On Shavuot, we celebrate the Jewish people standing at Mount Sinai and accepting the covenant with God. Some say that all Jews who would ever live stood at Sinai, perhaps we are there tonight.
Since I was a small child, I have wondered why, if there is a God, He does not reveal himself to us. Why does he make it so hard for us to believe in him? If he wants us to follow his commandments, the first of which in the Decalogue is
"I am Hashem Your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of slavery".
The first commandment is that we should believe in God. If God wants us to accept that he exists, why doesn't he give us a little more evidence?
In Exodus there was no shortage of direct evidence for the slaves who left Egypt of God's existence and his concern with human affairs. God appears to Moses as a burning bush. Pillars of fire and smoke lead the Israelites away from Egypt. The Red Sea was parted. All of these miracles violate the natural order of things, they are "super" natural. How could the people who had experienced God directly fail to believe and obey him? Yet we know how much trouble they had.
Why are there no miracles today?
I would like to share a poem with you by Maxine Kumin who also muses, among other things, about miracles. She was born in 1925 and lives on a farm in New Hampshire.
| Getting the Message |
| God, the rabbis tell us, never assigns exalted office to a man until He has tested his mettle in small things. So it is written in the Midrash that when a lamb escaped the flock Moses overtook it at a brook drinking its fill and said, I would have taken thee in my arms and carried thee thither had I known thy thirst whereupon a Heavenly Voice warmly resounded, As thou livest, thou art fit.
Divine election's scary. The burning bush
I like my Bible tales, like Scotch, straight up
I like to think God's talent scouts today. |
I love the line "I like my Bible tales, like Scotch, straight up"
When I was a small child I believed in God and miracles because my parents wanted me to. I was not very old, when my rather tentative belief in God went the way of my faith in Santa Claus, the Easter bunny, the tooth fairy and the other secular deities of American culture.
For most of my life, I was satisfied that science and western rationalism explained the world. In school, I studied genetics and evolutionary biology, and like my teachers, one of whom was formerly a Spanish Jesuit priest, I saw no need for God. It was only during my occasional forays, during a misspent youth, into the realm of pharmacologically inspired mind expansion, that I had a sense that there might be more things in heaven and earth, ... than were dreamt of in my philosophy.
When I began spending time in rural Mendocino, I started to admit the possibility of a subtle unseen hand at work in the world. Unplugging from what Ira Rosenberg describes as the "ceaseless sixty cycle hum" of modern life, allowed me to quiet my mind to the point where I began to hear and see phenomena that were previously hidden from me.
It seemed possible that there was a God who acted in our world, in a way that is so subtle that it is easily missed as we rush around in our constant quest for more input and stimulation.
It often happens that I seem to stumble across answers for what is troubling me in Jewish writings
A few years ago I came across a book of contemporary Chassidic tales organized by the weekly Parsha, collected by Rabbi Shlomo Yosef Zevin. Rabbi Zevin was born in Kazimirov, Belorussia in 1890, and succeeded his father as the Rabbi of Kazimirov. In 1934, he migrated to Jerusalem where he lived until his death in 1978 at the age of 88.
In the introduction to this book, Rabbi Zevin wrote about the Jewish attitude toward miracles. He explains that the Chassidim are somewhat disdainful of miracles, in part because the systems of the natural world are far more amazing and a finer testament to the greatness of God, than violations of the beautiful laws of nature that the Almighty created for us. He related this story from the Talmud.
"There was a man whose wife had died leaving him an infant, and he had no money with which to hire a wetnurse. A miracle was worked for him, and he developed breasts like those of a woman so that he was able to nourish his baby. Hearing this Rav Yosef exclaimed: 'How great is this man, that such a miracle should be wrought for him!' Said Abayae: 'On the contrary - how blameworthy is this man, that the natural order of creation should be disturbed for him!'"
This teaching resonated with me. I had always been deeply affected by the natural beauty of the world, and since moving to the Mendocino Coast I had experienced moments of an acute realization of the exquisiteness of the natural world, moments so intense that they were almost painful and would move me to tears.
It started to seem to me that the observations and explanations of science, instead of arguing against the existence of a God; almost screamed that there had to be a creative force behind the world. The fantastic biological diversity of the earth and its complicated processes seemed imbued with divine beauty. Processes, like the dance of chromosomes during meiosis, thermodynamics and the conversion of sugars to adenosine triphosphate via the Krebs cycle, are so elegant that it is easier for me to believe that there was an intelligence behind their evolution, than that they arose from purely random mutation and selective pressure or just happen to be the way our part of the universe works. I make no pretense to understanding the science behind quantum mechanics, black holes and particle physics, except at a metaphorical level, but they to are redolent with an elegance that argues that their creator had an eye for beauty.
While it seemed to me that while the universe almost undoubtedly had a creator, it also seemed likely that the creator was no longer in the picture, like the 18th century metaphor coined by the English natural theologian William Paley, who wrote of God as an absent watchmaker that created an elegant timepiece, wound it up, and then left the scene.
However, my view began to shift slightly. I started to suspect, perhaps as a result of excessive consumption of Bal Shem Tov stories and the writings of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslov, that there might be a God who took an active interest in human affairs. When I thought about it on those rare occasions when my mind was quiet enough to pay attention, it seemed that there were strange coincidences in my life that seemed to give me gentle nudges in one direction or another. I have yet to see a burning bush that is not consumed or a vision of Ezekiel's chariot, nothing that violates the natural order of the world, yet my life has taken some peculiar twists and turns, and who can say that an unseen hand was not at work.
I'll tell you about one of these strange turns. About 5 years ago, after becoming interested in Judaism and studying with Margaret, I decided that I wanted to convert. The ritual process involves three steps: brit milah, an appearance before a Bet Din and a mikvah.
This happened (coincidentally) to come at a very difficult time in my life. There had been at a major upheaval at the large multinational financial institution where I worked and my old boss, who was a very supportive and appreciative woman, had been replaced by a fellow who had been demoted into the slot as my manager. He was extremely unhappy and I think more than a little unbalanced. He amused himself by tormenting the managers reporting to him, including me. At the same time, there was a new property manager for my apartment in San Francisco who was pressuring the older tenants in hopes that they would abandon their rent controlled apartments. I have had to deal with occasional depression my entire adult life; and at this point, I was going through a fairly severe depressive episode and extreme anxiety. since it seemed that my world was crumbling around me.
By the afternoon of my conversion, I has already had an encounter with a very gentle and serious Orthodox Rabbi and mohel named Chanan Feld, and two witnesses Moshe and Mordacai, in a rumpus room in Mill Valley. The Bet Din was going to be convened at the Caspar shul. During the morning, I had attended Mina Cohen's "Hebrew on One Foot" class and had several hours to occupy before heading back to the shul to face the Rabbinical Court. I walked on the Mendocino headlands for a while. I found myself growing more and more anxious and filled with self doubt. I decided to go to the Jewish cemetery to meditate and pray. I was so distracted that I couldn't seem to find the entrance to the cemetery.
I remember walking along Main Street, just off of Highway 1, thinking, "what the hell am I doing", "I'm not Jewish, who am I trying to kid", "what kind of bizarre ego trip have I gotten myself into". I was becoming so overwhelmed with anxiety and panic that I felt like I would crawl out of my skin. I was trying to figure out how I could get in touch with Margaret and call the whole thing off.
And suddenly I fell, hard, on my face. I was astonished. I am fairly sure footed and almost never lose my balance and there I was on the ground. I picked myself up, brushed the dust off, and looked around to make sure that no one had witnessed my clumsiness. I wasn't hurt. Then I realized that the anxiety was almost entirely gone, it had some how dissipated, and while the thought of facing the Bet Din was intimidating, it seemed possible.
Later that night, after appearing before the Bet Din and bounding naked into Big River for a somewhat less than toasty April mikvah, I reflected on the experience. I had the distinct feeling after falling that I had been pushed. Actually, it was more like being whacked hard on the back of the head.
I thought that this was curious, but I had a great many worries at the time and didn't give it too much thought. Sometime later, after hearing Albert Polay's Dvar Torah on Korach at his Bar Mitzvah, where he talked about Moses and Eliezer falling and stating that he felt that in the Torah "whenever someone falls on their face, there is a sign from G-d."
The falling experience was unusual, I am quite certain that I never lost consciousness. I was probably so upset that I wasn't watching my footing and tripped. I seem to remember reading somewhere that large doses of insulin and metrazol which induce shock were used to treat depression in the 1940's and 50's, maybe a large jolt of adrenaline has a similar effect. Certainly, my experience was not super-natural, at least not in the common sense. Yet, if I had not gone to the Bet Din that day, I think that I would have been too ashamed to try it again. I would not have become part of this community. I would not be a Jew.
I cannot tell you that this experience was miraculous, because events occurred that are impossible according to natural laws as we understand them, but for me, I think that it was maybe a small miracle. I suspect that if this tiny and physically trivial event had not occurred, the course of my life would have been profoundly different.
I think most of us have experienced events that have altered our lives profoundly. The car accident that almost happened or did happen. Making love and having it lead to the birth of a child. A gamma ray that insults the DNA that causes cancer. The chance meeting that introduces us to our soulmate. Picking up a book that changes our understanding of the world.
Perhaps if we look carefully enough, we may sense that shadow of the hand of God at some point in our lives, perhaps not.
I will never know, at least in this life, whether taking a header on that April afternoon was the result of divine intervention or sheer clumsiness. But what I do believe is a miracle, is that a little boy who grew from a nominal Presbyterian in Riverside, to a cynical Atheist in San Francisco, is here with you tonight in Caspar talking about God and his role in out lives.
I want to thank God for the miracle of giving me life,
for sustaining me ,
for bringing me to this moment.
I would like to leave you with a poem by the English-American poet Denise Levertov who was born in 1923 and died in 1997.
| CONTRABAND |
| The tree of knowledge was the tree of reason. That's why the taste of it. drove us from Eden. That fruit. was meant to be dried and milled to a fine powder. for use a pinch at a time, a condiment.. God had probably planned to tell us later. about this new pleasure.. We stuffed our mouths full of it. gorged on but and if and how and again. but, knowing no better.. It's toxic in large quantities; fumes. swirled in our heads and around us. to form a dense cloud that hardened to steel,. a wall between us and God, Who was Paradise.. Not that God is unreasonable, but reason. in such excess was tyranny. and locked us into its own limits, a polished cell. reflecting our own faces. God lives. on the other side of that mirror,. but through the slit where the barrier doesn't. quite touch ground, manages still. to squeeze in as filtered light,. splinters of fire, a strain of music heard. then lost, then heard again.. |
© Robert G. Evans 2001
updated 06/15/2001 - rge
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