The Nation of Israel: Chosen for a Different Task

Growing up as a Jew I always felt different than the other kids. In the suburbs of Pittsburgh, where I was the only Jew in my elementary school, I heard everything from playful teasing to out-and-out racial slurs from my classmates, and once even from a teacher.

In Hebrew school, being different meant experiencing horrible tragedies: the Spanish Inquisition, the pogroms, and of course the Holocaust. If being the chosen people meant undergoing tragedy, God could choose somebody else.

Only in my young adulthood, after learning more about Judaism than the tragedies we underwent, did I embrace this difference; yet still I still didn’t fully understand it.

One insight that struck me was from the Kabbalist and philosopher Rabbi Yehuda Lowe of Prague, known as the Maharal. He explains that we have a unique relationship with God, a parent-child relationship. With our chosenness comes greater expectations, and with that greater punishment. But there is also greater consolation. This all stems from an essential difference in our nature.

One way of understanding this point is that the Jewish Nation is not bound by the laws of history. No nation has ever left its land for 2000 years (much less even a fraction of that), maintained its identity, and then returned home. The establishment of the modern State of Israel as a Jewish State flies in the face of the laws of history. And its continuing success despite coming under constant attack testifies that Israel runs by a different set of rules.

This is only one expression of our unique identity, but it’s one that we should feel a sense of pride in. It doesn’t mean that we are better than other nations, only that we have a unique message to give to the world. Teaching the world about the oneness of God is not a simple mission; the stakes are high, but this is our special task.

And despite the pain that the Jewish people have faced and still face, maybe the State of Israel, with all its miracles, is the beginning of the consolation that we have been awaiting for so long.

Is the Torah Divine? It’s All in How You Ask

One would imagine a book written by God to knock the reader out of his seat before reading the first word. Yet an adult opening up the Torah for the first time could easily mistake God’s eternal message to humanity for simplistic children’s stories.

In fact that has happened, and in recent history certain scientists and thinkers have spent lots of time and energy trying to disprove the divinity of this text.

Some great minds have attempted to refute these claims through Bible codes or philosophical proofs. Personally, I find none of them convincing. But the question still stands: if the Torah is truly divine, then why isn’t it blatantly obvious?

For me, the conclusion that the Torah is a divine document came through asking the right questions.

The Torah is not a scientific treatise on the creation of the world, nor is it a history book meant to depict every detail from the beginning of creation. It may give us some insights into these topics, but that is not its purpose. Its primary objective is to answer existential questions about ethics, our ultimate purpose, and life’s deeper meaning.

In other words, the Torah is an answer to the question why, as opposed to the question how. Science can teach us plenty about how our world works; however, science is silent when asked why the world works the way it does.

Therefore, approaching the Torah requires that we must first and foremost recover the deeper questions about life. Once we have started to formulate them, we can begin to read the Torah through the proper lens. Only then can we start to sense the Torah’s divinity. And only through continued interaction and grappling with the text can we fully grasp its greatness.

Finding the God Within Us

When I reflect on my spiritual journey, I realize that it began before my immersion in traditional texts. It started while sitting behind an old wooden desk in Tallahassee, Florida, in my college apartment, writing in my journal. Though I couldn’t articulate it clearly then, the deeper my self-introspection, the closer I felt to God.

The burning search for meaning and truth is a Jewish tradition that dates back to Avraham. The midrash teaches that before Avraham heard the voice of God, he was a charismatic spiritual seeker traveling from place to place searching for answers.

According to the Chassidic master Rabbi Mordechai Yosef, also known as the Mei HaShiloach, God’s first message to Avraham is that he is looking in the wrong place. “Go to yourself,” God says. You are combing the physical realms, but if you really want to find me, look inside yourself. The more that you search yourself, the closer you will come to Me.

A deeper relationship with self is a deeper relationship with God. This is not to say that any one of us is God; however, each one of us is a unique facet of God’s infinite personality. The deeper we delve into ourselves, the more we sense that divine spark inside us.

“Go to the land that I will show you,” says God to Avraham. This is the Land of Israel, which is symbolic of constant process. It represents development that never reaches finality. God’s message to Avraham is: search yourself and you will find Me, but know that this inner journey has no end. Just as you can never reach absolute self-awareness, so too you can never fully reach the infinite place in your heart where God dwells.

Moving Our Hearts Along with Our Lips

There is an unfortunate phenomenon found in many minyans in both the US and Israel called the 30-minute morning service. Slurred speech and speed-reading have unfortunately become the norm in many shuls.

When I walk out of a such a minyan, I can’t help but feel that the purpose was nothing more than fulfilling an obligation. Certainly doing any mitzvah is commendable, but from another perspective an essential component is missing.

Rabbi Tzadok HaCohen from Lublin, a Lithuanian-trained Talmudist-turned-Chasid, teaches that the essential part of prayer is the desire to pray.

We see in the ancient ritual of animal sacrifice, which like prayer is also called by the name “avodah” (work or practice), that the essence was not the sacrifice itself, but rather the desire to serve God. Sacrifice was a vehicle through which to bring one into the presence of God, but without a yearning for divine connection, the act is hollow.

So too with prayer; words void of feeling are like a body with no soul, and are nearly meaningless. God doesn’t want holy mumbling martyrs; Hashem wants our hearts.

God’s Perfectly Imperfect Plan

For those of us who believe in God, we must face a serious question, one that philosophers have been wresting with since the beginning of theological debate.

If God is perfect, why are we, God’s creations, so imperfect?

We expect a God who is omnipotent, omniscient, and infinite to create beings that reflect some aspect of those qualities. Yet no one can claim even one of them. The divide between us and God appears too vast. Could such a God create something so imperfect? One could wonder if this Creator exists after all.

Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzato, the eighteenth century Italian Kabbalist, teaches that God desires to bestow the best possible good. One might think that creating perfect human beings would satisfy that criteria.

But not so; the greatest good was creating humanity with imperfections, and then empowering us through Torah and mitzvot to fix them. This allows us to feel a sense of accomplishment for the work that we have done, as opposed to feelings of shame like a beggar who receives sustenance with no toil.

This can also allow us to accept our flaws, and the flaws of others. Those imperfect cracks are the places where God is most revealed. Those blemishes empower us to work on our character traits and our service to God, and it is through this work that we actualize our true potential.

Does God Want Mitzvot?

As a young adult I started asking existential questions about the meaning of life, spirituality, and God. After finishing college I came to Israel in order to take a deeper look into the Jewish tradition for answers.

After an introduction to the intricacies of halacha (Jewish law) I was disturbed by several issues. First of all, traditional Judaism related to a mitzvah as an absolute requirement, not as a good deed as I had been taught in my Reform upbringing. This sounded very imposing.

Secondly, why must the halachic system dictate each and every daily activity? Where is the autonomy? And most importantly, where is the spirituality that I was seeking? Where was the God amidst all this halacha?

I found a midrash (Bereishit Rabbah Chapter 44) that helped me begin to formulate an answer to these issues.

The midrash asks: Does God really care if I do the ritual slaughter from the front of the neck or the back of the neck?

In other words, does God care about all the halachic hair-splitting found in the Talmud?

The midrash answers: The mitzvot were only given to refine us.

The mitzvot are not for God, but rather for us. They are a divinely orchestrated spiritual system designed to help us reach our maximum potential. Each mitzvah in its own unique way can move our consciousness from selfishness to selflessness, from craving to caring. Every aspect of life, even the most seemingly mundane acts, can become a tool for growth and connection.

This work is incumbent on all of us; we were created in order to better the world, not to destroy it. Halacha, from the word “to walk,” guides us on a path towards God’s ultimate desire for humanity. This is the path of Jewish spirituality.

The Holy Fire of Faith

Much of my after-school elementary Jewish education focused on the Holocaust. We visited the Holocaust Memorial in Miami, we heard stories from survivors, and we watched the movie “Escape from Sobibor.” But never did we speak about maintaining faith in the face of evil.

It wasn’t until I opened up “Aish Kodesh,” (Holy Fire) by Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, the Rebbe of the Warsaw Ghetto, that I was able to learn this message.

His insights into the infamous story of the scouts that we read in Parshat Shelach offer a powerful model for faith under duress.

The spies return from Canaan and give their report to the waiting nation: The people living there are too strong for us; we saw giants, and the walls of their city are too high!

Calev, himself a member of the scouts, gives a simple rebuttal: We can do it.

Asks the Rebbe: The spies had a logical concern about entering the land. Why didn’t Calev give a pointed response to their report, instead of just saying, “Let’s go”?

There are times when logic challenges faith. But the point at which no rational hope exists should not be the end of one’s faith; this is the time for its deepest expression. God is above the realm of natural law, and in a second our salvation can come. We cannot let our intellect barricade real faith.

This is Calev’s message to the nation: true, logically we are militarily outmatched; but this is not a time for intellectual calculations; this is a time to act on faith according to the word of God. We can do it.

The Rebbe’s words take a different tone when we consider them in the context of the death and destruction he faced. However, the message is one we can relate to in our daily lives. Logic should certainly be our guiding principle, yet there comes a point when we must recognize its limitations and embrace simple faith.