of purpose.

I do not know how a mother who has lost her beloved son, can somehow look at a different world, seemingly empty without the sights and sounds of the son she loved so much, and still see a world filled with purpose and meaning. I know only it is not our place on this earth to attempt to find answers to these painful questions, any more than we can attempt to offer the words that will comfort a person in such pain.

And it remains a mystery to me, how a people, having lost so much, and after spending two thousand years seeing death and cruelty all around them, could still find the strength to see a world full of goodness and purpose, choosing to build a state of Israel out of the ashes of destruction that was the Holocaust. But it is certainly our Nechama, this little country that we love so much.

And if the same word for comfort (nechama) also implies change (va'yinachem'), then our greatest comfort will be if something changes.

This week, more than any event in recent memory is a sure sign that something is dreadfully amiss, not only in Israel, but for the Jewish people in general. We are cut off from each other, 'disengaged' from our fellow Jews, and locked into our little islands of comfort: religious or secular, right or left, and if anything needs to change as a result of these terrible events, it is our ability to become more connected to each other, more aware of and sensitive to each others' challenges and dreams, pain and joy.

Perhaps this is the Nechama (the comfort) that awaits us after Tisha' B'Av. We need to learn to change the way we look at each other, seeing the inside and not just the externals, and after commemorating a destruction that seemed to happen because Jews could not learn to see what was beautiful in each other, maybe at long last it is time for us to see each other for the beautiful souls we are, and not get stuck on the different opinions we have.

Perhaps this year, if we look hard enough we will finally see a land of peace, where Jews have learned to live together in harmony appreciating each other's different opinions instead of debating them. Of course, to see that, we all first have a lot of work to do, and a lot of Noachide fields to plow!

Shabbat Shalom, Binny Freedman

Binny Freedman

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