From Self to Self

We are living in a very difficult period. The world as we have known it is coming to an end, and a New World, that we cannot yet see, lies somewhere far ahead of us. And here we stand at the edge of the Red Sea. Fear and violence threaten to overtake us, and vast watery uncertainty lies before us. We are trying to escape the disempowerment, the enslavement, that has held us in narrow limitation, for countless generations. For what? For Freedom? It is not possible to see what lies ahead, because we are not there yet. 

It is at times like this when the only thing that is going to get us into the sea is… Faith. And it is at times like this that Faith is hard to come by.

Teachers know that we teach what we need to learn, and Rabbi Wayne always said that he preached what he needed to hear. There were so many times in his life when he just wanted to throw in the towel and give up. His hope and expectations were so high, and he and the world fell so short, so often. Rabbi had many crises of Faith. 

I often told him that he was the bravest, most courageous person I had ever met. Because somehow, miraculously, over and over again, from the depths of despair — he managed to move, to crawl on his hands and knees, to lift himself, to rise up, and keep going. 

Rabbi Wayne wanted us to have this essay of his, this month. We can hear it as a very personal message — from Self to Self.

Amen, this springtime should be a time of renewal and rebirth, transformation and resurrection, Freedom and emPowerment, Hope and Faith for us and for our whole world. 

I am continuously encouraged by your courage and commitment, and so grateful for your presence. 

Ellen, continuing the work of the Elijah Minyan 

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ON FAITH

Rabbi Dr. Wayne Dosick

One of the greatest impediments to faith, to belief in God, is the existence of evil. We ask: How can a good and loving God permit such evil and suffering in our world? How can a just and fair God permit little babies to be burned up in Holocaust ovens and wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, and . . . ? And, more personally, we ask: How can God permit my mother / father / child to die — especially when I prayed so hard?  How can God ignore my pleas and my prayers and take my child from me? 

And, defiantly, we say: If that is how God is, then I cannot and will not pray; I cannot and will not believe in God. 

These are, of course, the questions of the ages. Libraries are filled with the responses of the philosophers and the theologians. Here is but one thought-provoking response. 

In a personal postscript to his book, The Meaning of Death in Rabbinic Judaism, Professor David Kraemer posits why the Holocaust — the systematic murder of six million Jews by the Nazis in the years 1939-1945 — has had such a profound theological impact on contemporary Judaism and the Jewish people.

Kraemer suggests that at every other catastrophic moment in Jewish history — times when the persecution of the people and the destruction of their institutions and land was greatest — the Jews of the time were sustained by underlying beliefs. 

First, the Jews believed that their own sins — their faithlessness; their separation from God — had led to the punishment of persecution and exile.  In 586 BCE, when the Babylonians plundered the land, destroyed the Holy Temple, and sent the people into exile, Jews believed that “the Lord has afflicted her [Israel] for the multitude of her transgressions.” (Lam. 1:5) Still, today, in the liturgy for the three Pilgrimage Festivals, we say, “because of our sins we were exiled from the Land.” 

However, Kraemer teaches, “the same theology of punishment and reward provides a source of comfort and promise; if sin leads to exile, [then] return to God’s ways will lead to restoration.” 

In short, the Jews of the time had faith in God; faith that brought them back to God when they were disconnected; faith that God would grant them redemption and salvation. 

Later in Jewish history, at the time of the Greek and the Roman persecution, leading to the destruction of the Holy Temple in 70 CE and the exile from their land, Jews were introduced to the notion of personal reward and personal salvation, in a World to Come. 

As Kraemer puts it, “…death at the hands of the tyrants is insignificant next to a future life restored by God….If it is just the next stage in the life-cycle, then the ending of this life cannot be seen as so catastrophic.” . 

Indeed, Kraemer says, “One way or another, in Jewish history, religious equilibrium was restored. But not after the Holocaust.”

Why was religious equilibrium not restored after the Holocaust?

Kraemer makes a powerful and interesting argument.

“…the most significant factor which made the Holocaust unique was the prior loss of belief in life after death. Whatever the responses following earlier catastrophes, one thing remained constant: the belief that there is life beyond death, that this life is only one stage in the human-divine drama. But modernity engendered an extreme skepticism in regard to such beliefs. They were too irrational, too primitive. With no belief structure to make sense of mass death — modern Jews could not but respond with utter theological despair. Unless we see death as the next stage in life, and understand death as a cleansing transition… we are frozen, without faith-options. 

The Holocaust did not precipitate a crisis of faith. A prior crisis of faith made the Holocaust the theological watershed it has become. They rejected the living, personal God they had already rejected, finding in the Holocaust, the confirmation of their earlier fears.”

And, at the very same time, the pious, faith-sourced believers — who still had the flames of the crematoria before their eyes and the stench of the ovens in their nostrils; who had watched their towns, their synagogues, their yeshivas, their families, their wives, and their children utterly consumed — came to Israel and to America, and re-established their communities; built their synagogues; and inspired new young ones to study in their yeshivas. They came from faith.  That faith was sorely tested; yet they never lost it.  They re-built their lives from out of the ashes; they continued their lives in never-wavering faith. “In perfect faith, I believe in God, and in God’s saving redemption.”  

Modernity, surely, has it blessings. 

And, just as surely, modernity has its curses.

Modernity has given us new wisdom, but, too often, it has stifled our spirits. Modernity has expanded our minds, but, too often, it has battered our hearts and crushed our souls. 

In our quest for the rational, in our veneration of the intellectual, many of us have lost a most precious component of our beings: the faith that powerfully translates into the surety of our knowing beyond knowing.

That is why the evil we see in the world, and the suffering we personally experience, so utterly devastates us. We don’t have the faith to look beyond the present moment; we have little notion that God has an ultimate plan for us and for our universe; we have little time or energy to be curious about the Great Beyond. 

In our bewilderment and pain, we disconnect, we separate, from God and the Divine Design. 

And it is then, that we feel the greatest angst and existential loneliness, for there is no greater emptiness than being without faith; there is no greater loneliness than being without God.

We are grateful for the knowledge and the learning and the wisdom that the age of reason has opened to us. But, we are ever-evolving human beings, living with ever-expanding consciousness, in an extraordinary moment in the history of our ever-unfolding universe. We cannot be limited by time, or space, or dimension.

We know that if we are connected, we are being called to deepen our bond.

We know that if we have been away, we are being called to return.

We know, in the image of the ancient psalmist, that “we must keep God directly before us” each and every moment. 

Faith is believing in something you cannot yet see. Can faith be acquired? Can faith be taught? 

Absolutely.

The way to faith is through faith; the way to faith is through doing faith.

If you would like to be thin and in good physical shape, you can sit in your house, or at the seashore, or on a mountaintop, hoping that a slim waistline and good health will wash over you. Or, you can go to the diet center and the gym — where you will find others wrestling with the same issues — and, slowly yet profoundly, you can be guided to learn and adopt the practices and habits that will lead to weight loss and physical fitness.

It is the same with faith. You can sit in your darkened room or in a beautiful natural setting, hoping that faith will wash over you, and that you will be in good spiritual shape.  Or, you can go to the places and find the teachers where, slowly yet profoundly, you will be guided to the World of Spirit, toward a faithful relationship with God. 

You can learn to pray, and meditate, and chant, and move your body. You can sharpen your intuition, your night dreams, your daydreams, and visions. You can tap into your soul memory so that you move beyond your Earth-existence and Earth-experience, and open yourSelf to receive and hold — if only for a few moments at a time — universal, eternal knowing.

You can stand at the always-burning bush, and enter into the always-open gateway, and come into the Divine presence. 

You can know that God loves you, and cherishes you, and cares for you and watches over you, and protects you, and comforts you, and offers you guidance, and good counsel, and constant companionship, and eternal love.

And you can come to know that God, the Creator and Sustainer, has a blueprint, a Divine Design for the universe, and that the way to stay connected to God — to be in balance and harmony with the Divine flow —  is to strip away all ego, and to say, with loving faith and conviction, “Not my will, but Thy will, O God, be done.”  “For, with my limited Earth-view, even if I cannot see it at the moment, I know that You have set the ultimate plan, for the highest and the greatest good, the eternal right, the infinite intent.” 

You can come to know that there is no separation between you and God, between you and all other human Beings; you can become vividly aware of the Wholeness of existence, the Oneness of all peoples.

You can believe. You can have faith. You can know God in communal covenant as the sovereign of the universe, and in deep personal intimacy as your closet friend and guide. 

Then, when you open your eyes, you see from the beginning of time until its end. When you open your ears, you hear the echoes of eternity resounding throughout the cosmos. When you open your spirit, you feel the Oneness of every Being. When you open your heart, you are enveloped in the presence of God. When you open your soul, you were, you are, and ever will you be.  

Evil, suffering, pain, anguish — we see and feel and know and fight to eliminate — but they don’t have to hold dominion over us.

In death, we are simply “not here, present elsewhere.”

Death is returning home.

And where is home?

“The immortal spirit lives with God.” “Death is just a matter of going from one room to the other.”        

From God.

To God.

The circle is never-ending.

The circle continues still. 

Whether or not we are in body, we are in the holy firmament, protected and nurtured under the sheltering wings of the Shechinah, of God.

Whether we are here or elsewhere, we are bathed in God’s Holy Light, filled with God’s everlasting Love.

In full faith and trust, we say: “Magnified and sanctified be the Name of God.”