By now you know my spirituality often comes from song lyrics. One that has always been important to me is Bette Midler’s “From a Distance”:
From a distance, the world looks blue and green
And the snow-capped mountains white
From a distance, the ocean meets the stream
And the eagle takes to flight
From a distance, there is harmony
And it echoes through the land
It’s the voice of hope
It’s the voice of peace
It’s the voice of every man
From a distance, we all have enough
And no one is in need
And there are no guns, no bombs, and no disease
No hungry mouths to feed
From a distance, we are instruments
Marching in a common band
Playing songs of hope
Playing songs of peace
They’re the songs of every man
God is watching us
God is watching us
God is watching us
From a distance
From a distance, you look like my friend
Even though we are at war
From a distance, I just cannot comprehend
What all this fighting’s for
From a distance, there is harmony
And it echoes through the land
And it’s the hope of hopes
It’s the love of loves
It’s the heart of every man (every man)
Seems simple, no?
I could take each of those stanzas and intersperse how they impact my spirituality. Like seeing those mountains from a distance, reminds me of the question we looked at last week, “Have you seen My Alps? Have you taken pleasure in my world? YES! From a distance, we all have enough. But apparently we don’t know how to share it or distribute it equitably. From a distance, people look like friends, but still there is war. ENOUGH I want to scream. And yet from a distance there is hope.
But why is G-d saying this from a distance? Where is G-d?
One line of our High Holy Day liturgy begs:
Sh’ma Koleinu, Adonai Eloheinu, hus v’raham aleinu. v’kabel b’rachamim uv’ratzon et tefilateinu.
“Hear our voice, O Lord our God; spare us and have mercy upon us, and accept with mercy and favor our prayer”.
When Stephanie sings it, it reminds me of a gentle waterfall or a babbling brook at a Japanese garden, maybe at Anderson Gardens. It is one of the most beautiful pieces of liturgical music. It transports me, it elevates me. Listen for it when you hear it.
During the next 25 hours we will sing this prayer over and over again.
Recently I was driving to a police death investigation in my role as chaplain, and praying. I was thinking about a question I was asked recently. If the cantor sings Hineini, Here am I, shouldn’t G-d also answer that G-d is here? Where is G-d? And I was wondering where was G-d in the moment I was driving toward? And a related question from a young Torah School student who wanted to know if we can see G-d.
Where is G-d? That is a big and important question.
First, we may need to figure out what we mean by G-d.
Maimonides codified what Jews believe in 13 articles of faith.
About G-d he said that G-d exists, is perfect, that G-d is One, the creator of everything, is and was and will always be. That G-d doesn’t have a body. That our worship and praise should only be directed to G-d and we don’t need intercessors or intermediaries. Many of us might agree,
Yet, here’s the deal. You don’t have to agree with him. Not on all 13 or even on specific individual points. Others have argued with him before. And will again. In Judaism there is no litmus test of what you must believe.
You don’t even necessarily have to believe in G-d to be Jewish, because sometimes it is a question of what concept of G-d are we talking about. There are Jewish atheists, including my own father and maybe some of you.
If it would help you and if you want, you can read all the arguments with Rambam in the published form of this with a link to My Jewish Learning. https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-thirteen-principles-of-faith/
So how can I stand up here and try to answer the question. Where is G-d?
When children ask me how can we see G-d I answer simply. It is like the wind, I say. We can’t see wind, but we can see the trees blow. We can’t see G-d but we can see the after effects of G-d’s presence. We can see the good in others. We can see the spark of the divine. We can feel G-d’s presence like we feel the wind on our faces.
But where then is G-d?
G-d asks where Adam and Eve are at the very beginning of the Torah, after they eat from the apple, perhaps really a pomegranate. “Ayecha,” G-d calls, “Where are you?” But if G-d knows everything doesn’t G-d know where they are?
G-d calls to Abraham in the story of the Akeda, the binding of Isaac that we read last week, and Abraham answers “Hineini, Here am I “. G-d calls to Moses at the burning bush and Moses answers “Hineini., Here am I”
G-d calls to Isaiah and Isaiah answers Hineini, Here am I, and adds “send me.” (Isaiah 6:8)
Eight times in Scripture the phrase Hineini is used to answer G-d. 178 times the word is used. When a name is doubled, like Abraham, Abraham or Moses Moses, you better pay attention! And you better answer. Maybe it is like a parent who calls you by your full name. That is usually when you are in trouble. The difference here is that the answer “hineini” carries with it a profound meaning. Hineini. Here I am. Fully present. Ready. It is a declaration of spiritual presence and readiness to serve, even in the face of fear or the unknown. And it has had great meaning for me. Hineini, Here am I. I am still here, despite all the obstacles.
Yet, this doesn’t answer your question. Where is G-d? Does G-d ever answer Hineini? In fact only twice does G-d declare Hineini. Both in Isaiah.
Hineini, Here am I, I about to do something new;
Even now it shall come to pass,
Suddenly you shall perceive it:
I will make a road through the wilderness
And rivers in the desert. (Isaiah 43:19)
Most of Isaiah 43 is designed to bring us comfort, that G-d is here and that G-d loves us.
The second example is from tomorrow morning’s haftarah and it brings me hope:
Then shall your light burst through like the dawn
And your healing spring up quickly;
Your Vindicator shall march before you,
The Presence of GOD shall be your rear guard.
Then, when you call, GOD will answer;
When you cry, [God] will say: Hineini Here I am.
If you banish the yoke from your midst,
The menacing hand, and evil speech, (Isaiah 58:8-9)
G-d seems ready to act and be present with the people. G-d is reaffirming the covenant that G-d made with us. If we do x then G-d will do y and take us back in love.
Many people sit in High Holy Day services wondering what does any of this have to do with me. Isaiah was a long, long time ago. It doesn’t seem like G-d is fully present. It doesn’t seem like G-d loves us. G-d doesn’t answer my prayers. I feel distant from G-d. I am really angry with G-d. I am not even sure that G-d exists. That’s OK.
When Jacob’s name was changed to Israel, we became G-d wrestlers. He received the name Yisrael because he wrestled with G-d and man and prevailed.
Isaiah’s message for these yamin nora’im, these fraught days of awe when the world seems to hang in the balance that G-d doesn’t want our fasting. G-d wants something else. To feed the hungry, clothe the naked and house the unhoused. If only we would make good choices as Heather would say, then G-d would be present.
But G-d’s love is unlimited. How then do we reconcile the words of unetaneh tokef that acknowledges that some people will live and some people will die. That’s true, of course. But the prayer continues that tefilah, teshuvah, tzedakah can avert the decree. Our class looked at very translations of that. Avert, lessen, annul. The prayer doesn’t promise that there will be no death.
When we feel distant from G-d or we think that G-d is not answering our prayers, I want to suggest something else.
Sometimes we think G-d is all powerful, omnipotent, all knowing, omniscient and all good, beneficent. This is a very traditional understanding of G-d. And yet, it can be a problematic understanding, like the Rambam formulation. If G-d is all good, and all powerful, G-d could have stopped the Holocaust, right?
Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev (1740-1810) argued with G-d, wanting to know where G-d was if people are suffering. Using a very similar construction to Moses, he demanded, commanded G-d:, It is a prayer of protest, “Din Torah mit Got” (a lawsuit with God) in which he asserts, “And I, Levi Yitzhak, son of Sarah Berditchev, say, from my stand I will not waver, and from place I shall not move until there be an end to this exile.”
Here is another Rabbi Levi Yitzhak story about Kol Nidre and not letting G-d off the hook. The tailor had cheated Goldman (not our Goldman, just the way the story was told!) out of a pair of trousers, yet G-d had allowed a little girl to die of diphtheria.. The tailor lost his temper with his children ,but G-d had known about a famine in another country. So the tailor said, “And for every sin I had committed during the past year, God had done one too. So I said to God, ‘Look, we each have the same number of sins. If you let me off, I’ll let You off!’ ”
http://www.berdichev.org/arguiing_with_heaven.htm as told by Rabbi Larry Kushner.
Sometimes we don’t even know what the question might be, as Reb Levi Yitzhak illustrates at a Passover seder. When speaking about the four children, he said, “Lord of the Universe, I Levi Yitzhak. am the one who does not know how to ask….doesn’t the haggadah say that with the child who does not know how to ask, “you must start with him.”…Lord of the Universe, are You not my Father? Am I not Your son? I do not even know what questions to ask. You take the initiative and disclose the answer to me. Show me, in connection with whatever happens to me, what is required of me? G-d, I do not ask You, about why I suffer. I wish to know only that I suffer for Your sake.”
Elie Wiesel called G-d to account in his haunting play, The Trial of G-d. In introducing the setting for the play, Wiesel gives us an idea of the provenance of the din torah / trial concept: “Its genesis: inside the kingdom of night, I witnessed a strange trial. Three rabbis—all erudite and pious men—decided one winter evening to indict God for allowing his children to be massacred. I remember: I was there, and I felt like crying. But nobody cried.”
Reverend Larry Zimmerman said at the funeral of John Oganowski, the pilot of Flight 11 which had left from Boston, that G-d was present when the World Trade Center Towers fell. G-d wept as we wept. G-d gave the firemen courage as they raced up the stairs. G-d held every victim in the palms of His hands. Perhaps too anthropomorphic but comforting nonetheless.
Rabbi Harold Kushner, in his major work, “When Bad Things Happen to Good People” argued we have to limit G-d’s power. If we have free will, G-d can’t stop people making bad choices that cause that kind of suffering of the Holocaust, or 9/11 or October 7th. People chose to do those things. The question we need to wrestle with, because the word Israel means G-d wrestler, isn’t where is G-d when bad things happen but when bad things happen, because even us ordinary folk will experience bad things , the question is when that happens what do we do with our lives.
Sometimes there is no good explanation. Each person needs to respond to tragedy in their own way, in their own time.
Maybe the question isn’t where is G-d? But how ? How do we answer G-d with Hineini? Can we hear G-d calling to us? Even if, as Bette Midler sings, G-d seems distant.
Earlier this year you may recall that my good friend Danise Habun died. She and I ran our cancer journeys together. We served on several boards together. We would talk about this word after almost every oncologist visit. Hineini, Here am I ready to meet life’s challenges. Ready to make the world a better place. Ready to make good trouble. Even if it was hard. Even if we would rather be in bed.
So one of my questions is why am I here, and Danise is not. Many of you have similar questions. But look around you…we are still here. Hineini. Here am I ready to be fully present. Ready to wrestle with these eternal questions.
One of my favorite poems is from Mary Oliver, Summer Day.
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
That’s how we find G-d and that’s how we answer Hineini. May this be the beginning of beautiful wrestling, for each of us and as a community. Gmar chatimah tovah.