Does God Act in History?

August 28, 2021

Author(s): Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz,

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Parshat Ki Tavo
August 28, 2021 — 20 Elul 5781
Does God Act in History?
by Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz
Temple Emanuel, Newton, MA

 

            Does God act in history?  If you look at the world, does it testify to the existence of a loving and powerful God who acts to make sure that God’s highest ideals are implemented?

            Of course, even asking the question in this hot mess of a summer suggests the implausibility of the premise that God acts in history.

            How could God act in history when floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, massive fires cause death and destruction on a massive scale to innocents too numerous to count?

            How could God act in history when the Delta variant continues to rage?

            How could God act in history when two suicide bombers exploded themselves at the Kabul airport killing 13 American service members and more than 100 Afghan citizens and seriously wounding so many innocent civilians?

            In short, any honest assessment of the question would have to come down on the side that God does not act in history. 

            That assessment seems accurate.  But there are two problems with it.  It’s a problem for the world to be a hot mess and God-less.  And it is a problem for our Jewish sources.  The Bible’s signature voice is that God acts in history.

            When God gives the Torah at Sinai, the first command is not only to believe in God, but specifically to believe in the God that acts in history: I the Lord am your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage.  The God who intervenes in history, the God who redeems the oppressed, is literally the first commandment.

            And in our reading  today we see this same theme, deepened.  The ancient farmer in Israel comes to the  Temple in Jerusalem with a basket of fruit–the first pomegranates, figs, dates, grapes, wheat and barley–and he says to God thank you for this basket of fruit at two levels.

            God, thank you for this fruit because you are the God of nature.  This produce exists because of you.

            And God, thank you for this fruit because you are also the God of history.  This produce belongs to me, a farmer in Israel, because I am part of a people, the Israelites.  You promised this land to my ancestors.  But we went down to Egypt and were enslaved and oppressed.  We cried out to you.  You heard us, you redeemed us, you brought us to this land of Israel, you gave us this land, and I am now a farmer in this land because you act in history. 

            In other words, we modern Jews, if we read the newspapers and the Torah, we have a  problem.  The newspapers make it obvious that there is no God in charge of the world.  But the Torah insists that our God is the God of history who intervenes in the world.  How are we to navigate this tension?

            This is not a new problem.  There are basically three different approaches.

            The oldest approach is in the Torah itself which warns explicitly that when people see massive suffering, they may jump to the conclusion that there is no God, or that God does not act in history.  Not so, the Torah answers.  Rather, God is choosing to hide God’s face, in Hebrew,  hester panim.  God will be so upset by the Israelites’ lapses that when all the horrible things happen to the Israelites, God chooses not to see, God chooses not to act.

            The hester panim doctrine is authentic. It is in the Torah.  But to me it is totally unsatisfying.  The notion that God could see the suffering of innocents—be it Jews in the Holocaust, or Afghan citizens today terrified of the Taliban—and God could do something, but chooses not to, is quite simply a God I do not believe in, nor is it God I would want to believe in.

            The second option is a mid-twentieth century approach composed by Rabbi Richard Rubenstein who wrote a book embodying his essential thesis: God is dead. The God of the Bible, the God who rescued the Israelite slaves from Egypt, is dead. That God is no more.

            This option is honest.  It squares with much of the world as we know it.  But I am drawn to a more humble approach.

            One morning I was at minyan when Nommi Nadich was observing the 15th yahrtzeit of her father, Rabbi Judah Nadich.  After the davening was over, I asked Nommi to share with me one teaching of her father. What resonates most 15 years later?  She observed that her father had been an army chaplain who accompanied the troops liberating the camps.  The experience was so painful that for a full year afterwards, when he got home, he was unable to function as a pulpit rabbi.  He could not talk to a congregation about God.  After a year, he went back to the pulpit.  She asked him: Abba, what changed for you?  Were you able to come up with answers?  No, he said.  I don’t have any answers, but I would rather face questions that have no answers with God than without God.

            The humility of admitting that we do not know feels better to me than confidently proclaiming a truth so large and sad as God is dead.

            God is dead does not work. God hides God’s face does not work.

            The only remotely satisfying answer I know of is the title of Abraham Joshua Heschel’s book: God in Search of Man.  Heschel lost his mother and three sisters in the Shoah. He was under no illusion.  Here is his central claim:  The statement that God acts in history is not a description of what is; it is an aspiration of what should be; and for that aspiration to be fulfilled, God needs our help. God needs us.  God is in search of us.

            Here is another way to say it:  God does not act in history, unless people act in history because they are inspired by God.  If we look at our broken world and say it is on us to fix it, we have divine ideals that can light our way, like the sanctity of human life, like the infinite value of human dignity, like honesty and integrity, like compassion, rachmanut, and lovingkindness, chesed, if we are inspired by these divine ideals, we can act to implement them in the world. 

            God acts in history through us.

            About a year ago, on August 23, 2020, to be exact, one of our beloved members, Adam Suttin, was biking with two good friends in the Berkshires when he had a heart attack.  He fell off his bike, collapsed on the ground, and was not breathing.  His two friends, neither of whom is a doctor, called 911.  The operator they reached on 911 instructed them how to do mouth to mouth resuscitation to keep Adam alive until the ambulance came.  They began doing so, which indeed kept him alive.  The ambulance came with four EMT volunteers who used the defibrillator and took Adam to a hospital in the Berkshires where he was transported by helicopter to MGH, where he was treated by the best medical team, with the best of modern medicine.  Thank God, Adam has enjoyed a full and complete recovery, a rephuah shelaimah.  He is doing life with his beloved wife Hope. He is a loving father to Ben, Rachel and Liana.  He is back to doing his important work for his private equity firm.  He is back to his leadership in CJP, our shul, and his other volunteer commitments.  A few weeks ago he did the PMC, the Pan Mass Challenge.  All of that would be dayeinu, a miracle tale of biblical proportions.  But there was a coda.

            Two weeks ago, as they were approaching the one-year anniversary of his heart attack and his recovery,  Adam and Hope hosted a day at their home so that they could thank the people who saved his life.  The two friends came  The 911 operator who instructed the friends came.  The four EMT people came.  These four EMT people are volunteers.  They are not professional EMT people.  They have day jobs. But they work weekends—Adam’s heart attack happened on a Sunday—because they wanted to be helpful.  Each of these ordinary people did the extraordinary feat of fulfilling one of God’s most powerful teachings:  if you save one life, you save the universe.

            Does God act in history?  The answer depends on you.  Shabbat shalom.