A religious dilemma -by Rabbi Hyim Shafner

August 25, 2011

My friend and former student Esther (not her real name) embodies all the values and qualities that are deemed praiseworthy in the Orthodox Jewish community…except for one.   She is a leader of Jewish people helping to form observant and learned communities wherever she goes.  She is smart, modest, humble, learned in Torah, observant with the punctiliousness and passion that is the Orthodox ideal, and she even grew up Orthodox, the perfect match for any Jewish man…except that she is, and has always been, only attracted to women.

Esther tried for many years to figure out what her observant Jewish life would look like.  She knew two things for sure, she was gay and she was Orthodox.  The question for her and for many Orthodox Jews who are only attracted emotionally and sexually to people of the same gender is: How should I live my life?   Should I be celibate?   Should I live with a roommate of the same gender and raise children but not tell the world in any official way that we are as loving, supportive and as one person as much as any married heterosexual couple?  Should I have a partner and be open about it and raise an Orthodox family and risk being ostracized?  The easy fixes like not being gay or not being religiously observant are usually not options for people who really are gay and who really are observant Jews.

I always knew the time would come when Esther would realize that she would not really be able to live alone her whole life.  A woman of community and family, steeped in the beauty of Jewish family values, of Shabbat (Sabbath) tables filled with rejoicing, singing, and words of torah study, and of community.   A woman who knows what the important values are and is not moved by the narishkiet (Yiddish for nonsense) that larger American society and its superficial media driven values constantly churns out to us.   Esther is a woman steeped in Orthodox Jewish family values and Torah through and through.

The time that I knew would come, has come.  She met someone she loves, someone she can create a loving, religious Jewish family with which will embody the very best of Orthodox values.   Is creating a Jewish home with another woman and raising Jewish children the best thing for Esther’s Jewish life?   I believe it is.

Esther wants to take the values that Judaism teaches about relationships, as embodied in its writings about Jewish family and weddings and in the Jewish wedding ceremony itself, and utilize them in a ceremony that will deepen and solidify the relationship with her same gender spouse that will serve as the foundation for their “bayit neeman biyisrael,” their house of faith among the Jewish people.  Instead of slinkingly living with a “roommate” she wants to publicly solidify this relationship and foundation for her new family in front of friends and community in order to encourage its longevity and strength.

The halachot (Jewish laws) of Jewish marriage pertain only to a Jewish man and a Jewish woman who are permitted to each other.  True, it is not forbidden in Judaism to ceremoniously read sections of the book of Ruth about relationships, or the Song of Songs, or to make a blessing on a cup of wine, or to offer a prayer on behalf of a bride and a bride.  On the other hand all of the paradigms of marriage in the Torah are only between men and women.

Is it the time to say our focus on drawing lines and holding ground against gays, their relationships and their marriages is wasted energy?  To say as Rabbi Shmuly Boteach recently has that we should stop focusing on gay marriage and worry about the 50% of heterosexual marriages that fail?  To acknowledge that marriage does not have to prompt a community analysis of what happens in people’s bedrooms but can just see what happens in their dining rooms and living rooms such as loving children and teaching them Judaism in a house of Jewish celebration and faith among our people?

Maybe this is the moment to stand up and say it is better for gay orthodox Jews (at least those who can not be celibate and still keep the rest of the Torah with joy) to be in monogamous relationships which are the most observant ones they can be?  To say why  assume every relationship is only judged based upon what we think might be going on in the couple’s bed room and not on the building of a traditional Jewish home?   That when it comes to heterosexual couples who may be violating things in their bedroom that are forbidden by the Torah we turn a blind eye but when it comes to gay couples whose bedroom violations may be much less, perhaps only rabbinic, that suddenly we are up in arms?

If I believe the best thing for Esther is to “marry” a woman and raise a Jewish family and I do not help facilitate that because I fear the reverberations in the Orthodox community am I a hypocrite?   On the other hand I am a Jew committed to Jewish law and tradition and same gender marriage has never been part of that, indeed has been seen as outside of it.

So what is a rabbi to do?

15 Comments | Contemporary Issues, Halacha (Jewish Law), Judaism and Homosexuality | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
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A hesped (eulogy) for my mother: Torah and art a synthesis of worlds

August 11, 2011

My mother (hk”m) died last week.  She was a well know artist, committed observant Jew, a deep thinker, and a humble supportive mother.  We are all dying, but to live a life that is dignified, creative, and that brings much insight and light to the world is the goal -and this my mother truly did.  I offer HERE, a link to some of her more recent  large Biblical and Midrashic oil paintings, a HERE a link to her obituary.  Below is the eulogy I gave for her, one among many that were given.

 

A Eulogy for my Mother

My mother made each of us feel and appreciate our uniqueness, our talents and strengths.  She helped us to understand that we had something to give to the world, that no one else did, something great.   This came through her unconditional love and lack of judgementalism, which enabled her to know each of our strengths and weaknesses, to appreciate and love us as the magnificent individuals even we ourselves did not always know we were.  And from her each of us learned to do this with others, to give without judgment, to help without expectation of return, as my father said, to be good people, which is what she wanted from us.

But more than that, she gave us the message that the world was important, deep, mysterious, and was ours for the taking because we were her children.  “The world is your oyster” she used to say.

She thought much about life and death, art and human expression, man and god, love and values, about the things that mattered.   Life was precious in her eyes, to be cherished.  When asked by her art students how she could raise four children, have a devoted marriage, find time to teach and paint, she said “you have to be a pig for life”.   What she taught, she taught to everyone who knew her, by being who she was and by imparting her unique vision that we must take life by the horns yet with the deepest humility, practicality and lack of self-importance.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Physical beauty transformed: From Anthony Weiner to Sara of the Bible -by Rabbi Hyim Shafner

July 8, 2011

I recently came across a fascinating blog. It is authored by an anonymous single mother inSan Franciscowho suffered horrendous sexual abuse as a child at the hands of her own father and contains some of the deepest spiritual insights I have read. In a post entitled “Does your grandmother look good naked?” she writes:

“In our culture today, we seem to have allowed the porn industry to define female beauty for us. …I thought my grandmother was a beautiful woman. Actually – I know she was a beautiful woman. I remember the day I chose to name my only child after her: she was eighty-two years old, visiting her forty-three year old son in a nursing home (a horrible accident left him brain-dead). But she didn’t just visit him. She also brought gifts and smiles and attention to the other residents of that nursing home. Every one she touched could see how beautiful she was…I know what you’re thinking – my grandmother had spiritual beauty, not necessarily physical beauty. But how have we come to separate the two? They are not separate….My grandmother’s laugh lines, her arthritic hands, her dowager’s hump, her aged and tender skin-all of that was beautiful to me. Her body was beautiful because she lived in it. Your body is beautiful because you live in it…When we separate a body from its spirit; we turn that body into a corpse….Let’s stop treating our bodies as sex objects, and start embracing ourselves as sexual subjects. Only then will we have a shot at genuine beauty.”

I think she is talking here about an entirely new way of seeing beauty, sexuality, and attraction. That physical beauty must not be separate from emotional, relational, and spiritual beauty but that the two can be seen as deeply connected, as actually the same. Not jettisoning the physical for something deeper but seeing it in a new light, illuminated by the person themselves.

What would it mean to see each other in this way? How can we reframe when we feel attracted to someone due to their physical beauty alone? How do we see beauty as still beautiful and attractive but at the same time emerging from who someone is, the real person that inhabits that body, not from their skin? Is it even possible to see emotional and values driven beauty as inseparable from physical beauty? Not as many do, to see the soul and self in place of the body, but to see bodily beauty and sexuality as a manifestation of the soul? To see ourselves and others as beautiful, as sexy, but not because our skin is taught, not because we are an ideal figure, but as the “us” that inhabits our bodies.

It is interesting in this vain to reread the Bible’s description of the first Jewish woman, – Sara, who at 66 years old is described as physically, not spiritually beautiful. Shouldn’t the bible be more concerned with the spiritual or emotional beauty of Sara rather than her physical beauty? Is a 66 year old woman really the Bible’s image of physical beauty? Indeed the Bible does not describe many younger women this way.

Even stranger is that the context is one in which Abraham is afraid that due to Sara’s incredible beauty she will be taken by Pharaoh for a liaison. Pharaohs typically had access to all the young beautiful women their hearts desired, so why would Pharaoh notice Sara at 66 years old and take her? Is it possible that the blogger is right? That were we not inundated with media indoctrinating us to believe that beauty is only a manifestation of certain kinds of skin, certain weights, certain breast and leg formations, that beauty would be a wholly different type of experience for us? One in which the person and body were not separate, one in which the person themselves manifested their physical beauty?

In an age of Anthony Weiners who wish to be known only by their skin, in an age inundated by pornography and sexually oriented advertising, of television that only encourages us to see others and ourselves as objects, how can w cultivate the instruction of the anonymous but wise San Franciscan blogger? How do we move toward an appreciation of Biblical Sara whose physical beauty is her spiritual beauty and vice versa?

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Reflections on our Community Shavuot Tikun and Jewish Unity -by Rabbi Hyim Shafner

June 17, 2011

This past Tuesday night, the first night of Shavuot, over 100 people from five different shuls and institutions, Reform, Conservative and Orthodox, came together  to spend the night (some even made it all night!)  learning Torah together; to stand again as we did at Sinai, no matter our differences, as “one person with one heart”.

Classes ranged from Pirkey Avot, to Jewish mysticism, to Midrash.  Jews who rarely pray together and might not share the same visions of how Jewish observance should look none the less placed those differences aside in light of the big picture –that we are all one.  As Richard Joel, the president of Yeshiva University often used to say regarding the Jewish people, “One size does not fit all.”  Yet at the same time it is imperative I think that we are able at times to put aside those different “sizes” and be one people learning Torah together -especially on Shavuot.  As the Midrash says, “The Jewish people came together as one person with one heart in order to receive the Torah with love.”  According to the Midrash the Torah must be received in love and this is only possible if the Jewish people can, even if only for one day, see each other as wholly unified.

Some people in the Orthodox community have asked me how I can allow teachers who do not share Orthodox views of Torah or observance to teach at Bais Abraham on Shavuot.   I do not believe it is forbidden to read or hear what other Jews believe and often I find they have much to teach us.   I have not once had any of my congregants tell me they considered not being Orthodox from hearing a non-orthodox rabbi speak on Shavuot at my shul.   I have faith that the Torah is true and can protect itself.

I was once discussing our annual community Shavuot Tikun with the head of an Israeli yeshiva and that some people have been critical of this interdenominational learning since they were afraid of having teachers teach who were not Orthodox in belief or observance.  His reply was: “They should be afraid of being too afraid”.

What does indeed come from the annual Shavuot Tikun, thank G-d, is a deep sense of the unity of Klal Yisrael (the Jewish people).

1 Comment | Conservative Jewdaism, Contemporary Issues, Interdenominational relations, Jewish Thought, Orthodox Jewdaism, Reform Judaism | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
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Seeing the sincerity in those with whom we disagree

June 1, 2011

It is not easy for the Jewish people to see themselves as one. They label each other heretics and fanatics, and deem each other guilty of undermining the welfare, identity, and religious underpinnings of the Jewish people as a whole.

Some have noted that unfortunately it often takes persecution to bring Jewish unity.   Hitler for instance considered all Jews, even those who did not consider themselves Jewish, as part of the Jewish people.   The Jew who lived a fully assimilated life in 1940’s Germany, the Jew who converted to Christianity, and the Jew who did not look Jewish and perhaps did not even know they were, were all equally Jewish in qualifying for extermination.

In several weeks Jewish people all over the world will celebrate the Biblical holiday of Shavuot.  Though as described in the Bible this holiday is very much about thanking God for the wheat harvest, today a different aspect of the holiday, its commemoration of the divine revelation of the Torah at Mount Sinai to the whole Jewish people, is more central.

The Midrash, Judaism’s most ancient commentary on the Bible, writes that the Jewish people accepted the Torah at Sinai together, “As one person with one heart.”   Perhaps this upcoming holiday of Shavuot can be the day when we put aside our differences, and reclaim that Sinaitic sense of being “One person with one heart.”

Each time I study what someone else in Judaism believes and hear how they see the world, even though their ideas are different from my strongly held religious beliefs, I am pleasantly surprised. I may still think that their views are incorrect, but what I see, with fresh eyes, is their good intentions and their integrity. Each time it becomes clear that they see what they are doing as best for their community, for the Jewish people, and for the world.  Jewish people and groups whom I thought were damaging the Jewish people, I found were actually engaging  in what they saw as correct religious life and values, caring much more about the Jewish people than I could have imagined.

For instance, the liberal rabbi  whom I thought was out to undermine Jewish tradition and herald assimilation turned out to be someone of deep faith and integrity, trying to the best of their ability and with good intentions, to engage the Jewish people in religious life and values, caring much more about Jewish tradition than I had imagined.  Or the fundamentalist rabbi that I thought was out to separate the Jewish people entirely from other Jews and from the outside world, whom I imagined was trying to compromise much of the light that Jews are commanded to bring to the nations, turned out to be a loving, caring, understanding human being who was much more open minded than I had imagined.

The great miracle of learning about the other, of seeing through another’s eyes if even for a moment, is not only appreciation of their integrity, not only a greater sense of unity with them, but taking something productive away, learning something I did not know before that could relate to and deepen my own beliefs, no matter how different from theirs.

The common denominator of all the Jewish groups is their claim to the Torah. In the spirit of this unity, Jewish people from all denominations will come together to study Torah all night long this Shavuot, Tuesday June 7th, at 11pm at Bais Abraham Congregation.   The event is sponsored by the Orthodox Bais Abraham Congregation, the Conservative Sharee Tzedek Synagogue, the Reform Central Reform Congregation, the Jewish Community Center and many others.   For more information call Rabbi Hyim Shafner 314-721-3030 or email rabbi@baisabe.com.

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Our neighbors: Jeffrey Dahmer and Osama bin Laden –by Rabbi Hyim Shafner

May 12, 2011

“Do not rejoice when your enemy falls.” -Proverbs 24:17

“Then Moses and the children ofIsraelsang…Pharos’s chariots and army God has drowned in the sea!” -Exodus 15:1

Should we cheer at the fall of Bin Laden?   The Biblical book of Proverbs would seem to indicate we should not.   On the other hand in the Biblical book of Exodus when the Jewish people walk through theRed Seaand the Egyptians who are perusing them drown Miriam and Moses lead the Jewish people in song and dance in thanks to God for saving them from Pharaoh and his army.  So which is it?

The Talmud, Judaism’s most basic book of law, in discussing capitol punishment asks how capitol punishment should be carried out if a criminal is deserving of the death penalty.   The Talmud concludes that it must be carried out in the most painless way possible.  This is learned from a familiar Biblical verse used in a shocking way:

“And you shall love your neighbor as yourself” – Choose for him a good death (Talmud, Sanhedrin 52b).

Of those we are inclined to see as “our neighbor” to be treated as ourselves, the least likely candidate for such status is a criminal so horrendous they are deserving of capitol punishment.  Yet it is precisely to such a situation that the Talmud understands the Biblical dictum to apply.

I remember about 15 years ago I was in the dollar store and came across a book by Jeffrey Dahmer’s father about his son’s life.  Dahmer was, in most of our minds, the most horrid of criminals.  He met men at bars, brought them to his apartment, had sex with them, cut them up into bits and ate them.   I paid my dollar and snuck the book out of the store as if it were pornographic.

In reading the book I was amazed.  This individual whom I saw as so horrible as to not really be human, at least not the same catagory of human as I, had a real life, a real father, mother, and childhood, not unlike most of us.  He played, ate, waked the dog, and had what seemed to be normal parents.   It was a revelation to me.  Suddenly this person whom I thought was so other, so disgusting as to not be of the same humanness as the rest of us, was indeed much like the rest of us.

It made me wonder if perhaps we all have the potential to be so evil and I began to see the most horrendous of criminals as a little less “other” -as my neighbor.   Which does not mean we should not punish them or even mete out capitol punishment when deserved, but at the same time we must realize they are human like the rest of us, and in loving them, our neighbor as ourselves, we must do the work of choosing for them the best death.  Death and justice certainly, but a death in which we can not free ourselves from seeing them, we can not see them as wholly other, but as our neighbor….albeit a neighbor so wicked they deserve death.

Perhaps the message is that justice must be done, it is good to bring Osama Bin Laden to death and rid the world of a bit of evil, but at the same time perhaps we must not separate ourselves mentally  from him, we must realize he is “our neighbor”  and choose for him a good death.  A death  not of revenge and pain, but of mercy and justice.

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Avoiding the comforts of extremism

May 3, 2011

Sometimes the middle path is perceived as that which is noncommittal and lacking passion.   But in the realm of religion the opposite is true.  It is moderate positions that require more passion and commitment because they tend to be less black and white and thus harder to balance.  Extreme ideas in contrast are easy to grasp and hold onto.

Within Judaism, especially within more traditional arenas, there is disagreement regarding to what extent one should put up isolationist walls as a bulwark against western culture for fear of it compromising one’s religious values, or be open to outside people and ideas.

Sometimes those who form more extreme insular communities are seen as more pious.   In truth though, every stricture, every religious piety comes with an equal and opposite religious compromise not as readily apparent.  For instance, the more isolated and protected a community is the more they may retain their exclusive religious values, but at the same time their religious values will be less able to impact the outside world and thus less able to render them a “Light unto the nations” or as God put the Jewish mission to Abraham in the book of Genesis, “A blessing to all the families of the earth.”

Rabbi Marc Angel makes this point well in a recent article about Passover in the Jerusalem post http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=217325 in which he writes that true religious life is balanced, not veering to the side of “ice” or skepticism and hedonism, nor toward the side of “fire” or religious passion that expresses itself as fanaticism and isolationism.

Yet it is hard to stand for moderation and balance, it is much easier, and I would add more sexy, to take extreme positions.   The extremes of “ice” or of “fire” are less complex and at the extremes we are prone to see ourselves as self righteous, a position that, while locking out others, usually makes us feel pretty good.

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The French Emperor’s Burka: When Liberalism Leads to Close-Mindedness

April 13, 2011

It is ironic when liberalism generates, instead of open-mindedness and acceptance, limitation of others’ free expression and denial of their rights.   France, I think, in dictating the limitations of what Muslim women can wear, has unmasked its liberte et egalite and shown it to be something else entirely.  The French Emperor, it seems, is wearing no clothes.  Liberty and equality that in the name of French secularism does not allow religious freedom are just prejudice and fear masquerading as secular values.

 

Rabbi Abraham Kook, the first chief rabbi of modern day Palestine (pre-state Israel) in the 1920’s, and father of modern day religious Zionism, understood that even in a religious context all things, even those usually deemed as anti-religious, can have value.  For instance, atheism, he said, has an important voice and place.  When others are in need, we must be atheists and not rely on God to help, not attribute the pain of others to divine justice, but jump in to assist, feeling the full burden of others’ needs as if there were no God for them to rely on.

 

I think secularism, too, has its place.  To be deeply religious, the tolerance and viewing of others’ religious values is of paramount importance.   If God is one and infinite then there are many keys to the kingdom.  When caught up in our own religious views (be they spiritual, or in the case of France, secular) it is hard to appreciate the take others might have on the big questions, i.e. God, people, the good, the universe.   But to have religious depth and not just self-righteousness, we must hear and appreciate the views of others, even if we do not accept them.   Ironically, the more we know about our own religion and the more secure we are in our observance and faith, the more we will be able to tolerate and learn from other’s views.   It makes one wonder how secure the French secularism that Sarkozy has touted really is (http://www.france24.com/en/20091112-nicolas-sarkozy-burqa-france-religion-muslim-secular-france).

 

The Talmud says that Jewish law follows the one who states the opposition’s opinion first and only then his own opinion.  Such a person’s view is truly informed and thus more likely to be correct.   When blind to another’s world view, it is easy to be right.  But if we first look through the eyes and values of another and only then commit to our own values, our own opinions will be more true and just.

 

How ironic that France, birthplace of revolution and freedom, in unmasking the Muslim woman, has donned its own cultural blinders.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Heaven and Heck

April 4, 2011

When I was a Rabbi at Washington University it was common for students who were not very knowledgeable about Judaism to ask me, “Rabbi, Judaism does not believe in Heaven and Hell right?”  I am not sure where this seemingly widespread impression came from, but my flippant answer was always, “No, but we do believe in heck.”

In the Five Books of Moses, the Biblical books of Genesis through Deuteronomy, there is no mention of heaven and hell.  There are proscriptions of earthly punishments, for violations of interpersonal as well as ritual law at the hands of a court, as well as earthly punishments from the Almighty (holding back rain, defeat at the hands of our enemies, exile from the Land of Israel) directed toward the entire Jewish nation for not obeying the Torah, but nothing is portrayed beyond our physical world.

Though the Torah proscribes many punishments for the violation of commandments, in only a few instances does the Bible mention reward for correct actions.  In the case of honoring one’s father and mother (Exodus 20:11) the Bible says, “You shall have long life on the land which God has given you” and for the commandment of shooing away the mother bird before taking her eggs from the nest (Deuteronomy 21:6), the Torah writes the same reward, that “it may be good for you and your days be long…”

The Talmud records an interesting story regarding faith and reward and punishment.   A father told his son to climb a tree and shoo away the mother bird, claiming the eggs for himself.  The boy obeyed and on his way down fell off the tree and died.   The Talmud tells us that Rabbi Alisha ben Avyah, watching the scene of the boy dying while occupied precisely in those two laws for which the Torah rewards long life, gave up his faith in God.  The Talmud then asks, indeed, how do we explain the boy’s death?in light of his fillment of these two commandments?   The Talmud answers that the torah does not mean long life in this world but long life in the next.

Normative Judaism does believe in an after life, usually referred to as Olam Habah, the “World to Come.”  Maimonides railed against the branches of Islamic philosophy in his day (11c) that saw this reward as physical, since the body is put in the ground and only the soul meets its maker.  Maimonides explains that through our actions in this world we cultivate our soul’s ability to reconnect with its Infinite divine source after the body’s death.   What we have done in this world conditions the soul to be close to God or distant from God.

Closeness to the Divine is the ultimate reward; distance from it the greatest punishment.   So we must be clear from a Jewish point of view that though we believe in reward and punishment (with out it, I think, what we do does not really matter) we should not mistake this for a vindictive King in the sky image casting humans into a Dantesque inferno.  Rather our soul in the next world is a natural extension of who we have become in this world.  The development of our moral and religious character which we achieve in the physical world, in a way continues on and “naturally” results in our proximity to the Divine, perhaps the greatest of all rewards and punishments.

In Jewish study and life in general one rarely hears discussion of Heaven and Hell.  I think this emerges from Judaism’s very strong stress on this world, and doing what we should because we are commanded so, not because some non-earthly reward and punishment awaits us.   As the first century Jewish moral work Pirkey Avot, The Ethics of our Fathers (4:17) puts it:  “More beautiful is one hour of repentance and good deeds in this world than all the life of the World to Come, and more beautiful is one hour of spiritual satisfaction in the Next World than all the life of this world.”

 

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Is God in the Tsunami? -By Rabbi Hyim Shafner

March 23, 2011

…After the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake… -I Kings 19:11

“Where is God now? Where is He?…He is hanging here on this gallows” -Night by Eli Wiesel

“The cruelty and the killing raise the question whether even those who believe after such an event dare to talk about God who loves and cares without making a mockery of those who suffered.” -Rabbi Irving Greenberg

The Japanese, I am told, living on one of the most active tectonic faults, feel always that the “big one” can come tomorrow.   I guess all humans, if we are not completely jaded, wait for the big one, though perhaps not actively. Indeed humans have a unique ability to ignore the tragic realities and statistics predicting the disasters that may come. But we all have some deep sense, when we are honest, that life is as transient as things get. Beyond helping the Japanese people by sending funds and supplies, how do we assimilate the tragedy?

 

 

Perhaps we can not.  Only survivors of tragic events can know what it is to be they; for us to make assumptions about such tragedy would be audacious.   So what can we, 10,000 miles from the epicenter think, say, and reflect upon, other than crying for fellow humans, made in God’s image who are suffering so much?  For us as religious people and religious leaders, how do we understand the ago old question which asks “Where is the merciful God we talk about and pray to, now?”

 

 

In the face of tragedy, unfortunately, religious leaders seems to make the news when they take either of two extreme positions.  That God brought about a tragedy to punish us, -Rabbis, Priests and Imams all were quoted after the floods in New Orleans and the Tsunami in Thailand as saying that God brought about these modern day floods for the same reason as those in the Bible, to punish humans for their sins.

 

 

But, as the biblical book of Job instructs, we must not suggest reasons for, or try to make sense of, the suffering of others.  Though we want to make sense of our world and the seeming injustice of it, if we do we make a mockery of humans and God.  In the end God seems to rebuke Job’s friends who suggest reasons for his torment with the words, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the world?”

 

 

The other extreme was heard also, that tragedy of such proportion should lead us to question the existence of God, as if the death of one child is less horrific and more explainable.   So what are religionists who believe in a merciful God on one hand and read a Bible of reward and punishment on the other, to say about calamity of such huge proportion?

 

 

In Judaism there is expansive writing about such questions.  In ancient times in the Talmud and in more recent years a vast Holocaust literature and theology has tried to grapple with modern day tragedies of biblical proportion in which often the righteous suffer and the wicked are spared

 

 

One helpful idea, much discussed in modern holocaust literature, is the idea of God’s hiddenness.   That while believing in an infinite God, this does not mean that God is always present, -God’s face as it were, can be hidden from us.  The Bible, following a list of curses and punishments that will befall the Jews if they do not obey the Torah, states, “…and I will hide my face from you on that day.”  To be hidden does not mean to be gone, nor does it mean to be understood, but it does mean that the promise of Divine presence and possibility still exists.

 

Recently Jewish people all over the world celebrated the holiday of Purim.  On this day 2500 years ago a wicked man attempted to genocide all the Jews and almost succeeded, if not for a courageous queen named Esther.   Esther’s name, the Talmud tells us, is hinted at in the Hebrew bible in the words “vaani hister astir panai bayom hahoo”, “And I will hide my face from you on that day (Deut. 31:18)” Esther=Hister-meaning “to hide.”

 

 

The very name Esther, the queen who saves the Jewish people, also refers to God’s hiddenness, and indeed in the entire book of Esther God’s name is not mentioned even once.  And so the scroll of Esther offers the hope that though we live in a world of tragedy, pain, suffering, and injustice, perhaps it is not a world in which God is absent or dead, but hidden.

 

 

In the words of the great 20th century Rabbi, Joseph Solovetchik in his profound book, Lonley Man of Faith: “Who is He who trails me steadily, uninvited and unwanted, like an everlasting shadow, and vanishes into the recesses of transcendence the very instant I turn around to confront this numinous, awesome and mysterious ‘He’?”

 

 

Though God is indeed hidden in our world, even more so at this moment, perhaps it is up to us to reveal the Divine through our actions and response.

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