I don't believe in Santa Claus. I used to when I was a little kid, then my Mom told me that Santa didn't come to our house because we were Jewish. Eventually with the help of some Hanukkah presents, I got over this loss and I soon after outgrew believing in Santa. Around that same time, I also believed that God was an old man, with a big white turban, a long white beard and sat on a flying carpet in the sky. I also outgrew believing this fantasy, and for many years afterwards, when it came to God I was an agnostic, meaning I was on the fence. I didn't know either way whether or not God existed, I didn't have faith in Gods existence, nor did I deny it, I just didn't know.
During a visit to Israel in 1998, I discovered a Judaism very different than the one I grew up with. A Judaism that was a wisdom tradition, a spiritual path to awaken people their highest selves. I also came to have faith in God, but not the childish god-concept I had growing up. In fact, the God atheists don't believe in, I don't believe in either. So what do I mean when I say "God"?
I can't tell you, because its not something I can put into words. The word "water" doesn't make you wet, but you know what it's referring to. This is not the case with the word "God." Rav Abraham Issac Kook, the first Chief Rabbi of Palestine, a visionary and philosopher writes:
"All the divine names, whether in Hebrew or any language, give us only a tiny and dull spark of the hidden light to which the soul aspires when it utters the word "God." Every definition of God brings about heresy, every definition is spiritual idolatry; even attributing to Him intellect and will, even the term divine, the term God, suffers from the limitation of definition."
First, a bit about Rav Kook and atheism. Rav Kook, who lived in Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel) under the British Mandate, was known for being universal, out of the box, and able to befriend and dialogue with people holding seemingly opposite ideologies from him, including the secular Zionists who were proud atheists. Rav Kook actually believed that the phenomenon of atheism was the hand of God influencing history because religious practice had fallen to a state where too many people had blind faith in a deity that did not exist. He writes:
"Since the thoughts concerning God in their basic elements are unclear, God being, as conceived by the multitude and even by individuals who should be their leaders, is that of a ruthless power from which there is no escape and to whom one must necessarily be subservient. ... No grandeur of God is then manifest in the soul, but only the lowliness of wild imaginings, that conjure up a form of some deceptive, vague angry deity that is dissociated from reality. It confuses everyone who believes in it, depresses his spirit, blunts his feelings, inhibits the assertion of his sensibilities, and uproots the Divine glory in his soul. ... atheism arises as a pained outcry to liberate man from this narrow and alien pit, to raise him from the darkness ... To uproot the dross that separates man from the truly divine light, and in the ruins wrought by atheism will the higher knowledge of God erect her Temple."
Knowledge of God (called the experience of d'vekut, which means "bonding" or "unifying" in Jewish thought) reveals to me that I and everything else in this temporary world of multiplicity and separation is One with God. It is seeing but not with my eyes and knowing but through my mind, that duality is not the fundamental truth of existence. That the Infinite and Eternal One is giving birth to creation every single second, and that the flow of history is Divine intelligence unfolding through time. It's seeing what the kabbalists teach as "Ain Od Milvado" (אין עוד מלבדו), which translated means, "There is nothing more than Him." Judaism teaches that although God transcends creation, everything in creation is sourced in God, is One.
This higher knowledge of God is reflected in the Hebrew names of God. The name of God most used in Hebrew (the Hebrew of Jewish sacred texts is known as Loshon Kodesh, which means the "Holy Speech" because it is a God-centered language) to refer to the Divine is Hashem. Translated, "Hashem" means "The Name" because it refers to one of the most sacred names of God in the Torah. This name is composed of the four letters (read from right to left) ה (Heh) - ו (Vav) - ה (Heh) - י (Yud) and is known in English as the Tetragrammaton, which means the "four-letter name." This name is not spoken, its pronunciation has been lost to known history. Thousands of years ago, it was pronounced during Yom Kippur by the High Priest when he stood in the Holy of Holies, home of the Ark of the Covenant inside the Holy Temple of Jerusalem. Hashem is the name God revealed to Moses after Moses asked whom he should tell the Israelites sent him, and Hashem answered tell them "I will be what I will Be."
This answer, which is a name, implies that God transcends time. A common question people ask is if God made everything then what made God? Then what made whatever made God? Then what made that, ad infinitum. Inherent in this question is the idea of causality, that A causes B, which causes C, like dominoes falling in a line, like time flowing from the past into the present into future. God was, God is and God will be. This concept is contained in the letters of Hashem's name, which is a composite of the past present and future tenses of the verb "to be": God was (היה), God is (הווה), and God will be (יהיה). Everytime the name Hashem is used in the Torah or spoken, it is invoking and evoking that God is infinite, and beyond beginning middle and end.
God cannot be grasped through our mind because our mind is time-bound. There is a story about a man who is found by his neighbor looking for something under a streetlamp. When his neighbor asks him what he is looking for, the man replies his keys. The neighbor then asks him where he lost them and the man replies in his house. Upon being asked by his neighbor why the man is looking for his keys under a streetlamp outside, if his keys are in his house, the man answers because there is light under the lamp and his house is dark.
This story is a great metaphor to describe the folly of searching for God with our minds. The intellect is an incredibly powerful tool. Through the power of our cerebral cortex humanity has developed the scientific method, discovered the laws of nature, put a man on the moon, ushered in the digital age and given us almost God-like powers. We are so used to using our minds to look for answers, but in searching for God, the "streetlamp" is our intellect, and the "keys" are God. No matter how much we look with our intellect and its tools, God cannot be found, and the fact that God cannot be found with a microscope or telescope does not prove that God does not exist. The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
So how does a time-bound being awaken to that which is timeless? The Tikkunei Zohar, a classic of Jewish mysticism, states, "No thought can grasp him." Higher knowledge of God does not require that a person discard reason, but simply be open to the possibility that there are ways of knowing that are trans-rational. The God atheists deny is a man-made construct whose origin is in the human mind. Hashem, also known in kabbalistic terms as the "Endless Light," cannot be grasped or conceived of by the human mind but can be apprehended through transcending the mind. Torah is the Jewish spiritual path, a set of practices to awaken to this transcendent knowledge of God. When this awakening happens we behold, that we are not alone, that there is nothing to fear and that our true source is Hashem.
May Hashem bless us with d'vekut, to see through the prison of our finite minds, and to recognize that we are all a spark of the Infinite One.
Special thanks to the Tzfat Gallery of Mystical Art for the blog art.
Follow Eitan Press on Twitter: www.twitter.com/eitanquest
Joe Winkler: Theodicy in Contemporary Life: An Exploration of the Book of Lamentations
Right off the bat, a complete misunderstanding of Atheism.
We do not have a single individual definition of God we do not believe in.
We do not believe in ANY definition of God, no mater how vague and nebulous, simply because there is no evidence to suport it.
Actually, I'd say I give the personified God concept more credibility than the vague one- the personified concept could be explained by aliens. The vague concept is simply mental masturbation.
Rational Approach To Divine Origin of Judaism
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEg_Oys4NkA
Adam placed hand in stream then raised same watery hand and exclaimed: Mah? Mayim!
Teutonics centuries later wanted into same act, Teuton's hand in stream exclaiming: Vass? Vasser!
Latins/Anglos centuries later wanted into same act. Anglo's hand in stream exclaiming: What? Water!
French/Spanish centuries later wanted inot same act.Their hand in stream exclaiming: Quoi? Aqua!
With all due respect, who was first?
Hebrew yud= 10 heh= 5 vav=6 heh=5 making a sum total of 26
Hebrew and English sum total is 26
2 plus 6=8
8 times 1=8, 8 times 2=16 (1 plus 6=7), 8 times 3=24 (2 plus 4=6), try furtther i.e. 8 times 4, 8 times 5 etc. and you will see that in the end the numbers are reduced indicating the modesty of the All Mighty.
If there is no God, then, why do so many events occur on a daily basis which can NOT be explained by sheer coincidence? And I have found myself elaborating this point in a few conversations recently using this example:
Everyone has experiences when they think about someone and moments later the phone rings and it is that same person calling. For it to happen once a month would be coincidental. For it to happen every other day would be too unlikely to be so explained. Same type of event. Rarely means nothing. Frequently means something.
This example relates to INFORMATION violating the known properties of physics. Essentially, traveling and propagating on its own self-powered bandwidth.
Push this (information) envelope a bit further and many events--normally attributed to 'divine intervention' can at least be quantified.
Anyway (IMHO) the primary purpose of creation is EVOLUTION. If one accepts this premise, the other open question is potentially answered. God may not have always been God. God may have started out 10 or 20 billion years ago (or potentially longer) as an amoeba.
"If there is no God, then, why do so many events occur on a daily basis which can NOT be explained by sheer coincidence?"
Answer:
First, there is no such thing as coincidence- there is a chain of cause and effect. Everything that happens occurs because of what happened before.
Second, just because you do not understand the chain of events, that does not mean it has a magical explanation.
Your example about the phone ringing is explained by selective memory. You remember these incidents of thinking about someone and the phone rings because they are unusual occurrences.
You forget all of the times you think about someone and nothing happens, or the phone rings and it is someone you have not thought of in years.
If you factor in ALL of those occurrences, based on the number of people you know, and the number of times your phone rings, you will see that no magic is involved.
Also- even if this was some kind of psychic phenomena, that does not violate any laws of Physics. There are areas of physics that we are just beginning to touch upon, like quantum entanglement, that could explain things such as this.
Again- just because you don't know what causes something does not mean that a God had to do it.
Please do not be such a maven.
There was no indication in my underlying post that God = "magic". Or, that God equals any popular description. Your other explanations are condescending and well, wrong.
Example: (you) "You forget all of the times you think about someone and nothing happens, or the phone rings and it is someone you have not thought of in years."
I have done no such thing. My earlier statement was very specific. Namely, if every other day the phone rings and one knows who is calling without cause to do so, that would not be explainable by sheer chance. If you wish to argue, please argue with my statements, not your false projection of my statements.
Here is another interesting example. I have a weekend house that I have not been visiting because I have been very busy. My neighbor across the road has a family member who is a high~ranking appellate justice. I had just submitted an appeal (Petition) to the US Supreme Court. I thought this person's relative might find it interesting. So I left a copy in my mailbox and called the neighbor to alert him that there was an envelope he should retrieve. To my shock, he had already looked at it and described it. He had left it in my mailbox and could not explain why he looked in my mailbox, except to say that he was just walking past and had the strange notion to do so.
Such events occur in my life periodically. Some are far stranger then that. They may not reveal the God of the common description but something is going on above (or below) the radar.
"laws of Physics"
I did not say "laws". I said properties. Again, you substitute your own words to persist in argument.
"quantum entanglement"
This could explain them, if you knew what you were talking about.
I have limited respect for physicists because they are like accountants. The bigger the company, the easier it is to massage the books to arrive at a desired outcome.
Of course, math is a vital component but I prefer the method of locating the answer first and using math to help verify it. Doing it that way makes mathematical slight-of-hand exceedingly more difficult. Because just arriving in the same ballpark as a balanced equation is no simple feat.
They can be explained by sheer coincidence:
"Apophenia is the experience of seeing meaningful patterns or connections in random or meaningless data." (from Wikipedia)
They were created to be discussed only by advanced Torah scholars.
They even say within them that they are dangerous documents that could easily lead readers away from the spirit. It is sad in California to see people trying to create a religion around documents they do not understand because they believe there are ideas of peace and universal love in the documents.
I would say that that is actually a pretty rational way to handle belief vs. evidence.
I wonder if he were travel to tibet would he become a Buddhist.
The existence of God is the greatest scam perpetrated by man; a fairy tale, one that we should outgrow regardless what flavor it comes in.
Somehow I doubt that few who take Judaism seriously would feel compelled to adhere to the "findings" of posters on an anonymous opinion forum..................
If they don't take such findings seriously, then they're acting contrary to Judaism, which is to know the truth.
All I have heard are myths and legends passed on through the generations, based on the initial assumption that there is a God in the first place.