Ten Paths to G-d - Unit 1 - The Way of Identity

INTRODUCTION

Uniquely, Jews are born into a faith. It chooses us before we choose it. Physically we come naked into the world, but spiritually we come with a gift: the story of our past, of our parents and theirs, through almost forty centuries from the day Avraham and Sarah first heard the call of God and began their journey to a land, a promise, a destiny and a vocation. That story is ours.

It is a strange and moving story. It tells of how a family, then a collection of tribes, then a nation, were summoned to be God’s ambassadors on earth. They were charged with building a society unlike any other, based not on wealth and power but on justice and compassion, the dignity of the individual and the sanctity of human life – a society that would honor the world as God’s work and the human person as God’s image.

That was and is a demanding task, yet Judaism remains a realistic religion. It assumed from the outset that transforming the world would take many generations – hence the importance of handing on our ideals to the next generation. It takes many gifts, many different kinds of talent – hence the importance of Jews as a people. None of us has all the gifts, but each of us has some. We all count; we each have a unique contribution to make. We come before God as a people, each giving something, and each lifted by the contributions of others.

And yes, at times we fail or fall short – hence the importance of teshuvah, repentance, apology, forgiveness, re-dedication. Judaism is bigger than any of us, yet it is made by all of us. And though Jews were and are a tiny people, today a mere fifth of a per cent of the population of the world, we have made a contribution to civilization out of all proportion to our numbers.

To be a Jew is to continue the journey our ancestors began, to build a world that honors the image of God in every human being and to be part of a people summoned by God to be His ambassadors down here on earth.

THE STORY OF OUR PAST

A PROMISE

A DESTINY AND A VOCATION...TO BE G-D'S AMBASSADORS ON EARTH

Albert Einstein, As I See It, p. 103

The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, an almost fanatical love of justice, and the desire for personal independence – these are the features of the Jewish tradition which make me thank my stars that I belong to it.

Milton Himmelfarb, Jews and Gentiles, p. 141–142

Each of us Jews knows how thoroughly ordinary he is; yet taken together, we seem caught up in things great and inexplicable . . . The number of Jews in the world is smaller than a small statistical error in the Chinese census. Yet we remain bigger than our numbers. Big things seem to happen around us and to us.

Rabbi Lord Immanuel Jakobovits, The Timely and the Timeless, p. 96–97

We have become altogether too inward-looking, with our horizons largely limited within the ghetto-walls we have erected to separate us from the rest of our people and from the human society beyond . . . Preoccupied with the burning problems of our own survival, we have lost sight with our assignment as a light unto the nations.

BUILDING A SOCIETY UNLIKE ANY OTHER

HANDING ON OUR IDEALS TO THE NEXT GENERATION

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Nineteen Letters, p. 64

Devoid of power, splendor, bereft of the brilliant show of human grandeur, Israel was upheld by its faithfulness toward the All-One . . . Other states, everywhere, in all the glory of human power and arrogance, disappeared from the face of the earth, while Israel, though devoid of might and splen- dor, lived on because of its loyalty to God and His Law.

Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith, p. 112

Despair and resignation were unknown to the man of the covenant who found triumph in defeat, hope in failure, and who could not conceal God’s Word that was, to paraphrase Jeremiah, deeply implanted in his bones and burning in his heart like an all-consuming fire.

FINAL THOUGHTS

For forty centuries, Jews have held tenaciously to the belief that we have been charged with a sacred mission: to sanctify life by being God’s ambassadors to a world that has all too often worshipped the multiple forms of what Nietzsche called ‘the will to power’. We were called on to write a different story, that tells of the beauty of holiness and the call of compassion: ‘to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.’

Judaism has placed at the center of its striving some of the most healing of all sacred imperatives: (1) the importance of love and loyalty; (2) marriage and the sacred bonds between husband and wife, parent and child; (3) education and the life of the mind; (4) justice, equity and the rule of law; (5) compassion, charity and human dignity; (6) the bonds of belonging and community; (7) memory, history and imperishable hope. We seek God not just in the remote heavens or the innermost recesses of the soul but in ordinary life, with its pleasures and pains, fears and hopes, conflicts and consolations. Judaism believes not in abandoning earth for the sake of heaven, but in bringing fragments of heaven down to earth in simple deeds and celebrations.

For that is where God is found. Not in wealth, power, fame, success, or any other of the myriad substitutes for life, still less in violence and terror, but in life itself: living, breathing (neshamah, the Hebrew word for soul, means ‘breathing’), loving, giving, caring, praying, praising, giving thanks, defeating tragedy in the name of hope, and death in the name of life.

Our task is to be true to our faith and a blessing to others: a blessing to others because we are true to our faith. To be a Jew is to bring redemption, one day at a time, one act at a time. Every mitzvah, every kind word or deed, every act of sharing what we have with others, brings the Divine presence into the world. By recognizing the image of God in other people, we help to remake the world in the image of God.