There’s a Chasidic story about a person who approaches their rabbi with a conundrum. “Rabbi,” they say, “I don’t believe in God.”
The rabbi considers this statement and says, “Tell me what you don’t believe.”
The person says, “I don’t believe that God is a man in the sky. I don’t believe that God is angry and vengeful, and sends natural disasters to punish us. I don’t believe that God can intervene in human life and perform miracles, and yet chooses to watch us suffer instead.”
The rabbi listened to the person explain what they don’t believe in. And then the rabbi said, “You know... I don’t believe in that God either.”
No one has a monopoly on God. In Judaism while we’re instructed to believe, what we believe is largely up to us.
There is a long history of Jews who rejected traditional beliefs in God, but believed nonetheless.
Einstein, who was often labeled as an atheist, was quoted as saying, “To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious.”
To Einstein, belief in God is a feeling of awe and wonder. It is less about what you know and more about what you don’t know. To let go of the workings of the mind and tune into the workings of the heart. To surrender to beauty.
Some people mistakenly say Judaism is not about belief, but about action. We do focus on action, but we have belief too: shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad. Adonai is our God, Adonai is one. That first line of the Shema tells us to believe. And what comes next tells us HOW to believe: v’ahavta – and you shall love. We show we believe through love.
We all have different ways of showing our love, yet love is love regardless of the form it takes. So too will we have different ways of believing. God can be one and still be different to each of us, as each of us is different.
The God most of us don’t believe in is a supernatural God. The angry, vengeful God who destroys as punishment. As it turns out, it is very Jewish to not believe in this God.
Rabbis and scholars have promoted disbelief in this God for over 1,000 years. In the 10th century, Saadia Gaon wrote that “miracles” were natural occurrences: not divine intervention, but more like divine coincidence. In the 12th century, Maimonides wrote that miracles were meant as metaphors and not to be taken literally. They could not believe in a God that intervened, when they lived in a world where God did not intervene.
These were not non-believers. They were not fringe thinkers. They believed, just in a different way. We have in our history over a millennia of disbelief in a supernatural God.
I’ll admit, I’m a little obsessed with Jewish theology. I’ve devoted many projects and papers to the theme. As much as I would love to share an in-depth overview of various Jewish theologies, what I really want to share with you is my personal theology.
Whether we realize it or not, we all have personal theologies. We may not have developed them thoroughly, but any belief or disbelief we have is our personal theology.
My personal theology is a patchwork of others’ theologies which have resonated with me, stitched together with my own unique experiences. It is a home-made, sentimental thing, not meant for mass-production. Even if our patches are identical, our stitching is unique to us, like a thumbprint or a signature. I know my quilt will not be your quilt. But maybe I can share what it means to me.
My theology is both a belief in God and a way to connect to the God I believe in. My God is a rejection of binaries. My God is not either/or, but both and everything in-between. Elohim is plural, but God is one. The multiplicity with the singularity represents connection. The fabric of the universe. Everything is connected. Though we are many, through our connection we become one. God is connection.
God’s proper name which we do not say out loud is related to the Hebrew word to be. In the Torah we only see the verb to be in future or past tense; it never appears in the present tense. Perhaps God’s name is the original present tense of the verb to be. God is being.
In the beginning, God was being. But as our story begins, God creates. God becomes creator.
God is connection. God is being. God is creator. God is becoming.
God is possibility. God is evolution. God is a gravitational pull toward goodness.
In truth, the word God has lost its meaning. It was meant as a placeholder for the ineffable, a way to describe the indescribable. In its potential to mean so much, to many of us it has come to mean nothing. I have described to you what God is to me, and now I want to share with you my practice of connecting with that God. But understanding all the baggage that the name God carries, I will use the name Source of Goodness.
This is just one practice, but it is my practice. I don’t use it all the time, but it is my go-to for whenever I need a spiritual connection. Sometimes I use it once a month, and sometimes I use it multiple times a day. It is not something I feel obligated in, but something that helps me connect to a power greater than myself, and to feel recharged with goodness.
If you are comfortable, I invite you to close your eyes. Find a comfortable position. Try and release any tension you may be holding in your shoulders, in your jaw, between your eyes. Take a deep breath in, and a deep breath out.
Envision yourself in a dark room. The darkness is so stark that you cannot see the walls, the ceiling, the floor. It is as if you are in a void.
If you feel comfortable, bring your hands to your chest. Now envision a warm, soft light has materialized in your heart. This light is the Source of Goodness that lives inside you. It is so bright it shines outside of your body, illuminating the space around you. As you bring your hands back down to your lap, the light flows out of you and into your hands. You can hold it now, resting in your palms. Feel the warmth of its glow.
You take this warm, comforting light, and you stretch it out as wide as your arms can reach, and you wrap yourself in the light like a tallit. You pull it over your head and around your body until you are surrounded in the light.
You can no longer see the darkness. Everything is light. You know the darkness is still there, but it cannot reach you. You are protected by the light. It is warm, comforting, and nourishing. Feel yourself blossom within this light, opening up your heart, unburdened by any heaviness you were carrying before.
This light comes from the Source of Goodness. You conjured it from within, but it exists all around you. The one source flows through many channels. You can always access it in your heart, or you can experience it in the goodness of others, or in the beauty of nature. You can surround yourself with it if you need protection or comfort. It is not a shield which closes you off from the world, but an energy source which gives you the strength to face the darkness. It reminds you who you are. You are not lost in the darkness; you are a source of light. You have within you the Source of Goodness.
This is my personal patchwork quilt. It is handmade and tailored to me. Your quilt will be different. We each will have our own beliefs and ways to connect.
I’ll conclude how I began: with a story. There was a young kid who went missing every time the community gathered to pray. Ordinarily no one would think anything of it, but this was the rabbi’s kid, and the community began to gossip. Did the kid not know how to pray? Where did the kid run away to?
Fed up with the rumors, the rabbi confronted their child. “Where do you go during prayers?” the rabbi asked.
“I go to the forest,” the child responded.
“Prayers are not time for playing,” the rabbi chastised.
“But I’m not playing!” the child insisted. “I go to the forest to pray.”
The rabbi laughed. “But why would you need to go to the forest to pray?” the rabbi asked. “What difference does it make if you’re in the forest or in the synagogue? God is the same everywhere.”
The child simply responded, “God may be the same everywhere, but I am not. In order for me to pray, I need the forest.”
We all have different ways of being spiritual. Different ways to believe in that which our minds cannot fully comprehend. Different ways to connect with the ineffable.
Your personal belief will affect how you connect to that belief. Some need the forest, others need science; some need meditation, others need music or art. We are not meant to be identical with identical beliefs. My God will be different from your God; even if God is the same, we are not the same. You don’t believe in an angry, vengeful God? I don’t believe in that God either.
Judaism tells us to believe, but doesn’t tell us what to believe. What we believe is up to us. We are only told how to believe: we believe through love. Whatever we believe, whatever our personal patchwork quilt looks like, it must inspire us to love. Love is at the heart of it all. Love is all we need to believe.
Let us wrap ourselves in that love. Let us let love guide us to becoming a light in the darkness. Let us use love as a tool to heal ourselves and our broken world. Let this next year be our year to love.
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