|
Walk Through the Parsha by Rabbi David Walk
Knowledge
Va'era 5768
January 3, 2008
One of the most beautiful sentiments expressed in our liturgy is in a
verse recited every morning while putting on tefilin. "And I will
betroth you to Me forever, and I will betroth you to Me with righteousness and
with justice and with loving-kindness and with mercy. And I will betroth
you to Me with faith, and you shall know the Lord (Hoshea 2:21 & 22)."
We then wrap our tefilin strap thrice around our index finger symbolizing
our triple betrothal to God. This is very moving, but what does it mean?
The prophet Hoshea seems to be telling us that we can know God. That
appears to be impossible. How can we finite mortals gain knowledge of the
Infinite, Immortal One? Even Moshe Rabbeinu was denied clear sight of God
(Exodus 33:13-20), so how can we expect knowledge of the Deity? The simple
answer, often offered, is that the term is being used in the metaphorical sense
of intimacy between spouses as often happens in Genesis. This continues
the comparison of our relationship with God as that of lovers. However,
that doesn't help us solve a similar problem, which crops up in this week's
Torah reading.
At the beginning of this week's parsha it states, "God
spoke to Moshe, and said to him, "I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, to
Isaac, and to Jacob with [the name] Almighty God, but [with] My name YHWH, I did
not become known (noda'ti) to them (Ibid. 6:2 & 3)." The clear
implication is that the Jews will achieve this knowledge not known to the
Patriarchs. The normal way to finesse this problem is to limit the
knowledge being described to the names of God. In other words it was the
attributes or characteristics of God's behavior towards the world hinted at by
these names which was missing from the experience of the Patriarchs. There
is no assurance of knowledge of God being promised, only terms descriptive of
Divine acts. Reb Simcha Bunim of (the unpronounceable town of ) Peshischa
(1765-1827) elegantly sidesteps the issue by reminding us that the verbs
to know are always in the future tense, and refer to the World to Come, when we
will have knowledge of God. In any case we Jews avoid theology, the study
of the nature of God, like the plague. We just don't know very much about
God.
Having said all of this, there does seem to be an idea of
gaining knowledge of God, which I believe can't be totally ignored or made to go
away. While acknowledging that ultimate understanding of God is beyond our
grasp we are not exempt from the attempt to further this wisdom. It's
similar to our studies in science, especially physics, where we don't expect to
completely exhaust the questions, but each new insight brings us closer to
useful information about the universe around us. The implausibility of
total success doesn't exempt us from the quest. I believe that there are
two approaches to discovering the secrets of the universe. One is the
ivory tower approach of contemplating the elegance of the cosmos. This was
Einstein's method. The other style is to observe and measure as many
phenomena as possible in the hope that all this data will reveal patterns in the
puzzle.
I believe that these two systems are available in the Torah
realm as well. The great Rosh Yeshiva of Har Etziyon, Reb Aharon
Lichtenstein addressed this problem in 1990 and gave the following description
of one way of dealing with the problem: "Yet we are commanded to know
God, and must strive to reach the level of "noda'ti" - familiarity.
How are we to fulfill this mitzvah? One important method is that we
achieve this through learning Torah. Even though we cannot grasp God's
actual thought, the Torah is identified with His thought. When a person
studies Torah, he is studying God's thought, and God's will becomes entrenched
in him. Obviously, in order for this to happen, we have to invest our
hearts completely in our learning, such that it is not merely an intellectual
pursuit and somehow 'external' to ourselves. We have to feel God's voice,
thought and will emanating from our study, and through this - with God's help -
we can reach the level of "noda'ti."
The other approach is beautifully described by Rabbeinu Bechaye
ben Asher (d. 1340). Rabbeinu Bechaye introduces each Torah reading with a
verse from Proverbs which he then explains. This week he chose, " The
Lord acquired me at the beginning of His way, before His works of old (Proverbs
8:22)." To explain this verse he brings the famous story of the
angels complaining to God about giving the Torah to Moshe. The angels are
upset that something so holy will be disrespected by humans. Moshe
counters that the material in the Torah are instructions on how to live in this
realm. Without physical needs angels don't keep kosher or resist
promiscuity. We attain an intimacy with God by following the directives in
the Torah. Our closeness and ultimately knowledge of God develops by
living according to God's will. Knowledge isn't facts; it's experience.
But doesn't this just bring us back to the original question:
How can we know things totally outside our familiarity? Well, the
answer to that problem was given at the moment of our creation. We were
created in God's image and likeness (Genesis 1:26). According to Reb
Chayim Volozhin (1749-1821) this means that we share two traits in common with
God. One is intellectual and one is behavioral. Our capacity to
reason and our ability to choose freely make us Godlike, albeit in a limited
sense.
I remember in writing classes we were often told to write about
what we knew best, namely ourselves and our experiences. We can only know
what's happened to us. When these life occurrences include spirituality of
both an intellectual and performance types, then our experiences contain God,
and we know our Maker.
|
