I offer this teaching in memory of my mother, Nelle Frisch, whose yahrzeit we observe today.
This may make some of you uncomfortable. That’s OK, my job as a rabbi is to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.
This week’s full parsha is a driving force in my life, at a number of levels. Let me explain why.
As you may know, because I say it frequently, my father was an atheist, at least that’s what he said until his dying day, when he may have changed his tune just slightly. Eating a hard boiled egg, symbol of life, he said, “I have to go now. I have to see my mother.” Now having worked with many on hospice, I am not exactly sure what he meant, but that kind of sentence is not all that uncommon toward the end.
My mother was what is now called a “classical Reform Jew.” She would say she was “agnostic. Unsure of whether there is a G-d or not.. She was confirmed at Shareth Emeth in Saint Louis and eventually founded Temple Emanuel Saint Louis when Shareth Emeth became too observant, embracing the outward trappings of Judaism. Kashrut. Hebrew. Bar Mitzvahs. Kippot. For her, Judaism was all about how to behave.
Part of how she lived was always going to yizkor with her father and then with all of us. It was important to her to remember her family and to say Kaddish with her dad. What it means to say a prayer that never mentions death and praises G-d for life remains a mystery to me but we were raised on the stories of her going every year on Yom Kippur.
When we lived in Evanston, my parents, as Northwestern faculty started the North Shore School for Jewish Studies, a Sunday School with a lot of Jewish ethics and history, but without Hebrew and without G-d. When we moved to Grand Rapids, I started sixth grade. We joined Temple Emanuel and at the New Member Shabbat we were asked to do the Friday night blessings. I told the rabbi, ‘But Rabbi Al, Jews don’t believe in G-d only Christians do.” My mother walked out when that rabbi started wearing a kippah. But both parents remained highly invested and involved until sometime in the 1980s when they owned an independent bookstore and it became more important to them to take a vacation than to pay temple dues. My father was on the board. My mother taught 7th grade. She was very involved in sisterhood, making salads and traying food for Oneg Shabbat. We hung out with a group of five families that all had kids about my age. It was an early havurah.
When I went to college, I took a course in parshat hashavuah, the portion of the week. It was very similar to how we do Torah Study today. I was captivated by this week’s portion. I suddenly got it. It was the rainbow. A sign of G-d’s covenant. A sigh of G-d’s presence. G-d was real. A rainbow can only exist when there is a perfect balance between sun and rain. Too much of either and you can’t see a rainbow. G-d is like that. Perfect. Perfect balance. It was an aha moment. So, you see, this weekend’s portion remains the center of my faith.
https://www.song-list.net/videos/debbiefriedman/rainbowblessing
Recently I started reading Rabbi Angela Buchdah’s memoir, The Heart of a Stranger. She was born in Korea and moved to Tacoma when she was five. When she was a young girl, she would lead bedtime prayers for herself and her sister. They would include the Shema, the synagogue telephone directory Bedtime Prayer for Children and some personal prayers. Now that she is a rabbi, she says she has conversations all the time with congregants who feel a visceral sense of faith or connectedness to something larger than themselves. But she also talks to many people who don’t…(page 59) That would be true of me as well. At the end of each chapter, she has a brief description of a concept in Judaism. This chapter, “Bedtime Prayers,” talks about Emunah, Trust. While it is often translated as faith, it is related to the word Emet. In fact, the Conservative Movement guiding principles was called Emet v’Emunah, Truth and Faith. She goes on to explain that the difference between faith and trust is that faith is a noun, and trust is a verb. She says that when G-d tells Abram to leave his house, next week’s portion, by the way, G-d doesn’t ask Abram to believe anything. G-d asks Abram to do something—to step outside himself, to look up and to count the stars.
She goes on to say, “Many Jews, when asked if they believe in G-d have trouble answering. The better question is: Do you trust that there is a force for good in the world? Will you act upon that trust?”
That was my mother. She trusted that the world was good and we had the responsibility to make it even better. Some of that belief came from Girl Scouts and the idea that we should leave a place better than we found it. And some of it came from her Judaism.
We are a tradition, starting all the way at the giving of the Torah at Sinai, that acts before it believes. Na’aseh v’nishma, We will do and we will hear. The doing comes first. The understanding will come later. Or it won’t.
There is an old joke. There are no atheists in foxholes. There are also no Jewish atheists. It is a question of what kind of G-d do you not believe in. My college rabbi told us that we couldn’t really discuss G-d because that would limit G-d and G-d is limitless. While that may be straight quotation of Rambam, it was not very helpful to a searching college student. Rambam also developed 13 Articles of Faith, which we sing as Yigdal and some Jews use in their daily prayers. I have often thought Rambam’s list is in response to the Christian Nicaean creed. So, I’ll risk this conversation. Here is the deal, you don’t have to believe it to be a good Jew.
The understanding of who or what G-d is changes throughout the Bible. G-d, A Biography is a good explanation of the evolution of G-d.
Belief in the traditional, all powerful, all knowing, all good G-d can be hard after the Holocaust. If G-d is all powerful, why did G-d not stop the Holocaust. Rabbi Harold Kusher, in his best-selling book, When Bad Things Happe to Good People, limits G-d’s power. G-d gave people free will and can’t take it away, therefore G-d cannot stop bad things.
Other types of belief systems include the idea that G-d created the world and then like a watchmaker wound it up but doesn’t have anything to do with our day to day lives.
G-d is the 13 attributes: Adonai, Adonai El Rachum V’chanun, Merciful and gracious, Erech Al[ayim, slow to anger or patient, long in the nose, v’rav chesed v’emet. Full of lovingkindness and truth. Noseh chesed l’alaphim. Extending lovingkindness to the 1000th generation. Forgiving inquity, transgression and sin.
G-d is love. Or as Shai Held said in his recent book, Judaism is About Love.
G-d is One, we say as the watchword of our faith. Hear O Israel, the Lord our G-d, the Lord is One.
G-d is the still small voice within you, according to Elijah. The Jimmie Cricket. The moral compass, if you will.
G-d is a verb, according to the mystics. This leads to meditation and the sefirot and trying to become one with the divine.
G-d is a metaphor. G-d is water. G-d is Makom, the Place. G-d is a Rock. G-d is Fire. G-d is a cloud. Drawing on traditional sources, that is what Rabbi Toba Spitzer teaches in her book G-d is Here.
However you think about G-d as a Jew, we know that the tradition teaches that we are all created b’tzelem elohim, in the image of G-d. There is one more piece that I find important in today’s parsha. G-d promises to be in relationship with us. To form a covenant with us, a brit. To never destroy the world, at least by water. And yet, G-d still wants to destroy…over and over and over again.
G-d prays, we learn in the Talmud:
‘May it be My will that My mercy, my compassion may suppress My anger, and that My mercy may prevail over My [other] attributes, so that I may deal with My children in the attribute of mercy and, on their behalf, stop short of the limit of strict justice.’ (Berachot 7a)
We then have a responsibility to take care of this world. We are all on this ark together, taught one of my Bar Mitzvah students. We need to remind G-d that G-d, that we will not destroy the earth, by water (too many current examples of floods this year!), by fire (again, too many examples this year alone.) No, our job as part of this covenant is to be in relationship with G-d and take care of this world, to leave this world better than we found it.
That is part of what the rainbow teaches. That is part of what we learn from this parsha, and yes from my mother. The conversation has been started. Let’s discuss.
There is a blessing for a rainbow in Judaism. Baruch Atah Adonai, Zocher habrit. Blessed are You, G-d who remembers the covenant.