Why Are We Here?
Written by Rabbi Shoshana Boyd Gelfand Thursday, 10 July 2008
Rabbi Shoshana Boyd Gelfand's closing speech from Conference 2008 in Leicester.
Why are we here? No, not here in Leicester. No, not even here in England. I mean the big question - Why are we here? Why do we exist? Why did God bother to create us at all?
The rabbis in the Talmud actually debate whether it would have been better for human beings not to have been created at all. I’m sorry to tell you that they concluded that the world would have been better off without us. But God doesn’t listen to a bunch of rabbis, I’m afraid, and God went ahead and created us. So we are left with the fundamental question of meaning: Why are we here?
Now you may say that that is just too huge a question for us to tackle in the next half hour. So I’ll narrow it just a bit. Instead of “Why did God create human beings?” I’ll ask “Why did God create the Jewish people?” I’m fairly convinced that those two questions are linked. Our humanity and our Jewishness are not wholly separate. So I’d like to take the next half hour to explore this with you by looking at a few very familiar texts. The stories won’t be new, but perhaps our questions could be. At the end, I’ll ask you again, “Why are we here?” Hopefully, we’ll have some glimmer of an answer.
So the obvious place to begin this quest for an answer to why we are here is to look at the moment when we came into being - the creation story.
If you recall, in Chapter one of Genesis, God speaks and through the power of God’s word, each element of the world we live in comes into being.
א בְּרֵאשִׁית, בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים, אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם, וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ. ב וְהָאָרֶץ, הָיְתָה תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ, וְחֹשֶׁךְ, עַל-פְּנֵי תְהוֹם; וְרוּחַ אֱלֹהִים, מְרַחֶפֶת עַל-פְּנֵי הַמָּיִם. ג וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים, יְהִי אוֹר; וַיְהִי-אוֹר. ד וַיַּרְא אֱלֹהִים אֶת-הָאוֹר, כִּי-טוֹב; וַיַּבְדֵּל אֱלֹהִים, בֵּין הָאוֹר וּבֵין הַחֹשֶׁךְ. ה וַיִּקְרָא אֱלֹהִים לָאוֹר יוֹם, וְלַחֹשֶׁךְ קָרָא לָיְלָה; וַיְהִי-עֶרֶב וַיְהִי-בֹקֶר, יוֹם אֶחָד
1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
1:2 Now the earth was unformed and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters.
1:3 And God said: 'Let there be light.' And there was light.
1:4 And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.
1:5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.
Verse 3 – And God said, “Let there be light. And there was light.”
This is a remarkable verse. In most ancient creation myths, the world comes into being through some childish battle of the gods, and human beings are not the pinnacle of creation, but rather, the servants or playthings of the gods. In our creation myth, however, the world comes into being through the power of speech. God speaks and the world comes into being. Perhaps it is no accident therefore that we became the people of the book, the people of words.
But even more remarkable is that our God is a reflective God. Look at verse 4: And God saw the light, that it was good.
After each act of creation, God steps back and evaluates the quality of the work. Each time (with the notable exception of the creation of human beings), God says – ki tov – it is good. God approves and makes a value judgment about the world. So even from the first chapter of the Torah, there is an indication that God is concerned with values and what is good.
That makes it all the more remarkable when, in chapter two of the Torah, after the creation of Adam, we come across the following phrase:
יח וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָה אֱלֹהִים, לֹא-טוֹב הֱיוֹת הָאָדָם לְבַדּוֹ; אֶעֱשֶׂה-לּוֹ עֵזֶר, כְּנֶגְדּוֹ.2:18 And God said: 'It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper corresponding to him.'
For the first time in history, we come across something that is not good. And that something is loneliness. God does not want Adam to be alone. Perhaps by extension, God does not want to be alone. In fact, one way to read the rest of the Torah is, in Heschel’s immortal words, God’s search for man. (Although I’m sure Heschel meant “God’s search for humankind.”) The realization that it is not good to be alone is the beginning of God’s search for a partner, an ezer k’negdo, not just for Adam, but also a partner for God.
If my interpretation of this verse it right, it brings us one step closer to the answer to our initial question about why are we here. We’re here because God realized it is not good to be alone. It is not good for people to be alone and it is not good for God to be alone.
God is concerned about relationships – and one of the primary purposes for which God created human beings was to be in relationship. Our tradition speaks of two kinds of relationships: one with a vertical dimension and the other with a horizontal dimension. Judaism teaches that they are both essential: we must pursue what I call a vertical relationship to God (beyn adam l’makom) and we must pursue what I call a horizontal relationship with each other (beyn adam l’havero).
The next two stories of the Torah serve as the foundational narratives about these two kinds of relationships. The story of Adam and Eve is about the relationship between God and human beings; and the story of Cain and Abel is about the relationship between people and other people. So let’s explore those two stories a bit to see if they shed some light on the kind of partner that God is searching for, which will ultimately explain to us why we are here.
Genesis 3 – the story of Adam and Eve
You all know the story. God creates Adam and Eve, places them in the Garden of Eden to work it and to guard it, commands them to eat freely from any tree except the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Nothing like putting the cookie jar right in front of the child, right. So what happens? The serpent tempts Eve to eat from the tree. She offers it to Adam and he eats. Their eyes are open, they realize their differences and immediate clothe themselves to cover them up. And that’s where we are when the following scene unfolds:
ט וַיִּקְרָא יְהוָה אֱלֹהִים, אֶל-הָאָדָם; וַיֹּאמֶר לוֹ, אַיֶּכָּה
3:9 And God called to Adam, and said to him: Where are you?
Ayeka - Where are you? What kind of question is this? It’s clearly not a physical question. Don’t tell me that God is playing hide-and-seek with Adam and can’t find him. This is not a question about physical location. This is a question about moral standing. This is the equivalent question that I ask my 3-year-old son when I catch him red-handed with chocolate cake smeared all over his face and I ask, “What do you think you’re doing?” It’s a moral question and one which demands a recognition of wrongdoing and a willingness to take responsibility for it.
Has my son – or any 3-year-old for that matter - ever said, “Oh, yes, Mommy, that chocolate on my face is from the forbidden cake that was meant for Abba’s birthday party. I’m so sorry. I think I really screwed up” No, that is most definitely not the answer I get from my son. And that is not the answer that God gets from Adam.
Just for the record, if God ever calls to you and asks “Ayeka- Where are you?” The right answer is: Hineni – I am here, ready to take responsibility for my actions and for my relationship with You. That’s the answer God is looking for. It’s the answer that Moses will give at the burning bush. It is the answer that Abraham will give at Mount Moriah. But it is not the answer that my son gives me regarding chocolate cake, and it is not the answer that God gets here. Instead:
יא וַיֹּאמֶר--מִי הִגִּיד לְךָ, כִּי עֵירֹם אָתָּה; הֲמִן-הָעֵץ, אֲשֶׁר צִוִּיתִיךָ לְבִלְתִּי אֲכָל-מִמֶּנּוּ--אָכָלְתָּ3:10 And he said: 'I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.‘
3:11 And God said: 'Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree, which I commanded you that you should not eat?'
Yet another opportunity to come clean, to say hineni, to take responsibility. But instead, Adam does the equivalent of my son saying, “I didn’t do it, my sister did it!”
יב וַיֹּאמֶר, הָאָדָם: הָאִשָּׁה אֲשֶׁר נָתַתָּה עִמָּדִי, הִוא נָתְנָה-לִּי מִן-הָעֵץ וָאֹכֵל3:12 And the man said: 'The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate.'
It’s her fault. I had nothing to do with it. And not only does Adam blame Eve for it, but he also blames God. “The woman whom You gave to be with me”. It’s Eve’s fault. It’s God’s fault. It’s anyone’s fault but Adam’s.
But I’m afraid that women come out looking just as childish as men in this story. In the next verse, when Eve has the opportunity to take responsibility for her actions, look what she does:
יג וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָה אֱלֹהִים לָאִשָּׁה, מַה-זֹּאת עָשִׂית; וַתֹּאמֶר, הָאִשָּׁה, הַנָּחָשׁ הִשִּׁיאַנִי, וָאֹכֵל3:13 And God said to the woman: 'What is this you have done?' And the woman said: 'The serpent beguiled me, and I ate.'
Again, the buck is passed. No one takes responsibility. And the rest of the story is history. Or rather, the rest of the story is the beginning of history; for Adam and Eve are punished with the classic punishment for disobeying God – exile. Throughout the Torah, when anyone demonstrates an inability to dwell with God or with community, the punishment will be that they will live without God and without community. Adam and Eve cannot live according to God’s boundaries and God’s rules within the garden, so they are exiled and forced to live outside of Paradise, and human history – along with mortality - begins.
Chapter 4 of Genesis introduces us to the next generation. Adam and Eve’s children, Cain and Abel, enter center stage. Like in their parents’ scene, a seminal question will be asked; a fundamental test of character will take place. And like their parents, they will fail. But we will learn something crucial about God from their story:
ח וַיֹּאמֶר קַיִן, אֶל-הֶבֶל אָחִיו; וַיְהִי בִּהְיוֹתָם בַּשָּׂדֶה, וַיָּקָם קַיִן אֶל-הֶבֶל אָחִיו וַיַּהַרְגֵהוּ4:8 And Cain spoke to Abel his brother. And it was when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.
We don’t know what the conversation was or why Cain killed Abel, other than perhaps classic sibling rivalry and jealousy brought on by God’s favouritism (a mistake that more than one parent has made). Look carefully at this verse, however. There is a word repeated unnecessarily, and that word is key to our understanding the message of this story. Which word is repeated and in doing so adds no new information?
Achiv – his brother
That word is repeated 7 times in 10 verses. We got it the first time. In fact, we didn’t even need it the first time. The Torah tells us that Eve had a son Cain and then she had another son, Abel. We could figure out for ourselves that they are brothers. So why does the Torah need to tell us seven times that they are brothers?
One understanding of this repetition of the word achiv is that murder is fratricide. All human beings are related. All human beings are siblings. So not only is the first murder is also the first fratricide, but all murder is fratricide.
The question now is what will the reaction be to this horror of the first death in history. How will Cain react?
ט וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָה אֶל-קַיִן, אֵי הֶבֶל אָחִיךָ;4:9 And God said to Cain: 'Where is Abel your brother?'
Just like the Adam and Eve story, God opens the conversation with a question. Again, this is not a question of physical location. God clearly knows what has happened and where Abel is. This is a moral question to Cain, “Do you take responsibility for your actions against your brother?”
While I am not one of those who views God as a perfect, faultless Being, I do love this practice of asking questions and giving people the opportunity to step forward and take responsibility. God could have simply pointed a finger and said, “Look what you’ve done, you idiot.” It could have been an accusation, but instead it is an opportunity – an opportunity for moral growth.
Many years later, one of our great leaders and teachers, Maimonides, will write that when one is rebuking another, one of the best techniques is to ask a question. Questions open up conversations. Statements and accusations tend to close down conversations. Both in the Adam and Eve story when God asks Adam “Where are you?” and here in the Cain and Abel story where God asks Cain “Where is Abel your brother?”, God is demonstrating the proper way to rebuke. You ask a question and hope that this will lead to someone stepping forward and taking responsibility.
As we all know, however, that is not what Cain does. Instead, he asks a question in return:
וַיֹּאמֶר לֹא יָדַעְתִּי, הֲשֹׁמֵר אָחִי אָנֹכִיAnd he said: 'I know not; Am I my brother's keeper?'
Note again the repetition of the word brother. Not only has Cain rejected responsibility for what he did to Abel, but he even acknowledges that Abel is his brother and despite this, he feels no responsibility towards him. This rejection of responsibility for his brother seals Cain’s fate. And we see that once again, the punishment for sin is exile. Whereas Adam and Eve’s sin was disobeying God, and their punishment was that they were exiled from the garden and no longer permitted to live there with God; Cain sin is that he cannot live with human beings, and therefore he will be exiled from living with civilization. Watch:
י וַיֹּאמֶר, מֶה עָשִׂיתָ; קוֹל דְּמֵי אָחִיךָ, צֹעֲקִים אֵלַי מִן-הָאֲדָמָה יא וְעַתָּה, אָרוּר אָתָּה, מִן-הָאֲדָמָה אֲשֶׁר פָּצְתָה אֶת-פִּיהָ, לָקַחַת אֶת-דְּמֵי אָחִיךָ מִיָּדֶךָ יב כִּי תַעֲבֹד אֶת-הָאֲדָמָה, לֹא-תֹסֵף תֵּת-כֹּחָהּ לָךְ; נָע וָנָד, תִּהְיֶה בָאָרֶץ4:10 And God said: 'What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood cries to Me from the ground.
4:11 And now you are cursed from the earth, which has opened her mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand.
4:12 When you till the ground, it shall not henceforth yield to you her strength; a fugitive and a wanderer shall you be in the earth.'
A fugitive and a wanderer – na va-nad – if you cannot live with your brother and take responsibility for him, then you will not be permitted to live with other human beings in civilized society. And the curtain closes.
I’d like to suggest to you that these two stories – Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel – are paradigmatic stories. They represent the two requirements that God is looking for in a partner. We said earlier that God detests loneliness and is looking for a partner, someone to be in relationship with. In both of these two stories, God is searching for that partner. But it can’t be just anyone. We all know that loneliness is not quelled by simply being with others. We conquer loneliness by finding others who share our values and our dreams, who can be our partners on a journey. God is looking for a partner who will take responsibility for two primary relationships:
A vertical relationship – saying hineni to God
A horizontal relationship – saying hineni to other human beings
When God says, “Where are you?” – the answer needs to be, “Hineni, I am here, ready to take responsibility and be in relationship with God.”
That’s the vertical relationship.
When God says, “Where is your brother or your sister?” – the answer needs to be,
“I know where they are, because I am responsible for them.”
That’s the horizontal relationship.
To be God’s partner requires being in relationship to higher values and being part of something bigger and more transcendent than our individual wants and needs.
To be God’s partner also requires being in relationship with other people, being someone who will demonstrate that we are indeed our brother’s and sister’s keepers.
God spend the first 22 chapters of Genesis looking for such a partner.
There are a few more false starts:
In the next story, Noah looks like a possibility to be God’s partner. He follows God’s instructions to build an ark. Doing good with the vertical relationship. But Noah makes no attempt to save any human beings other than his family. So he fails on the horizontal relationship test.
Next story: Tower of Babel. The people work together beautifully to build a tower. They are looking after each other and being each other’s keepers. Nice horizontal relationship. But the purpose of the Tower is to “build a name for ourselves.” There is no mention of God or a higher transcendent purpose. And we know too well in this day and age the danger of people working together without a moral cause to guide them.
It is not until Chapter 12 that God finds Avraham, who spend the next 10 chapters demonstrating that he is his brother’s keeper, when he rescues his kidnapped nephew Lot and when he argues with God to save the righteous people of Sodom and Amorah. Avraham passes the horizontal test. And then in Chapter 22, we have the Akedah, the binding of Issac, where God calls out to Avraham to do the unthinkable, and Avraham answers back the magic word,
א וַיְהִי, אַחַר הַדְּבָרִים הָאֵלֶּה, וְהָאֱלֹהִים, נִסָּה אֶת-אַבְרָהָם; וַיֹּאמֶר אֵלָיו, אַבְרָהָם וַיֹּאמֶר הִנֵּנִי.22:1 And it came to pass after these things, that God tested Avraham, and said to him: 'Avraham'; and he said: 'Here am I.' – hineni
Why are we here?
We are here because we are the Jewish people, the descendants of Avraham. We answer both the vertical question and the horizontal question in the affirmative. When God asks, “Where are you? Do you believe there is transcendent purpose and meaning to life?”, we say “hineni¸yes, we want to have a relationship with You and higher values.” When God asks, “Are you your brothers’ and sisters’ keepers? Do you care about other human beings?, our answer is an unequivocal, yes. This is why we are here and it is why God created the Jewish people – to share the message that both of these questions are essential to human existence.
Judaism does not accept the solitary monastic existence as a model Jewish life. You cannot sit on a mountaintop and commune with God and have a fully Jewish life, for the vertical relationship with the transcendent is only half of the Jewish equation. Nor can you be a humanist existentialist, who believes that pure social action is sufficient for expressing Jewish commitment. That caring for other human beings must be informed by some sort of higher purpose.
Jews must be concerned with both the horizontal and vertical axis. To be honest, most of us lean towards one or the other. Each of us has a tendency to express our Judaism more through spirituality/study or more through social action. I believe that one of the reasons the Torah sets out the Adam/Eve and Cain/Abel stories right at the beginning is to show that both the horizontal and vertical axis are essential to being a fully expressive Jew.
This weekend, we’ve celebrated a number of projects that we as Reform Jews have initiated or been part of: the Siddur, ResponsAbility, Jeneration, Israel.
Each of these initiatives has a vertical aspect and a horizontal aspect to it:
The Siddur – Obviously part of its purpose is to help us connect to God more meaningfully and to answer hineni in response to God’s call to us. But this Siddur is not simply about a vertical relationship with God. This Siddur was created collaboratively, by all of us working together and contributing to it. It is the most grass-roots Siddur I have ever seen. It is a Siddur which consciously tries to be inclusive and invite people to engage with it and each other. Thus, it has gender-neutral language, transliteration, large-print versions. It is a Siddur which has a definite horizontal dimension. It is a Siddur which says, “Yes, we are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers and we will make sure that prayer is accessible to everyone.” This Siddur has a vertical axis for sure, but it also has a horizontal one, and that’s what makes it unique.
ResponsAbility – One might think that a Jewish ethics initiative would be over-focused on the horizontal dimension. It would be very easy for ResponsAbility to have become a social action initiative without mentioning God or a higher purpose. But this is a Jewish ethics initiative, and as such, will engage with Jewish responses to ethical issues based on Jewish texts and Jewish tradition. As such, it has a vertical dimension to it as well.
Jeneration – Reaching out to Young Adults and meeting them where they are at was the mandate of Jeneration.org when it was launched in October. Since then, we’ve had almost 12,000 individual visitors to the website. They have connected with each other, communicated with each other, and used Jeneration as a platform to engage with each other. They have stated loud and clear that they want to connect to each other and be each other’s keepers. But Jeneration.org, like any technology is just a tool. It has the potential to bring people together and in order to create something transcendent and meaningful, but it is up to the users of Jeneration to create projects and initiatives - like the Purim Spiel Video Competition, like Shabbatz, like a late Bar/Bat Mitzvah ceremony – projects that have a vertical connection and shout out “hineni” in response to the question of connection to something larger than oneself.
Israel – One of the reason Israel has always captured my imagination is that it engages the Jewish people in both a vertical and a horizontal enterprise. You cannot create a State without caring about your brothers and sisters. In fact, what we have learned in the past 60 years is that you can’t create a Jewish state without caring about all of the citizens who live there, and that is the biggest horizontal challenge ever. At the same time, Israel has an immense vertical challenge as well: How do you create a State whose purpose goes beyond being a nation like any other? How do you create a State that has transcendent meaning, that is guided by the wisdom of the Torah and the Prophets? Israel is the greatest example of how a vertical and horizontal relationship co-exist and how both are necessary for the flourishing of the Jewish people.
Each of these initiatives has a vertical dimension and a horizontal dimension. That’s why we chose them. That’s why we believe in them. My question to you as we leave this Conference is meant on two levels: Why are you here?
By “you” – I mean you as an individual and you as part of your home community. So I challenge you to ask yourself the vertical question and the horizontal question two times: once on a personal level and once on a communal level. Let’s start with the personal:
God asked Adam, “Where are you?” God was hoping for the answer, “Hineni” – Here I am.
- In what way do you answer “hineni” to God’s question of “Where are you?”
- Do you have a personal, vertical relationship with God – with some sense of transcendent meaning and purpose in life?
- If so, how do you pursue that relationship - through prayer/study/meditation/reflection?
- If not, what are you going to do to remedy or improve it?
Where are you? That’s the vertical question.
And then there is the horizontal question:
- In what way are you your brother and sister’s keeper?
- What do you do to help Jews in your community and around the world?
- What do you do to help our non-Jewish brothers and sisters and to build positive relationships with them in the interest of repairing the world?
Those two questions – “Where are you?” and “Where is Abel your brother?” - are ones that every Jew needs to ask him or herself. That’s why we’re here.
But I’ll make it harder for you. I’m going to suggest that not only does every individual Jew need to ask those questions, but every community needs to ask those questions of itself as well:
The vertical question:
- Are our prayer services inspiring people to have more meaningful relationships with God?
- Is our cheder helping young people to engage with our tradition in a compelling way?
- Are our members answering “hineni” when God calls out to them?
The horizontal question:
- Do members of our community care about each other enough to visit the sick, comfort the mourners and celebrate s’machot together?
- Does our community reach out to other Jewish communities in Israel and around the world to support them in times of trouble and times of joy?
- Does our community engage with the non-Jewish world in significant ways through inter-faith and community activities?
I challenge each of you to return to your synagogue, and together with your rabbis and leadership, to challenge yourselves to say “hineni”, to be your brothers’ and sisters’ keepers, and in doing so, to be the true descendants of Avraham.
That’s why we are here – and I am so grateful that you all are. Thank you.
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